The depressing cloud that had overtaken the wizard during the decade past had mostly lifted from his world. He'd waved his magic wand furiously at the fog that had overtaken him and hidden his spells from his sight, to see it burn off quickly. Unfortunately, though, he had to sleep. Each night, the fog re-formed. His unconsciousness returned every time he fell off guard even slightly. The wizard was still a man. He was still streaky and felt the urge to be evil. He fell frequently into unconsciousness and continued casting spells blindly, even when he had the best of intentions.
A storm of darkness swirled in his heart. Would he ever be free of this prison? Would he be doomed to casting spells hither and thither in the vain hopes of striking the right chord and unleashing an avalanche of knowledge where he would finally see the elusive light at the end of the tunnel? Was there just no escape from the suffering of life? Was their no escape from the identity he'd cocooned himself inside of? Was there nothing that could break the spell he was under?
He knew that no magic spell could change the basic reality he faced: his identity was doomed to die. His experience was fleeting. Who he was ran deeper than his magic did, and his Self carried the real power behind his spells. He possessed a strength within him that could make a mockery of the tiny little changes he'd been trying to affect in his world. He'd been using magic to fight tiny little ants, one at a time, when all along, he held inside him the means to conquer the mountain. And the ironic part was: the ants were trying to help him.
No, his magic wasn't going to get him out of this mess. It was just going to complicate the web he'd snared himself into. He couldn't stay isolated any longer. His True Self was in danger of being hidden and concealed in the unmanifest, perhaps for aeons longer. His window of opportunity to Self-express was rapidly closing, and their might not be another for quite some time. The great irony was that his True Self had no concern for urgency or time, and would patiently waiting twelve million more years as easily as twelve seconds. However, his mockery of a self that he'd made up to run from the boogeyman had no patience. If this opportunity were lost, much suffering would result, for him and for others. He could not wait. The next time he fell asleep, he might not awaken. The experience of this identity would be lost forever. There would be others, but this precious, fragile flower of an identity had been crafted with care, and there were valuable lessons to be learned from it and through it. The experience would never be duplicated.
There was a problem, though. The false self that had been cast upon him was so deeply rooted that he no longer could distinguish it from who he was. Only by being experienced through another person could he ever discern the two. In other words, it was time for the wizard to find a woman. He needed to find his counterpart, his opposite, the one who would love him with the intensity that he denied his own existence. And he knew already that he would resist this. His identity was king. He was the one who ruled his world. He commanded supreme power above all creation through his magic. And he would have to yield.
He could not bring her to him. He could not find her. If he sought her out, she would elude him. If he tried to figure out who she was, he would look her right in the face and not recognize her. He could not try to make himself be the thing that would attract her. She had to be someone who was attracted to his True Self, not his identity. His identity was too fragile and too fleeting to create any sustained attraction. His True Self, however, would be the envy of all women in the kingdom. He had to forget all consideration and forget trying to figure out how he would identify her. She would identify herself. Or maybe she wouldn't. Somehow, some way, he would find out when she had arrived.
He knew that she might well be in his presence already. It might be someone that he already saw on a daily basis. She might be someone he had known long ago, and who had passed from his experience. It might be someone very close to him who he had not encountered yet. She could be anyone. He had no way of knowing who she was, and he would not be able to know. Any attempt to discern who she was would push her away from him.
No magical spell could possibly work. Or could it? Could he cast a spell that would come to his aid in this goal? He couldn't cast a spell to create the situation he wanted. No spell had any power to alter his True Self, nor had he any use for doing such a thing. No, what he needed to do was get out of the way and allow his True Self to come through. Could a spell be used for this purpose? Could a spell send him deep within himself, and allow him to hear his own, true, quiet, voice? Could a spell make him conscious enough to know himself?
He knew that no spell could shortcut the process entirely, but he wondered if it could be accelerated. He knew that only by going deep into the void could clarity be attained. He wondered if during his sleep, the spell could be activated. He wondered if by putting himself all the way to sleep, his True Self would be reborn in a new form. He wondered if, were he to fall into complete black unconsciousness, his True Self would finally have a clearing into which it could speak. He wondered if he'd finally hear the echo. He wondered if he'd finally get the punch line of the Cosmic Joke. He wondered if, even for one second, he could know one tiny little slice of Who He Was.
He knew that this would awaken him. He set to work on his spell, and that night, a vision came to him in his sleep that told him everything he needed to know and then some. He didn't remember it, and in the morning, he had no memory of having dreamt anything at all. He went about his day, wondering if the spell had worked. As usual, his identity resumed its noisy beehive of thinking, trying to devise a complex solution to an imaginary problem. He enjoyed the process. It spared him from the echo of oblivion he'd been seeking. It didn't matter, though. He'd found the buried Easter Egg, even if he didn't remember finding it.
He didn't notice that anything had changed, but others began to notice something about him.
In what seemed like no time at all, he was once again unrecognizable.
The woman soon emerged. She was mysterious, beautiful, wickedly sharp, light on her feet, and quick on her wit. They made a fantastic pair. But he never would have guessed in a million years that it would happen the way it did.
Life began to get interesting for the wizard after this.
