Today's side quest is brought to you by the Knight of Wands, the Ten of Swords, and the Two of Cups, with the Seven of Wands holding things up from the bottom of the deck.
Starring: the Eight of Coins, the Knight of Swords, and Temperance. (And, since he flipped across the table from his original pile and refused to stay out of it, the Knight of Wands. Of course, he wanted more spotlight.)
There's a large empty lot on Main Street, right next door to Temperance's little credit counselling office. If you've driven through Tarot Town, you've seen it. It's the yellow ground between the office and the bakery, dry as toast, rocky as a riverbed, and completely bare except for one small green plant that pokes up near the sidewalk like it didn't get the memo.
Last spring, the town council voted to let someone build something on that lot for the whole community to enjoy. They posted a notice. They waited. For months, nobody applied.
Then, on the very same Monday morning, two applications landed on Temperance's desk at the town offices within ten minutes of each other.
The first came from the Knight of Wands, who strode into the office in a jacket bright enough to be seen from space and a hat with a little infinity loop stitched into the brim. His application was a sketch on the back of a diner napkin. "An outdoor stage," he announced, tapping it. "Lights. Music. Big enough for the whole town. I can have it up by Hallowe'en."
Temperance was still reading the sketch through what appeared to be a dry smear of duck sauce when the Knight of Swords arrived, carrying a cardboard tube under one arm. Out came forty-two pages of plans for a pavilion, with elevations, drainage diagrams, a seating chart and three pages of footnotes on acoustics. "It has to be done properly," he said, glancing sideways at the napkin. "Some of us think things through."
"Some of us actually build things," said the Knight of Wands.
And that, as they say, was that.
Now, here's the thing about these two. They're both builders. They both love making beautiful things, and they're both genuinely talented. But the Knight of Wands is all fire, and the Knight of Swords is all air, and if you've ever blown on a campfire, you know what happens when you put those two together. Every time the Knight of Wands made his stage bigger, the Knight of Swords made his pavilion better. Every time the Knight of Swords added a page to his plans, the Knight of Wands added a spotlight to his. Neither one would withdraw, and neither one would give an inch.
By October, the permit file on Temperance's desk was three inches thick. Revisions were stuffed in on top of revisions, and appeals were stapled to amendments. Nothing could move forward because every new idea was jammed into the file backwards, tangled up with the one before it. Both knights still showed up every morning to defend their plans, but the shine was starting to wear off. The Knight of Wands' jacket was rumpled. The Knight of Swords had stopped bringing the tube and was showing up with wrinkled, scribbled, out-of-order papers. They both looked, frankly, exhausted.
Meanwhile, something else was happening on Main Street.
The Eight of Coins walks past that empty lot every morning on her way to her workshop, and one day she stopped, set down her toolbox, and picked up a rock. Then another. She stacked them neatly along the edge of the lot and went to work. The next morning, she did it again. On the third morning, she brought a watering can for the little green plant by the sidewalk. She didn't ask anybody, and she didn't file anything. She just came by every day, did a little, and left.
It was Temperance who noticed first, from her window in the permit office across the street at town hall.
That Friday, she invited both knights to her business on Main Street, the credit counselling company, not the town office. She made them each a cup of tea, sat them down, and slid the enormous permit file across the desk.
"I've read every page," she said. "And I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that the bylaw is very clear. No structure can be built on town land until the ground has been cleared and prepared." She smiled. "The good news is that somebody's already doing it."
She took them to a window in the waiting area, overlooking the empty lot. It was hardly recognizable. The rocks were gone, stacked into a low wall along the edge. There were neat rows of turned soil, and the little green plant had become a proper vine, climbing a stake the Eight of Coins had put in for it.
The knights stared.
"You know what I do in this office?" Temperance asked. "People come in here who have spent more than they had. Nobody meant to. They just kept pushing, one more purchase, one more bill, until they were worn out and stuck. And what I tell them is what I'm going to tell you. You don't fix it by pushing harder. You step back, you look at what you've got, and you put it back in balance a little at a time."
The Knight of Wands looked at his tea. The Knight of Swords looked at his. Then, for the first time since Monday back in the spring, they looked at each other.
"Your stage is a good idea," said the Knight of Swords, slowly. "It would need better footings."
"Your plans are good too," said the Knight of Wands. "They just need someone to actually start."
It didn't take long after that. By the end of the afternoon, they had one plan instead of two: a community garden, with the Eight of Coins in charge of the beds and the stone paths. In the rear of the large lot was a small public green space with seats and tables, and a small, sturdy stage for unplugged music on summer nights. The Knight of Swords drew it up in four pages instead of forty-two. The Knight of Wands promised to have the lights hung by next June, not Hallowe'en. They clinked their teacups together over the desk, and Temperance stamped the permit before either of them could change his mind.
That evening, she made a note in her ledger: Main Street lot. Balance restored. Account in good standing.