Fic: Fortune, Fate, Freedom, Chapter 11: The Beginning in the End, Echo Bazaar

[escritoireazul]

Chapter 11: The Beginning in the End

In that great time between -- when she was the Cheesemonger’s daughter, between child and adult, between the life she always thought she’d live and this one you have granted to her at long last, taking her place in the game as her mother and her grand-mother and her great-grandmother, always and into forever – she takes it upon herself to visit a fortuneteller. Her mother had been, once, and though she would never say what she was told, something in the memory of it made her turn her face into shadows. In time, she learned to watch closely enough to catch her mother's fleeting smile.

After, she looks at you with an easy air, her eyes clear, but she keeps her fingers pressed together and her palms turned to the floor. You will never know what she was told, but sometimes you see her trace the lines of her palms, and if you look close enough, she could be writing the sigils of secrets into her skin.

When you dream of her – and dream you must, for you dream of all things, the things you have seen and the things you have not, that which exists and that which does not and that which will – she holds up her hands, blood smeared across her palms, and laughs.

“I did not see you for what you are, game player.” Her smile goes sharp. “Death on your fingers and lies on your tongue.”