Even though time and space don’t matter in this world, the Fool ran into the Page of Swords somewhere and sometime. He was a Zulu warrior standing in the middle of an incomplete world. It looked like the Page was standing on solid ground, but the only thing under him was white space, with lines going horizontally. Where the horizon met the sky, the lines stopped.
The warrior stood in a defensive position: shield at the ready, sword drawn and held to his side. He studied the Fool with fierce regard. Finding weaknesses and strengths. The Fool could feel the Page’s mind rooting around the empty cathedrals of the Fool’s mind. The Page relaxed at that point.
The thing about creation, the Page said finally, is that it is never finished. Every piece of art, music, sculpture, or building is unfinished. It is only the creator who decides it is done, and if the creator dies, the creation is done, but even then, it can always be built on.
This is part of the universe that is unfinished, the Page went on, looking around. I’m not sure if the creator will be back to finish this.
There was an empty echo to every sound that was made in this world. Up above, a giant rectangle the color of a dark olive blinked, waiting for something to happen.
That has been blinking there for eternity, the Page added. Maybe it is the sun? When I find myself in a place that is alien, I have to know that I will have to expand the way I think to make sense of it. My mind will tell me lies since it has a hard time not knowing, but I just have to philosophically tear each statement down till I know what I know.
The cursor began to move, and then suddenly symbols began appearing in the sky as the blinking rectangle moved across the blank sky. It said:
<p style=”background-color:#edc9af;”>Content here</p>
The Fool and the Page turned to the horizon as they felt a rumbling in the world. Something stretched across the sky, a color that looked tan or light brown, growing and changing shape. It was a sandstorm, and it was heading towards them fast.
The Page dropped to his knee and put his shield up and grabbed the Fool with the other hand, dragging them both into the shadow of the shield.
The wall of sand hit them hard and the Page put his strength into keeping the shield upright as all became turbulent sand. The Fool closed his eyes and put his shirt over his face to try and keep breathing air instead of sand.
They were like that for a long time before the sound stopped. When the Fool opened his eyes they were in a savannah in a field of yellow grass. Trees dotted the landscape along with some brush and rocks. Clouds blew overhead across a blue sky, casting moving shadows that chased along the earth’s surface.
They were in a world now. What was once a blank canvas was now a world full of life, color, and movement. A herd of elephants walked across the plain, the young calves playing with each other by throwing dust at each other with their trunks.
The Page stood up and looked around in suspicious wonder. He seemed to be trying to accept the world that he stood in now. The Fool could see all the thoughts passing through the Page’s mind as he tried to make sense of what had happened.
He shrugged and said, I will probably never know how this happened.
Gazelle began hopping by. The world seemed right. The sand was beneath the grass and red rock. Full-grown marula trees had grown quickly out of the newly created earth and cast their shade across the Page and the Fool.
The Fool knew that he should be moving on. What seemed like a dead-end in the labyrinth had become a path on his journey. So he said goodbye to the Page, who sat down under the tree and watched the herd of gazelle run by.