(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

[meanwhileback]

The first time you puke in public. From drinking. Also in public. Do those Tarot cards actually do anything? Because I'm prrrretty sure it's bullshit.

[she sits down at the table anyway. Hi, deal with her now.]

[fairytalenoir]

[ The Boy raises his eyebrows and does one of those card shuffling things you generally only see in cartoons. Aside from being visually ludicrous it's not too far from what stage magicians can do, though. ]

Usually it's total bullshit. But today, like I said, I'm on the threshold of death. I've got a special pass to stare into the [ dramatic voice ] worlds beyond [ and back to normal ] and tell you secret stuff. Mystical bullshit.

Also your answer was awful, so that's what you're gonna get anyway. Go on, pick three cards, any three cards.

[ The Boy presents her with the deck, fanned out. When he was shuffling, the cards had some kind of gold and pink rococo pattern thing on the back; now, spread out before her, the background has gone black and there seems to be a single symbol in white, something that looks maybe like a broken stick. A broken ruler, in fact, but it's probably harder to see with the other cards on top and the Boy's fingers in the way. ]

[meanwhileback]

Excuse you, that was a dead serious answer. I knew I was truly a woman when I woke up on a stranger's lawn with someone else's puke in my hair for the first time. Truly left my childhood behind that morning, that's for fucking sure.

[That's a little creepy! But somehow, so very appropriate for Penelope. She selects three cards.] Good thing I love mystical bullshit. Wow me, kid.

[fairytalenoir]

Oh, well, I can't argue with experience.

[ Not terribly sassy. The Boy isn't naturally so, and besides, he has a job to do. A non-paying job. Okay it's not a job. Whatever he sets the deck aside on the table and takes her three cards. ]

So you know how this works, right? The past, present, future thing? Here we go-o...

[ He turns the first one over. A blindfolded and bound woman with dark hair stands amid a cluster of swords stuck blade first in the ground. She seems to be on a beach, or some setting with a mingling of water and earth. ]

Mystical bullshit tells me that your past, represented by the Eight of Swords, was full of frustration and fear. Like this woman, you were trapped in this situation by your circumstances, by others — and you didn't really fight back, maybe because you didn't know you could. That's what the blindfold means.

However, the card is also defined as a temporary situation. The water is disrupting the earth beneath her feet. Soon she'll realize she's surrounded by weapons, weapons she is free to use. The Eight of Swords is not a strong card. This part of your past doesn't define who you are, though it's had its influence.