Nathaniel R. Summerby (piseag) wrote in afic, @ 2011-02-11 14:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | !group thread, character: hermione granger, character: luag chambers, character: nate summerby, player: deb, player: jessica, x player: joan |
Who: Nate, Luag, and Hermione
When: Friday, 11 February
Where: Nate & Luag’s black house
What: Hermione comes to visit, and Nate gives her a reading
Rating: PG-13?
Status: started in gdocs, continuing in thread
Luag had welcomed Hermione with open arms and plenty of food, so by the time dinner was over, Nate was feeling warm and comfortable and a bit overstuffed. They’d all talked a bit over dinner, and as the meal wound down, Nate excused himself for a moment.
When he returned, he was unwrapping the black silk from around his Italian deck. He set the cards in front of Hermione without saying a word, offering the reading silently. It seemed like a good time in her life for one, and other than clothes, it was all Nate had to offer for help.
Usually, Hermione would have refused it. She didn’t believe in the silliness of divination, even if Patil had seemed to have a real gift. Instead Hermione watched Nate with a critical eye, the energy to say ‘no’ sucked dry out of her. She looked horrible, and the healers hadn’t bothered to do much more than heal the bare minimum. Her broken ribs were sore, her left shoulder stiff from being dislocated. The broken nose she’d suffered had been healed, but it had left behind two black eyes and plenty of scrapes along her cheek and arms.
An owl had brought Hermione some clean clothing, her loose gray cotton pants and purple tee almost swallowing her up. But her eyes were alert, flicking from Nate to his cards before she finally decided that she needed to be a good guest and let the host play at his game.
“What do I do?” she asked.
Nate pulled out a chair to settle into it on the same side of the table as Hermione. “It’s easy. Just shuffle them, thinking about what you want to hear about, then cut them or not, and hand them back to me. Then I lay them out, tell a story, and you listen. If we’re lucky, the story makes sense and gives you something to think about that helps you reach either the good outcome the cards talk about, or a better outcome if it’s something you want to change.”
Hermione licked her lips for a moment, finally taking the cards and shuffle them. She had never really played games, and so her ability to do it was limited to just the simplest of ways. She didn’t even pretend that she could actually cut the deck, and so after a few moments of shuffling she handed them back over. She was tempted to point out that tarot cards did nothing but let weak minded people create self fulling, loose, easily applied to all topics, and basically nothing more than a zodiac daily horoscopes on pretty paper.
She shifted back into her chair, arms crossed and legs brought up close to her chest. It was like she was trying to curl up and look like a hedgehog- protecting by her own skin and bones.
Luag had been listening as he cleaned up the dishes from dinner and put away the leftovers in the kitchen side of the dining room kitchen set up. He couldn’t help smiling in amusement when Nate brought out the cards, even if the story they might tell wasn’t always a good one. He still thought the whole premise of it was ridiculous, but he would stand by Nate’s cards and defend them every time. After making sure the fire in the kitchen was burning at a good temperature, he stepped out for a moment and came back with a badly scuffed up leather box that he placed on the table.
“We goin’ fer a fluffy readin’ or serious?” he asked as he rifled through the glass jars and metal tins in the box, going more by the look of the potions and creams than labels. “Or do Ah get ta be surprised too?” Finally finding one of the creams he was looking for, he pulled a chair up beside Hermione’s as he gave the cream a sniff to make sure it was still good. “This should help ye look less like ye’re aimin’ ta be Hufflepuff’s mascot if ye’re up fer it.”
Hermione thanked Luag quietly, taking the cream and starting to very gently dab it under her eyes with two fingers. If anything, it was wonderfully cool and helped sooth her skin in a way that she hadn’t expected it too. “I didn’t realize that there were setting,” Hermione said, biting back a nice chunk of sarcasm as a brow raised and she cocked her head at Luag. “Thank you,” she said, her manners still strong enough to know that Luag could have told her that it was too dangerous to live with a ST.
She wished Harry felt that way. Moving out would be better for the DA, and she felt pain in her heart every time Ron was home. Living with two gay men who were more interested in her cat’s breeding sounded... heavenly.
“We’re going for whatever the cards tell us,” Nate said. “Seems like one of those good times for a reading, when there’s something to think about, yeah?” He laid out the cards with deft, practiced fingers, in the layout he almost always used. There were so many available ways to lay out the cards, and every once in a while he did something different, but this deck and this layout worked well together, and he tended to stick with what the cards seemed to like.
Two cards went down first, one upright at the center -- the Queen of Cups upside down -- and one crossing against it -- the Five of Pentacles. The next four went down around those two: the Princess of Swords upside down above the pair, then the Ace of Pentacles, also upside down, below them, and the World behind to the right, and the Four of Wands ahead to the left. Nate’s fingers slowed when he placed the Princess, and he glanced at Luag momentarily before moving on. He had to get all the cards on the table before he’d be able to see the story they told.
The last four were in a line to the right of the others, with the Five of Cups upside down at the bottom, then the Two of Pentacles above that, and the Ace of Wands above that. Topping the final line was the King of Swords, upside down, and again, Nate’s brow furrowed. If the Prince and Princess were specific people, he wondered if this were as well. And why was the Princess reversed this time around? He could approach that when he got to it, he decided.
“I ought to tell you,” Nate said quietly, “that I’ve been doing other readings. And I can see things in this one that remind me of those. But I’ll save that until the end. It might help us make sense both of this, and of the ones I’ve already done, if we put our heads together.” He reached out and lightly tapped the first two cards. “This is where our story begins. At the center of now is someone who is intelligent, but can’t be relied upon. Probably someone dishonest. Pushing against that is a social frustration and loneliness. Basically, this says that right now, the current situation is caused by someone who is trouble, and they are making the world a place where people who are friends can no longer meet, and yet people who might not normally be drawn together are finding new affinities amongst the trouble. And that’s where it all begins.”
He glanced at Hermione, giving her a chance to speak before he went on.
Hermione couldn’t keep silent forever, and finally she had to let out a low ‘hmph’ as she cocked a brow. “Well, considering how many cards you have in that deck it’s hardly implausible that one would show up, it call goes back to probability-” she began, running a hand through her bushy hair as she retied her hair band and went back to dabbing cream on her face. But she stopped, smiling tightly and muttering ‘I’m sorry, keep going’. It wasn’t even that she was annoyed about a card popping up. It was what Nate had said.
Because for a horrible moment, she’d brought it. That maybe that intelligent, but can’t be relied upon person was her. What she no longer reliable? Had she already failed? But the cards soon seemed to be pointing to Diggory far more than herself, and that allowed Hermione to still her tongue for the time being.
“The rate that some o’ these cards are comin’ up though is startin’ ta push the bounds o’ simple probability,” Luag interjected as he went through the medical box to find something for Hermione’s scratches. “Sometimes it’s spooky too since with Nate’s deck, the same cards’ll keep showin’ up fer readings ‘bout the same topic. Last readin’ Nate did while Ah was ‘round had the Princess o’ Swords in it too.” He snorted as he looked up at Nate with a smirk. “Too bad the Prince o’ Swords didnae show up again. Ye’d have me bein’ a true believer if that card showed up again considerin’ everythin’.”
“No, but we’ve gone from the Prince of Swords being the problem to being the goal, and the Princess of Swords going from what was needed to achieve the goal, to being an odd version of the goal herself,” Nate said quietly. “I don’t think the Prince is entirely absent from the reading, even if the card’s not on the table right now.” He drew in a breath, and considered the next few cards. “The goal right now is someone of intelligence, but possibly dishonesty this time because its upside down. Or if it refers to a specific person, it could be that what she stands for has been turned on its ear.” He glanced at Hermione. “This one’s tough for me just because I last saw this card in the very last reading I did, and it was the foundation of the entire story. The rock that kept the Prince stable. But here its reversed.” He shook his head, not sure yet what to do with it. “The foundation for that goal is a false start. Which might explain why she’s upside down, if whatever is affecting her, or bringing the situation to achieve that goal, hasn’t actually got off the ground. Pushing forward and through that false start could turn things rightside up again.”
Taking in the next pair, he had to smile. “The recent past is obvious: the world is completion. The end of a journey, a successful place to be. It’s the end of the war, and the peace you had. At least, that’s how I’d see it. And in the near future, you’ve got a card almost as good. Old lovers might not find a place anymore, but those new affinities might bring peace and harmony, possibly new love.”