Peaceable Kingdom
A wave towards the morning sky...
For Alex Lee, this new job had proven to be stressful. There, he was dropped in New York City after years in Minnesota and soon this fox had discovered that there was far more to this job as a consultant in this city than anything he had ever experienced in the frozen tundra. Alex Lee would often find himself in the very early morning hours, say 5:00 in the morning with nothing to do as his clients and employers would meet in meetings to determine some such mumbo-jumbo about the security of investments after the dot-com crash of a year ago. Mostly, it was a challenge for the fox to stay awake during such dull meetings and it took a major jolt of coffee just to get him to wake up afterwards. The only thing that could bring him any form of entertainment was a shuffle and draw of the Tarot which he always brought with him in the suitcase, while waiting for the meetings to start.
"So what will happen today, Tarot?" the fox would say while stationed at a desk waiting for his clients to gather. He would shuffle twice to make sure that the results would be completely random as he did nearly every other day but this Tuesday would be much different. From the middle of the deck and with his eyes closed, the fox drew a card. It was the Tower, the card of sudden and unexpected change. On its face was a large building struck by lightning as a crowned lion and his wife were falling to their dooms. Lee did not like to draw a Greater Arcana card to start out the day but after shuffling again, his paw stopped once more on the same card. So he would start with a Major card that day and it represented something major was going to happen to him. Not once did it occur to him that the events about to unfurl in his life would affect his entire city and as a matter of fact, the entire world would be changed violently.
This was a cause for concern but his coworkers including Vanessa, a young lioness just a few months removed from an internship in Boston, and David, his bear employer known for his intimidating boardroom presence paid the nervous fox no heed as he began shuffling again. This time he would draw two cards facing against each other to show what two opposing forces would be fighting today. (The fox believed that certain elements of nature were constantly at war with each other.).
Alex closed his eyes and let his paws lead him to the two cards which would represent today's battle- they turned out to be "Justice", the matronly red-robed tigress holding scales and representing the fairness and justice of the world and the "Hanged Man", a fox caught by his hindpaws in a rope All of a sudden, a deep and nameless fear awakened in the fox's heart though the sun was still only a rumor on this autumn day in the City that Never Sleeps. The presence of so many Greater Arcana cards meant that something big was going to happen today and the cards themselves indicated this.
He turned to Vanessa, who was near him and asked for her intrepretation of the cards as she dabbled in Tarot as much as Alex did.
"Justice against the Hanged Man indicates that while the universe is fair and just, run by a God who is fair and just, there is an event of great importance today that people will look to in the future and just accept. The presence of the Tower means something will change, an old line of thought will be discarded," she divined the cards as a pocket radio blared its usual commercials followed by a radio talk show. The host was some personality that Alex did not spend much time listening to and thus would not have known anyway but given the disconcerting messages from the cards, Alex was a captive audience.
"There are many people in this world who in spite of our attempts to teach them peace and how to love one another, still hate us. They hate us for our freedoms, they hate us for our faith, they hate us for our prosperity. And woe to us when that hatred takes form"
The next question the fox asked "What virtues must I have to make the most of this situation?" This time, he drew his first Lesser Arcana card, the Knight of Wands, a brave and gallant lupine soldier charging into battle, armed with a long stick, dragons on his tunic. The fox was reaching his goal and everything would be turn out right. But wait! The card was inverted meaning that the finish would not be something he would want and that things would turn out against him.
And that's when he heard the news on the radio that planes bound for California had been taken over and upon hearing this, the fox wanted nothing more to be out of this room, this building. It was as if everything which once gave him respite and strength worked against him- they very terrain was about to declare war against him. The fox had never been victimized by a panic attack but there was no other way to describe it. His only hope was to leave and leave now and if he got fired, then so be it. Something in his mind told him that the skyscraper he was standing in right now would be destroyed and thousands of unsuspecting individuals would die with it. He took his deck and left under the pretense of using the facilities.
This building had its own pressure, its own hellish intensity and the fox would need to escape before disaster struck. He started down the lobby, with an elevator that could not go fast enough where if anything should happen, Alex would be one of the first to leave. His old employers and coworkers could find him down there and if his fears were true, they could leave as well. There was hustle and bustle all about the first floor but the fox was in his own little world, shuffling away asking questions about the hijacked airliner.
"Why was the plane hijacked?" His paws clenched around two cards- the "Devil", a hated card which meant that a negative event would be fast approaching, of being a slave to fear and "The Fool" the collective uninitiated who knew nothing of what was about to unfold. What was about to happen wouild be catastrophic and the fox would need all of his strength, not just physical but mental strength to understand what this day would bring and then survive.
"How will the world be after this day?" he shuffled and said, nervous sweat dripping down his fur and ruining his suit. But before he could have the Tarot answer that question, a loud thundering explosion came from the floors above. And he knew in his mind, that the literal and figurative meaning of the Tower was coming true in ways that he would have never guessed when the day started. A metal bolt of lightning had hit the tower and soon the world as he knew would be changed completely. He realized the true meaning of what the radio host was saying as well. Men who carry goodwill in their hearts would dream of a world without war or fear but these dreams of a peaceable kingdom would fall apart when exposed to the harsh realities of life.
Soon, the fox found himself joining a concerned and deeply confused rush of New Yorkers and visitors running to the exit doors. Word got round that the hijacked airliner had indeed ran into the tower and that this was absolutely not an accident. Others doubted that the tower would soon collapse but Alex knew that it would- the Tarot had told him. Soon, he phoned Vanessa and Dave. They had been looking for him in the lobby when he told them to escape the tower immediately as he retreated several city blocks, fearing that he would be in the destruction zone once the tower fell. The lioness and the bear who Alex had grown to like so much during his time in New York gave him a call when they were several blocks away and they agreed to meet at a deli five blocks away.
As soon as they met up at the deli, Vanessa, Dave, and Alex found themselves huddled there around a television, sitting nervously, fearing what might come next. This was an act of war against the US, the President had been notified, there would be swift and decisive actions against the perpetrators of this horrible act, they told themselves. And they saw the news being made not a mile from where they once were- the tower fell to the ground and its twin was hit as well. And as he saw that massive edifice, that shrine to American ingenuity and hard work destroyed, Alex grabbed the Tower card which he had kept separate from the deck and compared it against what he had just been party too- the destruction, the change in everything that had occurred on this Tuesday, the 11th of September, 2001 in New York City.
A wave toward the morning sky...