(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

[asongwithin]

[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?

[fairytalenoir]

[ 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.