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

[nottheboss]

[He huffs a laugh]

Well now you're flattering me.

When did you learn about cards and shit?

[cache_coeur]

[She pops a grape in her mouth. The rest of lunch is croissants with butter and ham and cheese, simple but rich.]

When I was a girl, twelve or so. I thought the whole world was going to vanish around me, and it felt like the only thing powerful enough to reassure me.

[nottheboss]

[he isn't starving anymore, but the desire to devour once he tastes his croissant is real. He eats politely out of sheer force of will.]

I can get that, yeah. I mean you were...fuck, you were dead on with me so. Yeah. I want to learn, too.

[cache_coeur]

[She watches him, smiling serenely.]

So you’ll learn. Would you consider yourself a good judge of people?

[nottheboss]

[he fiddles with a grape]

I think I used to be. But I've spent like twelve years with the same people every day, you know? No reason to judge other people, they were all damned anyway. Do I have to be to be good at the cards?

[cache_coeur]

If you’re just reading for yourself, no. But to read for others, absolutely. You need to be able to figure out what they need to hear, what they’re prepared to hear, because fortunetelling is about guidance.

[nottheboss]

What do you do if you think they're not ready to hear something?

[He's thinking of Carver, of his other brothers if they ever show up here.]

[cache_coeur]

You present what you’ve read in a way that won’t make them doubt themselves or despair.

[nottheboss]

Crafty. You sure you're not a politician?

[Teasing gently]

You think anywhere around here has cards I could get?

[cache_coeur]

[A laugh, under her breath.]

Thankfully not!

[But now is the time to pull hers, and she produces the deck from her pocket. The gold foil glints. In the sun, the black is actually a lovely marbled dark blue.]

Mm, I have no idea. If you have a set of regular playing cards, they’ll do, but it’s much harder.

[nottheboss]

I can probably find playing cards but these are so much cooler.

[he wants to touch them but doesn't. You don't touch someone else's weapons without asking.]

You got a Death card and everything in there?

[cache_coeur]

[She holds the deck out anyway; it is not sacred, it is not imbued with any more magic than anything else in the world is, and trust matters.]

Of course. All of the major arcana. Do you want him to make an appearance?

[nottheboss]

[He meets her eyes for a second, just double checking it's okay, then takes the cards and gently shuffles them]

Depends. Will it mean I'm going to get hit by a train or something after?

[cache_coeur]

[Amused:]

No card is going to tell you that. But we’ll see, won’t we?

[nottheboss]

[He sifts through the cards until he finds it, Death, and he holds it up in the light and admires it]

What would you have told me if you'd drawn this one?

[cache_coeur]

It's about transformation and new beginnings if it's upright, and a call to change if reversed. Death is one of the happiest cards, I think. What draws you to it?

[nottheboss]

[Happiest? He thinks Pope would have liked that.]

It was my job back home. [He puts it back in the deck and shuffles, drawing at random now.] My people were called the Reapers.

[cache_coeur]

[Killing people. She wonders if those are undead people, or ones with a little bit left in them.]

And who did they kill?

[nottheboss]

[He knows what he should do. Bare his teeth and call it a grin; sneer; tell her proudly that it's everyone, living or dead. Pulse or not. Man, woman, child. Infant. Pope would tell him to be proud of all he's done, Pope would tell him to scare the hell out of her before he slit her throat.

But he finds he doesn't want her to fear him. This woman who's sitting here teaching him to read cards. Who brought him food. She didn't have to do any of that.]

...Everyone. [It comes out very quiet. He can't look away from the cards.]

[cache_coeur]

[That momentary silence and little voice tells her all she needs to know. She just watches him, no visible shift in her serenity, and she takes a short swig of her beer.]

Do you regret it?

[nottheboss]

I don't know if I'm allowed to regret it.

My commander says God loves us. Because we survive when no one else does. We show our devotion to God through blood.

But I don't have to do that here. And it's...confusing.

[cache_coeur]

[Fascinated as she may be by fortune-telling and other forces unseen, she has never personally felt the call to worship, and could not say she’s even known someone who does. It lingers on, conceptually, a thing from for another time. Godlike beings don’t care for sacrifices or shows of devotion; they have their believers for that.

She cants her head.]

You don’t have to, and you’ve evidently chosen not to. How strong is your faith, then?

[nottheboss]

[He frowns like the question pains him.]

Our priest talks to God. I mean he has literal conversations. But I've never heard God. Never felt him.

That's fucked up, isn't it? That I'd kill for Him without...any proof.

[cache_coeur]

That’s very horrible.

[The truth might hurt, but not nearly as much as a lie.]

But people in desperate positions will reach for anything that brings them comfort. Some sense of purpose, or to keep a family.

[She gives a little shrug of her shoulders.]

What comes next?

[nottheboss]

[she isn't condemning him. That's something. It's more than he dared hope for.]

Well now I'm here. Where I don't have to kill people. And I've got my big brother, and he's got friends.

I guess now I go on picnics with pretty women and learn how to tell fortunes and then I figure out how to save my world.