askandanswer | (no subject)

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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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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.

[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.

[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.]

[ 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.

[And suddenly, she's smiling despite herself.] Either of those could work.

[It's Scott all over, isn't it, one of the best and worst things about him. The perfect leader, the good soldier, a role he never escapes. Not for long.

She wonders if that's what attracted Emma, too. She wonders if she'll do better.]

So, how's my future?

[ He would feel guilt, if this weren't his last reading. Not necessarily justified guilt, even; the reader's projections and biases always influence the reading, so if he'd wanted to please this woman where he wanted to confound the other, or where he wanted to find the best truth for Gisela versus the truth that the man didn't want — those things do matter. Psychologically, if not mystically.

It's just nice sometimes to have hope for good things to happen. ]

The same as any future: variable.

[ The final card is also the Moon, though only the Boy would know that hers is different from Gisela's. This moon has an upside down crescent inside its full circle, embracing a smaller spiral. The dog and wolf are less emphasized, almost hidden by their respective towers, and they stare at each other across the river instead of the moon in the night sky. A shadow lurks in the waters. ]

The Moon is classically interpreted as a card of intuition and the unconscious. Some cards put a little lobster coming out of the water, to represent whatever fears and weirdness everyone has swirling around beneath our conscious thought, but probably whoever drew this card thought that was too silly. They're there, though. The Moon is about these kinds of fears, and about illusion and deception.

Given your past and present cards, I think this card suggests your fears aren't as bad as you think they are. Bigger than a lobster but smaller than a leviathan. The Moon also suggests that these fears are making your journey difficult — that reason can only take you so far, and that even though it's scary and maybe even dangerous, you may need to follow your intuition, to accept your own instincts as valid.

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