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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You've certainly got your priorities in place for someone soon-to-be-dead.

[Lumis doesn't put any stock in superstitions, but she does believe in magic. She's been to too many planets to abandon the idea of it, and she understands that sometimes the former precludes the latter. With a faint smile she tips her head as she thinks.]

From what I've seen, it's the loss of something. Life through a kill, or innocence through sex, right? Or maybe the security of your home through travel.

[She spreads open her hands.] What do you think?

I'm a tireless servant of the community.

[ He might look tired, but he certainly sounds energetic enough. ]

Yes, a lot of human cultures use those things to mark some sort of passage, to the point where they're all metaphors for each other. But apart from sex, I don't think they're usually framed as losses. And probably aren't usually losses in reality.

Still, if you wanted a reading, that's a justifiable enough answer.

True enough. I guess 'loss' would be too negative a word. 'Price' would be a better way to put it. You're gaining something in the end.

[She nods to herself.] Amaze me with your insight between two worlds. Like you, I'm dying to see it.

[ He smiles with all the silly brilliance of teenage intellect when she says "price," but chooses, apparently, not to elaborate. Instead he takes the deck off the table and gives it a quick shuffle; she might notice, or perhaps not, that the backs of the cards all seem to be different colors and patterns. ]

You're very kind. Thank you for your answer. And now, please allow a moment for this deck to become attuned to you.

[ Like with the others, his tone is not altogether serious, but the joke isn't clear, either. He holds the deck between them and the back of the card on top, it changes — the original, eye-searing paisley goes dull, then coalesces back into matte black with a white star inside a red circle. ]

Please pick three cards without looking at them.

[Noticing is what she does. The limitations of a body put an interesting lens over the world that she would not have otherwise, and so, with an attenuation suited to her mechanical nature, she drinks in as many sensory inputs as she can. It's an interesting deck for sure. As it shifts its form, she can't help but feel a little curious to its nature.

Lumis takes the number of cards he asks her to, keeping them face-down.]

What next?

[ He puts the deck aside, pausing as he does so in contemplation of the iconography of her deck. If he gets anything out of it, it's not obvious; but the point of it, and of Tarot in general, is that you can extrapolate almost anything you want from something very simple. ]

Turn over the first one. It will be about your past.

[ The Boy knows what it is already; he says it even before the card shows. Which could mean he forced it in the way stage magicians do. ]

The Star, reversed.

Edited (pressed post early gj me) 2014-09-26 18:40 (UTC)

[The quickness of his answer is a nice surprise to her. The meaning of it, she isn't sure. But that's what he's here for, isn't it? To explain, so she can go along with the show.]

My, that doesn't sound very good to me. What would you take from that?

[ As is typical for the Star, the card depicts a naked woman pouring water from two jugs. The starry night sky above her, or below her since the card is reversed, is especially vibrant. ]

In a sense it's not good or bad, it's just... what happened. The Star reversed has to do with hopelessness, with loss —

[ He smiles, acknowledging the relevance to her answer about rites of adulthood. ]

— despair too, and yes, those are bad things, but not a disaster. And not when it's in the past. The things on these cards all happen in the context of a journey, so these hardships right at the beginning can be seen as tests of faith. We don't all start off where we want to be, who we want to be. We all have to confront something in order to become something else.

[She's always been fond of the stars she had left. Out of all the cards that could have been chosen, perhaps this was best suited for her past after all. A little amused now, she presses a hand over her chest.]

I suppose I have run into my share of hardships here and there. But it's never bothered me much. [She offers a small smile.] After all, how can an adventure happen without some risk?

Exactly. That's why the card representing your present —

[ A modest gesture for her to turn that one over. A man in a wheeled cart pulled by strange beasts. The cart is sleek and silvery, perhaps anachronistic in its fully metallic make. ]

— is the Chariot, reversed. On your journey, you are being dragged through time and space, not entirely without direction, but not fully in control. But you're not worried about what you can't control. You're focused on what you can, and you hold on tight to the reins. Not even despite the chaotic ride, because of it.

[... ah. Things have taken a very interesting turn now. Sweeping her eye over the card, Lumis's smile broadens.]

Your cards have a way of flattering a woman, I'll tell you that.

It's good for business. If this were a business. Which it's not. But it could've been! The cards don't really care that I'm dying.

All right, now the final card, your future. The one card people can't argue with because the future is always still coming.

[ The Boy does not read this one until it's turned over. Perhaps he didn't know, too. A man holding a set of scales in one hand gives money to a petitioner with the other, while the other petitioner stares longingly. ]

The Six of Pentacles. A card of warning. Not as a portent, but more like a reminder of life's essential unfairness, the unpredictability of fortune. You're riding the Chariot wherever it takes you and the Six of Pentacles asks you to examine your own motivations for that. It asks you to think about what you really want, and whether that matches up to what the Chariot gives you.

And obviously, the Six of Pentacles doesn't have the same kind of drama as the Chariot, it doesn't carry the same weight, I guess you could say. It's not spelling out doom. It only suggests something which is rarely a bad idea: a pause to reassess. To think about what your life costs, and if you'd like to pay a different price.

[ The Boy shrugs as if this was all quite mysterious to him. ]

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