A Tentacle Monster lies on the floor, exhausted, its tentacles coiled in a heap across the floor. The Schoolgirl leans back against the wall; a second Tentacle Monster, also spent, lies at her feet. One of its tentacles is extended between the Schoolgirl's legs, where it penetrates her shallowly; its other tentacles are splayed across the floor of the basement. The Schoolgirl's fingers are between her legs, wrapped around the tentacle; her head is thrown back in ecstasy, and her nipples protrude as pleasure wracks her body.

The Story

For her entire life, the Schoolgirl has believed that pleasure and pain are mutually exclusive opposites. She has lived believing that experiencing one means avoiding the other, and she has sought always to avoid pain and seek pleasure, especially the intellectual pleasure of her books.

But now that has changed. She has learned that the two can sometimes be fused into one, so that she can not tell where one ends and the other begins; and this discovery has rocked the very core of her world view. Now she has learned that opposites can exist in harmony, and even be synthesized into one; where before she saw contradiction, now she sees union.

The Meaning

Union is a powerful card that, as its name suggests, reminds us how things which seem to be irreconcilably opposed to one another may in fact be able to exist in harmony, each reinforcing the other. It serves as a lesson to us to see things, not as opposing poles, but as parts of the same whole, a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts. In the right circumstances, and in the right measure, the dissimilar and seemingly antagonistic forces in the Querant's life can be blended together into a harmonious, perfect circle.