Most did not treat the Seer with any great seriousness. They were thrill seekers for the most part, people looking to add a little exotic flavor to their undercity adventures. She was a curiosity, an anecdote to be shared with their fellows on return to the surface. She gave them their readings all the same. Food might grow on trees, but money didn’t, and the upsiders almost always paid, even if they refused to listen to what the cards had to say.
Everyone else who came to see her did so with a broad mixture of motivations, united only in the belief that her cards could in fact tell their future. She had come to recognize a few types, able to tell them apart at a mere glance.
The desperate were her least favorite. They came to her seeking not guidance but reassurance, something solid to hold onto in the turbulent sea of life. A family member dying, a job lost, an injury sustained, tragedies big and small someone wanted to know would work out okay in the end. The Seer hated and pitied them in equal measure, knowing that she could offer neither the certainty they craved nor the understanding they needed. She could only tell them what awaited and hope they found their own stumbling way forward. It was rare that she saw any of them again.
She much preferred the skeptics in this regard. They at least managed to maintain some degree of grace, even as they sought to expose her as a fraud. It amused her greatly, watching them set up their machines and ask their questions only to be utterly baffled when they could detect no falsehood. So far as their science was concerned, she was legit. A genuine, bona fied soothsayer. A few of them came back, trying again to no greater success, but most just quietly packed up and left. She liked to think some of them had found what they didn’t even know they’d been looking for.
They were better than the calculators at least. The people who got it in their heads that the future was some grand puzzle, one that could be solved with the right shuffling of the pieces. This kind she would see over and over again as they tried to negotiate with the cards, arguing every point and detail, questioning her every reading down to the exact word choice. They always left in a huff when they inevitably failed to get something for nothing. What they wanted she could not give them, and what they needed was the last thing they wanted. Not unlike the upsiders really. She could only hope life would serve as a better teacher.
The last kind was her absolute favorite. Rare in the extreme, so few that she could count on one hand the number she had encountered. She often mistook them for one of the other kinds at first, never able to tell until that last, pivotal moment.
Their readings would begin as normal, her shuffling the deck, them selecting whichever cards called. Selections made she would place them on the table and begin, flipping each card in turn to reveal the signs and portents inscribed on their metal surfaces. How they reacted was always different, offering her no clues that she was in the presence of another of their kind.
It was only when they asked her to stop that she would realize.
As few times as it had happened, it always caught her off guard, especially the first time. It had been a young man on the cusp of the rest of his life, seeking some insight into what awaited him. The cards had much to say in that respect, telling of a life filled with adventure, tragedy, triumph, and defeat. He had been a pleasant and attentive subject, listening to her every word as she had read him a life in glimpses. She had been mildly disappointed as they came to the last card, realizing their brief time together was nearly done. That feeling had turned to surprise when he reached forward to stop her flipping the final card.
“Sorry,” he had said. “But can you just not read the end?”
Confusion beyond measure. She was more than able of course but didn’t understand why he didn’t want to know the rest.
“Where’s the fun in that? What’s the point of living it, if I already know where it’s going?”
Of all the readings the Seer had done in her long, long life, that was one of the few that stuck with her. She still thought about it to this day, about the life that man went on to live and die. Thought and wondered, having also chosen not to look at the ending. Because he was right about one thing.
Sometimes not knowing was the best part.
END
Bleeding Quill 