Lady, You Don't Need to See

Destiny Rules

 Cordelia tapped her way into the room where she had set up the marbles and the book on Divination. "Misty?"

In response, Misty rattled the marbles. "These are so pretty. Are we playing marbles? My grandma taught me." Cordelia almost wanted to laugh at her. She couldn't suppress her smile. The marbles distinctly clicked on the table as Misty put them down one by one. "I love all of the colors. They're like Easter eggs, but more fun."

In spite of herself, Cordelia snorted. "We're not playing marbles." She placed a hand on the table and took the jar away from Misty. "We're practicing Divination." Feeling around, she swept a bunch of the marbles back into the jar. Misty made a guttural sound in the back of her throat. "What?"

"I just spent the last half an hour sorting those by color." She hopped up from her seat at the table. Her footfalls were so quiet, Cordelia almost couldn't track her as she moved around the room. "We should close the windows. It's gonna storm."

Sweeping the floor with her cane, Cordelia followed her to the window. The sunlight washed through it and bathed her face in warmth, and the mellow summer breeze wafted through the room. "Is it cloudy?" she asked. She smelled the breeze, but no humidity clung to it—it carried no sweet scent or taste.

"Nah. It's gonna come out of nowhere."

"How do you know?"

"The trees sway differently when the weather's coming."

Cordelia didn't understand, but she didn't question, either. Misty seemed to know things about nature in an intimate way, the way a person only ever got to know a partner or a twin. Cordelia respected that. She took the window by its base and closed it. "Alright." Misty followed her in front of the table, facing the window. "Do you know anything about Divination?"

Misty shrugged. "That kooky lady from Harry Potter did it with tea leaves and stuff. But she was bogus. Except for the—You know what, let's just not talk about that." She cleared her throat and straightened up.

Resisting the urge to laugh, Cordelia nodded in agreement. "Right. But this isn't bogus. Some people are able to Divine information from other, unrelated means. Like a puzzle." She rattled the jar of marbles. It made a satisfying sound. "The marbles are the most common method, but you can use whatever works for you. However you can get the information you need to complete the task—it's the information that matters, not the method."

Nodding in agreement, Misty's eyes followed the jar in Cordelia's hand. She liked the way the marbles sounded, rattling around in there like a baby toy. "So what kind of information am I supposed to get?" She had spilled the marbles earlier. They hadn't whispered any secrets to her, so she busied herself sorting them by color, which occupied her until Cordelia arrived. I don't think I can do this one. Maybe she was off the hook. If she couldn't do this, then she wasn't the Supreme. Maybe I could pretend.

As she thought, Cordelia reached to touch her arm, and Misty knew that was a fruitless adventure. She had to be honest. Lying had never been her strong suit anyway. She offered her elbow to Cordelia. "There are artifacts belonging to former Supremes hidden around the house. Your job is to find them—all five of them."

This wasn't dangerous. But it still felt insurmountable. Five artifacts? From a bunch of marbles? Misty squinted skeptically at the jar of tiny colored balls. It seemed impossible. She had never heard secrets from inanimate objects before. Nature, of course, nature was different. The earthworms had knowledge unfathomable to the human mind, but Misty had learned it by sinking into the earth alongside them. Some parts of her former body lingered in the soil beneath dandelions. She took something from Mother Earth, the womb which had borne her into her second life, that she could get from nothing else. "I don't think this is something I can do," she admitted to Cordelia. "I just spilled those things earlier and didn't do anything but color code them. Pretty sure that's not the task."