Hibernal 🔮💘 𝓕𝓸𝓻𝓽𝓾𝓷𝓮 𝓣𝓮𝓵𝓵𝓮𝓻'𝓼 𝓣𝓮𝓷𝓽 💔🔮

[Jumbled]

As if Silas needs another reminder of why it’s a bad idea to fraternize with humans, his Valentine’s Day date points at the abomination across the street and says, “Oh, fun!”

Oh, fun.

She would think that, wouldn’t she. She can’t smell the burning spellwork like he can. She can’t see the distortion shimmering at the margins of the pavilion. That’s space-time magic, which is bone-chilling for all the obvious reasons, but this idiot woman darts ahead and gleefully flings herself into the death trap faster than Silas can say, “Well, at least you’re pretty.”

So he shoots a text to his brother—”carnie witches”—and drops him a pin, just in case this goes bad. He’s not sure why. If the tent goes bad then there won’t be anything left of Silas to retrieve.

He puts his phone in airplane mode.

Passing through the doorway feels like a violation, magic rippling across every goddamn one of his molecules and forcing them from the perfectly safe, perfectly mundane street to this other in-between place. He feels ill. His date is nowhere.

As he could have guessed, the inside is much larger and crawling with more people than there are cars on the square outside. Multiple points of entry, he reckons, and looks around for a way to mark the doorway he came through. He’d hate to go to all the trouble of heroically rescuing his companion from the clutches of dark forces only to spirit her away into a black hole.

He laughs when he sees that it’s an unopened fortune cookie he pulls from his pocket and drops on the ground to act as his landmark.

Vedma Rozanov

.

.

Vedma finished her cup of coffee and set the other one belonging to Max on the ground somewhere behind her station, for the faeducks, of course. She began to tidy her shelves when her magical ball shifted from swirling verdant mists to a likeness of the moon. Tilting her head at the depiction, she studied it for merely a moment before she stepped toward the opening of her station, leaning against long, colorful fabrics. A small paper manifested on the table in anticipation of Silas’ arrival.

“Ah,” she watched him drop his trail marker then folded her arms across her chest. “I’ve been waiting long time for you to step in here. Come, Vedma give you better reading than a cookie.”

A waddle of ducks found the wrapped fortune cookie and claimed it as their own, running off as they fought over which one of them got to crinkle the plastic. Meanwhile Vedma waved Silas forward and disappeared into the mouth of her partition.

She walked through, fingers poking and pressing trinkets around on her shelves.

“You’ll smell they’re from all over, yes?” The tent never discriminated, taking people from many times and places before it spit them back out. “Sit,” she paused for a moment, as if sensing a glare from behind her back and raised her finger in the air. “An offer, not command. Miss Vedma doesn’t work in obedience school.”

The paper square flinched and twitched nervously on the velvet surface and Vedma huffed. “You make paper nervous. Be good and sit, boy. Listen to fortune so you can leave and catch back up with ditsy date.”

The moon was still in full view inside of the crystal ball while Vedma finally rounded her table and took a seat. The paper barely rose from the table as it folded itself into a five-point star. She gave Silas the look a mother would give her son when he was being a pain in the ass.

“Hate it all you want, but it’s not going anywhere. It’s part of you,” she said, tapping the center of her chest. “Just as that moon and star is part of the sky. Something bigger.” Vedma waved her hands around the ball and the full moon faded, the image zoomed out until it was nothing more than a small, shining orb hovering over Louisiana. “Cosmic love, yes. Bound by centuries but always apart. You love this moon in a way that will rip you apart and put you back together.” Vedma snatched up the paper star, reaching across the table to shove it into Silas’ hand. “Don’t crumple!” She said before fully backing away, her index finger pointing to him in warning.

“You don’t want to settle, never have. You think you’re a playboy. Lone wolf. You’re wrong. This girl you have now, she is not forever. Most are not, you throw them away.” Vedma nearly gave the same ’People are like dirt’ speech then paused and shifted gears.

“You’re a knight. A knight with a giant steed. You will save your love. Leave lasting impression.” Vedma clicked her teeth twice, as if that meant anything at all.

“Then you know, that is the one.” The cityscape in the ball began to flash with a storm that began to cover the city. "This,” she said, gesturing to the scene. “Has not come to pass. But you must go now. Vedma can say no more, and only one witch can ever truly hold you.”

Twinkle, twinkle little star.

 

[Chele]

Her brow arched but no retort was made.

She watched Sera settle in, hands in lap, elbows on table. A half-smirk intact as though the tent were merely another roadside curiosity.

"Charming," Cordelia murmured softly. "You think this is a profession." Her smile was thin, patient.

"I could give you a very different life," she continued. "But you wouldn't survive it long."

When Sera's hands struck the table, the bones jolted and clattered sharply against one another.

Cordelia stilled.

Fingers moved slowly, deliberately, gathering the disturbed pieces and placing them back where they belonged. "Careful," she said without looking up. "They don't like being startled."

Once the bones were reset, she did not cast them yet. Instead, pushing them toward Sera.

"Again," Coredlia instructed softly. "But this time... mean it." That thin smile she had been wearing spread a little further, eyes locking on the assassin's with a hunger.

Whether Sera touches them or not, Cordelia lets the bones fall herself.

Each one scatters in a jagged pattern; the bent nail landing first, the knuckle bone tipping toward the bent nail, the bird bone points outward and away.

She studies the arrangement in a silence long enough to be uncomfortable.

"Babysitting," she repeats mildly, with a faint hum." "No."

Her gaze lifts, green meeting amber. "You're not hired to protect the princess." A fingertip taps the bent nail. "You're hired to protect everyone else from her."

The knuckle bone rolls slightly closer to Sera's side of the table. "Whether it leads to a fruitful life," Cordelia continues, voice lowering, "depends entirely on how comfortable you are standing between a blade and something that does not fear it."

With that same grin still spreading, her hand drifts towards Sera's wrist again, not restraining, just feeling the pulse. "You won't die on this job," She adds calmly.

"But you will leave it different." Cordelia continued after a beat.

The shadows around the edge of the table deepen faintly.

"And if you fail?" She cants her head slightly, her smile softening. "You won't be the one who pays for it."

The bones are nudged back into a pile, the shadows moving over the deck of cards and fixes up what had moved.

[/div][/div][/div]

"Is it not a profession?" There was genuine curiosity in her tone, when she asked. Her mouth pulled to the side in a half frown, half look of thought.

There would be a slight glimmer in her eyes, when Cordelia mentioned that she could, indeed give her a different life, but doubted she'd last long in it. That caused a low huff of breath to be expelled. "Shame," she muttered. When she was told to move the bones again, it caught her off guard. Enough so that she didn't respond. Thankfully, she didn't have to, as Cordelia took it upon herself to let the bones fall. Where they landed meant absolutely nothing to her. That would be explained, however. To hear that she wasn't babysitting and that she wasn't hired to protect the woman, but instead that she was hired to protect her from everyone else was shock.

Her mouth pulled to the side, as she thought on it, but she wasn't given much time to really let her thoughts wander. Cordelia pulled her back quickly, when she spoke again. Not knowing if the job would led to a life of riches was a disappointment. Though, it was further explained that it depended on how comfortable she was standing between a blade and something that didn't fear it. "Fascinating," she murmured. Her lips parted to speak but instead she sucked in a breath, when her wrist was touched. Amber eyes dipped downward for a brief moment before pulling upward again. She could see Cordelia out of the corner of her eye. Somehow, her pulse had remained steady. Even beats were thrummed against Cordelia's finger pads.

"Well, at least good to know that this job won't kill me, I suppose." Her gaze would be held straight ahead. Cordelia continued, telling her that she would leave different than how she entered. After a pause, there would be one more piece of 'advice'. That if she failed, she wouldn't be the one that paid for it. A relief and yet not at the same time.

"Well, then. Good talk," she said hastily. There was a push up from the seat she had been led to. With a turn on her heels, she would look toward the woman as the shadows repositioned the things on the table. "Just going to walk right back through that door. I have to do wash. Probably wouldn't hurt to scrub my skin raw either, I'd guess." With that, she she would move around Cordelia and back toward the door where she'd entered. It opened as she approached and she stepped back through it. Back to the same spot where she'd been sitting and eating the apple. "Fucking weird ass woman," she grumbled while rubbing her wrist where the woman had pressed her fingers.

 

[jahdeen]

Frazil Narthex

.

.

@jahdeen

"Hey YOU!"

kkkpffffffffss

"Yeah, you." Frazil had found another bag of snacks - some kind of corn nuts, which were neither corn nor nuts - and sat with his feet propped up on the messy desk, leaned back in his chair. He tossed a snack under the mask, somehow, suggesting that perhaps it was not airtight, or perhaps there was some sort of special food-port that allowed him to consume sustenance as a result of highly advanced technology devised by artificial intelligence and vetted over a thousand years of exposition.

"Th' fugger you doin'?" He tossed another snack up into his mask and crunched on it in a loud but muffled way. Purple haze, drifting out from Frazil's part of the tent, began to creep low along the ground and curl towards him in a way that could be as inviting as sinister. "Kneeling down like that. You're way too fuggin' close to Broomhilder's table to be rollin' around on the ground. Lookin' for a sandwich or somethin'? C'mon dude, get over here. Don't be weird, even if you gotta be a pidgeon or whatever."

With finger and thumb, Frazil adjusted the starkly beautiful and elegant flower crown on his head, which lay in stark natural contrast to the very industrial piece of machinery it graced. "Now I know you came to get a fortune told or some lame stuff like that, but lissen here - I'm a fuggin' princess now, so I don't do the fortune thing'nymore. I talk to ducks, I eat snacks, and I tell it like it is. You ain't exactly some... ehh... I dunno, hunky-assed black swordsman or something, but you're gonna get it like it is."

kkkpffffffffss

He tossed another snack up and crunched loudly, at the same time that the machinery was hissing in the mask, which of course made for a wholly regal appearance - like a middle manager consigned to the majesty of a daisy chain that was living its best life. "Yer gonna die. Sorry, dude. It's just how it is. Your freaky little Twilight makeup isn't gonna help you, either, Sparkles. But don't worry - you'll first be spared by a demonic creature that recognizes a necklace you wear. You're gonna be betrayed by a guy you trusted, and you'll have to kill him. He'll come back, though, during an eclipse. That right there's gonna be a bad time, dude, because you're gonna lose an eye and an arm protecting the one you love. And then you'll kill him, again, and have to go on this big ol' campaign or something, waging war against demons or some shit."

The snacks came freely now, tossed up by Frazil's hand one at a time every several words or so. "Mm. But before then. You'll... get captured by these holier-than-thous. Hang out with an elf. Kill a bunch of trolls. Get some cool armor. A Seahorse will take you to safety. And fight your inner darkness." He shakes his head. "You ain't gonna win that fight, homie."

He crumpled up the back of snacks noisily and stuffed it in the drawer of the desk. "But hey - you know what?" He pulled his feet off the desk and thumped them on the ground, then leaned forward. Planting one hand on the surface of the desk and pointing the other straight at Echo, he grunted. "Dance. With her. Like, whenever the opportunity presents itself, even if it's a really in appropriate opportunity. Heh, especially if it's a really inappropriate opportunity. It's gonna be really cute, fer one thing, and for another you'll stop doing weird-boi stuff like kneeling next to a table full of duck poop pretending not to be a pidgeon. And it might just save your life. Maybe."

kkkpffffffffss

Frazil leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. "Alright, get the fuggoudda here, Sp. You're making the ducks uncomfortable with your weird-boi-cough-totally-not-a-pidgeon-cough-wink-nudge energy."

Demonic creature (connection to necklace) - Kill betrayer... twice? Start practicing fighting with one eye and one arm. Demon war (check involvement/connection to Dragon Lords). Crescent Order again? Hope not. Elf. Trolls. Armor. Aquatic horse. Will be losing an inner fight.

Echo snapped his notebook shut and stowed his quill.

This hadn't exactly been the meeting he was expecting, and while his questions about the tellers themselves weren't exactly answered, he was still leaning towards the "divine seers" theory. Evidently, this man--or maybe it was a golem--was well aware of how chaotic and dangerous Echo's life was on a daily or weekly basis. That alone had the young man convinced of Frazil's psychic abilities.

His mind wandered, thinking of her. She was probably still waiting for him back on the ship, wondering where in the world her half-Scalebrood ran off to in the middle of the voyage. He smirked to himself. For once, he'd return without incident, and better yet, unscathed. Well, aside from the stains of mud and possibly duck dung on the knees of his pants. Better than blood--his or someone else's.

He jotted down one last note.

DANCE!!!

Echo stood and clasped his fist on his chest, pounding twice as a sign of respect. "Thank you for your uncanny insights, great fume-breathing golem-seer. May your battles be eased and your victories sweet."

He left the tent with the same efficiency and subtlety as he entered, barring an awkward dance past an inexplicable horde of ducks, who flapped and quacked at his boots.

 

[GremlinSage]

West entered the tent with only the slightest sliver of hesitation. He'd left a wagon-load worth of doubts and negative self-talk in a heap just outside the entryway, ready to be picked up upon departure. His gods had been attempting to persuade him to leave his arsenal of demoralizing weapons of self-destruction and defensive armor behind once and for all, but after carrying it around for nearly three decades, his attempts to lay it all down and just walk away had become a mind fuck just waiting to happen.

As a matter of fact, West felt certain that he'd already laid that shit down at least 42 times in half as many days, yet he kept waking up with more bullshit strapped to his weary soul than he remembered from the night before. His soul was in a sorry state. He didn't have any faith that a fortuneteller could actually help him, but he also didn't imagine they could make things any worse. Or rather, he'd learned from experience that sometimes things needed to get worse before he was able to see the better thing that had been right in front of him all along. Maybe a drop of poison would be the exact medicine that he needed to help him step out of his perpetual state of ennui, punctuated by moments of profound absurdist revelation that kept him going just long enough to get him through to his next fix of sublime truth and chaotic wisdom.

The man who entered the fortune teller's tent was in his late twenties with shoulder-length auburn hair. He wore purple cleric's robes with an eight-arrowed symbol of chaos embroidered in gold on his chest. He was attractive but distinctly effeminate in his gestures and body language. He carried himself with a contradictory air, one moment bold and the next deeply vulnerable. The part of the sign that read, "No Crying," worried him a little. He had been known to weep openly from time to time, but felt he could probably keep a lid on things long enough to avoid offending the vendors.

He was a man who had been in search of himself long enough to know very well that he was not what he pretended to be, while also knowing that pretending was a vital part of surviving in what often felt to be a cold and uncaring universe. If West were to summarize the ultimate truth he had managed to capture and keep since becoming a man of faith, it would go like this... The whole universe was also pretending, the whole universe was also in search of itself, and he was a finite manifestation of the universe's quest, pretending and searching. The better he got at pretending, the worse he got at searching, and the closer he got to finding what he sought, the worse he got at pretending, so that the only solution to the riddle was to try to fool himself into thinking he wasn't really the universe searching for itself at all. Then, the universe might become comfortable enough with him to let him glimpse its true nature from the corner of his eye. One day he hoped to turn around quick enough to look the universe full in its face like a cosmic mirror and then embrace himself like a brother, or a lover, and he believed this was likely to happen one day, but that would probably also be the day that he died, and he'd started to become accustomed to living at this point, even though it was difficult and involved more hang-overs than he would like. The idea of never waking up again unsettled him just enough to keep his darker demons at bay. Drugs and alcohol helped too.

What he really wanted was a soul mate, one person who had also caught a glimpse of the insane paradox of the universe, who also enjoyed it for the dangerous demon containing puzzle box that it was, and was capable of saying, "I know! I see it too! Yes, I think it is real, and yes, it scares the shit out of me too. Let's fuck with it together and see what happens next!" Most people got annoyed or bored before he ever had a chance to describe any of this, or they'd sit patiently as he tried to explain, only to dismiss him in the end as crazy or overly intellectual.

The odd cleric waited to catch the eye of an unoccupied fortune teller and then approached boldly, his question spilling out of his mouth almost the moment he was in proximity to be heard. "Give it to me straight, Doc. Will my broken heart ever mend and lead me into the arms of my one true love, or am I doomed to keep using wild but meaningless sex as a balm and a band-aid for my suffering until the day that I die?"

Cordelia

.

.

She had been listening long before he finished speaking. By the time he said 'Give it to me straight, Doc...' Cordelia was already smiling. Not warmly. "You're quite exhausting." She murmured, getting to her feet.

Light steps circled him, slow, fingers brushing lightly along the embroidered symbol on his chest. "Broken heart," Cordelia repeated. "Wild but meaningless sex. One true love."

Her hand fell away. "You don't want it straight," Cordelia leaned in closer. "You want it poetic." West was guided to her table, where the bones were gathered by shadows and set in the palm of her hand, before letting them fall again.

The knucklebone landed sideways.

The tooth rolled closest to him.

The cracked bead fractured further on impact.

Cordelia's eyes flicked to that last detail with interest. "Oh," she breathed, gaze lifting. "Not a broken heart." A soft, pale finger tapped the knucklebone. "It's intact, you just keep offering it to people who cannot hold it." She would have loved to add another broken heart to her... collection.

She leaned closer, enough that her breath brushed along his cheek. "You mistake intensity for intimacy. Chaos for compatibility. Revelation for relationship." The tooth was nudged toward him. "You fall in love with recognition, anyone who can look at you and say 'I see the paradox too.'"

Cordelia smiled, letting the shadow crawl up her arm from the tooth. "You don't stay long enough to see if they can survive you." Her eyes sharpened slightly. "You want a soulmate?"

At the question, she gathered one bone, then let it drop deliberately. Pausing, she hummed. "You'll meet someone who understands the puzzle box." A thin smile tugging at her mouth. "And they won't be impressed by it."

The cold air brushed passed them from the shadow sitting along her shoulder and arm. "And that," Cordelia continued, whispering. "is when you'll have to decide whether you want love..." Then, a little lower. "or an audience."

Straightening up again, Cordelia started back toward her seat, fingers wiggling over the bones until they moved on their own back to their places. "As for mending, well, hearts are muscle. They don't shatter, just scar. You are not doomed."

Taking her seat, one leg crossing over the other while the table was covered in that same shadow. "But if you keep calling self-sabotage 'divine chaos,' you might as well be."

"Straight enough for you, cleric?" That last word came with a slight hiss.

 

[bathtub]

Vedma Rozanov

.

.

Vedma finished her cup of coffee and set the other one belonging to Max on the ground somewhere behind her station, for the faeducks, of course. She began to tidy her shelves when her magical ball shifted from swirling verdant mists to a likeness of the moon. Tilting her head at the depiction, she studied it for merely a moment before she stepped toward the opening of her station, leaning against long, colorful fabrics. A small paper manifested on the table in anticipation of Silas’ arrival.

“Ah,” she watched him drop his trail marker then folded her arms across her chest. “I’ve been waiting long time for you to step in here. Come, Vedma give you better reading than a cookie.”

A waddle of ducks found the wrapped fortune cookie and claimed it as their own, running off as they fought over which one of them got to crinkle the plastic. Meanwhile Vedma waved Silas forward and disappeared into the mouth of her partition.

She walked through, fingers poking and pressing trinkets around on her shelves.

“You’ll smell they’re from all over, yes?” The tent never discriminated, taking people from many times and places before it spit them back out. “Sit,” she paused for a moment, as if sensing a glare from behind her back and raised her finger in the air. “An offer, not command. Miss Vedma doesn’t work in obedience school.”

The paper square flinched and twitched nervously on the velvet surface and Vedma huffed. “You make paper nervous. Be good and sit, boy. Listen to fortune so you can leave and catch back up with ditsy date.”

The moon was still in full view inside of the crystal ball while Vedma finally rounded her table and took a seat. The paper barely rose from the table as it folded itself into a five-point star. She gave Silas the look a mother would give her son when he was being a pain in the ass.

“Hate it all you want, but it’s not going anywhere. It’s part of you,” she said, tapping the center of her chest. “Just as that moon and star is part of the sky. Something bigger.” Vedma waved her hands around the ball and the full moon faded, the image zoomed out until it was nothing more than a small, shining orb hovering over Louisiana. “Cosmic love, yes. Bound by centuries but always apart. You love this moon in a way that will rip you apart and put you back together.” Vedma snatched up the paper star, reaching across the table to shove it into Silas’ hand. “Don’t crumple!” She said before fully backing away, her index finger pointing to him in warning.

“You don’t want to settle, never have. You think you’re a playboy. Lone wolf. You’re wrong. This girl you have now, she is not forever. Most are not, you throw them away.” Vedma nearly gave the same ’People are like dirt’ speech then paused and shifted gears.

“You’re a knight. A knight with a giant steed. You will save your love. Leave lasting impression.” Vedma clicked her teeth twice, as if that meant anything at all.

“Then you know, that is the one.” The cityscape in the ball began to flash with a storm that began to cover the city. "This,” she said, gesturing to the scene. “Has not come to pass. But you must go now. Vedma can say no more, and only one witch can ever truly hold you.”

Twinkle, twinkle little star.

Silas was still getting his bearings, patting his pockets to be sure he hadn’t been fleeced on his way through the portal and casting his attention around for his date, when the clownery began. A woman stuck her riotously coppery head out of her booth—the place was full of ‘em—and beckoned him to follow her inside. She didn’t wait to see if he agreed. Simultaneously, a herd of wild water birds scurried across the floor and stole his cookie!

Acutely feeling the lack of any workable alternatives, Silas followed the witch, stepping wide of the bird droppings. She lingered just inside her hut, fussing over her tchotchkes.

“You’ll smell they’re from all over, yes?” said the woman, Vedma, knowingly. Feeling suddenly naked, Silas scowled. But he also did note, beneath the pungent odor of magic, that he could detect a bouquet of foreign flora and fauna wafting from the shelves.

“Cute trick,” he said dismissively. “I’m not here for a reading. I just want to find—”

“Sit,” Vedma cut in, like Silas wasn’t even talking. Irritation sparked in his chest and he started to leave, but the witch smoothed it over without even looking back to confirm his offense. There was zero doubt in Silas’s mind that she’d done it on purpose. He took a few more shuffling steps into the booth, then stopped. He folded his arms and did not sit, only stared obstinately down his nose at her.

She asked him to sit again and gestured at the table, where Silas noticed the little square of folding paper twitching around on the witch’s table. It wasn’t a particularly fearsome display of power, nor was the moon floating in her crystal ball, but the mention of his date got his attention. After a hesitation that was purely for Silas’s own sake, so he could go on pretending he had any choice, he sat. The paper immediately started to fold itself.

She did something with her hands and the image in the crystal shifted, a star-spangled kaleidoscope of bullshit. The words cosmic love stood out as particularly hilarious, and he almost even laughed, looking down at his little paper star, but Vedma snapped her teeth at him and he swallowed nervously instead. He wished the witch would just stop talking, because it seemed that bleak, inescapable prophecies always started out with some witch talking about them. But he was too paranoid to interrupt again, so he let her finish.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said as he stood up, relieved. He put the star in his pocket, where it almost certainly crumpled. “Witches aren’t my type, and even if they were? They’re immune to the bite.” Silas didn’t need a seer bent out of shape with him, though, so he reached for his wallet, fished out a twenty, and set it in the center of the table where the little origami star had been before.

“Thank you, Miss Vedma,” he said as he left, because it was polite, and he was scared. As Silas swept back the partition and stepped out, he just caught the blonde bounce of curls exiting the way he’d come in. Probably. He held his breath and followed.