Solo Fortune Telling.

[Maore]

71 A U T U M N 517

Beyond the warmth of Farem Silverstone's tent, the deluge that had been pouring down onto Endrykas continued for the third day without respite. There was something disquieting about the downpour, an uncomfortable malignancy the weather had been experiencing over the past several seasons that gave the ethaefal pause when she considered. It was near the end of the season, something indicated as much to her in the ancient bones slung together under rosy sunkissed skin. She may not change with the seasons anymore, frozen in her own sort of limbo much as the seasons had seemed to stagnate, but something about the chill in the rain, or perhaps in the restless spirit turning about in her chest, indicated to her it was nearly winter.

And Ciraaci wondered if it'd snow this time.

Her moment of introspection was interrupted when a young man swept into the tent, dripping with the cold and bringing in a weary gust of wind that brought a shiver to travel the length of Ciraaci's body. Her eyes snapped to him immediately, taking in the sparkling quality of his eyes that seemed a brighter grey than the morose sky. Ciraaci couldn't resist smiling in response, though the green of her eyes was set flat and uninteresting, diminished without the sun to truly light them.

“Morning,” she said, pleased, genuine, warm in lieu of Syna. The rain pelted the fabric of the tent and smothered some of the feeling in her words, but she was confident in their meaning remaining undamaged through her grassland-sign. Was it still morning? she found herself wondering, glass-eyed for a moment too long, before recovering and accepting his own greeting. The man shed his cloak, leaving it to dry at the entrance with the other cloaks and coats. “Come to have your fortune told?”

She was horribly unfamiliar with the method to properly entertain a customer; the only mystical properties that the ethaefal seemed to embody were limited to the appearance Syna had long ago given her and the sometimes glassy quality of her features, as if she were lost in the long thoughts of her past. She couldn’t even properly muster a coolly lyrical tone to use when in this tent.

She crooked her finger at him before either Emry or Farem herself caught him standing there and questioned the verifiability of her fortune telling with asking a question like “come to have your fortune told?” in a tent dedicated to the art of it. “Sit,” she said, rising to her feet to lead him off to another section of the tent. She’d set up a few things of her own here, the most apparent being the deck of cards that sat on the floor between two mats dedicated to being sat upon.

Sitting first, Ciraaci indicated the man ought to sit across from her in the dedicated spot, and she took her deck of cards to riffle them briefly, satisfied by the dusty sound they whispered in the solemn quiet of the tent. “May I have your name?” She asked him then, lazily riffling the cards once more, though not without much thought to it.

“Jedda Firestone,” he said with a comfortable ease, relaxing as best as he could. She took a moment to look him over, head to toe, and regarded the man as typical to what she’d accustomed drykas to being. Sunkissed skin, endowed with more than a few windmarks, and by the look of his hands and clothes, a hard worker. She played a small game to determine what his work may be, and settled on something mundane: hunter—though she had no experience with hunting to back it up. “Of the Ruby Clan,” he finished, and offered another gleaming smile.

“I am Ciraaci,” she said. She’d stopped being ‘Sunstrike’ when it seemed to mean nothing, but the words lingered on her tongue like the taste of a man who spent too much time drinking sweet wine and smoking under the starlight. “Is there something you’re here for, Jedda?”

As she asked, she lowered her deck down, and began the process of ‘washing’ them, a symbolic gesture to her to clean them of the energy that had coalesced as she’d handled them. She could speak to him and imagine the energy, which she equated to a warm glow, being shed away as her hands manipulated the cards over one another, encouraging reverse cards where they could occur.

“I want to know if my wife will give me a son this year,” he said, without an ounce of hesitation. The query didn’t quite stun Ciraaci, though she did pause in her ‘wash’ and experience the flighty sensation of expectations she hadn’t realized she had being disappointed. She continued once the feeling had abated and considered the question, finally bringing the cards together to begin fixing them into a recognizable deck once more.


813

[Maore]

The shuffle from here to further randomize the deck was subjective to the ethaefal. Sometimes, when she was alone, she’d deal straight from this haphazard stack of cards and determine the best meaning she could glean from them. Lately, she’d taken more care to shuffle them at least twice. This time, she resolved to do it thrice, and began with the first riffle of her cards.

While Ciraaci aspired for absolute quiet in these moments, the cards were anything but. The riffle flicked them over one another, snapping their corners together before her hands joined the newly combined halves into a true whole. It was hard to describe the way it felt; long ago, she’d played around with the act of ‘riffling’ and had found the little finger on both of her hands bleeding for carelessly pushing through her the uncomfortable stage. She’d healed from the cuts within a half-day, as they were shallow and superficial and bled only a trickle at the start, but for the next two days they were tender and clumsy.

It was better now, but she couldn’t resist the allure of simply being swallowed up in the sound.

Resurrecting her train of thought, Ciraaci finished her first riffle and proceeded through the final two, before placing her card down and ‘cutting’ the deck in thirds, reversing the middle stack so it would make the cards upside-down in the deck, before piling them all together in reverse and completing a final three riffles. Finally, she considered herself done.

“I want you to think of your query,” she murmured to Jedda, placing her deck between them again, and delicately beginning to turn over the topmost three cards.

The first to be turned was a card depicting a man holding a chalice, standing as if to offer it to the viewer and wearing gaily coloured garb. She paused a moment, considering what the picture meant, as the card came without words, before proceeding to turn the second. This one was four swords, three arrayed in a line near the top of the card, with the forth lain under the sleeping body of another man. The final card depicted a man and woman under a sunlight goddess, whom Ciraaci presumed to be the likeness of Cheva as humans perceived her. She moved her hands from the cards and regarded the spread there.

None of them had been turned over in reverse, for which she was grateful, as she often found reversed meanings to be hard to decipher—although reading tarot was not something she could claim she was intimately familiar with. She took a good deal of time to look over these cards, pondering their meaning, before releasing the breath she’d been holding.

“The Page,” she said, indicating the first card with a neat tap of her left index finger. “He wants to encourage you to experience childlike wonder. His message is encouraging, and accompanied by the lovers here,” she moved to the third card, because she was uncertain of the second, “is to say that you should experience newfound wonder with your wife.” But did that indicate he’d have a son? No, it didn’t. Silly Ciraaci.

She regarded the middle card as if it were the determinizing factor as to whether or not his child would be a boy.

“Four swords say you’ll ultimately need to reconnect with your wife. The final outcome of your wife’s pregnancy may not be what you’re looking for, and you’ll want time apart from her, but as the lovers in the final position say, listen to the feeling in your gut.”

Her voice shook, betraying the uncertainty. She allowed a few moments to pass before raising her eyes to appraise Jedda and try to glean what he thought of her reading. For a tick, he seemed as uncertain as she did; Ciraaci was of the opinion her reading wasn’t very impressive and that she ought to try again for something more concise, or uplifting. Why was it the chalice with the swords?

“Was this reading satisfying?” She asked Jedda, breaking the mutual reverie.

“She’ll not give me a son?” He asked, his voice momentarily hollow. Ciraaci determined him to be one of the young ankal, or even an ankal’s heir trying to prove the strength of his seed.

“Fate can be whimsical,” she said softly, lowering her eyes to regard the spread once more. Chalice, swords, lovers. If she were particularly devout, she would ask Syna what sight told Her of these meanings. “This is what the cards tell me is yours.”

760 + 813 = 1573

[Maore]

The two of them were silent for a long moment, but for their own reasons. Ciraaci suspected his to be caused by uncertainty; he’d come to have his fate told, at least so far as this question, but he wasn’t ready to accept the answer she’d given him. She was sure her reading of the cards to not have been adequate, but the lingering self doubt was a toxic reminder of the things she’d never gotten over in the past. Her silence was caused by the thought of the three cards she’d pulled and other ways she could have read them. She should be saying something to reassure him, and yet she wasn’t quite ready to do so. What could she say, anyway? He was a young man wanting a son, and she’d been happy with four daughters.

“Is there anything else you’d like to ask of the cards, Jedda?” She asked him gently, because she felt sitting together for more than a few chimes in unsettling silence was more than enough. “The tarot is ready to answer.”

“Mm, yes,” he said. In his haste, he’d muffled uncertain grassland signs into the cloth beneath him. Ciraaci complied, and again began the shuffling of her cards, this time focusing on the way he felt with her rather than on his words. The young ones often said that practice made perfect, so Ciraaci would be unfortunate to miss the opportunity for another clumsy tarot reading.

“Will I become ankal soon?” He asked. She paused again, green eyes lifting to take in his expression, before they returned to the task at hand. He looked very serious about it, nearly grim. It could have been unsettling.

She fixed her cards into a deck after the washing and completed her shuffle with the same three riffles, the piling, and the final riffle. And then she drew the topmost three cards again.

The first was the gavel and sound block, the card naming itself ‘Judgement’. The meaning seemed clear until she drew the second, which came in reverse. The image depicted a tower, which of course was upside-down. Finally, preceded by the Tower, came the image of the Hierophant, who wore the priestly vestments of an unknown god and offered a holy symbol to the people looking upon him. It was also in reverse.

Ciraaci reclined in her seat and again took in the look of the cards. She was uncertain, so the reading was a longer wait than the previous one.

“One by one, Fate’s cards tell me that you must meditate.” No, something in her head whispered. That’s not right. But it was, to what she understood of the Judge. She lowered her left hand to tap the image of the card, so crudely embossed onto it by whatever unnamed artist had sought fit to make a rudimentary tarot rather than buy one from a divinist. “You’re close to something significant. You need to reflect on the changes in your life.” Moving to the Tower, “It suggests that while you want change, you’re afraid of what that change may be. Judgement says it’s coming, and you’re afraid of the outcome.” And finally, to the Hierophant. “You feel restricted. Either by rules, by authority, by your own hand, you feel confined and stagnant. He wants you to question tradition, and when flanking the Tower as he does, he is of the opinion that tradition itself is what you fear.”

“You may become the ankal soon, Jedda,” Ciraaci said, finally, giving him the answer to the question he’d asked. “Soon could be within the year, and even as soon as tomorrow. It will come, and currently, you’re not ready to be the ankal. You may want to enjoy the freedom of who you are, or you simply loathe the burden that comes with being the ankal. Fortunately, fate is forgiving.”

She looked at him, hoping to gauge his reaction to this reading and if it answered anything he’d wanted to know.

655 + 1573 = 2228

[Maore]

Jedda had as much a reason to believe in the cards as Ciraaci knew how to read them, but he seemed surer of the revelations than she did. The pensive expression on his face was remarkable, and it occurred to her that he genuinely took fortune telling as fact. The woman shifted and began to slowly pick her cards back up, one by one and smacking them together. She otherwise let him keep his own company, her thoughts similarly introverted and pensive, but carefully aware of him even still. She wanted to be ready to answer any of his other questions, even if she’d already picked up her tarot, thinking it’d help her to better understand and perfect her delivery.

Fortunately, Jedda was content (or seemed to be) to digest his thoughts independently. When she’d put her cards away, she looked at him properly, considering everything she had the means to consider. Top to bottom. Ciraaci was, at least for a memorable moment, very glad she hadn’t said anything that’d implied he should usurp his ankal and take the position for himself; Jedda looked a large, strong man, and she didn’t doubt his ability to do so, or his capacity to want it badly enough to commit that crime. The thought was a perversion of many things she knew of the Drykas, and she regretted it nearly immediately – and was similarly glad that men couldn’t read minds.

“Do you have any other questions?” Ciraaci asked, but only when the moment had seemed too poignant to let grow more. She could say she was uncomfortable with the silence, having been surrounded by raucous Drykas for many years of her life, but she valued silence equally as much as she did their warm company. This was entirely because she didn’t like to sit quietly with strangers. Odd, that she should choose this path of work.

Jedda didn’t startle like she thought he might, but he looked at her sharply like he had forgotten she was there regardless, and she managed a slim smile, reassuring.

“I think that’s all I needed,” he answered, eventually. It took a long time in the coming, but he moved to stand. She stood, too, extending her arm to clasp him by the wrist in a firm grasp, their business done with this last connection.

387 + 2228 = 2615

[Taurina]

Grade in Progress

Ciraaci

Experience

• Fortune Telling: +3
• Investigation: +3
• Rhetoric: +2
• Observation: +3

Lore

• Jedda Firestone: Of the Ruby Clan
• Fortune Telling: ‘Washing’ is a symbolic gesture of cleansing the energy of the Tarot cards
• Jedda Firestone: Eager for a son
• Tarot Cards: Meanings of reversed cards are harder to decipher
• Tarot Cards Interpretation: ‘The Page’ carries an encouraging message
• Tarot Cards Interpretation: ‘Four Swords’ means what is searched for might not be found
• Tarot Cards Interpretation: ‘The Lovers’ say listen to your gut
• Jedda Firestone: Wishes to be an Ankal
• Tarot Cards Interpretation: ‘Judgement’ says change is coming and there is fear of the outcome
• Tarot Cards Interpretation: ’Tower’ reverse means something significant is close
• Tarot Cards Interpretation: ‘Hierophant’ reverse wants tradition to be questioned
• Ciraaci: Values silence, but not in the company of strangers

Notes
Wonderful job! I really enjoyed getting a look at Ciraaci at work and seeing how she dealt with the uncertainty that comes with telling another’s fortune. If you have any questions or concerns about your grade feel free to let me know. And don’t forget to edit your grade request