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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[ 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.

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. ]

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.

[ 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.

[ 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.

The whole spectrum. I've really enjoyed doing readings in places like these.

[ He turns the third card over, his expression momentarily vague and distant. Remembering, maybe. But he refocuses on the card, its night scene with its pale empty moon and the dog and wolf sitting by the lake, staring up. ]

The Moon for your future. Not as stable a card as Temperance, naturally, but cycles are their own kind of stability. The phases and the coming and going of the tides might feel disorienting; sometimes following your instincts and intuition can make you feel like you're in a dream. It can make you more vulnerable, but it also can lead you somewhere good, if you're careful. If you're not afraid.

[ Huh.

She had expected the Tower, and there is some minute surprise in her face, before her eyes go downcast again, studying the card more than the boy; like the moon, in fact, Gisela is prone to disguising her expressions at turns. The Tower tended to recur in her old self-readings, but she realizes that is as much projection as anything else, and is why an outsider reader is occasionally a useful thing. The waning moon brings change, a lessening of light, but it is intended to return. ]

If you're not afraid...yes, that I can understand. [ She notices (again), the details of the card, the animals on it. ] Why do you think the artist chose the dog and the wolf? Their faith in their own instincts?

[ maybe they just really liked dogs? ]

[ He could easily admit to his own projections. The Star reversed, Chariot, Six of Pentacles woman — something about her, the hint of flippancy, the unyielding smile, all brought him to the final card in a far more definitive way than he ever has in the past. The woman who could float his cards had a certain wistfulness that made him go another way. And the too calm guy, who is a little unnerving... that went to a dark place real fast.

For Gisela, because of her answer and seeming normality, for looking like a Real Adult through his still fifteen year old eyes though he can see she's not actually old — well, he didn't choose the card, but the Moon fits his projections. ]

I think... for that, and for how similar their instincts can be. Under the right circumstances.

[ The moon's changeable face still has a method to it, and that's about the same for Gisela, who has been biding her time before she asks why this tarot-reading teenage boy is dying. She's not sure it's the kind of death she's thinking of, but maybe. You never know. ]

Distant cousins, but still cousins. [ Ancestors, she knows better than most, are important; like it or not, they inform certain things about you. ]

Do you ever get your own cards read by someone? [ Not that she's offering. Gisela does not partake that way, not any more. ]

[ He gathers the cards back together, the touch of his hands encouraging the design to shift once again. He keeps them moving, the shuffle now slow and simply something to do with his hands. ]

Able to see themselves in each other, and vice versa. [ He says by way of agreement. ] Oh, uh, not really, no. I usually don't have the money.

[ Her attention lingers on the shifting design of the cards. It does not unsettle her, precisely, but anything so ambiguous stirs up thoughts of family (not home, as she's never had such a thing). Now she looks more clearly at the boy. ]

But you're not asking for money when you read. Of course, money might be a little less valuable to the dying.

[ The way he looks back at her is a little wide-eyed, as if he forgot that part. It's not that, though, he's only prone to a certain ingenue slant of persona. ]

I used to, but yeah, not this time. Plus all those other times were practice, and it's not fair to charge a lot for that.

It worked out, though, I think I did good this time. I think I understand better.

Yeah? I'm glad. [ It worked for her, at least. ]

They're very unusual, those cards of yours. I hope you plan to hang onto them for as long as you can.

Flashy, right? But that's what I wanted for this time. They're — on loan, though.

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