Troubles Will Come (and They Will Pass)
Jul. 26th, 2013 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emmyclaire in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
birthright_rpgEmmeline jingled when she walked. Not always, of course, but on most days a soft tinkling of metal upon metal, beads against beads from the bangles and long strands she wore, followed her wherever she went, adding its own soft form of music to her day, something that she found she rather liked.
Her day had begun early, up with the sunrise to work in the greenhouses and harvest some of the herbs ready for drying and sale. Then she had to clean herself up, shower off the greenhouse dirt and dress, make a small breakfast of weak tea and dry toast – anything heavy in the morning always made her ill – and make her way into town to open the store.
She never kept regular hours but it didn’t seem to matter; most of her clientele were of the tourist sort, roadtrippers and family vacation bandwagon blazing by on their way towards the Hoover Dam or the Grand Canyon or the bright lights and sleaze of Vegas, stopping by what they must have thought to be a kitschy little oddball of a shop set in some throwaway desert town. Emmeline didn’t mind a bit; there were still a few dedicated regulars, whose patronage was reason enough for Emmeline to keep the store open.
There were too few talented practitioners keeping up with the craft for her to leave them out in the cold.
She busied herself throughout the quiet day, dusting displays of crystals and statues of pagan gods, straightening rickety metal racks of incense and oils, and meditating when the heat of the day overcame the power of her air conditioning and left her sleepy and warm.
In the late afternoon, Emmeline jingled her way behind the counter and plugged in the tape deck she kept there, popping in a cassette from the box beneath the counter without even reading the label. It began playing just at the start of Simple Man, and Emmeline smiled and hummed to herself as she drifted across the empty store, settling at the table in the far corner draped in purple velvet, a deck of Tarot cards sitting and waiting for her.
The Tarot of the Witches deck was certainly not her most attractive set of cards, nor the most elegant. The images were surrealist and strange, far from beautiful, and often downright ugly. They weren’t even printed with what Emmeline would consider the proper suits, using coins in place of pentacles and batons in place of wands. But it was her first deck, the one most imbued with her essence and power, the edges of the cards faded from her constant handling. It wasn’t a perfect deck, but it was hers, her working deck, and the cards knew her as well as she knew them.
On a whim she cut the deck and flipped the top card, shaking her tousled dark locks as she stared down at the card looking back at her. The Queen of Swords, in the reversed position. Again.
The card had been haunting her, turning up in the same position, over and over again. Every time the cards slipped from her fingers, the Queen of Swords was always the only one to fall face up, and always reversed. Each time she pulled a random card, just for curiosity’s sake, without a question in mind, it was the Queen of Swords, reversed.
At first Emmeline thought it was meant to represent her own insecurities, something she was projecting out into the universe. Perhaps there was something she was trying to ignore, or something she was lying to herself about. But the more it happened and the more readings she did, the more it became clear: the card didn’t represent her, but someone else.
Something was coming.
Someone.
“Who are you?” she pondered aloud, while Skynyrd wailed through the tinny speakers of her tape deck.
She had the distinct feeling that she would soon find out.
Her day had begun early, up with the sunrise to work in the greenhouses and harvest some of the herbs ready for drying and sale. Then she had to clean herself up, shower off the greenhouse dirt and dress, make a small breakfast of weak tea and dry toast – anything heavy in the morning always made her ill – and make her way into town to open the store.
She never kept regular hours but it didn’t seem to matter; most of her clientele were of the tourist sort, roadtrippers and family vacation bandwagon blazing by on their way towards the Hoover Dam or the Grand Canyon or the bright lights and sleaze of Vegas, stopping by what they must have thought to be a kitschy little oddball of a shop set in some throwaway desert town. Emmeline didn’t mind a bit; there were still a few dedicated regulars, whose patronage was reason enough for Emmeline to keep the store open.
There were too few talented practitioners keeping up with the craft for her to leave them out in the cold.
She busied herself throughout the quiet day, dusting displays of crystals and statues of pagan gods, straightening rickety metal racks of incense and oils, and meditating when the heat of the day overcame the power of her air conditioning and left her sleepy and warm.
In the late afternoon, Emmeline jingled her way behind the counter and plugged in the tape deck she kept there, popping in a cassette from the box beneath the counter without even reading the label. It began playing just at the start of Simple Man, and Emmeline smiled and hummed to herself as she drifted across the empty store, settling at the table in the far corner draped in purple velvet, a deck of Tarot cards sitting and waiting for her.
The Tarot of the Witches deck was certainly not her most attractive set of cards, nor the most elegant. The images were surrealist and strange, far from beautiful, and often downright ugly. They weren’t even printed with what Emmeline would consider the proper suits, using coins in place of pentacles and batons in place of wands. But it was her first deck, the one most imbued with her essence and power, the edges of the cards faded from her constant handling. It wasn’t a perfect deck, but it was hers, her working deck, and the cards knew her as well as she knew them.
On a whim she cut the deck and flipped the top card, shaking her tousled dark locks as she stared down at the card looking back at her. The Queen of Swords, in the reversed position. Again.
The card had been haunting her, turning up in the same position, over and over again. Every time the cards slipped from her fingers, the Queen of Swords was always the only one to fall face up, and always reversed. Each time she pulled a random card, just for curiosity’s sake, without a question in mind, it was the Queen of Swords, reversed.
At first Emmeline thought it was meant to represent her own insecurities, something she was projecting out into the universe. Perhaps there was something she was trying to ignore, or something she was lying to herself about. But the more it happened and the more readings she did, the more it became clear: the card didn’t represent her, but someone else.
Something was coming.
Someone.
“Who are you?” she pondered aloud, while Skynyrd wailed through the tinny speakers of her tape deck.
She had the distinct feeling that she would soon find out.