A Night of Fortunes

You set up your fortune telling booth at a central location at the local park. At this time of sweep, you tend to get a lot of customers: People who have attended Fright Night parties and want to ensure they weren’t tricked into eating a slow-acting poison hidden in the buffet, people wanting to ensure they’ll have good luck for the 12th Perigees season, and people curious to know if they’ll live to see the beginning of the new sweep. It’s a job you’re more than happy to perform, every life on this planet is precious, and while death is inevitable for everyone, no one should have to depart the land of the living on untimely and preventable terms. Your psiionics have imparted a sense of responsibility onto you, a (sometimes stressful) knowledge that you have the power to save lives, and any inaction is another stain on your well-bloodied hands.

The latter has always weighed heavily in your head, which is why you’re pleased to find a small gathering of curious customers as you stick the ‘Open!’ sign onto the stall banner.

Your first customer is someone you have met many times before, a short greenblood sailor with tired eyes and a nervous smile. He mentions that he had taken up a small job ferrying another troll from a nearby port town to this city, and on the trip they had not only stepped onto the boat incorrectly, but also used a forbidden word while they were at sea (“The ‘D’ word”, he said, in a way that you think was intended to be a whisper if he wasn’t so annoyed). You’re sympathetic to his anger, as while you’re not someone who follows superstitions to the letter, you understand the comfort people feel from doing things that they believe will give them good karma. Fate and fortune are fickle things, so it’s understandable that people want to believe they have some control over their lives - it’s why you do this job in the first place. You remove your bandana so you can look into his eyes, advise him to not provoke any seadwellers who happen to share the same pier as him, and wish him safe travels on his next voyage.

Your second customer is one you’ve never met before, an orangeblood girl with hair covering over one eye and a trio of horns positioned on the left side of her head. She jumps when you greet her, as if she wasn’t expecting you to say anything other than her fortune, and turns away from you to frantically type something onto her phone. You wait patiently, understanding that approaching someone like yourself must be daunting. You know your reputation, rumours that your abilities are the cause of mysterious deaths in the city, the uncomfortable aura of death that comes with psiionics of this caliber, and the general unease that comes with staring back at your piercing gaze as you reveal their fate. A text-to-speech voice cuts off your train of thought, and the girl holds her phone out to you so you can read along. “Sorry, but, I- I have a fieldwork assignment, a- and-” Ah, she’s mute. You reassure her that it’s perfectly fine to be nervous (for this, and the future assignment she mentioned), and after she removes her glasses and brushes her hair out of her eye, you’re happy to tell her that you saw nothing unfortunate and place the twenty caegar fee back in her hands. She smiles for a moment, and types a “Thank you” onto her phone.

Your third customer is another unfamiliar troll, a tealblood (you think? They look a little blue too) clasping a notebook and a pen, their large frog-like eyes staring you down. Before you can greet them and ask how they’re doing, they launch into a series of rapid-fire questions about your career and personality. They’re a writer, you gather, and seem very interested in creating an oracle character. Like the verbal equivalent to a hydra, every time you answer one of their questions, they fire back with two more in their place. How vivid are your visions? Have you ever seen someone die in reality, or only in your mind? How likely is it for people to believe you? How do you feel when they don’t? Have you ever seen yourself murder someone in your vision? Would you be compelled to do that if it was fated? Do people think you’re crazy? They quietly leave once they’re satisfied with your responses, without waiting for you to tell them their fortune.

After that event, you need to take a short break. You wish you got their name, so you can check the upcoming papers to make sure your inability to convince them to stay for their fortune wasn’t a mistake.

The fourth customer is another new face, a very cheerful yellowblood in a work uniform. He greets you before you can greet them, and says that he’s currently running errands for someone you assume to be his boss. Compared to the previous customer, he’s so bright and positive you decide to not put a damper on his mood to mention that the ‘souffle pump’ he’s been tasked with finding is nothing but a fool’s errand to get him out of the hive for a couple hours. He also asks if you can tell the future of other trolls, because he doesn’t need to know his future but he’d like to make sure some people he knows will be safe. Unfortunately, you cannot do that. It’s one of the many drawbacks of your power, that you can only see the future of someone who is physically present and does not have their eyes obscured. But, as much as it pains you that you cannot fulfil his request, you acknowledge that perhaps that much power would be unbearable. You’ve grown accustomed to seeing the deaths of others (a response that prompted your previous customer to jot down an entire page of notes about your character), but you wear the bandana precisely because you realised you needed a controlled environment to cope with your power. Even if you could tap into other’s futures at will, you know you would be the kind of person who would do it for anyone you were even slightly concerned about. And curiosity kills the cat, they say. But, you insist on the yellowblood sitting down for a fortune and he complies, fortunately you’re also able to tell him that you saw no dangers in his future. He refuses to take back his payment, wishes you a nice rest of the evening, and leaves.

Your fifth and final customer is an old friend. Well, ‘friend’ is probably a very loose term to describe him, as he certainly doesn’t think the same. The tall yellowblood stands before you, his white coat somehow untarnished despite a career of contract killing and building detonations. He glares daggers at you, with an expression somewhere between a pout and a snarl on his face. Good evening, you greet him, how lovely it is to see- He cuts you off to launch into a rant of your sick mockery of fate. How dare you reopen your stall once again? Do you laugh in the face of the gods? Is this funny to you? He slams twenty caegars onto the table, leaning forward so you can look him in the eyes. One day you will learn. Your negative karma is building up, don’t you feel it? Don’t you feel the guilt weighing down on you, knowing that you have angered Deities beyond your mortal comprehension? Your sins are catching up to you, Nancor, and I will be there to witness it. As usual for him, you see no death in his future. Of course you won’t, he says, unlike you, I’m blessed.

You laugh a little as you wave him goodbye. You’re certain he’ll be back next week. He always comes back.