Re: Nick & Wren: Fortunes
Wren had no bedrock. She knew, from stories told and pictures in an album, that she'd had deep roots once. Long, long, long ago, and now she floated. She didn't remember a life built deep into the earth. Even seeing herself in children laughing, it hadn't made her feel like a thing anymore made for anchors. She floated, and she thought the man in front of her did too. But she thought it was a new thing for him, and he didn't wear it well yet. Like his uneven wheels on unforgiving ground, he was a thing unsteady. She looked at his face, and she wondered at his before. She knew this was new, this chair, this place, these circumstances. She could see the bullet. She could feel the searing pain along spine. She could see, and he hadn't spent a lifetime like this.
They had that in common.
"I don't have a past, so I'm not sure," she said honestly, words clear for once and no miasma of confusion coming parcel with the confession. "I think you're meant to learn from it. I think it's meant to be a light, the switch flipped and illuminating. I think people see it like this, because they can't handle things existing without meaning. I trust fate." She looked at him with curious gray. "But that angers people sometimes. They don't like thinking their bad things are fated, and fate is only made for good things."
His smile flinted sharp, and she hadn't meant to land words painfully.
She smiled, rainbows and storms still lingering. The sun fought hard to shine through the clouds of her smile, and thunder could still be heard in her voice. "You to it. You think it's passive, ami? If your past comes for you?" But that wasn't the truth here, was it? She shook her hair, and white-silk blonde slipped along her bare shoulders. "Non, you came here, and not passively, oui? You came here, but your past, it was waiting. The question is, what to do with it?" She laughed sweetly. "My omens aren't like that. You'll know when they come, because they spill like milk in a shattered container. You didn't want lies, so that is the truth. In you, I see a man broken when he wasn't expecting it. I see a man left behind, and he wasn't expecting that either. I see a lifetime ended, a career closed. I see fleeing. I see the past waiting here in flesh and with a similar face. I see conflict and combustion. I see. I see. I see."