Leaneé kicked her heels on the edge of the wall, watching the city rumble below her. Night was already falling over the City of Katrough, taking with it the warm red of the day sky and replacing it with the gentle purple hue of the night sky. Against the city lights below, Leaneé couldn’t see the stars that she knew where up there. She wondered what they would have told her tonight, if she had brought her cards. But they were stashed back in her room downstairs, waiting for tomorrow’s classes.
For tonight, she’d have to let the future be unknown.
Still, her hands itched for the cards. Once you had glimpses into the future you could see splinters of what could happen. Of the possibilities that could come about. And even if not all of them came about, just having the flashes inside her mind was enough to give her some guidance or direction. The cards would give her clues about the bad things that could happen or the things she should avoid. They gave her a guide to her future.
But they didn’t tell her the truth. They didn’t keep her wishes. They didn’t let her change what she wanted and the cards certainly didn’t allow her to create her wishes.
Which is why she came up here, at the end of every week of reading the future. To sit and watch the chaos of the world below. The unpredictable chaos that no cards could tell her. The many lives that would be affected by tomorrow’s prophecies and readings.
They, down there, had hopes and wishes and dreams. They wished of places, of people, of lives that were not their own. And so they wished with a feverant belief that Leaneé wished she could have again.
But the future, once seen, told you that wishes could not be made. They didn’t necessarily come true, no matter how hard you believed it.
Leaneé’s hand reached for her necklace pendant, rubbing the amethyst between her fingers. It hummed at her, whispering of a time when the people who owned her power would be gone, when she would be free.
She dropped her fingers. It was a wish. And wishes were futile.
Only the cards told the truth.
This flashfiction was first posted in 2019
Featured Image by Alice Hampson on Unsplash
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