A Daemon's Babble

Waterways

I met fate in a café in Venice.

It was a quaint little café, with the aroma of pastries wafting through the air and with wisps of smoke from a cup of hot tea or coffee floating aimlessly. It had yellow walls and a black ceiling, and there was a charming woman who ran the place in her mid-twenties with an eternal smile.

It wasn’t a normal café, though. It had an eerie atmosphere.

The charming woman who ran the café was missing an eye, and had what looked like a large marble in its place. Creatures with four-knuckled fingers played poker in the back of the café, yelling things like, “That’s two years away from you!” and “I’m going to live forever!” A woman with blond hair like Rapunzel and icy blue eyes dined on a bowl of nothing but strawberries, and in the booth by the window a teenager spilled water all over the table and trailed designs in it. A boy with hair completely obscuring his eyes and a smile that would put the Cheshire cat to shame twirled a penknife between his fingers as he waited for his latte to be ready.

And in the corner of the room was a girl, perhaps twelve years of age, constantly shuffling a deck of cards.

I had heard about the café in whispers, snatches of conversation exchanged between the boat keepers as they whispered of a being there with a deck of cards who can see your future and spin it around some too. They called the being Fate itself and warned people away from it. But no, not me, I didn’t want to pass up this opportunity because I hear the café changes places like the phases of the moon so I took all my money. And I got lost. Because that’s how you find the place, you see, you get lost, or so they say. And I found it. I walked through the door and a blast of cold air hit me, almost toppling me backwards.

I knew Fate when I saw her. I don’t know why or how; maybe it was because I came here looking for her, but I saw Fate.

I marched right up to her and she raised her eyebrows at me, blowing a wisp of blond hair out of her face. “Hello,” she said in a rich Italian accent.

“Hello,” I responded. “I hear you’re Fate.” I got straight to the point. I caught a small smile from the girl and the gestured to the chair across from her.

“I suppose you want me to change your fate?” she asked me softly.

“No. I just want to see it,” I said firmly.

She blinked, almost looking surprised before her hands finally stilled from shuffling the cards. She then plucked three from the center of the pack and laid them down face up. Then she picked one from the top, one from the bottom, and then another from the middle. She laid those on top of the other ones and peered over them, her hands returning to obsessively shuffling her cards. Fate glanced back up at me and I nodded. “I have money, if you want it,” I told her quickly.

Her laugh rang out through the café, sharp and mocking, almost drowned out by one of the poker-playing creatures yelling obscenities at another one. “I have no use for money,” she said breezily, and I fell silent.

“You come from a family of four. The third child.” I nodded. “You work as a sales manager for a beauty company. You hate your job. You’re single and alone. You don’t get paid a lot and the owner of the company of mean to you. Your dog ran away last week,” she rattled off, her voice progressively getting darker as she listed all the things wrong with my life.

I winced. No one had put it that bluntly. “My fate. I want to know my future,” I persisted, placing my palms on the table and leaning forward. Obsidian eyes stared back at me, unfathomable and endless. I pulled away.

She glanced at the cards, then glanced back up at me. She looked amused.

“You’re not going anywhere.”

My fists clenched. “But I went to college! I behaved! I didn’t do anything bad! Why aren’t I going anywhere?” I almost yelled, leaning forward again.

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’re never getting anywhere if you just sit there,” Fate replied softly, her black eyes showing no trace of anger or malice. “You are not going anywhere. You will never get married. You will live to the age of eighty-four. You are going to die alone,” she said quietly, staring at me.

And the worst part was is that I knew she meant no malice towards me. I could tell that she was just telling me the inevitable, and maybe deep down I knew it, but no one had ever told me to my face. And it made me angry.

But she continued. “You are also getting fired next week.”

I angrily pushed away from the table, my chair scraping against the tile, and shoved all her cards back at her. They fluttered to the ground like dead butterflies and I stormed out of the café.

No one noticed. I was just another person displeased by the upcoming turn of events.

Fate sat at her table, still shuffling her remaining cards. She frowned, her jaw tightening. Fate didn’t exactly feel emotions how others did. She just felt… displeasure. It wasn’t her fault people’s lives went nowhere. It wasn’t her fault that people couldn’t handle the truth. It was their fault if they got angry.

But to be so dramatic, like her last customer.

She didn’t like people like that.

She turned over her deck, face up, and rummaged through them to find a specific card. She picked it up and pressed her lips to it.

She didn’t like people like that.

I stormed down the street, my fists clenched by my sides. Fate was cruel. It was a common saying, but to say it, to let me know I wasn’t going anywhere or doing anything…

I was so lost in my thoughts, staring up at the stormy gray clouds, a sure sign that it was about to rain, that I didn’t noticed where I was walking. A black cat darted across my path and I tripped over it with a yell, and I felt myself falling through air, into one of Venice’s famous waterways. My neck hit the edge of the stone as I tumbled into the water.

My body floated downstream as the first droplets of rain began to hit the water.

But spirits don’t tend to slumber gently when tucked in before their time. I wasn’t the first one that had fallen victim to Fate’s capricious ways and violent crimes. So I stay here by the window of the café of creatures and wait. I sit on the windowsill and I wait for another victim to walk in, wanting Fate’s advice. I try to stop them, grab them, but all they feel is a blast of cold air as they walk in the door. One shouldn’t mess with Fate.

Fate is capricious.

Fate is dangerous.

Fate is something to leave to mystery.

I met my death in a café in Venice.