Malta is reopening a little from its lockdown, but there are starting to be signs of things not being quite the way they were before... I think we're starting to see business's giving up after the repeated lack of proper guidance and help from the government, sadly.
The storyteller The woman with hazel eyes adjusted her necklace so that it was centred over the exposed skin of her chest where her dress was cut to show off her figure. Her figure was impressive, as was the necklace, but my eyes were watching her hands, waiting for her to try and slide a card from the bottom of the deck, or palm an inconvenient one from the top. She knew I was watching, and a tiny smile kept quirking her lips as she worked to control it. Her red, full lips that might have had only the slightly touch of lipstick used on them. "Are you sure you want this?" she asked. Her voice was husky as though she didn't use it a lot, but it was also somehow comforting. It reminded me of the storytellers voices back in Jocelyn's Woods. I nodded, preferring not to speak. At least, not unless I must. "This is," she went on, her hands shuffling the cards gently, slowly, "an unlicenced reading after all. If the Guild of Soothsayers should find out--". I nodded, curtly. I was aware of the fines and that I would probably get a week sat in a smelly, wet prison cell in the Clink or somewhere equally unpleasant. Deterrents, not serious punishments. "Very well." She passed the cards to me and I felt them, heavy and rough-textured, in my hands. I cut them three times, wondering if this little ritual did anything more than it seemed, and passed them back. She turned the top card, laid it out on the table, and started to tell the story. She claimed she was reading the future using the cards as an aid. The Soothsayers would say that she was influencing the future and that the cards were anchors. They resented unlicenced readings, as much as I could tell, because they believed that the careless placement of such anchors could damage the future, though what damage could be done to something so intangible mystified me. Asking questions led to no answers however. For me though, she was telling a story about my favourite character: me. As she turned the next card, finding a new image, she linked them together and a tale was woven: a fictitious me drew a knife, ventured down the sewage-slick, fog-shrouded streets of the darker parts of the Unreal City in search of excitement and adventure and found it. I relaxed slightly as she turned the third and final card, waiting to here how I overcame the challenge at the last; I hoped for something death-defying and heroic, though often the storytellers lost their nerve at the last and went for a vague "you will overcome" without enough detail. "And then you die," she said. I started, broken from my enjoyment by the unexpected. "What?" I said. "The hero never dies!" She tapped the card, which appeared to be a sooty blob of jam sitting on cracked paving stones. "I have no other interpretation," she said. "That is a gelatinous ooze and I've never known anyone survive an encounter with them. They're used in the Tower; they feed prisoners sentenced to death to them. I must conclude that you either end up in the Tower with a death sentence, or you venture into there somehow and get lost." "Get lost yourself!" I said, standing up. "That's not the story I wanted to hear."
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Malta is reopening a little from its lockdown, but there are starting to be signs of things not being quite the way they were before... I think we're starting to see business's giving up after the repeated lack of proper guidance and help from the government, sadly.
The storyteller
The woman with hazel eyes adjusted her necklace so that it was centred over the exposed skin of her chest where her dress was cut to show off her figure. Her figure was impressive, as was the necklace, but my eyes were watching her hands, waiting for her to try and slide a card from the bottom of the deck, or palm an inconvenient one from the top. She knew I was watching, and a tiny smile kept quirking her lips as she worked to control it. Her red, full lips that might have had only the slightly touch of lipstick used on them.
"Are you sure you want this?" she asked. Her voice was husky as though she didn't use it a lot, but it was also somehow comforting. It reminded me of the storytellers voices back in Jocelyn's Woods. I nodded, preferring not to speak. At least, not unless I must.
"This is," she went on, her hands shuffling the cards gently, slowly, "an unlicenced reading after all. If the Guild of Soothsayers should find out--". I nodded, curtly. I was aware of the fines and that I would probably get a week sat in a smelly, wet prison cell in the Clink or somewhere equally unpleasant. Deterrents, not serious punishments. "Very well." She passed the cards to me and I felt them, heavy and rough-textured, in my hands. I cut them three times, wondering if this little ritual did anything more than it seemed, and passed them back.
She turned the top card, laid it out on the table, and started to tell the story.
She claimed she was reading the future using the cards as an aid. The Soothsayers would say that she was influencing the future and that the cards were anchors. They resented unlicenced readings, as much as I could tell, because they believed that the careless placement of such anchors could damage the future, though what damage could be done to something so intangible mystified me. Asking questions led to no answers however. For me though, she was telling a story about my favourite character: me. As she turned the next card, finding a new image, she linked them together and a tale was woven: a fictitious me drew a knife, ventured down the sewage-slick, fog-shrouded streets of the darker parts of the Unreal City in search of excitement and adventure and found it. I relaxed slightly as she turned the third and final card, waiting to here how I overcame the challenge at the last; I hoped for something death-defying and heroic, though often the storytellers lost their nerve at the last and went for a vague "you will overcome" without enough detail.
"And then you die," she said. I started, broken from my enjoyment by the unexpected.
"What?" I said. "The hero never dies!"
She tapped the card, which appeared to be a sooty blob of jam sitting on cracked paving stones. "I have no other interpretation," she said. "That is a gelatinous ooze and I've never known anyone survive an encounter with them. They're used in the Tower; they feed prisoners sentenced to death to them. I must conclude that you either end up in the Tower with a death sentence, or you venture into there somehow and get lost."
"Get lost yourself!" I said, standing up. "That's not the story I wanted to hear."
Greg - that's unfortunate. Hopefully things right themselves soon and everything and everyone adjusts to how things need to be.
Hah, I like how you slipped in that 'a story about my favourite character: me.' Really says a lot about your narrator.
Also: I appreciate how straight forward the final interpretation is. Unexpected and satisfying at the same time.
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