(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

[fairytalenoir]

[ 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.

[whitenoises]

[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?

[fairytalenoir]

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.

[whitenoises]

[... 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.

[fairytalenoir]

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. ]