Following their first day in Heaven, the applicants were a-buzz with excitement. They were supposed to be asleep by now, but they were all too busy chatting about their day and tossing around opinions to care about the curfew. On and on the chatter went until one of the girls, the redheaded one named Courtney, spoke up louder than the rest.
"Do you guys want to cast badges?" she asked.
"Cast badges?" Natalie, the tall blond, asked, looking to the shorter girl in confusion.
"Casting badges!" Alexis, the short blond, echoed eagerly. She looked up at Natalie before explaining. "It's a little game where you take your badge, your armband, and toss it up in the air and whichever way it lands tells your fortune!"
"What?" Amy, the dark-skinned girl, sounded incredulous as Alexis explained the rules of casting badges.
"It's just a silly little ritual! But Publicist told me about it!" Alexis said. "And you all know how old he is! He said that they were casting badges for luck when he was just an applicant like us!"
"What? Back when Jesus still roamed the Earth?" June joked and the others laughed.
"So shall we do it now?" Amy asked eagerly once everybody understood what casting badges meant.
"Yeah!" the others cried, busily removing their armbands and heading towards the heart of the dorm room.
"Who'll sing the prayer?" Natalie asked, looking around the small group.
"I will," Cora offered. Together, with badges held tight, they shut their eyes and bowed their heads.
"All children of Heaven sing 'Alleluia', born of blood and cast of wing, alleluia! Alleluia, alleluia, always alleluia!" Cora sang.
Once the last note had dissipated into the air, every girl tossed her armband over her shoulder with her eyes still shut. Then, somebody began counting. Once she got to seven, everybody opened their eyes and turned around and checked their armbands.
"Ooh! I got a good one!" Amy cried delightedly.
"Awww, I hope this doesn't mean I've gotta wash floors forever!" said Alexis, frowning at hers.
"Well, I think I'll be right there with ya!" Natalie joked. Cora looked at her own armband mutely, excitement surged through her body. Her badge had fallen face up with wings pointed away from her, a sign of wonderful fortune. (The rules were that the more of the wing you could see and the further away it faced from you, the luckier you were).
"What'd you get, June?" Courtney asked, turning to the blond. June was staring blankly down at hers and had not made a single sound since agreeing with the others to perform this silly little ritual. Such a silence was unusual for the hotheaded blond and that was why Courtney asked. The moment she and the others saw June's armband, however, they understood why she was only staring at the piece of cloth and not even trying to pick it up. It had landed totally facedown. That was already a pretty unlucky position. But none of the girls could stand the suspense so, finally, Natalie bent over and picked it up. The wings were pointed inward at June. The ultimate bad luck.
"Oh, June…" Cora's delight at her own good fortune vanished when she realized what was wrong with June. All the other girls made similar noises of sympathy as June could only stare at the piece of red cloth in Natalie's open palm. The tall blond handed the armband back to the smaller blond with an awkward and sympathetic smile. Her own armband hadn't exactly landed in the best position either, but it certainly hadn't been so unlucky as June's had been. But as the seconds rolled on, June began to shake her head.
"No," she said. "It is all just foolishness. This is Heaven, after all, and nothing could go wrong here!" she added, managing to cheer herself and everyone else up just a little bit.
"Let's try it again," Alexis suggested. "Maybe this time was a dud!"
"Good idea," said Amy. Then one by one, the other girls agreed. They reassembled into a circle, heads down and eyes shut again. This time, June sang the prayer. The results still came up exactly the same.
"Ok, that's just creepy," Natalie murmured, shivering slightly.
"Shall we cast badges for a third time?" asked Courtney. "For luck? Because three is a charm, you know?"
"Let's give it a try," June sighed. The results still came up the same as the other two times.
"It's all just silliness," Cora tried to say, but they all found that hard to believe after three trials getting the exact same results every time. It didn't matter what aspect of the tradition they changed, the results were always the same. That sobering observation made it hard for any of the girls to try and look on the positive side of things. Instead, they all drifted off to bed without saying a word.
By next morning, though, spirits rose considerably and the applicants were already dismissing their fortunes (and June's).
"Ha! As if I would get a good spot in Heaven," Amy joked.
"Well at least maybe I won't be cleaning floors forever," Alexis agreed.
"With my luck, I probably would get floor cleaning anyway!" Natalie laughed.
"Yeah, and June, you'll probably end up the best of us all," Courtney encouraged, squeezing June's arm in a friendly way.
"Yeah," June grinned. "All that fuss for foolish fantasy! It's faith and hard work that will win a spot in Heaven, not some silly rituals!" she cried and the others nodded fervently in agreement, encouraged by June's nonchalance.
Only Cora dared disagree, but she did not verbalize it. Instead, she only faked a smile. But the reason she wanted to disagree with the girls was because, last night, she had had a strange dream in which June had, twice, gotten into trouble to the point of exile. On the third round, she rose again from her troubles and Cora could, in the skyline of that dream, see fiery wings pointed outward. Not wanting to talk about it, Cora pretended to agree that the whole thing was just stupidity, but somehow she knew that what she was seeing was real. From what Cora had learned about casting badges, although most incidents were entirely unreliable and all done just for luck, it sounded like a rare few castings had given accurate predictions of one's future standing in Heaven. Cora had a feeling that this was one of those times. But her dream had shown June's wings faced outward and that usually was a good thing, so why did Cora feel like, in this case, outward facing wings was something almost bad?
Turns out, Cora was totally correct. June could've even backed her up on it, but there was something that the blond was hiding from the others. After that third attempt at casting badges, although Junes wings still landed facing the ground, they were pointed outward instead of inward. It was a small change but June, for some reason, couldn't bring herself to admit to it. Instead, she called an end to the game right there and that was it. But if June had twice gotten inward-facing wings and then once outward and Cora had seen them both coming true in a dream, could that possibly mean that this particular casting of badges was to come true? There was no time to discuss, however, because the six applicants had a long day of training ahead of them and they couldn't afford to be distracted.
Hours and hours later, the girls were in the same positions they had been in 24 hours ago. They were all lying in bed, trying to fall asleep. June was still awake, but that was because she was trying to tend to her armband. Earlier, she had noticed that it was fraying, threads coming loose.
"How?" she muttered to herself, trying to be quiet for the sake of her sleeping roommates, but she couldn't disguise her amazement. These things were as new as the applicants that wore them, meaning that they were less than a week old, yet already, June's was suffering wear and tear.
"You're just as troublesome as I am!" she finally said to her armband. She wasn't just referring to this early wear and tear, though. She was also referring to how, on her first day in Heaven, that armband had absolutely refused to stay on her arm. Instead, it kept sliding down her arm for the whole tour of Heaven. Then, of course, there was the whole "bad luck" thing with the casting of badges. Honestly, this scrap of cloth was starting to feel like more trouble than it was worth!
"Whatever! I'll deal with you later!" the hotheaded girl decided, tossing the armband onto her nightstand. As she tossed it away, the golden wings caught a few moonbeams peeking in a nearby window. The light bounced off of the wings and created a broken, fractured pattern upon the wall opposite to June. But the design didn't last long because it slide just a few inches across the nightstand and out of the line of the moonbeams. As quick as it had come, the fractured pattern of gold vanished into the darkness.
AN: I just wanted to write a fic with the other applicants in it (their character names are their actress' names) and I wanted to write them doing stupid schoolgirl stuff, like following ridiculous rituals that had pretty much become tradition despite being bogus.
In addition, this was also just an excuse for me to write more foreshadowing. You know, June's armband falling off and tearing and creating a broken pattern? Everything to indicate that June was never meant for Heaven at all. (Side note, June's armband falling off is real. You can see it during the Ark and Emilie even remarks upon it in the commentary).
Also, to recap the tradition, you throw your armband over your shoulder and based on which way it falls, your future is foretold. June's landed face down every time, indicating bad luck. But on the third go, June's wings were pointed out, indicating a slight change for the better. This was in reference to how, despite how much she suffered, she did ultimately end up getting the power she wanted because it sounds like Doll is one of the more powerful carnies of Hell. So yeah, more blatant symbolism. What can I say? Hope you enjoyed!