Tarot Creativity Challenge, Day #2

The Hermit

I listened to the autumn wind. It spoke songs to me. It drew me on.

I thought I could hear a sense in the speech, in the song. I thought I could hear the variance in pitch and rhythm combined with a repetition that had the hallmark of sense.

I followed the sound, the song, the speech into a deep place, a place of leaves and red shadows. There are darknesses here that last all through the day; the acute angles of sunlight at dawn and dusk or the full blare of noon are never sufficient to pierce through the canopy, leaving patches of shadow that have not been dispelled in a hundred, a thousand years. It is a place fit for listening to the speech of the wind.

The more I listen, the more I am sure that there is a secret in the speech of the wind. They trees know it. They dance in time to it. They strip themselves bare before it. And if I listen hard enough, if I listen with aperated ears, if I listen with ears older than new and mewling forms of speech, I will know it, too.

The more I listen, the more I am certain that the secret in the song, the sound, the speech is that there is no secret at all.

How long has it been?

Yesterday I saw a woman, a wanderer who had lost her way. She saw me. She opened her mouth. Speech fell out, but all I heard was wind.