Emmaline wants her fortune told

“I--” Liv started, but Emmaline immediately cut her off.

“One fortune, please!” she announced, sliding into the chair in front of her with near blinding speed. Emmaline leaned eagerly forward with her eyes entirely focused on Mistress Allyndra and Liv was left standing behind her, forgotten in stunned silence.

“Of course,” Allyndra said. With a flourish the cards poured from her hand out onto the table and the wooden token vanished into the cleavage of her dress. She spread them across the table face up, revealing intricately painted images of stoic horsemen, shimmering coins, overflowing cups, and beautiful women. The brushwork was so incredibly detailed and fine that Liv could only imagine how tiny a brush they must have used. As they slid across the table, the cards glittered as though they were etched with silver and gold.

Then, in an instant, Allyndra waved her hand across the table and they were nearly arranged back in their pile.

“May I have your names?” the elven woman asked, idly shuffling the cards in her hands.

“Emmaline Beaumanoire!” Emmaline answered a little too quickly. While her eyes were captured by the glittering shuffles and flourishes of the cards, {SN}’s gaze never left the elven woman’s face. Was that a flicker of recognition at Emmaline’s last name? Would an elf even be familiar with gossip from the Gallian noble houses?

“Liv,” she said after a moment. She took the silence that followed as an opportunity to pull her own chair out and join the other two women at the table. “Just Liv.”

“Very well,” Allyndra spoke. She stretched out a hand, her dark slender fingers wrapped up underneath the deck of cards. “Miss Beumanoire, if you wouldn’t mind?”

“Sure,” Emmaline said. She took the cards and began to shuffle with a bit more skill than Liv might have expected. They didn’t exactly dance through her fingers the way they did Allyndra’s, but Emmaline clearly knew her way around a deck.

Allyndra meanwhile had begun other preparations. Her hands disappeared into the long folds of her dress again and again, retrieving new artifacts and gemstones each time. A small metallic statue of a full moon went in front of her, with half phases to either side. Then she began to distribute pale gemstones, like diamonds but rough, uncut and a good bit more dull. Allyndra scattered them about the table in a pattern that seemed random, though that didn’t stop the woman from meticulously adjusting and rearranging their positions. What exactly for… Liv hadn’t the slightest clue.

“I’m ready whenever,” Emmaline announced, setting the cards in the center of the table between them.

“Quick and decisive, I see,” Allyndra smiled. She finished up tweaking one of the rocks, turning it so that the thinner side ran vertical toward the roof. “I like that in a woman.”

“Anything else you like?” {CB} shot back, leaning forward so that her ample breasts pressed down against the edge of the table, threatening to pop out of her bikini top at any moment.

Liv groaned.

“Quite a lot,” Allyndra answered, though her attention turned back to the gemstones and artifacts.

When she was done, the Mystic elf’s side of the table was decorated like a starry sky, dotted with the same jumbled chaos while Emmaline and Liv’s side was left as a totally empty half circle of dark, cured wood.

“Shall we begin?” Allyndra asked. With a nod from Emmaline, she snapped her fingers. “Cassio!”

“Right away!” the young elf’s voice called back with just a hint of shock. Liv watched him disappear into the back room, and just a moment later the lights began to gradually dim.

“The art of divination is an ancient and mystical practice, dating back countless generations of elves to when forests dominated the Amnistlants, and the Verdant Kingdoms were nothing more than squabbling tribes.” Allyndra said. A slight accent tinged her voice now, though Liv couldn’t quite place it. “It is one of the purest and most sought after of magics. After all, who wouldn’t want to know the future?”

“But to look at the future is like staring into the sun. Brilliant, beautiful, and blinding,” she had set the cards on the table now, at a point between each of the stones and began swirling her hand over them. On instinct, Liv’s eyes flitted everywhere other than the deck of cards, but she saw no hint of the real trick behind the street thief style misdirection. Her hand settled on her purse nonetheless. “And so human mages devised a way to catch the sun’s rays as they bounce off of water. They see a future distorted by ripples of their own emotions and ripples of the world around them. Their divination is easy, but it is murky and misleading.”

By now, the room had dimmed dark enough that Liv became aware of a pale blue-white light shining down from above. She glanced up to see a hole in the ceiling of the tent that she hadn’t noticed before--a perfect circle, directly over the table. Through it, she could clearly see the deep void of the night time sky. Though… it should have been close to midday.

Shimmering constellations shone bright through the hole, and as she stared, Liv realised that they perfectly mirrored the stones Mistress Allyndra had laid out on the table. And where the moon sat in their midst, Allyndra had laid the deck of cards.

“Elves, in our longevity, have always preferred a more refined method. Difficult to master, but blessed by the clarity of silver.” As she spoke, the glow of moonlight began to glow brighter and brighter still. With the light in the room continuing to dim, it wasn’t long before all Liv could see were the table and the silvery faces of Emmaline and Allyndra bathed in moonlight. Emmaline looked entranced by the elf woman’s speech, but as Liv turned to her, Emmaline looked back at her and winked.

Liv scowled. Was this just another joke to her, like everything else? Had she promised Liv a chance to look for answers then stepped all over her toes as a joke?

“We divinate by moonlight. It is another reflection of the sun’s rays, but moonlight is pure. It is uncorrupted by the mortal world, and so in it we may find a more genuine truth,” Allyndra’s hand crossed over the deck, but no shadow followed beneath. Instead, it was like the thinning shaft of moonlight shone on her fingers from all directions at once.

The beam narrowed gradually until only the deck was caught in it’s beam. Then, in a single instant, it vanished.

For a moment, it was only pitch black silence.

Then Allyndra snapped her fingers. “Cassio!”

The lights began to return from some unseen source, and slowly the room came into focus once more.

“Miss Beaumnoire,” Allyndra said. “You may draw your first card.”

Emmaline was staring at her with an implacable smile on her face. Her hands sat folded on the table. “You’re a lot better at that than Serah was.”

“Thank you,” Allyndra responded, “Though I am unfamiliar with the name.”

“She was our fortune teller, back when I was with the carnival,”Emmaline explained. “She would usually just draw the cards, so the whole ‘glowing lights with a fancy moon magic speech’ thing is actually new to me.”

Emmaline turned to Liv giving her a serious look--serious enough that it guaranteed the woman was teasing. “Then again, she was only human.”

Before Allyndra could respond, Emmaline reached forward and flipped her first card.