The Fool came out of the peacock feathers to a place outside. When he turned around he didn’t see peacock feathers anymore. There were cypress trees around him, and it was rocky. A hot dry wind blew through the small glen he was in. He saw a waterfall, and, sitting beside it, a Black woman. As he approached he could see that the woman was pregnant. She held an amaranth flower in one hand and a shield in the other. The shield had an eagle on it.
The breeze turned nice and cool. The Fool could feel the spray from the waterfall drifting over him and cooling him down. He was tired, but a nice, take-a-nap-under-a-tree tired, not weary or sick. He was attracted to the woman in a maternal way. She seemed strong and nurturing.
The woman waved the Fool to her feet and he sat and stared into her bright brown eyes. He smelled the sweetness of the earth around them and the cooling water that flowed behind her. The Fool was content. The woman offered him some peaches and nectarines, and he ate in ecstasy.
He spent his days with her, and she took her time tending to the earth. She would dig her hands into the soil and root around until she’d pull out a plant or rock that then would just be there. She was the Empress, mother of all the earth. She was Gaia.
The Empress remembered the Fool from the beginning, back when he would wander the barren land. He’d walk by the new men and they would create masks and statues worshipping him, even though he didn’t do anything but wander. He was an observer of the world as it matured from infancy to its present-day toddler self of now. Once his bones were carved with runes and wards that were to be used to help others, but in time the Fool had forgotten about them along with everything else about himself, and had begun to think of himself as a mere man.
The Fool bathed every day in the cool stream behind the cattails. He didn’t want the Empress to see him nude. He became bashful. He was usually very brazen, but he felt unworthy to be nude in front of the Empress. He tried to help, but she was doing things beyond his capabilities. She was making Earth.
Wherever she walked, flowers grew in her footsteps. When she raised her arms, trees came out of the earth. Animals walked with her as if they were tamed and her pets, only for her to shoo them off and watch them return to the wilds. One night a lamb and a lion shared heat from the fire as she told them stories that made all of them drowsy.
She shared with the Fool how the earth was needed by people, animals, and plants to survive, but the earth really didn’t need them – but since the earth loved all of them, it wasn’t a problem. She taught him that it was wiser to adapt to your environment than try to force your environment to adapt to you.
They spent time learning about plants, and not just how plants can help to heal and provide nutrients, but how they can provide a message. Everything means something when someone is looking, she said. She pointed to the field of amaranth and said, It is my immortality that they are signifying. The Fool knew they also signified her unfading love.
When people make up their ideas of what the Gods are and what they want, said the Empress to the Fool, they always seem to be unaware of love being the most important value a God can have for her children. Yes, I am the Empress, but my real name is Love. And love isn’t always nurturing and supportive. Sometimes I have to make decisions that you won’t understand, and you think I have stopped loving you, but that is furthest from the truth.
The Fool, and only to his recollection, couldn’t remember being this loved. It made him feel whole. He was inspired to create and to help others. He wanted so much to show his love and devotion to the Empress. He felt like he could never do enough.
She told him that the temples and the sacrifices were doing too much and were aligned in the wrong direction. When communities get together to help the less fortunate, she said, that is the worship I want. Make food, shelter, and love accessible to everyone; then I will be pleased. I would tear down the gold spires and kick over the offering tables if I could, but I’m not an angry person. I am just Love.
She made a comment one day about how the Priestess was the one that summoned her there. She was there when they made the Fool. She even added to his creation. She had been like a mother to him. I may even be your mother, she said, but the Fool couldn’t remember his childhood or growing up. She smiled and squinted at him, as if it was okay.
As the years turned into decades – or maybe this was all just minutes – the Fool felt like he should go. He felt cared for and loved. He was fed, washed, and sheltered. He felt whole again. His urge to wander had been returning. The Empress didn’t stop him, and in fact, she encouraged him to go on. His journey was long, and this was still the beginning, still familiar and comfortable.
She hugged him and he felt like he was being enveloped by love and understanding. She kissed him on the cheek and he felt the wetness of her lips tingle into the darkest corners of his soul. She gave him a lock of her hair so that there was a part of her on him always.