Cirque Du Noir [Myk]

[Maeve (DELETED 8382)]

It had been a foul day to start when the company's back tires both caught them flat placing them behind schedule to meeting up with their fellow performers who had started traveling a full day before O'Reily and his team. With only one spare tire, they were stuck; two women, three men caught at the edge of unknown town. The three who had occupied the front of the vehicle were missing, having left their vehicle to scout out lodgings and a mechanic.

One man with long brown hair tied back behind him, a light tan and unseasonably dark clothes was seated in the opened back of the truck where the words O'Reily's Traveling Circus were printed in bold red and gold lettering on the sides. The unusual vehicle stored props, and other valuable such as antiques, equipment and gasoline. Two headed anomalies were preserved in jars that were kept close to the back, precariously cushioned by scant amounts of packing peanuts and outdated newsprint that a small female had been sitting with to keep them from rattling when they were all still in motion.

The man turned to her, "You alive back there? Looks like we'll be here for a while," He tried to make conversation though he sounded displeased to announce the last part. The young woman smiled weakly at her friend. His hazel gaze was locked in her dark hues awaiting an answer. Hannah dodged his look, her nerves rattling like her bones as she tucked a silver lock of hair behind her ears while they waited. "Yes." she spoke gently like a softly moving breeze and chewed on her lip nervously.

Chase took the image in and then gave a large grin, "Eh, cheer up! It's just us, this truck of creepy **** and," his gaze turned towards the city buildings that lay just before them, "the beautiful scenery."

Hannah smiled just a little and nodded her head, "I'm just tired." She admitted, earning a sigh from her partner while he shrugged one shoulder. "Then take a nap, it'll be dark before everyone gets back." She didn't need to be told twice, soon Hannah would have had fallen asleep amidst the collection of two, sometimes three headed oddities to catch up a missed night's rest.

But if she had dreamed she couldn't remember and O'Reily was standing in front of them at the back when the driver's side door to the truck slammed shut. She startled awake first and her eyes landed on their ring leader. O'Reily was the tallest though he wasn't the strongest, that award went to Rick who could rock the entire truck by just getting inside. Her jaw tensed as she looked the stern countenance over and then chanced a look at Chase who was still out cold, asleep.

"I've had caged cats who could watch cargo better than you two." O'Reily sneered and then left towards the front. Hannah grimaced and crawled around a taxidermied Badger with three arms towards Chase with her thin and frail looking arm extending forward to grab hold of his hair which she pulled; a gesture that caused the young man to swing at her following a loud "Y'ow!" Hannah ducked the hit and smiled sheepishly.

"You fell asleep," she said so innocently before rising to stand in the vehicle, revealing her unimpressive height of five foot five. She was dwarfed though by the others, even the other female who was an amazon at 6'3. They had lost a few members since the start of their road trip. They used to have a little person and a snake lady riding with them in the same vehicle across the continent, both left the company without a word leaving everyone to pick up their slack while opening two slots for new performers to fill.

Chase was in the process of waking up, his arms stretching towards the sky when Rick came around the back, "All right, everyone out. We're going to take some of equipment into town and start earning money with street performances." He paused and then really quietly grumbled, "We can't afford the repair."

Hannah furrowed her brows, tire repairs weren't terribly expensive in themselves, replacing them wasn't either. "We should have at least $500 from our last show, I counted it!" Hannah said, the loudest she had ever been causing Chase to stir and look at her weird. "Calm down Hannah, it'll be fine." He said, instinctively as though he'd said it a hundred or even a thousand times before. Hannah gave Rick a long, confused look. The surly gentleman shook his head and reached past her for six, heavy boxes stacked on top of each other and lifted them up with incredible ease and out of the back, unstacking them so the company had easy access to their weapons of choice.

Chase lazily glanced at the boxes with a roll of his head and with a sudden, deep inhale he pushed himself back to life and crawled out of the truck. He gestured Hannah to follow who still looked puzzled and by this point, troubled. This was the fifth time since she'd joined the company that their profits had mysteriously vanished. She knew better than to question O'Reily and so with defeat creeping silently into her gaze she crawled out of the trucks back, shoulders slumped and frowning deeply while dangling her feet of the edge and sliding off. Her head sank to the boxes before eyeing a trunk that looked truly heavier than it actually was, made of unfinished wood painted black and violet. She picked it up along with a table cloth and sighed quietly. Tonight, she'd wear the mask of a diviner.

Hannah felt a sturdy hand fall on her delicate shoulder as she looked up at Chase who was wearing that trademark goofy grin of his, "It'll all work out, it always does." He reassured her, again. Hannah wasn't so certain herself though as she watched him pick up a box containing lighter fluid, homebrew poi sticks that could be set on fire, torches and similar equipment that the average pyromaniac should never go without.

It would take them a full day to scatter across the streets of Harper rock where they could set up tents and props as needed in the traffic heavy spaces of the street. It was in the once unoccupied now mildly crowded park that Hannah sat in the small tent that Chase had helped her set up. She liked it particularly because of its unassuming nature, the outside was a royal navy blue but the inside... the inside was pitch black silk, yet it glittered with the light of a thousand stars projected from a hidden device that made entering the tent appear more enchanting than it actually was. Outside was a sign above her establishment finished in black with silver lettering, "Madame Maeve. Fortune teller. Crystal Ball Gazing, Palm Reading, Tarot Cards. Rune Casting."

The time had passed them by having started early in the day, and she had read the sweaty palms of four men and predicted the love lives of a least seven over worried women. It went without saying that if you're seeking the council of a fortune teller, if you have to ask, then there's probably trouble in paradise. At least, that's how Hannah saw it. Tarot seemed the most popular attraction of the day next to the crystal ball; the latter made her feel like a con artist while Tarot was more honest.

While she waited for the next visitor she had been reading her own cards. A traditional three card spread revealing past, present, and future. The deck represented her past with the inverted nine of swords, a card that made Hannah’s hands twitch while holding tightly in her chest air that struggled to escape. There was a long pause before she flipped over the next card, the present, featuring the upright Tower. The current situation seemed to encompass much of what this card had to say to the girl, though she couldn’t help but feel that there was more to it. Well, whatever it meant, her hands hovered over what would be the final, upright card of death, the card most representative of change. The first two cards had presented a problem to Hannah but this, despite what many thought of death, was a card that brought the girl relief for it was rare that the card was ever an actual omen of doom.

She stilled herself and gazed upon the beautiful illustrations, contemplating the various meanings of each card and the wisdom they had to bestow upon her while she waited. But there wasn’t a next visitor and it had been a few hours now. Outside, Chase was wowing a group of people with a combination of fire based acts which Hannah, having hit a slow point in her routine, had exited the tent to watch.

It was dark as she sat down at a healthy distance away from the crowd of people behind Chase on a large iron chest that had fake decorations inside typically used for larger set ups, candelabras, beads, and fake coins cushioned by unused altar cloths were kept inside. With the shadows of the night's velvet cloak creating a silhouette of Chase illuminated only by flaming poi that he waved skillfully into a dance, Hannah could easily forget that she had an act of her own to keep up. Night was ideal for fire performances. It brought the flames to life. He had a fiery diabolo act that Hannah enjoyed watching, that was similar in movement and energy to the dance he was performing for these locals. It was easy, now, to see why her business was slowing, Chase's acts offered more entertainment in the night and most couldn’t see or even read her tent’s sign.

[Myk]

What was the fun of playing Hide and Seek with an invisible Wraith? Well, that depended on your level of sanity and sobriety. To the dazed, schizophrenic Vampire then, it was a lot of fun! Though, whether the game was actually Hide and Seek and not, in fact, Marco Polo was up for debate. After all, one game involved actually seeking your target, where the other leant on your ability to hear and catch them. Myk couldn’t see Rutherford, or indeed touch him, and therefore had to rely on the Wraith’s generosity in being vocal just to locate the surly ********. More often than not, Rutherford would take advantage of the Telepath’s lacking perceptions and would haunt his shadow silently. It amused him to watch those who had no clue of his presence, which had been a trait that had followed Rutherford through his life, afterlife and now this state of haunting. Not that anyone knew that about the Wraith. Rutherford was used to being a figment, accustomed to it, almost prone to it, so why fix what wasn’t broken? He had given Myk a name to refer to him by and nothing more than that, but the Telepath had an eye for people, he knew them just by meeting them, and so a lot of his assumptions concerning the Wraith’s history were invariably correct. How frustrating. Still, Rutherford would admit to nothing and barely bothered to announce himself when the Telepath called for him.

“Oh, don’t be such a grouch!” Myk exclaimed, far louder than he should have done. This caused passers-by to look at him with apparent contempt, but Myk disregarded their complaints as pewter eyes searched the shadows for a darkness he couldn’t see. “Just say… something. Like, literally… something. I’ll take even that! This game’s just not fair when you don’t play fair, Ruthy…”

The Telepath’s voice was a deep, raspy tenor; velvety and purring, with musical tones and inflectionless pronunciations. His accent was generally anomalous, unidentifiable, a slur of a handful of different accents that came from culture-blending. Myk’s heritage was fairly odd in and of itself, where a thick Parisian accent layered over Milanese, Chelsea-speak and a bit of Cockney, but it didn’t end there. In his youth, Myk had travelled the globe and to this day he still watched world cinema, muddying his accent further. At times the Telepath could sound Eastern European and in other moments he could adopt a very convincing American accent, or something strictly Asian. It was often just a case of roulette, where the ball landed onto one accent or another or maybe even stirred them all up to a point where you might think he was representing a different species. Which, was technically true as well. Myk wasn’t Human after all, and was perhaps so strange to even Vampire kind that they rather considered him an alien race all his own. It was most likely the make-up, the hair, and his… well, interesting outlook on life.

While gender ambiguity is fairly common in the fashion world, the average person on the street is expected to follow certain stereotypes. Men are supposed to look like men, act like men, and enjoy manly things such as sports and cars and breasts. Women were, of course, held to similarly trite standards; they were expected to be pretty, want a husband, children and forgo careers. Yes, even in this day and age the oppression of the sexes was still ripe. Those individuals who blurred the lines of expectancy were therefore outcast from general society. Myk didn’t mind. It was almost his thing, becoming a pariah, and more than that, the Telepath enjoyed his position that caused such discomfort in others. It practically goaded him into being as much of a nuisance as possible. You think only women should wear dresses? Let me show you how beautiful I look in a frock, Myk would say. You think men should never lay with other men? I’m sure I can change your mind, he would challenge. You don’t like long hair on a man? Well, then I will grow it to my hips – anything to push your buttons, you sweet, simple little creature!

Incidentally, Myk had taken scissors to his hair recently – finding it strange that he was the type of Vampire that retained the ‘aging’ process while others reported that they could never change anything about their appearance. Noelle had been the first to state such, that no matter what she did, she was cursed to return to the very same appearance she wore upon her death – like a scar that would never heal. Noelle’s admission reminded him of Claudia from Anne Rice’s most infamous story; An Interview with a Vampire. Having been sired at such a young age, Claudia was cursed and trapped in the body of a five year old child, thus forever damned to a body that would never develop. How fortunate for Noelle that she had been imprisoned within a body of incomparable beauty then. Myk, however, seemed to be free of these binds because his hair and nails grew at their natural mortal speed, allowing him to change up his look as and when he felt like.

Up until a very short while ago, the Telepath’s hair fell to his elbows, and before that, his hips. Now, the bone-white tresses dripped down his shoulders and chest just past the clavicle. It was easier to manage at this length, providing more choice than straight down like a bridal veil. Tonight, the Telepath wore his hair in a style that could only be described as a lion’s mane. White hair branched from the roots in high, backward arches before gathering entirely over his front, trailing elegantly down his collar bones in tapered tresses. To Myk, the style was regal as much as it was outlandish, but to the general public it was punk and goth and just plain weird. The weirdness continued into his outfit where skinny, leather-look jeans paired with a poncho-styled cream shirt and Chelsea boots. Over time, that loose-fitting shirt had slid to the right, exposing an almost feminine shoulder, but Myk hadn’t bothered to address it; he didn’t mind the a-symmetry. The rest of the outfit was all about the accessories: a long silver chain featuring a tassel-shaped pendant hung near his navel, and an oversized peridot baguette ring surrounded his left middle finger.

When it came to make-up, the plan was to go au naturel, which to Myk meant making it look as though he was in a natural state rather than genuinely being in one. He applied a minimal amount of foundation, just enough to unify his porcelain complexion, and framed his eyes with light mascara strokes and kitty eyeliner. His lips remained in their natural rosy hue, but he’d opted to conceal his pewter eyes behind green contact lenses. There was nothing natural-looking about the contact lenses, however. They were cat-like in their iridescence and shape, where emerald rings surrounded an almond-shaped pupil, shimmering gold in the lowest light. Myk rather liked how sinful the contacts looked and how people would do a double-take, wondering if he was a Demon in flesh stalking the streets, calling out to the shadows for an invisible friend. Myk was enjoying himself for sure with all the attention he was getting, but the Wraith? Not so much.

“Really now, Ruthy,” the Telepath complained. “This is rather childish! If you continue to ignore me I shall just have to start singing and making a spectacle and… and…”

His thoughts hit a wall. False green eyes had fallen upon a scene that seemed pulled from his memories like spun sugar. A frown adorned his soft features, one that marked confusion into his brow yet highlighted the sparkle in his eyes. There were flashes of fire bursting in the night-stained sky, drawing in great crowds of people like a swarm of over-sized moths. Generally, Myk had a height advantage; his 5’10” slim frame allowed him to see mostly past the crowds to the central performer – a fire dancer by all accounts. That was one of the few tricks the Vampire had failed to acquire in his years, mostly because he valued his vanity far too much to risk losing his hair to flash fires. With the amount of product he wore, it was a real possibility that he would be transformed into a wicker man. Granted, he could probably recover from the damage now that he was among the walking, talking dead, but, Myk still lacked that… fire… that would make him want to take up the act. He could get by with his sword-swallowing techniques, balloon animal crafting, and not to mention his repertoire of illusions – he could make do with simply watching the performance like everybody else.

The Telepath and his crowded shadow joined the gathered mortals inconspicuously as eyes focused on the performance. A simple, nefarious thought charged through Myk’s brain like a freight train as he stood there, however – a wolf amongst the sheep. These gatherings reminding him of how easy it was to hustle a crowd like this; as their concentrations centred on the man with the whirling flames, a light-fingered thief would help themselves to any unguarded valuables. His green eyes scanned the crowd for suspicious signs, but he couldn’t find much. Instead, his sights set upon a fortune teller’s hut that almost looked hidden away. A brow quirked, his fingers strummed a quiet melody against his own side, and he wondered if he should bother the lady. Maeve appeared to be a female name to him, after all, and he really could be such a bother – Rutherford would attest to that. And almost as if the Wraith could read his thoughts, he popped a question that caused the Telepath to turn toward the voice.

“Does the young master honestly believe in such hocus pocus?”

A scarlet smile. “It’s hardly hocus pocus, Rutherford. Most of the time it’s just good acting.”

“Then… why look so focused upon the parlour?”

“Did I ever tell you about Patricia?”

Rutherford hummed, sounding slightly curious about the story.

“She was a witch. Or… rather, that’s not the most polite way to refer to her, I would think. Yet, she seemed content enough with the labelling. Would insist on it sometimes… Anyway,” Myk laughed, finding his accent mirroring that highly polished signature of good old British English the longer he spoke. “She was convinced that magic was just another part of life. It was something that was there, like the wind, and yet not all of us had the talent to comprehend it. Rather like the wind, wouldn’t you say?”

While Myk glanced across his shoulder to where he had heard Rutherford’s voice, he couldn’t see the Wraith and therefore took his silence as a means to continue his story.

“I always found her descriptions fascinating. That’s part of the reason I tolerated her for so long. She was intelligent. Had an interesting look on life and all its fundamentals. It was a perfectly symbiotic relationship up until she went a little crazy and tried to sacrifice me to some Pagan deity. Still don’t quite recall the point of that, but then, she was completely off her face at the time on a mixture of oxycodone and ecstasy… Anyway, the thing is that I don’t fully comprehend the way this world works. Perhaps I just don’t have the talent to see it clearly. But maybe this Maeve might. So, don’t you think it’s worth an investigation, Ruthy?”

“The young master is hardly Sherlock Holmes…”

Myk laughed. “True! Which is fortunate for you, as you’re rather apt at being a Watson. Yes… Rutherford Watson has such a ring to it!”

Hearing the Wraith grumble was all the indication Myk needed to know he’d struck a nerve as intended. Proud as punch, he wasted no more time on debate and decided to pass through the crowd to the make-shift tent. Rutherford, of course, followed his charge as ever – curious to see if Myk had a point or if this was simply another one of his crazy adventures. The Telepath had a habit of venturing off the beaten track to wander amongst the wild things, after all. The results weren’t always what one would expect, and it seemed that no matter how unsuccessful a venture might be, Myk appeared to find something positive to take away from it. He would call it an experience, which Rutherford often found ironic considering Myk seemed to have trouble remembering events of his life. As fascinated as Myk was with the world and how things worked, he had trouble deciphering reality from fiction and often lost complete periods of his time in an undiagnosed, unfathomable case of selective amnesia. Rutherford found that fascinating, which was likely the reason he clung to the Telepath’s shadow as they approached the fortune teller, beginning their next adventure.

[Maeve (DELETED 8382)]

The festivities of the day had come to bring a tiredness to a small frame, twice in watching Chase she had felt the sensation to yawn. A hand with violet nails was raised with a rattling of bangles to rub at one eye though it stopped just short of achieving the task as Hannah remembered the make up on her face which rendered her with a feminine stroke. Her eyes shimmered with magenta and warm gold like the colors of dawn and a dramatic double mod wing. Her lips were a dark shade of ruby that seemed black in the cover of night though the color had faded slightly throughout the day. Running her fingers over the black lace of her dress, she leaned forward and rose and stretched out her muscles with a quick roll of the shoulder when she noticed someone approaching her tent.

Hannah squinted dark eyes and drew the sheer, tasseled shawl in shades of plumb and amber closer around her form as though cold while awaiting complete confirmation that her tent was in fact the direction they had been heading. She turned once to look behind her at her own sign, the sharp edges of the letterings muted in murky shadows so that all she could make out with any certainty was Madame Maeve at its top.

So that they were not caught in total darkness Hannah turned to the chest and dug around through false copper coins as noiselessly as should could for a glass candle bowl with butterflies painted inside the thick glass. In her palm she had captured and held a pale blue candle that was soon set in place and lit with a bulky, bronze key shaped lighter kept on a copper chain around her neck. When the light had settled to illuminate the sharp angles of her face with a warm glow Hannah smiled broadly to appear more bold than she was and friendly, "Would you like your fortune read for free?" She asked and gestured towards the inside of the tent. She had earned enough or so one might have guessed during the day to humor one of her favorite past times for free.

As a child growing up, to say Hannah was weird would have been them most severe of understatements. Without a loving family to call her own the kindly Sisters of a small church who watched her leave foster home after foster home were constantly displeased to find that the young girl, adorable though she was, had the creepiest of tendencies to talk to herself. Through whatever fluke of nature caused her to be so, Hannah could see and converse with the dead though no one had told her so. She had yet to encounter a ghost that did not seem real and human. Later in her life she had the luck to be taken in by two Wiccan beauties living in the closet who embraced Hannah's 'strangeness' while introducing things like tarot, fairies, and magic. Magic, as it happened, had been Hannah's favorite.

As far as her practice of magic was concerned, Hannah never liked to use the term fortune, it could mean many things but usually...her services extended towards reading what already was. It seemed pointless to read the future. Often times it came to be that people altered their own fates through the most inconceivable of tasks. A seemingly harmless decision to sleep in an hour late could cause one to miss a chance encounter with a very special person, or simply stopping at the wrong exit on a highway could result in the most interesting of ripple effects that leave a lasting impact on one's life. Hannah understood this to be the butterfly effect. She always felt a little odd when trying to lure a customer in with the promise of a 'future' reading. Futures changed. It was never set in stone what would transpire.

[Myk]

When they approached the tent and its occupant, false green eyes delighted in the glorious details. There was so much effort put into each little pocket of interest, from the furnishings, to the exterior, and even the Mystic Maeve herself. For a moment, the Telepath was simply star-struck, unable to focus on one aspect for too long as another item – another treasure – took his fancy. The kid in the candy shop cliché had nothing on how recklessly, how avidly those eyes flitted from one point of fascination to another. It was simply dazzling how so much colour and life and detail could render something still so mysterious and enigmatic. If there was red in place of all this purple, why, this whole scene might feel like a dream conjured by his darling, Jezebel. After all, to him, Jezebel was a beautiful representation of the cruelties of the world, and her ways were surely magical if nothing short of divine. If he could, Myk would have taken a photograph to explore the contents of the medium’s tent better as surely even Myk’s perceptive gaze could not take it all in with the little time he had to explore. Very quickly, those false green eyes were drawn to the movement of the lady who’d lit a candle and was offering a free reading. It was instinct that caused the Vampire to tilt his head lightly to the left, and it was confusion that pulled his brows toward his nose.

“But… nothing’s free in this world,” Myk uttered idly – barely sure that those words had left his mouth or if they had remained, locked away inside his mind. Regardless, he made a more confident comment and bowed his head at her, smiling so self-assuredly that any Casanova would likely find himself a match. “I would like to hear what it is you can read for me, though.”

The Vampire followed the woman’s directions as strictly as computer coding, failing to recognise the ghost in the machine who had drawn up behind him. Rutherford loomed over his seated charge, as consistent in his proximity and stillness as the chair’s backrest. This shadow of a man appeared as if standing against the wall of the world; a flat black shape with willowy arms and hands that were more solid than the rest of him. He did not walk or even stand, but floated – a man-shaped silhouette that was roughly six feet in height. Rutherford had legs and those legs did reach for the ground, but he never seemed to connect with it. Rutherford, like most other Wraiths, was there and yet he was not. It was rare that mortals would glimpse him, so rare in fact that Rutherford didn’t even humour the possibility as they awaited Mystic Maeve’s reading. Both Wraith and Vampire were curious about what she could perceive and although Rutherford should have been suspicious of the medium’s abilities, and what her foresight could do to damage the veil between realities, he was convinced that Maeve was nothing but a charlatan.

[Maeve (DELETED 8382)]

Her finely sculpted brows dipped gently at his remark, just barely caught. A warm smile as practiced as it could be twitched as she felt slightly unnerved. A nervous laugh passed her lips as she nodded. "No, perhaps not. But for now it is." She spoke softly before entering the tent. Beneath the table she pulled out a small chest and because to unload some of her decks.

One deck was the iconic rider waite tarot, once used by Hannah to learn tarot though it was not her first deck. Her first deck was very old and it was set down next upon the table. The deck was wrapped in a protective cloth with a velvet, purple exterior tied in place by a golden string to spare the card's edges from further wear and tear. Third to come down was a modern deck depicting fanciful visions of unicorns, mermaids and similarly romanticized creatures.

The last deck Hannah almost hesitated to set forward. This was a deck illustrated with a dark mind, a much more unsettling deck and the one that was often picked the least of all. Not that she blamed anyone for that, still there were some that found more charm in its gorey, artistically interpreted representation of death and its monsters.

She was about to ask Myk to pick a deck, until she looked up and paused. Setting both hands on the table she stared seemingly at him, though not directly. Her eyes narrowing with furrowed brows as she attempted to make certain of what her eyes percieved. It didn't go away. Her hands which were set upon her lap in wait, pinched her arm just out of sight, she could feel the pain which meant. It was real. She wasn't sleeping, or anything silly of that kind.

Still there. Right. "Please, pick a deck."

[Myk]

Myk was no expert on Pagan beliefs and was generally agnostic, but he had picked up some knowledge here and there from the string of fascinating people he had encountered during his relatively short lifespan. That was probably one of the perks of being able to be so free, being able to pick up and put down as and when one chose, like seeds swept away and deposited by a breeze. He had travelled far and wide, mixing into his collective understanding the cultures, religions, customs and languages of many different countries. Still, the majority of what he had learned about Paganism had come from the United Kingdom – his homeland by all accounts. That was where he had met a lady called Melissa, who was more obsessed with white magic than the aforementioned Patricia. Where the English Rose differed from her American counterpart, was in the spells they cast, the rituals they performed, and their general personality. Where Patricia was a force of passion, defending the Earth with all the power and lust of a Champion Knight, Melissa was a silent sentient. Melissa observed and she theorised and she practiced quiet, healing magic as routinely as getting up in the morning. Even through her peaceful, nature-loving ways, she adhered to the rules that were passed down through the religion, helpful guidelines meant to protect and nurture the user as well as those around them.

One thing Myk remembered from these ladies was the importance of choosing the right Tarot Deck. It’s said that choosing the right deck can be like finding the right mate. The Tarot is a deeply personal journey that each person takes in his or her own time. Sometimes one can only be given a deck, and while it is certainly wonderful to receive such a meaningful gift from a close friend, it is equally important to seek out your own Tarot deck, one that suits your personal tastes and cultural affinities. Whether it be based on Celtic mythology, feminist spirituality, or Jungian psychology, finding the right Tarot deck can often take years of searching. The imagery of the particular representation of Tarot symbolism should resonate deep within the user’s soul, so when Maeve offered Myk a selection, he thought long and hard over his choice. He suspected that the cards would demonstrate different journeys, offer different advice depending on the deck he chose. While his instincts immediately drew him to the more grisly figures and icons from the fourth, and final, deck offered, he wondered whether or not his choice might reflect her reading too much. The last thing he wished was to discover the marvellous Mystic Maeve was exactly what Rutherford expected – a charlatan performing cold reading.

Cold reading is a set of techniques used by mentalists, psychics, fortune-tellers, mediums, and illusionists to imply that the reader knows much more about the person than they actually do. Without prior knowledge, a practiced cold-reader can quickly obtain a great deal of information by analysing the person's body language, age, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, gender, sexual orientation, religion, race or ethnicity, level of education, manner of speech, place of origin, etc. Cold readings commonly employ high-probability guesses, quickly picking up on signals as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not, then emphasising and reinforcing chance connections and quickly moving on from missed guesses. If Myk chose the darker Tarot deck, he would reinforce a particular image of himself, one that aligned with his physical appearance, allowing Maeve to make a more informed reading. The option to choose something else, and maybe test Maeve’s abilities had certainly come to Myk’s mind, but he worried over the consequences of tricking her.

When Myk’s conscience was in play, it was difficult for him to justify the otherwise normal decisions he would make. Choosing to lie to Maeve in the pursuit of psychological experimentation was not something his sense of ethics could necessarily condone. With a sigh, Myk pointed to the deck that had caught his eye the instant it had been placed and then sat back in the chair, rigidly. He still didn’t know where Rutherford was, or even if the Wraith had decided to join him on this exposition, but he felt a cold draft brushing the fine hairs on the back of his neck and related that to Rutherford’s presence. In fact, he hadn’t been wrong. Rutherford remained standing behind his charge. The Wraith was stood in Myk’s shadow like a possessive Demon, glowering toward the mortal with a faceless appearance. Something in the air made Rutherford uneasy and despite the fact that he was in no way obligated to defend Myk from the mortal’s intrusive gaze, the Wraith was determined to keep a watchful eye as the scenario unfolded.

[Maeve (DELETED 8382)]

She didn't allow her own surprise to show though her brow twitched in resistance. Quickly she picked up the other decks and placed them back in the chest. Iron handles rested on each side of the chest and she lifted these up off the table and back under. "That's an interesting choice in deck; most people prefer the other ones. I like it though. I got it off an elderly woman." She started to speak, as she removed the bands set around the cards and started to overhand shuffle them slowly.

"Her daughter made and illustrated custom decks. This one had been returned after only a short while with the complaint that it had been hexed." She continued while running the cards. Though she didn't comment, there was something in the way of Hannah's tone that implied how silly she thought the accusation to be. The cards had been nothing shy of a joy for her, providing her with many insightful readings and practical advice on how to handle the hardships and struggles of her current journey. Perhaps they had simply come in contact with a bad owner, and rebelled, that was her belief.

Hannah knew that most fortune tellers asked for their clients name and participated in friendly chatter to gain more knowledge on the individual but, she liked to go into these matters as blind as possible. It helped, and it kept a certain distance between her and the clients she worked with. She sometimes felt self-conscious about her methods and unwillingness to socialize, especially when her client was of a particularly chatty nature and Hannah, Hannah was not.

Done. Now that she had finished shuffling the cards she spread them out on the table before her into two semi-circle arches, one closer to Myk, the other closer to herself. Normally, she insisted the clients to pick their cards, to touch them and to hold them and in this way she conserved her own energy. This deck had a bite, however, and she didn't let anyone touch the cards but herself. She imagined that for many, the energy contributed to their aversion towards the deck, it presented itself as hostile and received nervousness and repulsion in response.

The hand of weariness came down softly over her head, guiding Hannah to quickly shift her focus from Myk and keep it dominantly on the cards. She turned her head to the far end when none of them presented themselves as particularly interesting. She was not a traditionally trained reader and her style was chaotic at best. Picking cards at random and intuitively determining their position and the spread only after the cards had been chosen, much like a novice. Her fingers curled into a light fist. She could see that there were four cards to be used in this reading.

The key was first. She pulled a card out from the end of the deck closer to herself, and set it apart from the space to which she'd set the other three. "This is the card that will color the meanings of each card." The next came from the center of the outer row. "This is your present." She pushed a card out from the row facing Myk and pushed it below the key card and away to her right. A few inches from where the last card had been drawn the next came forward, "This is your future." She said and moved the card into place. The next card was pulled from left side of the outer row and pushed into place.

She had the sudden inclination, an impulse to allow Myk to handle the cards, but she ignored it. She quickly pulled the cards that remained back into a single deck and set them aside. Her fingers found the edges of each card and flipped them delicately over, this time in order: first the key, then the past, the present and future. Her brows raised in curiosity as she looked at the cards. The cards themselves were black and white with accents of color to illuminate certain elements in the card.

The five of cups appeared upright in Myk's Past reading as an old woman hunched over, mourning the loss of three mangled children in place of the knocked over chalices. Each held a bright, metallic gold cup in their tiny hands. One child's head was detached from its body, another torn nearly in half at the waist with entrails spilling outward and the third appeared a dark, inky mass. Burned, it would seem. Two children stood behind the crone each with a cup, held strong and upright but of the same monotonous black, grey, and white as the rest of the picture.

The hanged man appeared in the reading of his present. This image was less graphic, but depicted a being of common lore, a vampire styled like Bela Lugosi's Dracula hanging upside down like a bat from a branch in front of a stone building, under a opened window where two other vampires prey upon a young woman, terrified. Metallic Red was the accent color and it colored the walls in small rivers of blood. The body of a woman with two very small red dots in her neck lay draped over the window, her hair and arms spilling outside, limp like the dead.

Temperance appeared to announce Myk's future represented by the ethereal beauty of a fae of unidentifiable gender with tattered butterfly wings. This was not a friendly creature, as it stared darkly back at the viewer with a mischievous grin. Bright metallic blue traveled along the veins of this creature's wings and wrapped around the humanoid's body in simple tattoo like patterns. They stand in a pool of water, possibly a lake, surrounded by the upright trees of surrounding forest.

Death was the key. There was no color in this card, only the metallic silver of his scythe held up right in his hand as he himself is surrounded by the black figures of wraiths. He is cloaked in a black, fraying shroud that takes up a good portion of the card's illustration. Hannah pointed to the card of death, "This is a card of transformation. Rarely does it ever imply actual death. A change is coming fast into your future, it is total, complete. This card informs you of a world about to be turned upside down, and perhaps of new friends, new family... or a completely new way of living."

And on to the next one.

"This is your past." She drew her hands into herself and turned her focus unto the old crone, the witch. "The witch mourns over her lost children but completely ignores the two still standing. This is a card of loss and it warns against being blind to the other blessings you still have in favor of the ones that have slipped by you. And your present... It is the hanged man, a vampire willfully suspended and doing nothing. Perhaps, harm is not intended in this act. The world around you may be changing even as you stand still. Which leaves you your future... Temperance. Though mischievous and even dangerous this fae represents balance, despite the changes, you seem to be at peace with them already."

Hannah lifted up her gaze and then she sighed, "Would your friend like a reading too? Or are you unaware... that you are followed by an..." She paused to stare the being over, it occurred to her that she didn't really know what to call the creature, "really rigid Shadow?" Hannah stopped to chew on her nail, uncertain of that assessment of rigid.

"And I suspect," after mulling it over, she pointed downward at the cards with her other hand, "that these cards represent other things in your life too?" She side-eyed the five of cups and was tempted to pull the witch and her dead children away but she left it there. She had felt the impulse to pose this question, and now she herself was curious to know.

[Myk]

Sometimes Myk was capable of sitting quietly, of reflecting on his thoughts and pondering without the need to express them out loud. Sometimes Myk was capable of hiding his emotions and not blurting out his thoughts and theories like there was a foghorn where his vocal chords should be. This was just not one of those instances. Sure, he sat there peacefully enough while the Mystic Maeve gave him his reading and explained every intricate detail, but that wasn’t to last. There were too many interesting points to make, things that warranted saying even if the Telepath was in breach of their beloved Masquerade. He would take the hits, bear the pain, endure the yawning of having to listen to people bellyache about his irresponsible nature. It meant nothing to him, this law of theirs, this cellophane wrapping over his lips – he would happily see the day their nightmare came. They harped on about a Vampire holocaust in the wake of the Masquerade being torn asunder, basing their accusations on an event that happened well over 200 years ago. Myk couldn’t stand to listen to it. Sure, he accepted that one should learn from the past, but, one also had to recognise that this was not the same world that predicated history’s events. People were still people, but, surely they were more evolved these days and wouldn’t grab their pitchforks at the mention of Vampires. But, there was no way to know for certain until it actually happened…

There was just one thing in the way of Myk speaking his mind, however. It was a nagging shadow, one whose presence remained clawing at his back, visible only to the bright purple eyes shining from the mortal. Maeve quite clearly saw something standing there, and Myk being Myk, tried his hand at looking for it too. Slowly, the white-haired man turned in his chair, his upper half bending around to see… nothing at all. There was no lingering mass of darkness in his sights, just the streetlights, the crowds, and the rest of the circus. Pewter eyes sharply turned back to Mystic Maeve, though there was only a shred of disappointment in them. Oh, but of course he didn’t doubt the woman’s ability to see the unseen – she appeared quite skilled as it happened. It was just a shame that, even now, Myk was incapable of perceiving what he thought was Rutherford standing right there. Again, all he had were descriptions of the Wraith to ascertain a connection. By physical appearance they were often described as wispy shadows shaped like men. Maeve’s report of the rigid shadow standing behind Myk was as close as the Telepath could imagine to being Rutherford. After all, why would anyone or anything stand in his presence for this amount of time without leaving?

Myk lowered his head and leant forward, his shadow just marginally obstructing the table toward the young woman in front of him. Pewter eyes were fixed on her, this malignant glint showing in his irises, and as he spoke, his voice was hushed yet no less purring with mirth. “So you can see him, can you?” Myk asked. “That’s very interesting…” He leant back then, the once pleasant smile on his face becoming something rather proud and toothy. “He says his name is Rutherford. I can’t see him, but, I can hear him. He’s been with me for about 2 years now. He’s such a character… reminds me of those Victorian butlers… At any rate, I imagine he’s not pleased that you are an actual clairvoyant.” Myk’s hands settled in his lap and as one leg slid over the other, he chuckled softly. “Is he spinning right now? Or does that apply strictly to being in one’s grave?”

“Hilarious,” Rutherford bleated.

“You see?” Myk said, his accent twisting like a knife in Rutherford’s side, becoming something ornate and Parisian. “Such a character…” The Telepath paused to address the cards still on the table before him, his eyes trailing over the fine details and how the gilded accents shimmered like dragonfly wings in the dull light. In particular, his gaze went to the card named Temperance. “It’s funny too that you pulled this card to represent my future… For me, Temperance has been a ghost of my past for the longest time. And I don’t mean the virtue.” Myk’s gaze lifted to Maeve, the dull look in his eyes mirroring his sudden shift in tone. “I knew a woman named Temperance. She changed me in an irreparable way. But. Not necessarily in a bad way. After all, without her, I wouldn’t be here talking to you and you wouldn’t be here talking to me, or… watching the Wraith behind me. Those cards… they really do mean a lot.”