(no subject)

[fairytalenoir]

[ 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.

Comments

[fruktansvard]

[ 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.

[fairytalenoir]

[ 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.

[fruktansvard]

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?

[fairytalenoir]

I don't.

[ He tucks his bag of cards into an inner pocket of his jacket. Perhaps it's an evasion of the question, but he sounds very certain. ]

[fruktansvard]

Everything lands.

[fairytalenoir]

I think that's your lesson, not mine.

[fruktansvard]

[ this had become so haunting. He gently lifts his hand to tug on his coat near his heart. Ah, sweet misery. ]

I think you're right.

[fairytalenoir]

[ The look the Boy Detective gives him is full of apology, but if there's anything else — compassion, for example — he holds it back. This guy is a slightly ominous stranger, and the Boy is on his way out. Nothing more can be done for either of them. ]