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]

[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.

[cache_coeur]

[She nods, her expression pleasant.]

I think that’s a much more fun way to be in the world, personally, but I am biased. Your brother is here? Is he adapting so smoothly?

[nottheboss]

Way easier than me. He's made friends with people who don't let people get close, you know?

[cache_coeur]

What’s the difference between you and him, you think?

[nottheboss]

He's stronger than me. Always has been.

You have anyone like that in your life?

[cache_coeur]

My loved ones and I are all strong in different ways. Every single person has something special to bring to the fight.

[nottheboss]

[He tilts his head, grinning a little]

Are you the leader?

[cache_coeur]

[She laughs, good natured.]

Oh, no. Most of my loved ones need a dot on every 'I' and every 'T' crossed, and my handwriting is a little unpredictable, so to speak. I'm happy to do my part but I leave final decisions to my more ambitious companions.

[nottheboss]

That's how I like it, too. I never wanted to be the one in charge. Too much shit goes wrong.

You working with anyone here?

[cache_coeur]

So it does. That’s why they need people to support them, isn’t it?

[She nods.]

Three members of my team are here. It’s very funny to come here off a mission to save our people only to be told we have to save the entire world, too.

[nottheboss]

Yeah it's wild isn't it? To go from thinking your world is dead to hearing you can save it. Can't even picture what that'll look like.

[cache_coeur]

It's unusual. [She can picture it though, quite easily. The sun will rise the same way it always does, and this time everyone gets to keep living under it.] Are the people in your time still having children?

[nottheboss]

Yeah but probably not on purpose. I've seen pregnant women and babies, but kids get you killed, they make too much noise, draw in the rotters in herds.

[cache_coeur]

[Her brows knit.]

Oh, that's terrible. [All of it.] But easier to think it's dead if you'll have no one to pass it on to.

[nottheboss]

Yeah. Kids keep hope alive.

[He won't let himself think of Matthew and how tiny that body was to bury.]

You think you'll want a family after you save your world?

[cache_coeur]

[The question has her hesitating for the first time all day; she takes a little breath in before being honest anyway.]

I didn't imagine myself having one before my husband came along, but the desire didn't go away when he passed, either, so... I'll see where I am when the opportunity comes.

[nottheboss]

[He nods thoughtfully]

I like kids. I just can't picture a world where I'd have one. Definitely not the world I've got.

Anyway. What's a card that means bad shit's going down?