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[ A handmade cardboard sign goes on the podium: 3 CARD TAROT READING: FINAL CHANCE. The wobbly card table with a Tarot pack waiting goes in front. The Boy Detective himself, pasty white and raccoonishly hollow-eyed as ever, stands beside both table and podium. ]

What do you consider a rite of adulthood?

If you want a reading, an answer is my final price. But —

[ So generous a tone here. ]

— if you only want to answer, I won't force one on you. I mean, I'm practically dying and it might be the best reading of the rest of my life and you'd be wasting the special spiritual insight my hovering on the precipice between worlds grants me, but I won't make you.

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The moment when you consider your parent and realize they are an actual complex human being, not an untouchable, immortal figure of either disappointment or safety. Whether they're present or not. That might not be a proper rite, I don't know.

[ she was about eleven. ]

I'll take a reading, since you're practically dying, and also I haven't had one for a few years.

[ and every reader is different, in her experience. has a different system, different interpretations. ]

Edited 2014-09-26 15:19 (UTC)

[ He listens with childish attentiveness, little thoughtful tics of the face and hands indicating he's trying to connect her answer to his own experiences. ]

I don't know what or who is in charge of determining what's a proper rite. But it sounds right. It sounds like a rite that helps you pick up the other rites. Whatever they are.

[ What wistfulness leaks into that last sentence, he cuts short by sweeping the deck off the table into his other hand with brisk precision. ]

Thank you! For your answer, and for accepting. It is a kindness to me and I will attempt, now, to make this deck... attuned.

[ His cartoonish magician's manner is not especially serious, but he holds the deck on the palm of his hand between them, frowning at it. The back of the card on top has a fairly plain two-color pattern, something fleur-de-lis looking in blue and white, but it dulls and fades into something else under the Boy's stare. Though the newly formed iconography retains the simple illustrative style, it looks like a cat poised in an open doorway, half in, half out. ]

Now you should pick three cards without looking at them.

You've certainly got your priorities in place for someone soon-to-be-dead.

[Lumis doesn't put any stock in superstitions, but she does believe in magic. She's been to too many planets to abandon the idea of it, and she understands that sometimes the former precludes the latter. With a faint smile she tips her head as she thinks.]

From what I've seen, it's the loss of something. Life through a kill, or innocence through sex, right? Or maybe the security of your home through travel.

[She spreads open her hands.] What do you think?

I'm a tireless servant of the community.

[ He might look tired, but he certainly sounds energetic enough. ]

Yes, a lot of human cultures use those things to mark some sort of passage, to the point where they're all metaphors for each other. But apart from sex, I don't think they're usually framed as losses. And probably aren't usually losses in reality.

Still, if you wanted a reading, that's a justifiable enough answer.

True enough. I guess 'loss' would be too negative a word. 'Price' would be a better way to put it. You're gaining something in the end.

[She nods to herself.] Amaze me with your insight between two worlds. Like you, I'm dying to see it.

[ He smiles with all the silly brilliance of teenage intellect when she says "price," but chooses, apparently, not to elaborate. Instead he takes the deck off the table and gives it a quick shuffle; she might notice, or perhaps not, that the backs of the cards all seem to be different colors and patterns. ]

You're very kind. Thank you for your answer. And now, please allow a moment for this deck to become attuned to you.

[ Like with the others, his tone is not altogether serious, but the joke isn't clear, either. He holds the deck between them and the back of the card on top, it changes — the original, eye-searing paisley goes dull, then coalesces back into matte black with a white star inside a red circle. ]

Please pick three cards without looking at them.

[Noticing is what she does. The limitations of a body put an interesting lens over the world that she would not have otherwise, and so, with an attenuation suited to her mechanical nature, she drinks in as many sensory inputs as she can. It's an interesting deck for sure. As it shifts its form, she can't help but feel a little curious to its nature.

Lumis takes the number of cards he asks her to, keeping them face-down.]

What next?

[ He puts the deck aside, pausing as he does so in contemplation of the iconography of her deck. If he gets anything out of it, it's not obvious; but the point of it, and of Tarot in general, is that you can extrapolate almost anything you want from something very simple. ]

Turn over the first one. It will be about your past.

[ The Boy knows what it is already; he says it even before the card shows. Which could mean he forced it in the way stage magicians do. ]

The Star, reversed.

Edited (pressed post early gj me) 2014-09-26 18:40 (UTC)

[The quickness of his answer is a nice surprise to her. The meaning of it, she isn't sure. But that's what he's here for, isn't it? To explain, so she can go along with the show.]

My, that doesn't sound very good to me. What would you take from that?

[ As is typical for the Star, the card depicts a naked woman pouring water from two jugs. The starry night sky above her, or below her since the card is reversed, is especially vibrant. ]

In a sense it's not good or bad, it's just... what happened. The Star reversed has to do with hopelessness, with loss —

[ He smiles, acknowledging the relevance to her answer about rites of adulthood. ]

— despair too, and yes, those are bad things, but not a disaster. And not when it's in the past. The things on these cards all happen in the context of a journey, so these hardships right at the beginning can be seen as tests of faith. We don't all start off where we want to be, who we want to be. We all have to confront something in order to become something else.

[She's always been fond of the stars she had left. Out of all the cards that could have been chosen, perhaps this was best suited for her past after all. A little amused now, she presses a hand over her chest.]

I suppose I have run into my share of hardships here and there. But it's never bothered me much. [She offers a small smile.] After all, how can an adventure happen without some risk?

Exactly. That's why the card representing your present —

[ A modest gesture for her to turn that one over. A man in a wheeled cart pulled by strange beasts. The cart is sleek and silvery, perhaps anachronistic in its fully metallic make. ]

— is the Chariot, reversed. On your journey, you are being dragged through time and space, not entirely without direction, but not fully in control. But you're not worried about what you can't control. You're focused on what you can, and you hold on tight to the reins. Not even despite the chaotic ride, because of it.

A preparatory rite, yeah. That suits.

[ Gisela pays attention to things like aborted wistfulness, but not in a particularly intense kind of way. Similarly, the manner with which she scrutinizes the tarot cards is not wholly glib; while she is genuinely interested in the process, it's not that new to her, either. ]

All right.

[ One by one, she does, deftly enough that she refrains from so much as brushing any of the cards besides the selected three. ]

[... ah. Things have taken a very interesting turn now. Sweeping her eye over the card, Lumis's smile broadens.]

Your cards have a way of flattering a woman, I'll tell you that.

Thank you. Okay, and here is your past...

[ A small pause as the Boy attempts to juggle setting the deck aside and keeping the three cards in order. The card he turns over shows a couple facing each other, holding the titular cups, while a lion head on a caduceus hovers between them. The Boy frowns at the card for some reason. Maybe because the lion head has a bloody mouth. ]

The Two of Cups. Usually I see this couple embracing.

[ It depends on the deck, of course. ]

Here this is more like. An alliance, I think. With definite emotional engagement, but not conventional romance, I guess.

[ He sounds uncertain, possibly because as a 15 year old he's not 100% solid on what "conventional romance" really means. ]

The Two of Cups isn't... less important than the Lovers, but it carries slightly different connotations, and in the past position, it makes sense. This alliance was the foundation for everything you became, but it doesn't necessarily exert power over who you continue to become.

It's good for business. If this were a business. Which it's not. But it could've been! The cards don't really care that I'm dying.

All right, now the final card, your future. The one card people can't argue with because the future is always still coming.

[ The Boy does not read this one until it's turned over. Perhaps he didn't know, too. A man holding a set of scales in one hand gives money to a petitioner with the other, while the other petitioner stares longingly. ]

The Six of Pentacles. A card of warning. Not as a portent, but more like a reminder of life's essential unfairness, the unpredictability of fortune. You're riding the Chariot wherever it takes you and the Six of Pentacles asks you to examine your own motivations for that. It asks you to think about what you really want, and whether that matches up to what the Chariot gives you.

And obviously, the Six of Pentacles doesn't have the same kind of drama as the Chariot, it doesn't carry the same weight, I guess you could say. It's not spelling out doom. It only suggests something which is rarely a bad idea: a pause to reassess. To think about what your life costs, and if you'd like to pay a different price.

[ The Boy shrugs as if this was all quite mysterious to him. ]

Making your own decisions, and dealing with the consequences.

Why are you dying, exactly?

I don't know, I think kids do that all the time. But maybe you're thinking of a certain kind of decision-and-dealing-with-consequence situation. Or you could argue that some kids go through that earlier than they have to, or should have to...

Eh, it's some mystical bullshit that will resolve itself.

[ Teenagerly shrug. ]

A certain kind, yeah. Most kids - they make their own choices, but they have a safety net. They have guidance, and support, and someone else holding the longer reigns. Ideally, anyway.

[Her lips quirk.] Mystical, huh? That's always a pain in the butt.

So it's doing it on your own that's the growing up part.

[ He seems pleased by that. ]

I'm trying to make use of it, though. You don't want your cards read? They don't tell you anything you don't already know, of course.

[ Her head tilts in assessment, peering at the card. Thoughtful, not giving a lot away, but open to what the cards might have to tell her. There is some truth to that interpretation, Gisela supposes, but as always with tarot, it could mean all sorts of things. Also, God knows if she's right in her suspicions, since her mother is a contender for most ambiguous woman on the planet. ]

Poor old lion. But yes, that sounds credible.

[ He has to laugh a little at "credible," because that's probably the only compliment Tarot readers want to hear. Otherwise he doesn't seem particularly watchful for her reactions. Like this one time, he really believes the whole ~on the threshold of death~ thing is working for real. ]

Is it a lion? I thought it might be an angel. But I'm not very good at telling angels from other things.

[ He turns over the next card. A winged and robed feminine figure pours water between two cups, standing with one foot on water and one on land. ]

Temperance, for your present. A pretty calm card. She's found balance and security. Not only does she not sink into the water, her hands are steady, capable of sharing waters of abundance with others. And though she's in the middle of everything, she's created and enforces clear boundaries.

Pretty unusual for the type of people who get readings from me, but I suppose that for most people, the whole of life is a journey towards getting your shit together. You already have that.

[She's quiet, for a moment, as she considers.]

It's worth a shot.

Thank you. It's really a favor to me.

[ He has a certain old-fashioned earnestness to him, like a kid from books written a generation or two ago, but the way he picks up the deck and shuffles it is pure cardsharp/street magician. ]

You know how a three card reading works? It's the simplest one, it just talks about your past, present, and future.

[ The cards are moving fast in his hands, and perhaps it's only a trick that the backs seem to change their design. At some point they were gray and gold, but when he stops shuffling and spreads them out for her, there's less gray and more gold — interlocking birds, sort of Escher by way of art deco. ]

Go ahead and pick three, without looking.

[ This one is a little closer to home, being the present card. Although it's tarot, although she was raised in a home where cards were used (given the appropriate amount of weight, which is to say 'enough', but not 'overmuch'... it's still a little validating. God knows she can't expect this sort of acknowledgment from the people she grew up with, who have different desires for her. Not malevolent ones, but the hard-earned rhythm and security she has built up are certainly not often common among her kind.

Or among people who get tarot readings, it sounds like. Gisela smiles with one side of her mouth more than the other. ]

Well, I'd like to think so. I suppose you get a lot of variety out here.

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