Send me “Skeptical?” + a subject for my muse to give their opinions about it.
“What are omens if not our attempts to interpret parts of the world we do not yet understand?
“Take dreaming, for instance. What are dreams if not the collections of our worries, hopes, and feelings, all knotted together in deep subconscious? Seeing great fortune can propel someone to make the necessary changes in their life and bring their vision to fruition. Seeing the death of a loved one may come from a collection of subtle signs of disease or illness that in our waking life we could not recognize, and could only be revealed in dream. Interpreting these can guide us down the right path, or unveil a future that only the deepest parts of our minds were ready to acknowledge.
“Consider also the belief that stillborn livestock foretell a poor harvest season. Animals are in tune with the world in ways we are not. A great amount of still births indicate sickly animals, or malnutritioned animals, or animals otherwise affected by the sway of the earth in a way humans can’t perceive. It only makes sense that this loss of life will be pervasive through both beast and plant. Were we to ignore this omen we might not prepare properly, and the entire village would suffer as a result.”