III – The Empress

Welcome to the Valentine’s Day 2021 Storytime Blog Hop!

This February, I am delighted to share the next installment of my Tarot series with you. III – The Empress is not about romantic love, but I think it still encapsulates the idea of love and nurturing, even self-care, of Valentine’s Day. While I have been single for almost all of my Valentine’s Days, I see it as a day to show love to myself, give myself some extra self-indulgence, and just bask in the love I have for myself and the world, and of course, my cat!

But enough about my cat and my Valentine’s Day… let’s get to today’s story!

III – The Empress

The cold wetness of a tongue awakens me. The dog is jumping up and down, but all I see is barren land. Just dirt. Within myself, I know instinctively that this land isn’t sterile, just dormant with potential. Someone or something has stomped out all the dreams and just abandoned it. I stand up, seeing myself clothed in a skirt of green leaves, and a top made of red flower petals, the only spot of brightness here. But I am sad; I don’t belong in this place that is so dead.

I walk around the dirt in the pale morning light of dawn. There is nothing for miles and miles.

Even the air smells like dust.

I am tempted to walk away. To find my real home, because this is not it. I belong with lush greenery and humming insects, not this dead land of nothingness. But even as I turn to go, I can’t. I can feel the pull of the land, the potential it still holds. Knowing that it has been abandoned again and again means that I can’t abandon it now. Not even for my true home.

I hunch over and cry.

I cry for all the lost children, all the abandoned pets, all the gardens gone to fallow. I cry for those who’ve lost those things, too: the parents standing at too-small graves, the little boy crying out the window for his cat, the woman in the nursing home watering a single plant every day with the same attention she once paid to a huge vegetable garden.

As I cry, I notice something. Under my hand, where the tears fall, a small sprout has timidly peeked its head up. Maybe that’s all this place needs: someone to care.

I care.

I feel the watery pools behind my eyes as I take in the world’s sorrow.

I just let it all rain out of me. Rain, rain, rain nourishing the land.

In no time, this once barren place has become home, my real home.

The dog yips and dances around, then disappears into the undergrowth. I am alone now, but no, never alone.

My tears dry and my face lights up in joy, as I once more stand straight and tall. I smile at a bud of an iris, and it slowly blooms, proudly presenting its golden beard against its deep purple petals.

I whistle to a bee, and it begins to dance. As I watch and continue to whistle, hundreds of bees join the first and follow a choreography brilliant enough to dazzle the world’s most prestigious ballet company. I sit on a stump and a shy rabbit hops up to my feet, then settles in my lap. A butterfly flutters over and kisses my nose, then kisses several of the most upstanding gentlemen flowers, then flies off again, coquette that she is.

All this land needed was compassion and tears and feeling. A mother. I have come home again.

The End.

Want to read more? Check out the next story in the blog hop!

Recognition by Sara R. Cleveland

Careful What You Wish For by Nic Steven

Jesse and Tyler by Bill Bush

Sweet Vengeance by Sabrina Rosen

Patent of Marriage by Grace Craddock

Love, Drunk, and Cupid by Jemma Weir

Stop Dragon My Heart Around by Elizabeth McCleary

Any Other Way by Barbara Lund

Date Swap by Sandra Kleinschmitt

Heart of Fire by Katharina Gerlach

Or, if you want to read the first two stories of this collection, you can find them here:

0 – The Fool

I – The Magician

Have a wonderful Valentine’s Day!