taxonomites | [Text] / [Location: a cafe in Speares]

Azkadellia was barely able to ask for comfort from Glitch and Cain, she certainly wouldn't put that burden on another as she worked so hard to hold herself together, to be the royalty she was born and bred to be.

Dabbing her eyes once more, she lifted her chain and sat straighter in the chair as she finally looked back to him. Despite the redness rimming her eyes, there were no tears. "I apologize for that. Having actual access to my emotions is still new and I have moments..."

She let that trail off, eyes narrowing slightly. Not upset but considering, doing her best to think back to those times. "I suspect you might well be correct," she admitted, voice a bit steadier. "You do have to remember, they're times seem through the eyes of a child." And one much more innocent to motives than Azkadellia was now.

She put out her hand to stay him. "No. Please do one? I'm not sure what you might need from me but please."

Jason wordlessly inclined his head at what she said, both the statement that emotions were new and her words regarding her sister and her sister's likely motivations.

"...as you like," he said, and gave the cards another shuffle.

"Do you know anything of the various layout used? Do you have anything like this in your world?

"And this reading is free."

Settling her hands in her lap, the napkin clutched in her hands, twisted around her fingers but the tears seemed to be at bay.

"Not that I recall, though I know the Mystic Man and the like used various means, though most involved using secondary substances to open the sight." Especially after the witch had her hand in it.

"I'll trust your decisions in this, but if you won't accept credits, then trade for something hatched. I couldn't expect you to do this for me without compensation."

"Then we will do a simple three-card spread," Jason said with a slight shrug.

He set the deck down, then drew three cards from it and laid them out along the table, orderly, more neatly than Merlin would have done it. With less theatricality also, he thought to himself.

He paused before turning the first over, though, looking down at the backs of the cards but not yet reaching for them.

"There is something you might do for me. But it is of a much greater magnitude... and risk... than the reading of cards, and thus, an unfair payment."

Azkadellia nodded once at that, certain it would give as much detail as anything as she had no expectations from the reading.

She watched each movement, curious as to what it would say though her gaze darted from the cards to Jason's face; settling on the latter as he spoke.

"Isn't that for me to decide? There are ways to negotiate a fairer trade, if you're concerned for that but I'm more than willing to listen and consider."

Jason flicked a glance up from the cards to Azkadellia's face at that. He half-smiled at the slightly cheeky but not entirely untrue Isn't that for me to decide?

He turned the first card. A woman bound and blindfolded, surrounded by eight blades. Well, that was cheerful.

"We may discuss it after the reading, perhaps."

She noticed he didn't answer. Not at first. Not that she could blame him. How could he decide on a spur of a moment if it was that important to him?

The card came up and she made a face, glancing up from the card to him. "Does that remotely mean exactly what it looks like," she asked, tensing in a way she hadn't been before. That was her for most of her life, blinded and bound by another.

"And what do you think it looks like?" Jason answered, giving her a question for a question in the finest tradition of charlatans and true magicians everywhere.

He offered her the faintest of smiles as he looked enquiringly at her.

"A woman bound and blinded. It's where I was for years, a person trapped within myself," she said, speaking of it frankly as if it was nothing but how life went. She was still haunted by it but she was trying hard not to think about it, about all she'd seen and experienced.

"The cards have many symbols, and layers of symbols. Sometimes the imagery is fairly blatant, as seen here."

Jason traces a finger over the eight swords and the figure of the imprisoned woman.

"I will reveal the others first, before commenting. The cards are often linked; one cannot truly perceive the meaning of a sentence without all the words."

The next card was the two of cups, reversed, and the final card was the Queen of Wands, also reversed.

Jason grunted to himself. He propped his chin on his hands and regarded the trio, eyes darting from symbol to symbol as he considered the story they were telling.

She made a face at that, looking younger than her years though she didn't realize the gesture caused that. "Though the swords..." She shook her head, thinking of all the possible meanings as he went on.

"That makes sense," she said with a nod. That each could not be individual made sense, at least so much as she understood the cards.

She looked over them both before looking up at Jason. She studied him as he did the cards. His eyes and any expressions he might make. She didn't urge or push though, just watching.

He was silent for a good ten seconds, no particular expression on his face save concentration.

"Swords cut both ways," he said finally, which might have been a response to her actual words regarding the eight.

Another few beats of silence before he shifted, fingers drifting down to touch the eight, straighten it slightly. "As you've confirmed, the eight of swords indicate a person trapped. From what you have said before I don't think I need to belabor the idea of your being trapped with this possession you experienced.

"But the cards speak on several levels. Imprisonment by others is merely the most blatant.

"The blindfold indicates that you should question your perception of past events. Its presence in a reading is often a sign that the querent has refused to acknowledge a truth about her life, or perhaps about someone close to her.

"You commented on the swords. Clearly dangerous, and a prison; but if the blindfold were removed the maiden could easily use the sharp blades to safely cut her bindings. But as she operates from a position of blindness, thus she is trapped and cannot move past the perceptions that hold her static-- mired in the water at her feet, boggish and stagnant. Emotions, kept from evolving or maturing, and locked instead into what they have always been."

Those words were sharp in Akadellia's mind. Not in his tones but the reality slap that came from them. It was not only a truth that related so much to her life but to what was to come as well. Yet it wasn't those words that left her cold, feeling brittle and dry within.

She could imagine exactly what was being said and, for a moment, she wondered if they were universal truths. Was she truly wondering if those cards could read the woman she was, the fears that hid beneath the surface.

"There is the option that the querent is not hiding from the truth as keeping it locked away, not only for themselves but others," she said softly, staring down at the cards and not looking up at him. She was assuming this was about her fear of her magic, that wish not to use it. Such as when she'd run from Ashley instead of hurting her, and had ended up bleeding and huddled in a corner.

Jason's gaze on Azkadellia was rather merciless, although she wasn't looking at him to see it.

"There is no such option. Such is only an excuse for refusing to see truths that the querent finds uncomfortable. Do you think you are the only person here with the potential to harm others?"

"No." She wouldn't argue that or pretend she didn't know. "Remus locked himself away for much the same thing, fearing the aliens would unleash him on the population," she pointed out. "Several here are vampires, though I don't know what their control is."

She drew a deep breath. "Knowing that there are others and accepting what I did, the dangerous of what is within me and wondering why the witch chose me over two there that day..." Yes, DG had run but the moment their hands had separated, she could have had her choice of them.

Jason busied himself with his coffee cup, stirring the brown liquid again as he watched Azkadellia talk out a truth to herself as much as to him.

His gaze sharpened a bit when she alluded to her sister, however roundaboutly.

It struck a chord-- his eyes darted back down to the card. Yes. Yes, there were unfaced truths there, intentional blindness.

"Your sister, you mean," he said, and sipped his drink.

Azkadellia’s hands curved around the mug, fingers lightly brushing over one side. She wasn’t exactly cold, but the talk of that time, of being bond, left her feeling a desperate need to stay connected to this world. She just needed that slight reminder that she was here, whole and fully in her own body.

She glanced up at that question, staring at him for a long moment before giving a nod. “Yes, I mean DG. I am not the only one gifted with magic in my family, after all.” A small pause before forging on. "Why? Do the cards say something about her?"

"I said that the blindfold may be a sign the querent is refusing to accept a truth about someone close to her as much as her own self," Jason answered.

He reached out to touch the card again, the standing water that the maiden was stuck in.

"Emotions stuck in the same place. Never growing, never evolving; clinging to a viewpoint of matters that springs from a child's understanding of the world."

She had assumed it had meant the witch and her own abilities. Hoping deep down that it meant they weren't that much alike, no matter why the witch had chosen her. To face that it might be DG made her blanch, leaning back slightly in her chair as her hands slid away from her mug.

"A child's understanding is all I have of my sister," she pointed out, chin lifting as her voice darkened slightly. "She was killed by the witch when I was in my early annuals as a young woman and now I will never know her as a grown woman. I have no option but to see her through those eyes.

"You have the option to look at your relationship and the things that occurred within it through the eyes of an adult," Jason countered implacably.

"That you were both children does not necessitate you continue to think of her as such."

She shifted, prepared to speak, pausing though as if rethinking her words. "An adult's eyes, those of an older sibling, sees a frightened child who did what most scared children would do."

Not what Azkadellia had done, nor would have been likely to do but had she ever truly felt herself a child?

"I either think of her as a child or a stranger. I've never known the woman she became, nor will I as things are going." Her voice cracked but she fought to keep her chin up and her eyes clear. "Not by anything more than Glitch and Cain's memories."

Jason gave a small, fractional nod when she reconsidered her words. What she wound up saying was something closer to honesty, at the least.

"Then take what you can from those memories. Try and see her for her flaws as well as her virtues: the whole person, not the eidolon constructed by affection. It is just as much a disservice to see someone as a saint as it is to demonize them."

Azkadellia opened her mouth, glancing away before she could let herself speak. She closed her mouth with a slight snap. Yet those emotions refused to stay buried, not any more than they had to.

“What good does that do now,” she asked, not attacking Jason but verbally expressing what she was feeling. “She’s gone. Sent back to the O.Z.. There is the assumption that I will not see her again unless somehow I return. What good does it do to find blame in her actions when all I have right now is my love for her, the few bright moments that Glitch remembers himself and those times I intrude on Cain and his life?”

She hadn’t meant to put this to Jason, to make him deal with her outburst and the moment the words were out of her mouth, she looked stricken and shocked.

“I… I’m sorry. You certainly did ask to deal with my pain when I invaded on your time here. You’re kind not to just walk away.” Which he might still do, and she accepted that. It was the same concern that had her remove her things from Cain’s the day after Paul returned, and why she was careful about intruding on Remus or others. Many had their lives here. Hers was part of still hiding from herself.

“I would do better making a life for myself than to try and keep hold in my heart of an Outer Zone I had a hand in destroying.” The Zone she remembered was gone. It was much more the one that Glitch and Cain remembered, no matter what had happened after DG had stopped the witch.

Jason is unfazed by the emotion in Azkadellia's voice. He leans back in his chair, strong fingers toying with the edges of the remaining deck.

"It does you the good of permitting you to proceed along the path that awaits you," he says with an almost-imperceptible shrug of his shoulders. "If you believe it is wiser to stand stationary for fear of what the path may hold-- emotionally or otherwise-- obviously that is your own affair.

"The life that you would make is rooted in your Outer Zone, whether you make it here, there, or on any of the thousand worlds that exist. Starting over never happens in a vacuum."

Her apologies, and statement that he is kind, make Etrigan giggle softly in his mind and tempt his mouth to a cynical curl. He is many things, but kind is not among them. He manages to keep his face impassive with an effort of will.

"Did you wish me to continue the reading, or is the eight of swords too divisive?"

His words struck deep, feeling like an axe swung between her shoulderblades. Fear had never held her back, though now she wondered if that was because of herself, or simply following along in her sister’s wake, not risking losing DG for her own fears.

“It is wishful thinking that this place holds a path for anyone, nonetheless everyone,” she pointed out, admitting more of her own concerns than she had meant to. It was one thing having an emotional break down as it were. Another to make revelations that should truly be kept to one’s self.

“My life in the O.Z. is over. Should I return, I can most hope that mother and DG have put it right as it should have been. I’m not there though and that life is another place and time. As for here… I will do what I promised to Glitch and beyond that there is no path or life that I can imagine.” She shrugged, pulling herself together with careful sips of her coffee and deep breaths. She might be an emotional basketcase anymore but she was well versed in courtly behavior to keep it from controlling her as often as it was.

“Please, go on,” she said, nodding at the cards. Whatever was being revealed would need to come out, but she could work well to not let her emotions be part of that. It would do no good for herself, and would certainly only become a burden on those she counted as friends here.

[Location]

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lecture moar, jason, sheesh

Awww. It's sweet.

lol that is one word for it

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