+ Fallacy, a 100themes Challenge +
Sarehptar
Theme: 13, Misfortune (Miss Fortune)
Characters: Kharl, Delte, Garfakcy
Pairing: None
Warnings: Liberal douses of irony.
Need to Know Info: ...The reason Delte's deck has a One Winged Angel card.
Title Provider: A Bad Dream (Keane)
Where Will I Meet My Fate? When Will I Meet My End?
He wanders the streets with a delighted and disinterested eye, taking in everything but not really stopping to inspect anything. It's nothing that he hasn't seen before; nothing that he feels really deserves his attention. Of course, it is a Fortuneteller's street, and he has never believed in fate or destiny. How can he possibly be expected to believe that his life is outside his control—that the events he forcefully molds each day are actually a series of predestined prophecies? It is ridiculous, in the basest sense of the word. If he decides suddenly to turn cartwheels in the street, will that too have been a push by fate?
He is here more from curiosity than belief. Fortunetellers are almost a breed of their own—and power, if there really is any to found among them, is not something he will willingly pass up. Some of the shops and tents resonate with an interesting ki, but most of the soothsayers he finds within them are demons, using youkai abilities to dazzle peasants and make a penny or two. Demon magic doesn't interest him at all anymore, because he knows more than enough about monsters, and about himself. A chuckle escapes him at the thought that he could probably pass for a successful fortuneteller just by muddling the minds of customers or confusing them with beautiful lights and ghostly fires.
A few of the shops haven't got any interesting aura about them at all—these are human fortunetellers, he thinks, laughing at the oxymoron already there. They are more intelligent than demon fortunetellers, he knows, because they must impress customers with mental ability rather than intriguing light shows and smoky tricks. But he is no more interested in vague personality and visual analysis than he is youki. A small sigh escapes him, and just when he thinks he'll have to move on (and actually do what he came to do, which is pick up a sample of native Chantel plants) an old-fashioned building at the end of the street catches his senses.
Spirit Tribe! He can feel the purifying energy from the twenty meters or so that he has yet to cross, and it intrigues him. Yes, Chantel is fairly close to Fiori Forest, but a faerie living (and working, he giggles at the strangeness of the idea: a faerie doing something other than tending flowers all day!) outside the forest is something he has never come across before. And a faerie fooling innocents into paying for fortunes that surely must not be true seems simply wrong… This is a place he wants to see the inside of, and without even thinking about quite how he will stage an inspection of the Spirit Tribe power, he wanders into the shop.
It is dim inside, the windows gently curtained, and the lamps keep low. There are mirrors lining the wall, and velvet drapes the bureaus and chairs effortlessly. The entire front room smells heavily of incense—faerie noses are certainly not as delicate as demons', because he can hardly stand the pervasive scent of burning oils. A bell tinkles above the door when he enters, sounding a high and pleasant note, and as if summoned, a small woman walks stately into the room to greet him.
Her hair is short, a pale green, like the under-sides of blue-olive Snowberry leaves, and her eyes are a dark emerald, wide and inviting.
"Welcome." She smiles at him gently, but he can see something flicker in her face for just a moment, and he wonders if she has discovered his true nature. Today he has forgone the human disguise he normally wears among mortals—this is too near to Draqueen to allow the ash magic to dampen his senses. For a faerie, rounding his ears and dulling his fangs would probably not be enough… "Would you like to have your fortune told?" she presses on, seemingly unfazed, in a sickeningly sweet voice.
"Miss Fortuneteller, I find myself entirely unconvinced that you can tell my distant future or even what I intend to eat for breakfast tomorrow." The woman sighs, and he realizes immediately that she is used to disbelief.
"I am Delte, the main fortuneteller for this shop. I read cards." She shuffles the intricately decorated deck as he watches, and the movements of her wrists are precise and practiced. She has been doing this for quite a while, and he wonders briefly just how old she is—it is always impossible to tell with faeries, even more than with youkai. With demons, aging stops several decades after sexual maturity; with faeries, he almost laughs, it seems like it stops several decades before. She stretches the deck across the table to him, and he knows this is some method of tapping into her customers' energies—he keeps his ki tightly locked away, and does not even brush her hand with his. Their powers are so diametrically opposite that he fears he will pollute her.
She shuffles the deck again quickly, and then with expert flicks, draws three cards from the top, bottom and center. They lie face down between the demon and the faerie ominously, and vaguely, Kharl wonders just what they will say. Nothing true, he is sure. Nothing that won't be changed by every tiny decision he makes—because if there is one he has learned, it is that everything has rippling effects (and how could anyone ever hope to read a future when so much changes every day?)
She turns the first card slowly, taking in its image with steady eyes. Kharl watches it too, and is surprised to see its blank face shimmer. Ink, as if from invisible pens, traces shapes across the top of the card. A wolf's face and cobweb-like strands of fire seem almost to ripple across the paper surface, and even though the entire thing is indicative of heat, there is something cold, impossibly cold, in the creature's wild eyes. For a moment, she is silent, and then the faerie woman fixes him with a heavy stare.
"Do you have any children?" The questions blindsides him completely, and for more than a few seconds, he can only gape in confusion.
"No,"he answers finally, still failing to make the connection between burning wolves and babies. She shifts nervously, turning the card over in her palm and frowning deeply.
"A terrible tragedy is going to befall your son… and you." He shakes his head, ready to stand and leave before this meeting becomes any stranger. She turns the second card over with ease, and they both watch the spells trace an elegant dragon across the paper face. She frowns again, as if she disbelieves the fortune she is reading as much as he does.
"Transformation," she murmurs, "savior, blood, Light… Your son is going to be a member of the Dragon Tribe." Kharl thinks for a moment that he will burst out laughing. As if anything could be less possible! He deliberates between leaving now and staying to see what the last card has to say—surely nothing could be more entertaining than the thought of any child of his ever magically ending up in the Dragon clan… She turns the third card, and he watches with interest and disinterest as the lines trace a chain-bound coffin.
"Death," she whispers tremulously, "death and Rebirth. The Lord of Light and Darkness, the fate of the world…" There is an incredulous look on her face, and she shivers in her pale dress. "This is—"
"Quite silly," he finishes for her, and drops a bag of coin onto the table. "I don't have any children, I don't expect any, and the chances of my ever being connected to the Dragon Tribe are as slim as you joining the Demon Army."
"But—" she starts and grasps for the right words.
"But this is certain fate?" He knows he is being rude and almost doesn't care. "Miss Fortuneteller, I firmly believe that inevitable things," he passes an errant hand over the cards on the table, "are prone to change." And then he is gone.
Delte watches his breezing exit and sighs to herself. This reading… When her look settles on the cards, she can not help but gasp—because all three designs had been rearranged into identical angels, shimmering wings spreading beautifully across the card faces. For a moment, they remain that way, immaculate and flawless. But then, as if being corrupted, the center card darkens with blood and the angel's delicate left wing becomes crippled and rots away. She sits for a moment longer, watching, but nothing else changes… Something in the ominous form of the bloodied angel makes her believe the stranger never intended the change.
"Incidentally," she mutters to herself as she shuffles the deck clear again, "You are going to have strawberry pancakes for breakfast tomorrow."
x - x - x
"How was your trip?" Garfakcy asks over the table the next morning, eyeing his master with a curious gaze.
"Strange," the Alchemist admits. "I had my fortune read in Chantel, by an absolutely bizarre woman."
"You actually bothered to go into a fortuneteller? I hope you didn't pay her well." His housekeeper shakes his head in exasperation.
Kharl stares at his fork, brimming with a syrupy mess of strawberry and pastry, and murmurs to himself. "A son in the Dragon Tribe? How utterly ridiculous."