route_1065 | I'm Dreaming of the Life I Once Loved

Entry tags:

I'm Dreaming of the Life I Once Loved

Who: Meridiana (

occultigen) and YOU!
Where: Goldenrod City
When: Anytime during the month of February!
Summary: What do you get when you cross a Victorian-era seeress with a pack of tarot cards? There's one easy way to find out...
Rating: PG!
Log:

[It's not particularly nice out these days, but at the very least it's not snowing most of the time and the weather's usually above freezing, and even on the worse days of the month, with the benefit of a couple of Fire-type Pokemon (and a few who happen to know Sunny Day) it's not altogether difficult to keep warm in spite of the chill in the air.

Which is why, at various times during the month of February, you might just see Meridiana bundled up and sitting at one of the outdoor tables of a cafe in Goldenrod, facing the street and playing with a pack of tarot cards. Every so often, she'll make a face and shake her head at a card she turns up; most of the time, though, she's shifting and arranging them with practiced and familiar ease. She's done this sort of reading before, in a similar way, and made a little bit of money at it and helped give passerby some guidance into their circumstances and futures, so all in all it's a reasonable enough way of passing the time on a quiet afternoon.

On days when she's out, she's got a little handmade sign up to advertise her business (which her Tropius is helpfully displaying for her), so if you happen to be passing by and would like to sit and have your fortune told — or even just stop by to chat a while — feel free to pause and say hello!]

[OOC: Okay, so! This is an open log for people in Goldenrod who'd like to stop in and interact with Meridiana, either just to hang out or to use her fortune-telling as a hook! As a standard disclaimer, I am not anywhere close to being an expert at this myself, so I'll be using this website for any readings she's asked to give and just going with whatever it returns; if you'd prefer to handwave something or for character/plot reasons would prefer to have her give your character a specifically-tailored prediction or result (that is, specific cards, a particular overall meaning, whatever), feel free to let me know and we can swing it that way as well! And of course, you're not obligated to ask for one; you're just as welcome to chat and hang out with her instead!

This log is good for the entire month of February, so please give me a rough date of when a thread is taking place on your starter, along with anything else I might need to know before we get rolling!]

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Huh. Well, good luck with that.

[Blake walks away.

That is, for about a step before he feels his pants caught on something.

It's Steve's claw. Her eyes are fastened on the cards.

Blake sighs and turns back to the girl.]

All right. Looks like I'm not getting out of here without getting my future read.

[Steve nods excitedly. She loves stuff like this!]

[Oh, no, it's cute. She throws a knowing smile in Steve's direction, then motions Blake toward an empty chair.]

Very well, then! I promise, I shall try to do my very best to convince you. Won't you sit down?

[Steve waves her claw. Blake sighs and sits down, then oofs when Steve hops onto his lap so she can see better.]

All right kid, show me some hocus pocus.

[Though he keeps an eye out. Distracting somebody with magic tricks while a friend makes them lighter by a wallet is the oldest trick in the book.]

[Pleasantly, she gathers up her cards and reorganizes them back into a neat stack, which she begins to shuffle with practiced ease; after a bit, she fans out the cards and offers them to Blake, facedown, for his perusal.]

I'll have you take three, if you please. Any three you like, and set them as so on the table in front of you: one to the left, one in the center, and one to the right. Past, present, and future.

[Blake polishes off his donut and reaches for a card. Steve makes an admonishing bark, so he pauses and wipes his hands on a napkin first.]

So it's fancy three card monte?

[He takes ones that looks likely. As he's reaching for the third, Steve stops his hand. She shakes her head and points toward an identical card two to the left. He shrugs and picks that one instead, and lays them out.]

There.

Mm, I see you've quite the guiding force on your future, here, haven't you?

[She flashes a smile at Steve, then sets the rest of the cards aside and reaches for the first one, which when she turns it over proves to be Temperance, reversed.]

...And as for your past, I see it's Temperance, reversed. This card is, well, precisely the way it sounds; upright, it represents things like balance, patience, and moderation. To have it reversed this way in your past suggests that you've previously been...well, out of balance to some degree, because of something in your life. Perhaps you've been driven to excess in something, or taken a path of extremes instead of one of moderation; it may also be that you've found yourself surrounded by discord of some variety, some sort of...lack of cooperation. Or it may be that you've had beliefs or wishes that ended up in conflict with each other, creating that out-of-balance feeling for you.

Likely we've found Temperance reversed this way in your past as a foundation of sorts — something to build upon, as we move through your other two cards. Perhaps there'll be some guidance in your present and future, as to what this means for you here.

[Steve straightens proudly. Then licks some cruller crumbs off her claws.

Blake cranes his head to look at the card. It's an angel doing some outdoor bartending, and that's a weird sort of relief. It's just hocus-pocus, nothing to do with him.

Then the girl starts talking.

Blake's expression turns strange.

It's one of those stage tricks, cold reading. You say a bunch of shit that's general enough to apply to anybody but just specific enough that everybody thinks it means them. It works because everybody thinks they're too smart for it. Blake once worked a case where a guy got grifted out of thousands by a lady who kept chanting over water to make him lucky, but he wouldn't cooperate because he kept insisting it worked. Eating the loss was easier than admitting he'd been swindled.

Blake gets control of his face.]

Everybody gets in fights. Keep going.

[Some people, when they sit for their readings, do give her clues along the way. So really, Blake's not wrong in the slightest; it's much easier to customize a reading for someone when the person in the chair is willing to fill in the blanks. She personally doesn't see that as cheating, so much; rather, it's letting the querent give her the direction she needs to read the cards properly, like a lens through which to view a greater picture.

This particular gentleman, he's not one to give her that benefit, it seems. But that's all right, she decides as she reaches for the next card. It's his own reading, after all.]

Very well. Next, in your present, we find...

[She turns over the Six of Swords.]

...The Six of Swords. This one, it's a card of transitions — sometimes regretful ones. As you can see from the image on the card, there's a sense of "moving away", or of traveling from one place to another.

With this in your present, it seems as though you've been struggling to move away from your old habits — or perhaps, finding it difficult to do so. For you, the present is a period of transition, of knowing that you'll not be able to move forward if you stay stuck in the past, but perhaps not wishing to relinquish that past at the same time. And perhaps knowing that has been making you feel melancholy, or casting you into...I suppose one might say, "a slump", of sorts?

But the lesson to take away from the Six is, as difficult as it might be to move on, change isn't always a bad thing — sometimes, a transition like this is necessary, to continue to grow as a person.

[Blake doesn't like the looks of this card. Something about the unsure horizon and the huddled figure in the boat are ominous. Unsettling, down to the gut. He tries to ignore it.]

Well, there's one thing I know, and that's not to stab a bunch of swords through the bottom of the boat you're in.

[See? He's not taking this seriously. It's just a way to kill some time.It's just a coincidence that Meridiana happens to hit on some things that might be kind of relevant. Pure luck.]

I don't do melancholy.

Sitting around and moping, that's for fifteen-year-olds writing sad poems in their notebooks at Sawsbucks. Me, I hit the street take action.

There just hasn't been a whole lot of action to take lately. And not much of anyplace to go, stuck here on Monster Island.

[He drums his fingers on the table. It's all just tricks. There's no reason whatsoever to be tense about the last card.]

Well. Perhaps we'll find some insight in your future, then.

[She reaches for the last card, turning over the highly unambiguous the Lovers.]

Mm. So it's the Lovers, then. At a glance, of course, it seems as though the Lovers is about...well, finding love. But it's also a card about beliefs, and about choices. With all of this turmoil in your past, and the mark of a transition in your present, I'd imagine that finding the Lovers in your future suggests that what you're working toward now is a new set of beliefs — a better, stronger philosophy to apply in your future. Likely you'll find your old beliefs being challenged, and be given the choice to continue on as you've been, or to reach out into something new.

So. I think, with the Lovers in your future, it's a message to challenge those values, and find the right ones for yourself, and to make good choices because of them. That might mean facing things you'd not like to, or being more honest with yourself than you might care to. But the alternative is to remain caught in your old ways, and perhaps right back where you started because of it.

[Blake exhales audibly. He doesn't know what he was expecting. Some kind of card with a devil on it, maybe, or just the words YOU FUCKED UP.

This one doesn't seem so bad.

His lip twitches up.] Are you a fortune-teller or a shrink?

Making good choices, huh. [He drums his fingers on the table thoughtfully. It's all a bunch of mystical voodoo crap, of course, but the coincidence is kind of interesting.] I don't know how a couple of naked people are going to help me with that.

I simply read the cards, that's all. And do my best at interpreting what it is they might be saying.

[She shrugs a little, motioning generally to the spread. She knows a hard-sell customer when she sees one, and doubts anything she might press further will convince him any more than she's already tried. So, so much the better to just leave him to it, and let him form his own conclusions.]

It's an optimistic sort of future, if nothing else. There's something to that, surely.

[Blake's eyes travel from one card to another. Angel, boat, couple.]

For a long time there, 'optimistic' meant thinking I might make it to retirement without getting shot.

[He catches himself.] Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I believe in any of this abracadabra stuff. [He cracks a lopsided smile.] But it's nice to hear your fancy solitaire thinks old dogs can learn new tricks.

...I knew someone, once, who saw the world that way. He was very adamant about...

[She hesitates a minute, staring at her cards.]

...He told me about his way of looking at the world. He was terribly convincing, so I believed him. He thought that...some things, he could prove weren't true, because it was simply impossible for them to happen.

I suppose for myself, I've come to learn since then that...there's a difference, between believing a thing is impossible and having proof that it is.

[She hesitates again.]

I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by it. It's only...you reminded me of him a little, just now. With your convictions.

[Blake shakes his head.]

S'alright. I'm not as sure about this stuff as I used to be. The thing about being real sure something is impossible...[He lets out a long sigh.] Sometimes that's wishful thinking.

[He chews on his lip, suspecting he's not going to like the answer to this but not quite able to keep from asking.]

So what ever happened to this guy?

Oh, he's...

[She goes quiet, abruptly, and glances away.]

I was with him, just before I came here. So I'm certain he's...back there now, carrying on, and such.

I suppose it's really not much of a story to tell, now that I think on it.

[Blake tilts his head wryly. He has a lot to think about but doesn't really feel like pacing around by himself yet. Steve is leaning over the table and giving the cards curious sniffs.]

I've heard worse, and I have nothing but time.

[She smiles a little, wryly, when he says he's heard worse, because her kneejerk reaction is to answer, perhaps you ought to wait until you've heard it.]

I...hope you'll pardon that I'll not go into specifics, but.

[She draws in a slow breath.]

Have you perhaps heard that, er...that sometimes, people come here after their death, in another place?

[He waves his hand.] That's fine.

[This guy she's talking about isn't a suspect. It's not like he's going to have to get a forensic sketch made of him.

He's been here too damn long. Talking about dead people showing up doesn't faze him.]

Yeah, I've heard that can happen. Hasn't to me as far as I know, though.

[Bringing it up implied a bad ending for her story.]

So this guy's dead?

...No. But I am.

[She ducks her head a little, but not enough to really obscure her face; most all it does is make her hair fall a little further forward around her head.]

That's what — you see, he convinced me that I wasn't...dying. But...he ended up being wrong.

[Blake has plenty of standard reactions to things outside of most people's experience, like I've been shot ("Yep, you have. Calling it in.") or I'm dying ("No, you're not."), but a little girl hesitantly and delicately stating that she's dead is a new one. She doesn't look real dead. Old-fashioned, maybe, with curls that give a kind of creepy china-doll effect, but breathing. He's seen plenty of weird in his time here, though, and dead people walking is known to happen.

Shit. How do you answer that?]

You're not dead anymore. You don't look sick, either.

Guess that makes him kind of right.

I don't want him to be right.

[That seems to slip out, and as soon as she's said it she jumps, abruptly alarmed at that bit of candor; all of a sudden, she's hurrying to clarify.]

W-What I mean to say is...

[...]

He should be wrong. He was wrong. I was never wrong about that and he convinced me otherwise, but I wasn't wrong. He was the one who was, all along. So he should be wrong, for once.

[Blake tries to wrap his head around a situation he doesn't have any context for at the same time as he's trying not to upset the girl, two things he is equally bad at.]

Hey, calm down. Take it slow.

[Steve has settled on his lap, and looks at Meridiana with doggish concern. Blake scratches her head thoughtlessly.]

You're mad you're not dead?

I...I don't know if I can explain it. Properly.

[She ducks her head, wavering on her decision of whether or not to make the attempt at all.]

I-I had a...a terminal illness. Awful things were done, trying to treat me...

[...]

Procedures. They hurt, and...people did wretched things. Because of it.

But then...imagine someone comes along and convinces you, manages to convince you beyond a doubt that there really is no illness like that. You're not dying from anything. Someone's taking advantage of you, but if you'll only trust him, then you'll live, because you were never dying at all.

And you know better, but you want to believe him, so you do. And then later it turns out he was wrong.

When everything else is ripped away like that, all of your hopes and your expectations...it's insulting, taking away the sole consolation that I was right and he was wrong. I've lost everything else. I don't want to be made to lose that, too.

There's something like that back where I'm from.

[She's probably not talking about cancer and chemo, but it sounds similar enough that Blake gets the idea.

A lot of the rest of it sounds very familiar, too. It starts to make an ugly kind of sense. An old anger tightens Blake's jaw.]

There's guys like that, too. Ones who go around to people who're sick, scared, and desperate, and sell them crystals, prayers, and snake oil. 'Believe in Jesus and you'll be fine - right after your check clears.'

There's always scumbags who'll screw over people in a low place so they can get what they want from them.

[And a goddamn little girl, too.]

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occultigen - 2016-03-01 00:48 (UTC) - Expand

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lieutenantantichrist - 2016-03-03 08:40 (UTC) - Expand

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