askandanswer | (no subject)

[Jean studies him closely, more out of habit than anything else. She can't tell if she's watching magic or illusion or something else entirely, and it's a little delightful.

She closes her eyes readily - sight is hardly her most powerful sense, after all - and begins to reach out.

But then a mischievous smile curves her lips. Instead, she curls her fingers inward, and three cards float towards her hand.]

The whole spectrum. I've really enjoyed doing readings in places like these.

[ He turns the third card over, his expression momentarily vague and distant. Remembering, maybe. But he refocuses on the card, its night scene with its pale empty moon and the dog and wolf sitting by the lake, staring up. ]

The Moon for your future. Not as stable a card as Temperance, naturally, but cycles are their own kind of stability. The phases and the coming and going of the tides might feel disorienting; sometimes following your instincts and intuition can make you feel like you're in a dream. It can make you more vulnerable, but it also can lead you somewhere good, if you're careful. If you're not afraid.

[ He laughs, equally delighted by the use of her powers. ]

It's a good thing I don't have to do this for money. You'd steal the show.

Go ahead and turn one over. We'll see your past. Turn on the long side, though. It's important for reversed cards.

[ Which the first one is, perhaps not coincidentally. The Boy Detective couldn't have forced the cards if she picked them through telekinesis, but he seems to know what it is anyway. Two people on the card face each other, holding cups. ]

The Two of Cups, reversed. It's a card about relationships, usually. Upside down, then, it's about the dissolution of one. Problems, a loss of trust, an imbalance of power. But this card isn't the Lovers reversed, and to me that means that though this relationship that ended badly was important to your past, it isn't the defining quality of your past. Though I guess it never feels like that at the time.

[She wasn't sure what to expect, really. Fortunate tellers, in her experience, run the gamut - charlatans and oracles and everything in between.

But the accuracy is startling.]

That's - yes.

[Her smile is rueful, and more than a little sad.]

I don't know that it's ended - but maybe I'm just fooling myself.

[ The charlatan-authentic magician spectrum is a tricky one to figure out, especially when people like the Boy Detective move around on it at will. He mirrors her smile, though there's no way he could understand the complications inherent to relationships. ]

Maybe. Because the card for your present... [ He makes a little gesture, and the card he means gives a little twitch. It doesn't flip over on its own, though. A crowned man sitting on a throne, holding a long staff. ] ... that's the King of Wands.

We can take it at face value, especially if it's in the present. In that case, we see a man with authority, someone who is happiest when he's busy and involved. He doesn't recline easily on the throne, but leans forward; he's a leader, someone passionate and direct about his work.

The card doesn't really have much to say about relationships, though. If we take this card literally, it represents someone who's important to you, even if they're not... with you.

Less literally, we can look at the King of Wands as energy and enthusiasm. A card about getting things done.

Pain and the responsibility to reflect upon it.

[ He steps up to the podium because of course he is interested even if it might be utterly incorrect or time wasting. Besides, who is he to deny this youth his last request. ]

A lot of adulthood rituals involve pain. But they don't always involve reflecting on it. Is that what completes the step over the threshold? Awareness?

[ His neutral inquisitiveness might ring a little false; he is not quite as young as his body is, and knows, or at least has opinions on, the answer to his question. He already has the deck in hand, too, shuffling it with the idle and complete competence of someone who's put a lot of hours into practice. As he shuffles, the backs of the cards, at first glossy black with little ornate stars, accumulate a profusion of reds and oranges until at last it is a black circle set against a backdrop of fiery flowers. ]

I believe so. Our ultimate goal in life is to be the best we can be in whatever way possible or deemed worthy. That task requires growth and growth requires pain and pain will be the tool of defeat if you let it.

[ And nor is he anywhere near the age he seems to be. It's merely that Fabian takes these offers with a grain of salt. Since witchcraft and occult practices became welcomed as opposed to damned the number of true users were greatly outweighed by greedy opportunists and ambiguous minds. Cards were never his method of reading but he can appreciate the art when the art is presented well. ]

[ His eyes unfocus just noticeably during Fabian's linear progression of reasoning, but not from inattention. It's the opposite, in fact. Strangely shifting deck aside, the Boy tends to use Tarot as a way of reading people rather than anything mystical about them, and this comment is part of the reading, in that sense. ]

I try to take life more organically, myself. The pain with it, or not, as the case may be.

[ He blinks deliberately to refocus, and presents the deck to Fabian. ]

Would you be kind enough to pick three cards? It's really for my sake more than yours.

[ To his understanding, that was the way with most reads. Palm, tea leaves, tarot. Sure, there was mystical properties to them if you knew how to channel it but more often than not they were conduits between the reader and the inquirer. A tool of psychology over anything else. Magic and science were more linked than thought. He himself was a scryer when it came to such matters, but he was also of an old generation. ]

What life have you lead that grants you no pain? [ That causes the smallest of smiles to rouse his lips. He takes the desk and it is with great care and grace that even such a movement as drawing three cards is done. ]

[ He smiles back, guileless in the way a kid can be, absentminded somehow. ]

I stopped growing for a time. No pain without growth, no growth without pain. I threw away my name and walked in the underworld. I took the face of a dead boy and gave him mine.

[ ... well all right then. He said all of that very nicely, like he was describing what he did at school, and expects no response of substance from Fabian other than what an adult might say to such a mundane recitation: oh, sounds fun, did you finish your homework? ]

Shall we look at your past? [ Without pausing to actually see the card— ] I wouldn't have guessed it to be the Lovers, reversed. But then I'm not normally all that great at Tarot.

[ And it is, if Fabian still feels inclined to turn it over. Two somewhat androgynous figures before a winged being hovering over a mountain. The sky is darker than most Tarot decks usually depict it as being. ]

[ Fabian displays no sign of shock nor disbelief when the boy speaks of this. Instead, his eyes remain on the boy until his last words of the tale is spoken and then they turn down to the hands that unfold the cards. ]

I'm interested in what you would have guessed. [ An acceptance of sorts as the card is turned over to reveal, and just out of curiosity his finger slides over the image. ]

Indulge me.

What I would have guessed. [ His thoughtful echo is not unlike the way he mirrored Fabian's earlier construction of pain and growth. ] The Tower, maybe. Six of Swords reversed. I don't know. I think I'm just not very good at understanding the Lovers card.

[ So he's not the hundreds of years older that Fabian is. Just a scrape older, hardly more than an accumulation of dirt. ]

Of course, in this case, it's not all that literal. It almost feels like an accusation. That you haven't taken responsibility for your actions, whatever they were, and that you did nothing about imbalances in a past relationship. That you made the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons.

I've spent many years reflecting on such matters. [ He leans lightly on the podium and slides the card between his fingers. If not for the blood spilled, Fabian would be among the bodies that now occupy the ground. Alas, still he lives to endure those counts. Such is his punishment. To endure. ]

And of these decisions I once made I can solemnly say so few were right. [ He sets the card down ] Suiting indeed, but fret not. I pay a great price of long endurance. Love is the greatest form of evil. The greater the crime the heavier the repercussion.

[ He tries. Well, he has recently begun trying. ]

[ He returns the gesture of observation and minimal commentary. This is useful feedback, or it would be if he had any plans to continue offering Tarot readings after he dies. The Boy Detective accepts all manner of information right up until the end, however. He can safely say he's never personally found love to be the greatest form of evil, and the knowledge that someone else has is probably meaningful. ]

That seems to be what the card indicating your present indicates.

[ This deck seems to interpret the World card as Yggdrasil rather than the Rider-Waite association of a naked woman wreathed in the sky. Upside down, like his first card. ]

The World, reversed. You linger on, things left unsaid, people left hanging. Your cycle persists in stagnation.

[ And now we come to see why his answer was pain and the realization of pain. Fabian was never an evil person although his past doings were certainly exactly that. In those times, murder and torture was family activities but there's a line in which such things transition from a right to a sin.

There will never be a pain greater to him than knowing those years long ago. A love so consuming and poisonous it swallowed him whole. Like the serpent, he is devoured slow and sure. He can continue and endure but he is aware what lays for him at the end of his journey. He makes no attempt to beg for mercy, only an attempt to be the best he can be with what he has. ]

How quickly you find me in a state of profound vulnerability. [ It is said after a long pause. Even toned as he has been from the start. If something could be said about Fabian it would be that still waters run deep. ]

Dare we unearth the last?

[ A statement like that, which he considers a compliment in this context, would get a laugh out of the Boy Detective if it had come from someone else. Here and now, though, and not just because of Fabian's demeanor, he feels like a little paper boat fishing at sea. He is too small to understand what he catches, and in any case, understands innately that he probably doesn't want to look too close. ]

If that's how you see it. But yes, I'm sure fate decrees we must.

[ Weak levity to divorce himself from whatever they've already unearthed. The Boy inhales, staring down at the back of the last card. Turned over, it will reveal a crowned man on a throne, scepter in hand. Unusually, he is beardless. Like the other cards, it's upside down. ]

For your future, the Emperor reversed. A loss not only of control, but of your rules, your own foundation. The inequalities of your past becoming the inequalities of your future — but with you in the other role, maybe. I —

[ He has genuinely never been this uncomfortable in a reading before, but the only outward indication of that is that hesitation. It's silly to feel that way, in any case. "Special mystical awareness" isn't something he was serious about and this can't possibly be any more or less accurate than every other reading he's done. ]

— suppose if one card was an accusation, this would be a warning.

[ Huh.

She had expected the Tower, and there is some minute surprise in her face, before her eyes go downcast again, studying the card more than the boy; like the moon, in fact, Gisela is prone to disguising her expressions at turns. The Tower tended to recur in her old self-readings, but she realizes that is as much projection as anything else, and is why an outsider reader is occasionally a useful thing. The waning moon brings change, a lessening of light, but it is intended to return. ]

If you're not afraid...yes, that I can understand. [ She notices (again), the details of the card, the animals on it. ] Why do you think the artist chose the dog and the wolf? Their faith in their own instincts?

[ maybe they just really liked dogs? ]

[ He could easily admit to his own projections. The Star reversed, Chariot, Six of Pentacles woman — something about her, the hint of flippancy, the unyielding smile, all brought him to the final card in a far more definitive way than he ever has in the past. The woman who could float his cards had a certain wistfulness that made him go another way. And the too calm guy, who is a little unnerving... that went to a dark place real fast.

For Gisela, because of her answer and seeming normality, for looking like a Real Adult through his still fifteen year old eyes though he can see she's not actually old — well, he didn't choose the card, but the Moon fits his projections. ]

I think... for that, and for how similar their instincts can be. Under the right circumstances.

[ In this context is it certainly a compliment. It's not to say he has never been matched by those of equal or even greater insight than himself. It's been some time, though. But he believes what you give to the universe you get and so he believes this meeting was so random act of chance.

And soberly, after time, he speaks. ] A fair assessment. I hold no doubt that it is.

[ The question is, when repayment is asked will he bow to it's just hand or will he stand? His name has long since left the papers of men who sought Strand's infamous accomplice but the earth never forgets. ]

Your own situation, as you mention, seems grim.

[ The Boy considers first Fabian, then the deck, returning the cards to the others and squeezing them until the design on the back returns to something more neutral.

(A labyrinth pattern, silver on dark blue, but he takes one look at that and keeps it covered with his hand.) ]

It's not. Everybody has to grow up some day.

[ How interesting the art. He'd be curious to know the story behind his cards, but such a thing is often personal to the one who holds them. He will remain, instead, merely appreciative. As far too many readers who use tarot are as if children playing with rocks. ]

Should. Everyone should, but not many do. People grow old more often than up.

[ Eventually the Boy puts them away into a small bag, with a hint of formality. The final time. ]

Only growing old, and not up, is still better than not growing at all. It means they have the chance to do it. Right up until time runs out.

A conflict in histories, I feel. [ He pulls up the lapels of his jacket and hides the smallest smile. ]

A question before we part: now on the precipice of death, where do you see yourself landing?

[ The moon's changeable face still has a method to it, and that's about the same for Gisela, who has been biding her time before she asks why this tarot-reading teenage boy is dying. She's not sure it's the kind of death she's thinking of, but maybe. You never know. ]

Distant cousins, but still cousins. [ Ancestors, she knows better than most, are important; like it or not, they inform certain things about you. ]

Do you ever get your own cards read by someone? [ Not that she's offering. Gisela does not partake that way, not any more. ]