Meditale : The Enumerator

This year I am writing a new book, with AI, that I didn’t plan to write about a missing and entirely new aspect of the Tarot, a Chromatic Arcana. One element of it will be 22 entirely new Major Arcana keys. I hope to serialise the audiobook version on this app when its ready but here’s the fifth of 22 short, allegorical 'meditales' describing the essence of these new keys.

The background ambience is called The Veil and you can find that on the app - it is designed to 'thin' the gap between the Void and the Density.

Photo by Imagine Buddy on Unsplash

Transcript

The enumerator was born into a house where nothing was wasted.

Not time,

Not words,

Not crumbs swept from the table.

As soon as eyes gained focus,

They noticed patterns before they noticed people.

Even as a toddler,

Pebbles arranged themselves into rows.

When they learned to walk,

Footsteps fell into measures.

Even the rain seemed to arrive in sequences.

Pauses between drops that whispered of an order beneath chance.

Their first companion was not a toy but a tally.

Sticks marked with careful lines.

One for bread,

One for firewood.

One for the days until winter loosened its grip.

While other children played at kings and monsters,

The enumerator learned that counting was a way of listening.

Numbers,

They discovered,

Were not cold,

They were honest.

At school,

They were neither loud or shy,

Simply precise.

They could tell when a story did not add up,

When a promise had hidden costs,

When abundance was being confused with excess.

People began to bring them problems wrapped in anxiety.

The enumerator unwrapped them gently,

Returning calm in place of confusion.

As years passed,

Their gift sharpened.

They could see risk before it ripened into disaster.

Probability spoke to them like the weather.

They learned the quiet art of balance.

How to weigh what was known against what could only be estimated.

This made them invaluable as an actuary,

Not because they predicted the future,

But because they prepared for it without fear.

Eventually,

The word reached the emperor.

He was someone who could be trusted with the invisible scaffolding of the realm.

Taxes,

Stores,

Treaties,

And the delicate arithmetic of power itself.

The enumerator never saw influence,

Yet influence found them.

In council,

They spoke little.

When they did,

The room listened.

They became the emperor's confident auditor and accountant,

Not by flattery,

But by fidelity to truth.

Where the emperor ruled through structure,

The enumerator ruled through clarity.

Together they formed a stable axis,

Authority anchored by insight.

And still,

Late at night,

The enumerator returned to their first love.

Counting stars.

Not to own them,

Not to control them,

But to remember that even the vast can be known,

One careful number at a time.

Reviews

Curiosity got the cat. I too, am a counter and my love is the stars. ✨

Satisfying story of a natural ability that becomes useful