(Flashback) What the Cards Said (Solo)

[Blythe]

45 Spring, 509 AV

Blythe was sitting on her bed, holding her grandmother's palladini tarot deck in her hands. She had taken the cards out of their box, and she was shuffling them rapidly in her hands. The cards were warm, her grandmother must have used them recently, she thought.

Blythe was sitting Indian style, and as straight as she could on top of her bed. A thin white sheet was draped over her legs. Blythe continued to shuffle the cards as she took in a few deep, cleansing breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth.

Blythe had borrowed the cards from her grandmother, knowing that she needn't ask for Rose's permission to use them. There was something that Blythe wanted to look into. It felt strangely... urgent to her... like she had to do so, NOW.

Blythe closed her eyes, silently praying to Avalis to listen to her question, and to provide her with an answer. Blythe took a few more deep breaths, before she began repeating the question over and over again in her mind: will my sisters have more children while I have none?

Blythe continued to shuffle the cards, before sifting through the deck with her thumb and choosing the Page of Cups as her significator. She set this card aside; knowing that it was meant to embody her presence and focus in the reading. The card had to with romantic souls, spirituality, and the birth of children, in some cases.

[Blythe]

Blythe set the page of cups aside, and then continued shuffling the cards for a few more minutes. When she was satisfied with her shuffling job, she set the cards out in front of her, and then passed her left hand back and forth over the cards. When she felt a pull to one of the cards, Blythe would drop her hand and pick it out of the pile.

Having decided to use the "three sister's" spread, which was often used to gain insight into the past, present and future, Blythe pulled out three cards from the pile, placing the first card down in front of her on the left, the second in the middle, and the third on the right. Blythe then picked up the remaining cards, and set them aside.

Now that everything was out of her way, Blythe flipped the three cards over so that she could begin her reading.

The first card Blythe had drawn, the card on the left, represented Blythe's past. The card she had flipped over depicted a man sitting in bed, his hands covering his eyes, as a light blue blanket fell off his legs and the side of the bed. The man was dressed in a light pink robe, and he sat in anguish under a black sky. The sky had been covered in night's dark blanket, and the only source of light from that sky shone from a golden crescent moon in the top right corner. Nine golden swords glowed against the dark night sky, and the words "nine of swords," was scrawled in cursive at the bottom of the card.

Lovely, Blythe thought, knowing the card had to do with distress or poor health. It had to do with guilt, mistrust, and doubt. The card may also indicate death or loss.

Well, didn't that just sum up her past quite nicely? Blythe thought, as she considered just how well the cards had hit the nail on the head. Blythe had always been upset by the fact that her sisters had each managed to successfully give birth to three children, while whenever she had tried, she either failed to become pregnant, the child either died while it was still in her womb, or, the child died soon after birth.

A wave of sorrow hit Blythe like a brick wall, and a steady stream of tears began to trickle down her face. Fawn... her ice blue eyes... tiny hands... toothless smile...

How was it that Avalis and Laviku could deny her a child? Over and over again? Or was this the work of some other power? Blythe wondered as she sobbed over the spread, not bothering to look at the next two cards yet. She was too upset to even see them through her glassy eyes.

Blythe allowed herself to cry for a few moments before she wiped the tears away with the back of her hand, she could miraculously see again. Blythe glanced down at the second card she had drawn, the card in the middle, the one that represented a deciding element in her present life. The card depicted a naked blonde woman wading into a pool of bright blue water, she was holding two cups, one above water, the other below. She was surrounded with a light blue sky that held several yellow stars, and a tree that held a red bird, with rather long tail feathers. The bird's coloration reminded Blythe of a roaring flame. The card was the star card. When the star was not reversed, it had to do with new hopes, insight, inspiration, "courage and enlightenment of the spiritual self. Body and mind and converging towards the light at the end of a dark time."

This card gave Blythe hope, it suggested that there was hope, as long as she knew where to look for it in all of the darkness that surrounded her.... and as long as she didn't screw everything up... she added as a sort of afterthought.

OOCThis spread is really called the Three Fates spread, but it isn't appropriate for this game, I do not think, so I changed the name.

[Blythe]

The last card, the card on the right, represented her future. Staring up at her was an imagine of a man and a woman, surrounded by a series of orange and apple trees. The leaves on the trees were a bright green, the fruit was ripe. The sun was shining down on the man and the woman, as they held each other tightly. The card was upside-down: the lovers in reverse.

And all of her hopes came crashing down around her.... THUD.

The lovers in reverse. Inner strife, frustration, suspicion, disagreement. Irresponsibility and indecision. Lust. Unfaithfulness.

Perfect, Blythe thought. Did this mean that she was never going to have a child? she wondered, as a cool breeze made its way in through the open window, circling Blythe's body like an ethereal blanket.

Blythe sighed, knowing it would only be a few moments before it left her too. Just like everything else seemed to.

Blythe was officially wallowing in her own self-pity puddle of tears. It would be a few minutes before she managed to get a hold of herself, and look at what all the cards meant when they were put together, painting the whole picture, and not just parts of it.

OOC: Referenced this site for the reading: http://www.facade.com/tarot/

[Blythe]

Blythe didn't have to think long about the first card at, all, the one that represented her past. It had been filled with anguish, countless attempts at getting pregnant, most of which resulted in failure, and a few times in which she got pregnant but miscarried, and one time when she actually delivered a baby, but it died essentially a week later. Her sisters, on the other hand, were far luckier, and each managed to have three children. Something which, although she was happy for them, extremely so, made Blythe feel like a failure at the same time. If they could successfully give birth to so many children, then why in the world couldn't she? It just didn't seem fair, it just didn't make sense to Blythe, not at all. And those questions, and the general level of confusion that surrounded each of them, was enough to drive poor Blythe into a deep dark pit of despair.

The second one, the star card, the one that represented her present, seemed to suggest that there was some sort of hope, presently. That there was a chance that she would give birth to a child, yet the more and more Blythe thought about it, the more confused she became, considering she hadn't so much as met a man in her travels for quite some time. Perhaps if she looked a little harder, she would find someone? Blythe thought, quickly moving onto the last card, the card that signified her future.

The lovers in reverse: inner strife. Unfaithfulness. Does this mean that any hope that the present carried, didn't matter, because her future would still be a mess? Did that mean that she either wouldn't find someone, which would indeed, make it impossible to have children like the rest of her siblings? Or, could it mean that she would go out and find someone, and still be unsuccessful? Or even, that she would find someone, be unsuccessful, and that one of the two parties would cheat on the other one during the course of their relationship?

Blythe simply had no idea. She shook her head. Perhaps she should simply put it away, and let it go. Stop depending on a deck of cards to provide the answers to her problems.

Blythe sighed, she reluctantly picked up all the cards, forming a tiny pile, before placing them back in their box, leaving them in the center of her bed, what an unfortunate reading, Blythe thought, as she got up and looked around the cottage for the rest of her family.

OOCSorry this attempt is a little more blah than the others. Slash, is slightly repetitive.

[Alice]

Blythe

Experience: 4 Fortune Telling
Lores: The Page of Cups Card, The Three Sisters Spread, The Nine Swords Card, The Star Card, The Reverse Lovers Card, Reacting Emotionally to the Cards, Tarot Providing No Answer

Comments

Nice little read. I can’t get enough of Blythe’s tragic story ... she’s just so unlucky it almost hurts. One day, I want to do a happy-go-lucky thread for her with a magnificent reward!