I am, as ever, a gracious host. It would be unbecoming to let the evening pass without offering some small amusement to my guests. Comment below, and I will read your fortune. Do not mistake this for generosity. I am simply allowing you the privilege of being informed.
~Sheesh I really did run s~Ome ~Of these bits intO~ the grO~und huh~
I am suspici-o-o-us that y-o-o-u can, yet intrigued that y-o-o-u might!
You will mistake hunger for loneliness, and loneliness for research, often enough that the difference will become useless. The wing you lost will not return, but the hand that reaches for it will teach you what flight was only ever imitating. One day your weapon training will stop being exercise, and you will learn whether tenderness can survive the first honest cut. It can, provided you stop apologizing for being soft before the blow lands.
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Your fortune is not about a man, though one appears in it. It is about roads. Trails. Tree lines. Shorelines. The private alleys between one life and the next, where a girl may briefly stop performing her own harmlessness and admit that she knows exactly where she is going. You have always been a creature of paths. Not the broad roads maintained for easy travel, but the narrow ones cut by hooves, claws, weather, and stubborn return. You trust the route because you have walked it yourself. You trust the dark because you know what your hands can find in it. This is wise. It will also get you into trouble. There are alleys ahead of you, Rorian. Some literal. Some not. In one of them, a secret will become too heavy to keep carrying alone. In another, a hand will be offered without the usual joke wrapped around it first. In a third, you will realize that being wanted is not the same thing as being cornered. Do try to remember that. You come from a little continuity already acquainted with winter, wreckage, and children who learn to make warmth out of each other. Casper knows this. Persep knew something adjacent to it, though in the irritating manner of someone arriving already finished. You are not finished. That is your advantage. The old sailor is only one lantern in this reading. A bright one, perhaps. Salt-stained. Dangerous. Ridiculous in the way all relics become ridiculous when they discover they still possess a heart. But your fate does not belong to him. It belongs to the girl who keeps returning from the woods with dirt on her boots and affection stuck in her teeth like a berry seed. Still, I would be remiss not to mention the relic. Not the one at sea. The other one. The one left beneath pawn-shop lights, abandoned among dead watches, dulled rings, and other objects whose former owners decided memory was worth less than breathing room. A charming little act of disposal, really. To place the past in a glass case and pretend the clerk’s ticket is the same as an ending. Unfortunately, certain relics do not remain where they are sold. Some are reclaimed. Some are stolen back. Some simply wait for the right hand to reach through the display and remember what was meant to be forgotten. There is a trail ahead of you that will look like a kindness. It will begin gently. Familiar trees. Soft dirt. A view worth climbing for. You may even laugh at how simple it seems, after everything else. But the switchback is treacherous, the stones are loose, and the safest-looking ledge is exactly where the snow has hollowed itself out beneath your feet. Do not trust a path merely because it resembles one you have survived before. Your fortune is this: You will be loved more plainly than you expect, and this will frighten you more than danger ever has. You will survive it. But not everything beside you will. The captain is old, Rorian. Older than a body is meant to be. Older than the empire that made him. Older than some sins can remain useful. He may speak as though the sea owes him one more voyage, but age is a quiet mutineer, and it has been waiting below deck with its hand already on the knife. One night, after warmth, after sleep, after the foolish little mercy of believing the storm has passed because the room is quiet, something old will move toward you through the dark. A ship that already crashed. A body that already bled. A name that survived the wrong timeline. A death patient enough to wait until you had finally found somewhere comfortable to rest. And when it comes, Rorian, it will not knock. It will only open the door.
Wh-o-o-a!! Y-o-o-u have such a way with w-o-o-rds. I'll keep them in my mind and heart. :)
Is that to say you are sharing with Casper and Persep?
Persep is -o-o-f n-o-o- c-o-o-nsequence t-o-o- me -o-o-r my life, and he sh-o-o-uld take care t-o-o- c-o-o-ntinue staying -o-o-ut -o-o-f it. Spit -o-o-n his name.
I would never spit upon a guest.
He d-o-o-es l-o-o-ve a g-o-o--o-o-d puppet.