FantasyFest Day 1: Introduction
It was cold that night. Not a refreshing sort of ‘cold’, either. The kind of cold that bit at fingers and toes until they turned blue and fell off. No-one should have been out in weather like that.
A young woman carved her way through the building snow, clutching her scarf to her face. She had left the safety of her village for a single purpose: she had to reach the summit of the God’s Mountain. She had a request that had to be heard.
Miyako Furuta had a nervous disposition. She constantly worried about how her choices would effect her future, to the point where she hardly ever made any choices at all. The decision to ask for a boon from the gods was entirely out of character.
Half dead and frozen to her core, she finally dragged herself up to the summit. The wind almost pulled the air from her lungs in an attempt to make it join the deadly waltz it danced around her. Still, she gathered her will and knelt down in the snow.
“Please...” she whispered, dragging the words from her chest. “Please... I need to know... I need the power to tell the future, completely and accurately. Maybe then... I wouldn’t be so useless... I would be able to move forward in life...”
For a moment, she felt a warmth in her chest. She knew then that the gods had heard her, and her wish was granted. With a shocked laugh, she looked down at her hands to read her palm.
Her lifeline had disappeared completely.
“N-no...” With that, she collapsed in the snow, dead.
Weeks later, she woke up. Confused, she looked down at her palms again. Her lifeline was back. More than that, it cut through the entirety of her palm, red and angry like a wound.
“Wh...?” Before she tried to think of that, she had to get home. Still freezing, she started her long trek back down the mountain.
Over the weeks that followed, she started to read the fortunes of everyone who asked. In fact, she felt compelled to. No matter what, she couldn’t refuse to do so. She supposed that was just the price she paid for her gift.
“Your fields will grow thick and plentiful this harvest.”
“You will have a healthy child.”
“You will open a new business this winter.”
Each prediction came true, of course, but not the way she intended. The fields grew thick with weeds. The woman gave birth to one healthy child, but lost the other twin and died in the process. And the businessowner was force to open a new business when his first burned down in a freak accident.
Slowly, Miyako realized that her blessing was actually a curse. Each of her predictions came true, but with a horrible twist. Worse than that, not only could she not refuse a prediction, but she couldn’t even warn people of the devastating effects of her curse.
“It’s... all my fault...” She had to leave. With nothing but the clothes on her back, she wandered out into the wilderness and never returned.
After the first fifty years, she realized something: reading her palm on the mountaintop had been a prediction in and of itself. The long life she had predicted for herself had cursed her to an eternal life.