Hero and Fool

The hero and the fool awoke together in my bed this morning, a chill, misty gale blowing down through the cloud forest of the Parque Quetzal of central Costa Rica.  Somehow they had each been summoned by the echoes of my lover’s voice warning that we should get to high ground as the ice caps melt.  Today was the day of which she had foretold, had premonisced.  And I had no way to find her.  No means of communication from here to wherever she and her daughter had decided to land within the maelstrom. 

As he served breakfast, Don Bernardo confirmed my suspicions, “This is not the normal weather.  It is rainy and cold throughout the entire nation.  The hills, the cities, the coastlines, all are rainy and cold.  No es normal.”

What to do then? 

The hero calmly started formulating a plan as he arranged the minimal amount of gear to assemble in order to travel lightly and swiftly.  Or maybe that was the fool who was readying himself to travel.   For his lover knew where he was and would try to make it up the mountain, surely, to safety and to his waiting arms.  If.  If she could.

And if she couldn’t?  Which would go in search of her, the hero or the fool? 

The fool must rely on luck for his good fortune.  But during time of ultimate catastrophe, isn’t luck the equal of determination and fortitude?  Was luck forged in a cooler fire than courage? 

Would that there actually were two of me, one to leave behind to embrace her when she arrives, to enfold her in my relief, to nuzzle down into her hair and breathe in the tranquility of having no parts missing, of the whole, the entirety ready to face whatever comes, together.  The other to wave goodbye, briefly and sternly, to myself that was staying behind, resolved of footstep, heading towards the unknown trail, but steadfast in the image of finding a hint, a scent of where she had been.  Closing in, approaching her essence, sure of finding her before the tragedy befell.

After breakfast, the hero and the fool both etherized and the daily me remained, holed up with a head cold, swaddled in blankets within my unheated cabana.  My lover is out there somewhere along the coast, but I’m sure she needs no rescue.  I am here for healing and cleansing before she and I somehow wend our way to that point and place where one of us arrives and is waiting, smiling when the other comes into view.