Title: Lady Gold-Eye
Author: Marius Sidorov
Prompt: #011 – "Woman King"
Game: FE10
Pairing/Characters: Micaiah, Sothe
Words: 499
Warnings: None
The fortune-teller sat on a thin pallet in a corner of the market. Children came to her, the curiosity etched plainly on their faces, and when she smiled warmly at them they would approach shyly, hands outstretched so that she might bless them with what she Saw.
She took their hands gently and traced the fine lines on their palms with her fingers. "Love and family," she said to one. "Wealth and prosperity," she told another.
A stillborn babe and a young wife made bare. The bodies of Beorc and Laguz piled high and gold piled even higher still.
The children delighted in her visions and ran barefoot through the dusty streets, playing at arms and marriage as children do while their mothers squatted before the fortune-teller and extended their own worn and callused hands; the dull thunk of copper dropping into the earthen bowl at her knee echoed in the warm afternoon air.
"Please tell us, Lady Gold-Eye," they asked her. "Tell us what you See."
The fortune-teller told them what they wanted to hear. "A fine harvest this year – rich in grain and wheat." The rats will feed well on your stores and grow until nothing is left but a few grains and fragments of stalks.
"And my daughter?" another asked. "Will she marry this year?"
She nodded. "Yes, to a young, strapping lad she has admired for many years." But he is known for his roving eye – the union won't be a happy one.
They came steadily until the hours grew long and only one person remained in the now deserted marketplace. He approached her silently, the footfalls of his boots muffled by sure, quick movements and the wary confidence of one who has walked in the shadows and yet never gone astray.
He crouched before her and removed one long glove, flexing the hand before presenting it to the fortune-teller. "What say you, Lady Gold-Eye?" he murmured as the shadows around them grew longer still and the light of the setting sun turned the world red. "Tell me."
Her fingers traced over the lines of his hand, lingering on the scars and brushing gently against the calluses. Her breath catches in her throat. "Blood," she whispered. "It will stain your hands just as it will stain mine. It will seep into the earth and stain the water – the blood of madmen and innocents and countless children playing at war."
"I am not a child," he said softly. "Not any longer."
She looked up from his palm and let her eyes roam over his face; it was all sharp lines and angles now, any trace of the child she had known erased completely. But perhaps there, that gleam in his eyes…
"You've changed," she told him.
He looked at her, his lips lifting in the small, wry smile she had known. "So have you," he said simply.
The raspy cackle of a crow echoed dimly through the market as the sun finally sank below the horizon.
For challenge #011: "Woman King" at FE Contest on Livejournal. Thank you for reading - feedback is appreciated.