the star's promise
Sep. 16th, 2009 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luna_rainbowThere are a lot of female entities in the tarot deck, and I have a dearth of important female characters that I like enough to use as tarot. Here is one I had always intended to use, somewhere:
I hadn't decided on what Hinkan would be until I read Aeclectic's interpretation.
Hinkan is one of the few characters that loves Vivant unwaveringly, but I hesitate to put the word love anywhere near them because I don't want their relationship to be mistaken. Probably once or twice, Vivant might have mistaken his own feelings of gratitude and thought he loved her like a woman, but she herself always knows where she stands with him. She loves him, but there is a distance between them, just as there was a different distance between she and Mordan. She's not someone to fall blindly and irreversibly in love. She believes that all meetings come at the price of an eventual parting, and she's never tied down a man simply because she loved him.
Without spoiling what their relationship becomes... Vivant is an important existence in her life, bound by the love of friendship and the duty of oath and the burden of guilt. I think she is an amazing girl, who becomes what people need her to be - not what they want or what she wants.
The picture would have been set some years after she parted with Vivant. I mentioned her in the epilogue, the Prilloni boy who asked Vivant to visit her. I think she knows he'll never come, and she takes solace in knowing that they are watching the same night sky. Even if the constellations she sees won't be the same as what he sees, she knows he'll see the same constellations some day. Even if she searched the endless oceans for him she may never find him, but she takes solace in knowing that he's drinking from a river somewhere that will one day run to the sea and join her. Even if she dies without meeting him again, she takes heart in believing their bond, and that they'll meet again in some other life. I don't think she's absurdly optimistic, just possessed of an incredible tranquillity of the mind.
As for Vivant, Hinkan becomes the hope...the light at the end of the tunnel that he knows will always be there, and so he can find his way with its help, without having to go towards it. Because he knows that if he ever needs her, if he ever feels starved of hope, he could find her and she would accept him, and so...perhaps he could hold out just that little longer...perhaps he could bear just a little more. And I think she is incredibly foresighted to send him that Prilloni child, who will equally dote on Vivant, and who will be there even when she is gone, so that when his mind tires, his heart will always have someone to turn to.
I hadn't decided on what Hinkan would be until I read Aeclectic's interpretation.
On the bleak landscape where the Tower stood, the Fool sits, empty, despairing. He hoped to find himself on this spiritual journey, but now he feels he's lost everything, even himself. Sitting on the cold stones, he gazes up at the night sky wondering what's left. And that is when he notices, nearby, a beautiful girl with two water urns. As he watches, she kneels by a pool of water illuminated with reflected starlight. She empties the urns, one into the pool, one onto the thirsty ground.
"What are you doing," he asks her. She looks up at him, her eyes twinkling like stars. "I am refilling this pool, so that those who are thirsty may drink, and I am also watering the earth so that, come spring, the seeds will grow," she tells him. And then she adds, "Come. Drink." The Fool comes to kneel with her by the pool and drink. The water tastes wonderful, like liquid starlight. "I can see you are sad," the girl continues, "and I know why. But you must remember that you have not lost all. Knowledge, possibilities, and hope, you still have all of these. Like stars, they can lead you to a new future." Even as she says this, she began to fade away, like dew, vanishing. All that remains is a gleam that was at the center of her forehead. This rises up and up, until it settles in the night sky as a shining star. "Follow your star," the woman's voice seems to sing from that light, "and have hope." The Fool takes in a breath and rises. It is a dark night, a desolate land. But for the first time, he has a guiding light to show him the way. Distant as it is, it heals his heart, and restores his faith.
Hinkan is one of the few characters that loves Vivant unwaveringly, but I hesitate to put the word love anywhere near them because I don't want their relationship to be mistaken. Probably once or twice, Vivant might have mistaken his own feelings of gratitude and thought he loved her like a woman, but she herself always knows where she stands with him. She loves him, but there is a distance between them, just as there was a different distance between she and Mordan. She's not someone to fall blindly and irreversibly in love. She believes that all meetings come at the price of an eventual parting, and she's never tied down a man simply because she loved him.
Without spoiling what their relationship becomes... Vivant is an important existence in her life, bound by the love of friendship and the duty of oath and the burden of guilt. I think she is an amazing girl, who becomes what people need her to be - not what they want or what she wants.
The picture would have been set some years after she parted with Vivant. I mentioned her in the epilogue, the Prilloni boy who asked Vivant to visit her. I think she knows he'll never come, and she takes solace in knowing that they are watching the same night sky. Even if the constellations she sees won't be the same as what he sees, she knows he'll see the same constellations some day. Even if she searched the endless oceans for him she may never find him, but she takes solace in knowing that he's drinking from a river somewhere that will one day run to the sea and join her. Even if she dies without meeting him again, she takes heart in believing their bond, and that they'll meet again in some other life. I don't think she's absurdly optimistic, just possessed of an incredible tranquillity of the mind.
As for Vivant, Hinkan becomes the hope...the light at the end of the tunnel that he knows will always be there, and so he can find his way with its help, without having to go towards it. Because he knows that if he ever needs her, if he ever feels starved of hope, he could find her and she would accept him, and so...perhaps he could hold out just that little longer...perhaps he could bear just a little more. And I think she is incredibly foresighted to send him that Prilloni child, who will equally dote on Vivant, and who will be there even when she is gone, so that when his mind tires, his heart will always have someone to turn to.