WTW Tarot Prompts – The Empress
abundance — nature — luxury — creation excerpts, various:
“I’ll tear this place apart piece by piece.” She would bring it to the ground if it took years, cracking each stone until there was nothing left of it but dust and memories.
The prince’s low sigh wrapped around her. “I can always build another.”
“I’ll tear that one down, too.” Irina dug her fingers into her arms, cutting white crescent moons into her skin.
“I’m glad to hear it.” A cold hand tipped her chin up. The prince had swept around the table while she wasn’t looking, and now he sat on the edge next to her. She bit back her fury where it rose to her face and stained her just as red as that awful smile. “I would so love to keep you.”
— BEARSKIN, 7
Old Mère taught me how to quilt when I was just old enough to thread a needle. She loved using her weathered hands to create, at the sewing machine or the pottery wheel or the rich black soil garden in front of her trailer. She sat me down on warm summer afternoons while my mother went to town and showed me different stitches, different styles, different seeds, and she taught me the art of magic-making.
— ONLY SAINTS (prototype)
“I thought you hated me. For Estel, for the lies, for all of this. It’s my fault. I should never have asked you to do this.”
She bit back platitudes—it was the right thing to do. That wasn’t true. There was no way of knowing that until the end of things. Maybe she would drive Journsea to its destruction, but if that happened, she would be in control of it every step of the way. She would do her best to claw it out of the hands of the fey. She would fight tooth and nail for this place that was her home yet not her home.
“It had to be done,” she said instead. She sat next to him on the bench and reached out for one of the roses where it had wrapped around his wrist and started to bloom. “This place likes you.”
“I like it.” Cadeyrn sighed. “Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I decided to become a gardener instead.”
“You? Do something peaceful?”
— UNCHOSEN, 4, ‘bloodnettle’
