0: The Fool

He was pink faced with spindly legs that had never walked a mile, and tearless eyes who'd never seen the curve and pitch of the sky. He was blind in the way of a youth, a blindness that appears long before cataracts and red veins along strained whites. To call him an Ingenue would be to oversell his cunning.
The hollow pole that held his airy belongings bore deeply into his shoulder, and the smooth bottoms of his feet grew weary within minutes of striking the ground. A thoughtless smile was etched deeply into the contours of his face, a smile which would later inspire wrinkles but today merely hints at radiance.
Eyes closed and the cliff is drawing near to him, beneath smooth, new shoes and the slight weight of the petals in his hand.
Drawing nearer now, nearer, rocks curling and cracking away beneath his feet, and his smile grows wider at what he feels freedom to be.
He stops, half a second away from empty air and broken bones, innocence still intact. Dumb luck, some say, thought they all had it once. Fools are prone to good fortune, after all. It's their consolation prize from the universe. A pat on the back to offer comfort before you thrust their insubstantial forms from the cliff face.
So the Fool wanders on, playing the game of the vagabond, along the dusty, darkling road that to him only brings out the stars. The fool wanders on, singing his song. Sill such a trifling, little bird unaware of the pain he'll soon endure. The pain he's been living, again and again, since the start of it all, and will continue to until time folds in on itself like so many burnt souffles.
But for now, he is the Fool. He is the Fool, he was the Fool, he will be the Fool, wandering along an endless road forevermore, with all of us watching, pitying, pretending we don't envy what we once were.