Water and Wind

Chapter 31

Nimue (30 minutes prior)

The first step is her all-doing, but she strides with a purpose from there. She walks even faster than the guards that accompany her, who are no doubt wondering why someone is so eager to meet their doom. It's not that she wants to die, it's that she knows she has something to do, and she knows that this is her time to do it. It's all because of that fortune-teller. That one stupid fortune-teller. And now she's here.

Nimue (3 years earlier)

The smoke is stinging her eyes and making them water. Everything is hazy, and quite honestly, the amount of incense and perfume is throttling her slowly but surely. She hears quiet chanting and she stifles a gasp as the scent intensifies and the fog swirls. She's getting dizzy, and she sticks her head between her knees just briefly enough to gulp a few breaths and make sure that the woman across from her hasn't seen her. But she's fairly sure that with all the haze, she couldn't see her if she tried.

And out of the clouds of mist, she hears a striking sound, and a flare, and then a tiny reddish light appears throughout her swimming eyes, floating, it seems in the near distance. It's being cupped in a jar, the candle floating on the surface of the water inside the glass, slowly, slowly, approaching her.

The voice comes next, gravelly and low, yet somewhat soothing - or else it was the heat of the room making her sleepy.

"Listen to me child."

Before her drooping eyelids, she can make out a face that is slowly looming towards her. One wave of a suddenly appearing bangled hand and the fog retreats, swirling just around the perimeter of the small table so that she can see the woman in front of her now despite her strong urge to close her eyes and give in to sleep.

The perfume clears up a little, and she's a little more alert, seeing those black eyes loom in front of her. The rest of the face is shrouded in a veil of deep purple tulle with gold trimmings. The body is clothed in the same material, draped so that it flows softly and settles around the woman's feet. Nimue sees sparkling bead necklaces and many colored bangles, coupled with much henna inscribed on the lady's skin. When she went searching for a teller, this was not at all what she had expected. But Delphine had said that this woman, the one in front of her, was the closest thing she'd get to a real deal outside of their little forest family group, and Delphine was old and wise, so Nimue was inclined to trust her. She'd stay and see what came out of this.

The woman advances closer and closer, but Nimue, in her sleepy haze, sits there and waits. The purple and gold figure stops a few inches from her face, and bends down to her height.

"Tell me what you see little one." The figure breathes, and the floating candle is extended to Nimue, who obediently bends forward, her honey brown hair falling around her face and dipping itself into the water ever so slightly. "Look into the flame, honey. Just the flame. Not the water. What do you see?"

She sees herself. She sees Nimue, with the golden brown locks and the crystal blue eyes. She sees her defiant stare, her calming smile, the way her eyebrows twist together when she's in bewilderment. But then the flame ripples, and the image distorts, flicking and changing.

"It's peeling back the layers of your soul, child." The teller whispers, and Nimue watches dimly as various versions of her appear before her eyes. The flame settles and stops moving then, and Nimue stares into what the teller says is the purest version of herself. She feels a large lump in her throat as she stares into the water. That's not her.

It's as if the teller can read her mind. "Sometimes the deepest parts of you are the ones you don't even know exist." She whispers, and Nimue's fingers unwillingly clench the edges of the table.

"Touch your fingers to the water. But lightly. Keep it on the surface, and then pull them back." The haunting voice orders. Nimue does so, and the water stays motionless. She frowns, but can't think of anything. Her mind is surprisingly blank as she stares at herself in the water.

"This is your future. This is your destiny." Her destiny is blank? Her destiny is water? Her mind runs awry with questions as the woman watches her. "Let it all go. Let your feelings go. Let your past go, and your future will come to you."

So that's exactly what she does. It's surprisingly soothing, as if her very emotions are floating out of her and dangling themselves in the air. She's empty, but full. Light, but heavy. She feels stuck and free at the same time, as if someone's let her into the sky, but lashed to a rope.

And then it goes, everything goes, and she spins into a void of nothingness, of quietness, doing nothing but watching the ends of her honey brown hair spin in the swirling water.

The teller murmurs and mumbles, free hand moving to light the other candles, to start up the incense again. Her voice raises, higher and higher, and the smoke swirls around the,, obscuring Nimue's vision of everything. Except the glass and its contents.

She sees herself, and her family, and chains. What is happening? Like little puppets, they march along, and she examines the scene closely. At times, much to her dismay, the teller covers the top of the glass with a darkened hand bearing many gold rings and even more bangles. "Some things are not for the present to see." She explains harshly, and Nimue attempts the impossible task of looking through the cracks between the woman's thick fingers and her many accessories. She gets nowhere with that and resigns herself to waiting until the hand lifts.

The hand lifts once again, and she watches herself enter the forest. The scenes that follow flash before her eyes, lightning quick and so fast she almost misses them. But she definitely does not miss the last image before the hand comes down again and extinguishes the flame.

The haunting picture lies in her mind, lingering just as the last wisps of smoke from the tiny candle extinguish. She feels a lump in her throat, feels the cold earth beneath her as she writhes, tastes the cold coins in her mouth as she struggles for her breath. Her last breath. Feels a hand slowly stroking the hair back from her face as she waits for it to be over, for it all to be over. Hears the whooshing as the blackness takes her away.

"And that," the deep voice says quietly. "Is your fate."

A hand waves, the smoke clears, the table vanishes. And she's alone.