UN: ScielCandide | Video

[cache_coeur]

[The camera is fixed on a table, upon which sits a neat stack of cards –– black with gold foil in the shape of a sun and moon bisecting each other. The user’s hands pass over the deck and spreads it wide into an arc. Her hands are tanned, with two rings on her ring finger and one on her index finger, and she has so many colourful braided bracelets that some wind around her palm.

Her voice is pleasant, playful, French, a little theatrical:]

Bonsoir, mes amies!

Tonight and tonight only, I will tell your fortune with a single card. Tell me your name, and if you would like to hear about love, money, health or the soul.

If it moves you, you must repay me with an amusing anecdote about yourself.

Ready to play?

Comments

[cache_coeur]

They’re popular back home. A friend and I were drinking and playing cards, and he showed me how they could be used for fortune-telling. I thought the messages were so wonderful, I just made a habit of it.

[nottheboss]

Are all the messages about self help like mine was?

[cache_coeur]

Not all to the same extent. You just didn’t say hello, or give me a name, so I figured I’d go right to the quick.

[nottheboss]

[Well now he's a little embarrassed]

...Yeah. I'm not used to- this.

I'm Bossie. Hello. Who are you?

[cache_coeur]

Sciel. [See-el.] Nice to meet you, Bossie. [Teasing:] You’re forgiven of your terrible rudeness.

[nottheboss]

Nice to meet you, too.

[she's joking but he is, he finds, actually really glad she doesn't hold his clumsiness against him.]

...Do you think you could teach me the cards?

[cache_coeur]

If you like. I’m already engaged tonight, but I should have some time tomorrow.

[nottheboss]

Okay. Where do you want to meet?

[cache_coeur]

Are you near the apartment building, or are you one of those fancy sorts living in some mansion kilometres away?

[nottheboss]

Me in a mansion? My country ass wouldn't know how to live. I can meet you at the apartments.

[cache_coeur]

It’s too much to keep up with, I can’t imagine.

Noon? I’ll pack a lunch, we can go picnic in a park somewhere.

[nottheboss]

[it catches him off guard because where he's from you don't just share food. You fight for it. You kill for it. But no one is starving here.]

Yeah. Yeah that'd be great. Want me to bring anything?

[cache_coeur]

Just your smiling face.

[He doesn’t seem like the sort, but that’s what makes it funny.]

Or drinks, if you have a preference. Fortune-telling is more fun that way.

[nottheboss]

[He gets the joke. A few weeks ago he might have bristled at it but he's calmer now, and he finds it charming.]

I'll bring drinks. You turn me into a psychic.

[cache_coeur]

[Easy. Her hand swipes across the cards, returning the Six of Cups back to the fold, and assembling the lot all back into one neat stack. Until tomorrow.]

Deal.

[And she’ll be there, a smidge late, like a proper Frenchwoman.]

[nottheboss]

[Bossie, on the other hand, is early, so he can scope out the area and get a feel for whether or not this might be an ambush.

He waffled on what to wear, but he felt itchy in anything but his uniform. Hence him being here in black on black on black, his mask strapped to his thigh, his knives and a gun at his belt.

He watches her warily but musters up a clumsy smile, and a wave]

You made it.

[He hefts the pack of beer he has under his arm] Hope you're thirsty.

[cache_coeur]

[Sciel swans up in trim trousers, a delicate tank top and a silk scarf. Her hair is loose and effortless, her face is heavily freckled, and a picnic basket hangs off the crook of one elbow.

She takes one look at him, eyes making the elevator path from head to toe, and smiles wryly.]

I am! [There's a scar banding the bridge of her nose, and it tugs around the edges when she smiles.] If I knew this was a military outing, I would have dusted off my uniform.

[nottheboss]

[It's the scar that sets him at ease. He likes scars. He understands people who have them better than he'll ever understand the people lucky enough not to have them.]

Nah you look good. You were in the military? [That perks him right up] What branch?

[cache_coeur]

Thank you.

[She knows the answer likely won’t make sense to him, but she replies without reservations.]

Survival & Rescue. You?

[nottheboss]

France divides you up like that? [He shakes his head slightly] I was Army. First I was a doorkicker in Korengal, then I became a sniper.

[cache_coeur]

Mostly by expedition number, but we all have our specialities. How long did you train?

[The 33rd had a few snipers, and she’d trained with them for years. It hurts in some vague way to think about, but she won’t dwell.

She offers her arm, in case he’d like to be a gentleman.]

To the park?

[nottheboss]

[He hesitates only because he hasn't really touched anyone outside the Reapers in twelve years. It's a long time to be isolated. But she's military; she's scarred. She's been tested at some point in her life. So he takes her arm and if his ears are a little red maybe she won't laugh.]

Ah, well, I joined up when I was seventeen. And I got sick of doing the shit work so I specialized when I was nineteen. And then the world ended and every day after that was like training. So a decade or so?

[cache_coeur]

[That hesitation sticks out like a sore thumb, and it makes her smile a little cat-like, but she says nothing. No sense in teasing a man who's made the courtesy to humour her despite his own discomfort.

On they go.]

You started much younger than most, by my people's standards.

[But one little note catches her.]

How did your world end?

[nottheboss]

[he's never had to explain the apocalypse to anyone before.]

It started with a virus. It infected everyone on earth. Killed a lot of them in the first wave. But the shittiest part is it raises the dead and brings them back hungry. Nothing stops 'em except taking out the brain. And if you get bit by one you die and reanimate too. So. Yeah. Most of the world is dead now.

[He glances at her]

Shitty, right? What's your world like?

[cache_coeur]

[The feeling is familiar, even if the details are entirely foreign. She looks up at him, the cheer on her face tempered with sad eyes.]

I’m sorry. Mine, ah… most of us are dead, too. There was a cataclysm in my grandparents’ time. For a while there was some thought that we could rebuild, and for a time it was better… but most of my life has been about preparing for the last generation.

[Grim, and fantastically so, but there’s a simplicity with being straightforward with someone who shares the same throughline.]