A night of fog The opaque fog swirled around the cold night air, twisting and contorting as something, someone, appeared within it. A startling Crack! assaulted the empty cobble street, and out of the distortion stepped a tall wizard, brown eyes set on a half-crumbled building ahead of him. He crossed the street without distraction, a streetlight temporarily highlighting him and shining in his blond hair before he strayed too far out of its warmth.
When he reached his chosen destination, the man entered unceremoniously, stepping over and through decaying wood as though the state of disrepair was normal. Once deep enough inside, he came to an open room, perhaps formerly a stockroom for an old business, in the center of which was a woman. She sat on the floor, her legs pulled up beneath her, and when she saw him, she greeted with a half-toothless grin. “Hello again, Ross Manger.”
Ross returned with a crooked, well-kept smirk. “Corsola,” he nodded back. Now decently into his forties, joining her on the ground was not as easy a feat as it had been in their prior meetings, age weighing in thus far almost exclusively in his joints. Corsola was eternally youthful, it seemed, as if time simply did not trouble her, but Ross could see by his comparisons to her: he was getting old. Not quite yet brittle, but he knew that was coming.
Nonetheless, he made it to the floor, his legs jutting out awkwardly to the side when they could not fold up tight enough. Ross sat--if one could call it that--facing her, and between them was a rather round object covered by a midnight black cloth. Beneath the fabric, Corsola revealed as she gently peeled it away, was a glittering crystal ball. She looked at him; she looked through him. “Shall we?” she grinned in his direction. He nodded. “Then prepare to ask your question."
As Corola gazed into the crystal’s inner mire, a swirl of fog entirely its own, Ross did his best to avert his eyes. He had always been a sceptic of the Sight, not just in his eccentric acquaintance but in all, but he remembered his boyhood days, when his father would invite a man who could See to their home on a yearly basis to make the same inquiry. Perhaps he had inherited this prolonged paranoia. “Am I going to die this year?” the man asked, glancing back to the orb only as long as he spoke.
The contents of the crystal twirled, transformed. Ross held his breath. “No,” Corsola reported, and he sighed with relief.