Title: Foretellings
Author: S J Smith
Rating: Teenish
Disclaimer: Joss and I are besties. He based Dru off of me. …psych!
Summary: Drusilla reads her Tarot cards.
It is a dark moon, and outside, the wind howls and whines and seeks entry into the tattered church where she's taken residence. A guttering candle fights against the breeze charging around the church, but Drusilla can see without the meager light. She can see in the dark, she can see without any stars or light of the moon. In her bone-white hands, a thick deck of cards shifts and flips. Drusilla remembers a very pretty boy, in glittery place, who played with cards. He'd shown her his fancy moves with the pasteboards, and, to show her thanks, she'd shown him her own moves, and chased him through the blinking streets and beautiful houses of gambling, hunting him down and draining him dry, leaving a deck of cards in his hands.
Tonight, though, she has other matters on mind than memory, and she whispers to the cards, to the spirits in the air, to the wind that tugs at her skin and hair and dress. She lays out the cards in the ascribed pattern, studying the images as she flips the cards to their faces. As she reads the pattern within the images below, her smile widens, her eyes gleam. Her left hand claws the air, shredding it to tatters as she laughs and laughs.
"Oh, sweet cards," she says, "you speak to me of great change!" Scooping up the cards, Drusilla cradles them against her breast, spinning like a girl at her first dance. "Such pretty chaos! Such brilliant evil plans! Oh!" As she abruptly stops her rotation, her dress and hair continue the motion, wrapping her in their ghostly embraces before falling down again.
"It's time." Drusilla gloats to herself, tucking the cards back in their silk scarf, and, after that, a pouch sworn to be made of some virgin girl's skin. She strokes the suppleness of it, giving it a pinch, and swears she can hear a gasp, somewhere between indignity and wantonness. Maybe it even comes from her. Drusilla smiles, and dances out of the church. She has much to prepare for, with a new Hellmouth coming into the world. And she plans to be there for the grand opening.
~ end ~