@rorycaston
Ruth’s nimble fingers shuffle the deck over and over while her dark eyes look Rory up and down. “Your future?” She asks with a smirk. “Alright~” She can tell them that they’re all going to die, that wings won’t be much help when they drown, or she could tell them that something big is coming, glimpses of a cabin buried in snow on a lonely wooded mountain, but that’s not part of the game. The game is filling in the blanks in-between all that. She shuts her eyes and sucks in a sharp breath. Air fills her lungs, carrying with it a light, dizzy feeling of peace. Her legs and tailbone rest firmly against the ground as she sits cross-legged on the floor. Another breath, this time instead of breathing into her own body, she breathes into Rory, reaching her mind out to them. She senses their presence there across the table. Rory always does have such a presence, whether they know it or not. Large, bright, intense like a spotlight. Rory shines. The third breath is directed at the deck in her hands. She feels it slide between her fingers, her breath streams a soft pinkish light from her, and a sharp white light from Rory. “Okay, cut the deck.” She places the stack of cards out in front of them. Once Rory selects where the deck is cut, Ruth tucks the cards back into one pile and immediately pulls the top three cards.
“The Fool, The Five of Swords Reversed, The Three of Swords. Oh Rory...”
Her soft features wrinkle with a deeply thoughtful little frown. Tiny wrinkles of concentration form between her eyebrows. Her delicate fingers trace over the images gently while her eyes scan from one to the next, then flicker up to Rory, then back to the cards.
“You want to make big changes. Ones that don’t necessarily help you but they make you feel good, which is important to you right now. But, you hold yourself back. There’s a lot of worrying and criticism going on up here.” She taps a dainty finger to the center of her forehead. “It makes sense. Swords are associated with the element of air and the mind. They are logical and sharp thinkers, good tacticians, powerful and single-minded in fighting for their beliefs, but they are prone to mental prisons of their own creation, anxiety and over-analysis. They get in their own way.” A little smirk tugs cheekily at her lips. She bites back the urge to say I told you so.
She shifts up onto her knees and slides The Fool card toward Rory. “You want freedom, but don’t we all? Yes, we find ourselves in a rather binding situation. We’re cursed. We’re stuck with a bunch of other doofuses who are rude and boring. However, you want to take it farther than that. If you had it your way, you’d rather have no responsibilities to anyone but yourself. Don’t like a situation? You wish you could just prance away. There’s always something better out there, no need to stay put and deal with this. A part of you would rather trust that things will work themselves out on their own, without your effort. That optimism is a good thing to have. A healthy sense of adventure, too. You don’t want to stress, you don’t want to ruminate. You wish to have thicker skin so injuries and injustices didn’t wound you so much, so you don’t feel their sting while you smile and dance away.”
“That’s not the way things are, though, are they?” Ruth pushes the Five of Swords Reversed toward Rory. Her fingers tap gently on the card as she shakes her head. “Oh Rory, try as you might, you take your losses very personally. You’ve been betrayed before and it left a taste in your mouth that you’ve never been able to get rid of. You don’t trust people any more, not until you’ve tested their loyalty quite a bit. You challenge people, sometimes unfairly. Whether or not they are honest and forthright to you, does not matter, you still feel the need to ensure your victory, even when there is no battle. You’ve fallen into a nasty belief that people are out to hurt you, and that belief hurts you more than people ever will. It imprisons you more than our curse does. It traps your mind and hides you away from the freedom and optimism you seek.”
She pauses to stare long and hard at the next card while Rory absorbs all the harsh statements she’s laid on them in the last minute or so. This next card is a bit trickier, and will take finesse to explain the feeling she gets from it. “So, what do you need to do?” She glances up at Rory, wide brown eyes watching curiously for emotions on their beautifully painted face. She slides the Three of Swords toward Rory. “You need to get up, assess your injuries, and move on. You have everything you need, Rory. Nobody has taken away from who you are. You’ve got a perfectly good body, mind, and soul. They’re a little weary and sore, but they aren’t broken. It’s time to use those sexy legs of yours to walk away. Of course, the hard part will be identifying the knives in your back that have hurt you. You may need some help removing those. That’s the thing, Rory, you don’t need to act like you’re alone in all this. You may feel like you are, like nobody can understand what you’ve been through, but you can’t go on fighting everything by yourself and keeping your hurt to yourself. That’s a very airy thing to do, so don’t tell me you don’t, Airy Faerie.” She reaches over the table to boop their nose with a color-splotched finger. “Your troubles really aren’t as big and scary as they seem.” She pokes the card again. “It’s just thunder and lightning, it all will pass, and you’ll be free again when it does.”
