The Moon

The Fool came to another oasis. This one was a large but shallow lake. The Moon had risen into the sky, and a halo surrounded it. The Fool was lost and the desert around him seemed alien and haunted. He decided to just walk across the lake since it looked to be only a foot deep.

As he got closer to the other side, he saw two towers in the distance. One, on the left, was completely squared, while the one on the right was rounded with a pointed roof. The moon was between the two towers in a waxing crescent. 

Hello, the Moon said to the Fool, you are finally here. 

The Fool could see that the Moon had a face, and was looking sideways at him. He couldn’t tell if the Moon was smiling or grimacing. The whole world felt unsettling.

A wolf walked in from the dunes on the right, and began howling. It was a long, sorrowful, lonely howl until a dog came in from the dunes on the left and also started to bay. Together, they created a haunting cacophony of canine song. 

Are you ready? the Moon asked the Fool. The Fool didn’t know what the Moon meant.

Cracks appeared in the ground. He could hear them slicing down into the earth. Scarabs began flying out of the cracks. They were even flying up from the shallow lake. They swarmed the air and the Fool was blinded by them. They created a dark clicking cloud, blotting out the Moon and the sky.

The earth started falling apart. Huge chunks of earth caved in and the Fool could see space below like the earth was flat. A chunk of earth that he stood on in the water floated up into the scarab swarm. The water stayed a foot deep, even without anything holding it onto the floating chunk of crust. 

The earth floated above the scarabs and the Fool was standing before the Moon again. 

In an echoed voice, the moon said, Why do you not fully realize yourself? The voice vibrated his very core. 

You are not to be a person, but a spirit guide, the Moon continued. You are to walk in and out of mortal conscience and lead them to a better future, but you wander around like you are one of them. The Moon was angry. You are supposed to be a dream.

The stars started streaking down until the sky was just lit by the Moon. There was nothing else. The Fool was no longer standing on anything. He was in the cold vacuum of space, a cruel hostile environment lacking anything that can sustain life, but the Fool floated there while the Moon stared at him with contempt.

I’m not whimsical like the Star or playful like the Sun, the Moon continued, I am your instinct. 

The Moon then blew at the Fool and the Fool was flung into open space. He cartwheeled through the black heavens for a million years – or maybe just a lifetime – feeling nausea and vertigo from the spinning. The Fool wanted to not be there anymore. 

Then light flashed all around him. It was his memories. He saw the many times he had traveled through these worlds and the times he would give up and he saw the times he had made it all the way through. He saw himself wander around on Earth since the beginning and he never made it a better place, he just wandered through. 

He started crying. He wanted to be different. He tried to grab the memories and keep them so that he could have the memory to change. He blamed his amnesia for his inability to change. He wanted so badly to be a better person, or a better spirit guide, as the Moon called him.

He was flying towards a black wall. It turned out to be a wall of scarabs. He could see the light from the moonglow between their bodies. He was propelled towards the wall of clacking insects and then shot through them. Their shells felt like hard punches as he penetrated the wall. He landed on the rocks below the two towers. 

The dog came over and licked his face until the Fool put his arms up, and the dog then laid down at his feet. The wolf continued his howling at the Moon, and the Fool fell asleep.

The Moon watched the Fool sleep. He had been here so many times before. The Moon wished the Fool would just figure it out and leave the Moon to his guidance of others. 

He was there when the Fool was made. He had come up with the idea of the Fool. He wanted a guide to bridge the gap between the waking life of Earth and the dream world they lived in. He drew the blueprints and he gathered the others to make sure that the Fool could be what the Fool could be. Instead, the Fool was an empty-headed simpleton who thought he was a ‘free-spirit.’