A Return
Startled I scatter the cards all over the desk. A few slide over the edge and fall before the feet of my muse who musters me with raised eyebrows.
"You! Were have you been?"
"Around," was the laconic answer. Anger replaces some of my surprise and - hey, I admit it - relief. I stab a finger in his direction.
"I needed you, and you weren't here. The challenge fic went all wrong and your story we better mention not at all."
He shakes his head. "I was around. You were just too absorbed by your Real Life worries to perceive me." Infuriatingly calm. "You had to loosen up first. Though I didn't expect that you would develop an interest in that." Slight disdain creeps in at the last word.
"Divination should be a familiar subject to you," I conter, "at least in your Anvar shift."
"But divination doesn't work in your realitys. Besides, no one uses cards in Anvar's world."
"Oh, it works." I smirk confidently. "As author's tool to determine a character's fate - your fate - it works very well."
He stiffens. "I tell you my story."
"Of course. But these," I gather the cards, "show me situations, events in the past and future, conflicts I can throw your way. Very useful, don't you think so."
I restart my aborted reading, consulting occasionally the booklet.
"Maybe," he says suddenly and throws three cards over the spread. Those that had fallen to the ground. One of them is The Magician. Fitting. "But this deck doesn't feel right for me."
I raise a brow. He glowers back. Finally I return to my cards. He turns on my pc muttering about ancient and slooow technology. I'm halfway through my reading when he taps me on my shoulder.
"What?" I muster the pictures. I can see the attraction but... "This isn't really my style."
"But it's mine." He is in full Anvar shift now. "And if cards have a say in my life then only these."
I can hear the 'Or else' in his worlds and I'm not ready to let him go so... "Okay, if you insists."
"I do."
He has to have the last word. As usual. I should be used to it by now.