#'shut up shiori nobody cares'

[hotwaterandmilk]

“We have to believe, too.”

[deathflares]

» ffxivwrite day #28 — irenic

wolgraha, 713 words, G. brief reference to shuffle.

[ao3 mirror]

She’s fourteen when grandmother teaches her the cards.

There aren’t many things that help Shiori feel at peace, which is why when she finds something that does work, she tends to cling to it with singular desperation.

She’s fourteen when grandmother teaches her the cards.

There’s something irenic about being able to peer into your own future, even should it be in the form of vague predictions and cryptic imagery. She keeps the cards close, learns to speak to them like they’re comrades and to take their advice to heart. She gets better, more accurate, as time passes. Grandmother ruffles her hair and tells her she’s proud.

When she and her brother find themselves on a ship to a foreign land, she shuffles the run-down deck in her hand like one would speak to an old friend. There’s no particular question in her mind, her hands simply following the practiced movement. One small familiar thing amidst a sea of unfamiliarity.

Then a card slips from the stack, falling to the floor like the petals would fall from the trees in spring, back home. She picks it up, and almost wants to laugh. Death, reads the text beneath a bird’s skeleton, scattered feathers clinging to its bones.

She stares at it for a long moment, then sweeps it back with the others. She closes her eyes and lets herself think of home.

Shiori draws the Knight of Wands the morning of the day she meets G’raha Tia, and somehow it doesn’t feel surprising. Enthusiastic is definitely the word to describe him, if she had to pick one other than pest.

But he grows on her against all odds, across quiet evenings and idle banter and whispered confessions of things she’d never told anyone but found herself at so much ease telling him of all people.

It scares her, feeling this vulnerable.

So she goes to her deck like a schoolgirl would go to her friends for advice about a crush, shuffles it thoroughly and thinks of him as she pulls three cards out of the stack.

There’s only a sinking feeling low in her stomach as she stares at the Hanged Man, the Five of Cups, and the Three of Swords. She picks up the cards and gathers them back into a pile, the little velvet bag she carries her deck in sitting undisturbed on a corner of her tent for weeks after.

Her friends tell her of sacrifice, heartbreak and grief. For the first time in her life, she finds herself wishing they’re wrong.

Giving a reading to the Exarch is definitely on top of Shiori’s list of most entertaining things she does while on the First, if only for the way the man gets so flustered, something she hadn’t seen before slipping through the cracks of his carefully crafted mask.

And, well. If she takes some pleasure in essentially telling him the cards say you’re a liar, my lord, that’s only for her to know.

But things stop being quite so amusing when he draws the Two of Cups and her chest tightens as she thinks of this person who must be so special to him. It could be Lyna, maybe, she tells herself—the Two of Cups doesn’t always mean romance—and then immediately feels like a fool for even caring. She doesn’t even know who he is.

Yet you still feel the way you feel, comes Ardbert’s voice in her mind, making her grimace. Shut up, she thinks to nobody, and moves on to the next card.

“This fell out of your bag.”

She puts the medicine she’d been preparing back down with a low thud. “How many times do I have to tell you to rest, G’raha Tia.”

“Oh, not calling me Raha,” he says with mock hurt, cheeky little brat, reaching from behind to wrap her into a loose one armed hug. “I’ve really done it this time, then.”

He places something down on the table. A cup in black and white against a colourful background, a pattern remindful of stained glass. A friend.

“Ace of Cups,” G’raha reads, intrigued. “And what might this one mean?”

Her hands come over his, lips splitting into a smile as she picks the card up.

“Good things,” she answers simply.