Story: Wordspace, I

(Part II)

There is another world, where the words are the characters, living on a vast metatextual landscape. Some words resemble their namesakes, for cloud does indeed live in the sky, along with his more sophisticated cousins Nimbus and Stratus, and he has indeed a curious relationship with his friend Zephyr and the ever enigmatic Breeze. Water sprawls effortlessly over his old friend Ground wherever he cares to, and Ground is vast and solid, reliable to the end. Under Ground, where no words dare to go, there lies one whose name remains unknown to all but Ground and Earth.

Mystery was sitting around in a small indentation in Ground wondering about the meaning of Life. Many of the more abstract words were hard to fathom as they moved quietly around the wordspace. What was the meaning of Life, and what his role in the replacement of words when they had outlived their usefulness? Why did everyone instinctively avoid angular Death and his many tricks with Card. (Card was a crafty character.) Why did Love and Hate alternately spend so much time together and then vehemently apart?

For his part, Mystery had no confusion about what it was he was intended to do. He pondered the meanings of life as well as Life, and then when mischievous set about mystifying others with the strange things and events he observed in his existence. Sometimes he would tell the answers he found to Air, who hovered around and loved to hear all but tell little. Returning to our thread, on this day Mystery was pondering the meaning of Life, that curly abstract whose letter crinkled when he smiled, and who sauntered through the air and water and over the ground as if he owned it all. The meaning of Life vexed Mystery.

Out of the sky dropped Bird, with a message. Bird was the official messenger of the council of lesser abstracts, a small and interfering committee who liked to pester all the other words with mostly ignored rules and laws that made little difference in the reality of the wordspace. The council was headed by Regulation, a bold tyrannical bully who no one dared to challenge but Mystery. Regulation and Mystery had been at loggerheads since their time with School, the great teaching word.

The message was from Mystery's old friend Wimsy, who enjoyed vexing Regulation by being morale officer on the Council: "Come quickly, for the time may be at hand, and by the grace of Wisdom come armed. Wimsy." Mystery, always alert for entertainment, fetched his friend Club and they went across the surface of Ground - who was chuckling in the thrill of Mystery's tickling feet - to the place of the Council.

To be continued...