Page of Cups

The youthful Page of Cups. She's a mermaid, in her element--water, holding a beautiful goblet and staring at it for all the possibility it represents! According to Joan Bunning, she is emotional, intuitive, intimate, and loving, and I couldn't think of a better creature of the water to emphasize these qualities and the child-like character of the page than the sea otter ( I was going to add a dolphin because of their social nature and constitution for communication, but they will figure into other cups cards). Sea otters are always ready for play, and when they are ready for sleep, they wrap themselves in kelp and hold hands to keep from drifting away from the group.

Sea otters are also an example of a keystone species: they prey on sea urchins and keep the numbers of those echinoderms in check, determining the well-being of the whole ecosystem. Areas without sea otters are often deserts of urchins without any kelp forests, which support an extremely high number of species. The sea otters also keep mussels in check by removing them from rocks, allowing for greater biodiversity in those habitats as well. So, one can view these creatures as messengers of a sort, with their presence indicative of the health of the ecosystem on the whole.