A Fortune-Filled Fellowship (Avaltri)

[Avari]

Season of Spring, Day 36, 512 AV

Now that much of the city was being repaired and rebuilt in the wake of the great storm, a semblance of calm and normality had descended upon the city again. Even though it was only a thin veneer above the seething emotional morass of desperation, disorder, and travail in every citizen's heart, Avari still found it a relief to not have to worry about encountering crazed mages, violent riots, or rampant illness on the streets. Everyone, including her, was doing their best to resume their normal lives before the storm and even to look toward the future again, albeit with a certain amount of trepidation and anxiety.

And right there, ready to soothe their hearts and shed light on their dark forebodings, was Avari. Seated on an old crate on one side of a busy city street, she had gone hatless and uncloaked today for once, and her gloves lay demurely folded in her lap. The wan sunlight shone upon her pale hair and skin, the pearl-grey scales on her forehead, and the pair of gills along the sides of her neck, all of which clearly marked her as inhuman and Konti. In these troubled times, when Konti messengers and healers had worked so much good among the citizens, Avari trusted her appearance and the reputation of her race would draw hopeful or despairing citizens better than any hand-lettered sign to ask for their fortunes to be read.

Now and then, she called out to the passersby hurrying along the street. She kept her voice gentle and soft, just as people would expect from some shrinking-violet Konti seer. Her advertisements, though, were somewhat less subtle.

"Do you worry about what the future holds?" she asked the people passing by. "Is there another disaster awaiting you around the corner, or will you find fortune and prosperity? If you seek to part the veils of time and gaze into what awaits you, come here and let me read the lines writ upon your hand. Let me tell you what the rest of your life holds in store."

For each reading, Avari charged the modest sum of a few silver mizas. Even a "fortune-telling" Konti had to survive, after all. Though food was being rationed and distributed equally among all citizens, prices for ordinary tools and luxury items alike had skyrocketed, now that no more shipments were arriving from Zeltiva's trade partners. Business had been passable so far, and Avari had added a number of silver mizas to the gold within the purse nestled in her lap.

"Can you tell me my fortune, miss?" a handsome young man asked her. He knelt down beside her crate, careful to avoid the muddy puddle that had formed in the dirt from the imprint of a horse's hoof, and extended his hand to her.

"Of course," Avari simpered as sweetly as she knew how, pulling her lips into an obliging smile. Inwardly, she gritted her teeth and touched his palm with a bare finger, wincing a little at the touch of bare skin against her own.

Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment, and she took several deep breaths. After a few moments, she spoke again. "I see you...uh...winning the heart of a golden-haired woman with a necklace of seashells, even though she is married to another man. She will...she will..." Avari's brow furrowed. "She will consent to leave her husband and elope with you, if only you have the courage to ask her. I see you and her clasped together in an embrace in a small temple, empty but for the priest presiding over your secret wedding."

The young man gaped wide and yanked his hand back, shoving it deep into a side pocket. "Golden hair and seashells...you mean Alisa is going to leave my brother? For me? That would break his heart! It can't be! I won't allow it!" He sprang to his feet and swore with passion. "I'll leave the city instead and live a life of celibacy instead!"

Avari stared at him, internally wondering what else she could have told him when she'd glimpsed that he was madly in love with his brother's wife. The only thing she could think of to say was, "Aren't you forgetting my fee? Five silver mizas, please."

The young man all but threw the coins at her before stomping away. Muttering to herself, Avari dropped the coins into her purse and looked back up toward the street. Her last patron's theatrics had caused a few faces to turn her way, some creased with consternation and others alight with interest. The Konti gave a shrug and a crooked smile, holding out her ungloved hands toward them in an inviting gesture.

"If you are interested in hearing about your futures," she said to the people staring at her, "I will see if your fortune holds as much...turmoil as that fellow's did. Who would like to be next?"

[Avaltri]

Avaltri was sitting on a roof overlooking one of the busy streets that lead from the docks to the city center. In this area, the damaged roofs of the houses had already been rebuilt, but the storm had left other traces. With shipments failing, the prices of almost everything had gone up, and there was fierce bargaining over such goods as spices, which had not been included in the food rationing, but were apparently thought by humans to affect favorably the taste of the dishes they ate. Avaltri had, despite her trying, not been able to confirm this. Akvatari were not attuned to a wide variety of tasts, and so to her, they had all just tasted completely unremarkable. Yet there was a little ruckus centered around a merchant who seemed to be charging what people though was an outrageous price. There was, however, another, more interesting event that caught Avaltri's attention. A woman of rather extraordinary appearance sat on a chest just opposite the house from which the Akvatari looked down. She was very skinny and had completely white hair, yet as far as Avaltri could discern, her features were not wrinkled as those of old women. Her skin was very pale, too, and sometimes Avaltri thought she saw a shimmer just around the hairline. The woman was apparently a fortune-teller. It was not clear at all to Avaltri what to think of that. She saw people approach, hesitate and sometimes turn back, some took advantage of the services offered and, what was curious, went away apparently very happy about what they had heard in the overwhelming majority of cases. Only some were very upset. Avaltri couldn't quite comprehend all this. Why did it matter so much to these people to know more of what would happen, more than they could themselves foresee? Wasn't it important what oneself did, and what one became in and of oneself? And how could a fortune-teller know that? Nobody could predict the minds of people, foretell what works of art might be conceived or what devices invented. Or maybe they did believe that was possible? How could they? It was entirely inconceivable for Avaltri that someone should be able to know what she would be drawing in a year's time. That would be against the nature of a creative mind. So what was it that these people found so interesting and that they believed they could learn about from a fortune teller? And if it was the banalities of subsistence, how could they be so happy about it? Avaltri stared at the fortune-teller quite absent-mindedly as she contemplated this puzzle, finding that she didn't seem to understand the nature of human beings at all. There had been other hints to the effect that they didn't value the creative mind very much. It had made Avaltri wonder that while works of art were exported to Zeltiva, none were ever brought to Abura in return. Although of course, a number of explanations could be imagined for that...

[Avari]

Avari continued plying her trade along the busy street, calling out to passerby and inviting them to let her read their palms. Most of them walked along without accepting her invitation and some who did often made her wish they hadn't, with their dirty, sweaty hands and their sometimes banal, sometimes incomprehensibly venal, obscene, or ridiculous desires. As a thief and liar herself, the Konti knew she could hardly sit in judgment on the customers she was taking advantage of and tricking, yet she couldn't always help it. Once she'd thought that a person's sins could tell you more about them than their love, but now Avari wasn't so sure. If a seemingly good man yearned after something bad or a wise man after something foolish, didn't that mean the former was a scoundrel and the latter a fool?

Nevertheless, she had to make her living, and in these lean times peddling hope was a good deal easier and safer than skulking in the shadows or picking pockets. Of course, she could try earning money with actual fortune-telling -- in her case, by rolling her dice and reading the numbers that came up. With her meager level of skill, though, which hadn't been helped by her frequently skipping her grandmother's fortune-telling lessons, Avari doubted her customers would shell out the mizas for what little she could tell them. Posing as a palm-reader and giving her customers the illusion of control and certainty over the unknown was much more satisfying for everyone.

At least her current customer wasn't someone who made her hands twitch for their shielding gloves. An old lady with silver hair and a withered but kind face had placed her gnarled hand in Avari's. Through her touch, the Konti could see her desire for a flock of loving grandchildren gathered around her and a man as elderly and silver-haired as she.

"I see you...sitting beside your beloved husband," Avari temporized, guessing the identity of the man beside her, despite not being able to see a Chevas mark on the old woman's neck beneath her woolen scarf. "At your feet, a circle of young children are gathered, each child clamoring for stories or sweets and smiling up at you. I can tell that they love you very dearly and feel as though they belong with you."

Momentarily, Avari thought about her own grandmother, even though she was sure that Eunoe never wanted something like that from her. Then a shout broke through her reverie.

"She's lying!" a skinny man with bright red hair standing behind the old lady bellowed, pointing at Avari. "You're a liar, and not a real fortune-teller at all! A charlatan! A fraud!"

He stomped forward, his face turning almost as crimson as his hair. "Everyone knows this is ol' Granny Watlon, who never had a husband, only some cad who seduced her and left her the day after. She had a daughter who did marry some fellow and have some kids, but the daughter and her kids all died one after the other. Granny Watlon has no husband, no grandchildren, you witch. What're you doing, telling her lies?"

Avari gaped at the man. "I…I…"

"I, nothing!" the man snapped angrily. "You're just trying to cheat us of our money! Well, I'll show you where your false fortunes will get you!"

Before Avari could react, the red-haired man lunged toward her and slapped her hand away from the old woman's with savage force. Then, with a harsh laugh, he snatched the coin purse in her lap. When Avari instinctively reached to grab it back, the man swung it at her forehead, hard enough for the Konti to see stars. Cries and screams resounded through her ears, one of them hers, as she reeled back from the force of the blow and the weight of her own purse, half-filled as it was with a handful of gold and silver mizas.

By the time her vision had cleared, the man had cleared a path through the growing crowd on the street and was running out of sight. In the aftermath of the sudden violence, she could feel a bruise forming in the middle of her forehead. Though she was still dizzy from the blow, Avari leaped to her feet, frantic to find out where the red-haired man had gone.

"That thief!" she raged, stamping her foot passionately.

All around her, several disbelieving eyes confronted Avari. She took a deep breath, remembering that the man had just named her a cheat and a fraud before them all. In a calmer voice, she continued, "I was telling no lies. I was telling of the future that Lhex intended for her all along, the future that should have been, before her life was ruined. The…the lines of her…her palm could not have known of the man who would break her heart or turn her fate astray from the path it was meant to walk."

With that explanation, Avari felt safe to rage again, albeit in slightly more dishonest fashion than before. "And now that thrice-damned thief has stolen what little money I had earned to support myself! This world outside Mura is so cold and these times so cruel." Her voice went soft and breathy on the last few words, emphasizing the pathos of her supposed situation.

"Can anyone tell me where he went?" she begged the passerby. "Anyone?"

She looked up frantically, shading her eyes against the pale sunlight, and repeated her plea. "Did anyone see where he went? Please, can anyone tell me where that dirty thief went with my money?"

[Avaltri]

Fraud. The thought shot through Avaltri's mind that this explained why the whole process didn't make any sense; and then she realized that it didn't explain anything at all. The mystery of why so many people walked away apparently content with what they had heard, and why they had come to hear the fortune-teller in the first place, remained just the same. And then Avaltri's thoughts were already interrupted by the incident turning violent. The Akvatari looked at the agitated crowd around the fortune teller and watched the robber run from its center with no-one trying to stop him. The street was quite busy and he had trouble getting forward, several times bumping into someone going into the opposite direction. They were all too startled to react in any way. With his unusual red hair, it was easy to follow him. The fortune-teller began to lament her... fortune; or rather the fact that her attempt at acquiring one had been thwarted by robbery. From her elevated position, Avaltri could still follow the culprit. When the strange woman asked imploringly who might have seen him, Avaltri turned back to her for a moment. "As a matter of fact, I have," she said calmly.

[Avari]

"Great!" Avari responded immediately, looking around and upward for the source of that calm, matter-of-fact announcement. "Where did he g…"

At that moment, her searching eyes finally found the hovering Akvatari. The creature's extraordinary appearance struck the Konti speechless in mid-sentence, too astounded by the sight to make another sound. Above the waist, the creature looked like an ordinary, lovely human woman with dark hair and fair skin, except for the kaleidoscopic butterfly wings of green, black, and white springing from her back. Below the waist, she was either wearing a fur-covered skirt, or her legs were replaced entirely by a soft, creamy-colored fur tail. Then, Avari realized with another silent shock that the reason she could see the woman's lower body at all was because the woman wasn't standing on solid ground. The creature was hovering several feet above the ground, her eye-catching wings lazily stirring the air and keeping her gracefully aloft.

Unable to determine whether her eyes were playing tricks on her or not, Avari opened and closed her mouth soundlessly a few more times. The Konti had met a Charoda before, which she had found unusual at the time, but this woman was a hundred times more improbable and striking. Then she remembered that a man had stolen all her money and this creature from atop her hovering vantage point had seen where he'd gone. Avari found her words.

"I'm so glad you saw him," she said rapidly. "Can you tell me which way he went? It would be ever such a great help to me. That petching son of a…"

She paused suddenly, remembering her surroundings. The commoners might not want to see a dainty Konti fortune-teller swearing like a foul-mouthed sailor. Avari cleared her throat and tried again.

"That son of a slaver stole all the money I have in the world," she went on, throwing in a light dash of mendacious exaggeration. "Please, can you tell me what you saw?"

The crowd around her started dispersing, though a few lingered to hear what the remarkable winged woman might say in response. Aware of their gazes, Avari offered a cautious smile to the hovering creature and extended her hand. Realizing that it was bare, however, she yanked it back quickly and snatched her gloves from inside her breeches pocket, tugging the cheap canvas over her fingers with almost unseemly haste. Her cheeks colored as she proffered her hand again, this time sheathed in thin protective gloves.

"Many thanks for your help," she said as graciously as she could manage. "I have never seen any of your kind before, but I have no doubt that those wonderful wings of yours will prove to be my savior and that foul thief's undoing."