The Empty Square

How destiny is in our hands

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There was only one empty square in front of me, surrounded by hundreds of tiles that seemed to stretch farther than I could see.

Some showed fragments of sky, others pieces of roads, windows, trees and faces. But none of them seemed to belong together, and yet I had the strange feeling that somewhere inside that confusion there was an image I was supposed to recognize.

She was on the other side.

I could see her, sometimes clearly, sometimes for seconds. I moved pieces, but there was no direct path between us.

The first time I pushed a tile into the empty space, I did it almost without thinking. The piece moved, the empty square appeared somewhere else, and suddenly there was enough room for me to take one step forward.

So I pushed another and then another.

And for a while I believed I had understood how the world worked.

Every movement created another possibility, every empty space opened another path, and if I chose carefully enough I would eventually reach her.

At least, that was what I told myself.

The problem was that sometimes the only possible move took me in the opposite direction.