Catelyn was quite relieved that her partner was not a stranger. Besides Sidney, the only person she knew here outside of her family was Dr. Cox, who wasn't taking the class. She still moved nervously around strangers, despite the fact that she no longer looked like something out of a horror story.
Catelyn turned. "Hello," she said. "That's quite all right--a relief, in fact; working with a stranger would likely make me very nervous." She'd lost a lot of social skills while she'd been a zombie...well, while she'd looked like a zombie.
"Glad to oblige, then," he replied, and flipped through the divination text idly. "Does Westeros have a tradition of this sort of thing? Divination, prophecy or what have you?"
Catelyn nodded, scanning the book. "We have auguries, who read entrails, and there are greenseers--those who see the future in their dreams. True greenseers are very rare, however, and those who divine from entrails are frequently wrong. I did not realize this world had so many ways of reading the future."
"It depends," he said. "In my experience - which, bear in mind, is out there in a world without wizards - we've any number of charlatans ready to 'see' any future you're willing to pay for. I have, however, met one lady who had genuine visions. When I persuaded her to do a reading, what she gave me was seemingly not at all what I asked for, and if she was angling for an advantage of me, a rather vivid little drawing illustrating my death is the last thing she would have offered me. Accurate too, in the end."
"You met a woman who prognosticated your death?" Catelyn asked, and shivered. "I do not think I would wish to know when I was meant to die. Death as a surprise was more than bad enough. Could you not...change it, then? Avoid that fate?"
She glanced at the pictures in the book. "You can divine by reading someone's palm?" How? A palm was a palm. Everyone had one, at least everyone with hands.
"Seemed a simple enough matter. Since I recognized the spot, the answer was clear: just never go back to Russia. At the time I couldn't imagine why I'd ever want to, anyway," He shrugged. "Then years passed, and filled in all the reasons why I couldn't avoid doing exactly that."
He nodded. "Supposedly. This is one of those techniques that's very easy to fake out in the wider world, but I suppose here it could have some basis in reality. If memory serves, the lines and creases on your palm mean different things. The life line is the only one I remember offhand. So to speak."
"Perhaps those who say we cannot escape our fate are right," she mused. "Though I am not certain I like the idea that everything is decided for us."
She looked at her palm, as if seeing it for the first time. "We know nothing of such a thing in Westeros," she said. "Do all these lines have a meaning?"
"Supposedly, yes." He turned the page of the book with a chart to face her, and pointed to the lines on her hand. "Life line. Heart line. Head line. Fate line. Those seem to be the major markings. I'm not sure I understand from this how we're meant to interpret them, though."
Catelyn read a bit, and looked at her own palm. She gave a dry laugh. "Unsurprisingly, my life line has run out. Has yours?" That at least was easy to discern--the rest looked a bit...confusing.
Reilly turned the book around so the chart was facing him, compared his palm to it and snorted. "Mine has a break in it. I wonder what that could mean? I do wish I'd ever thought to look at it before I died, so I'd know if the break is new."
Catelyn looked at his palm, and laughed. "At least yours continues," she said. "Mine simply stopped." She peered back at her own hand. "So this is my head line...if it has a cross, I've gone through emotional trauma." Catelyn didn't know the phrase 'no kidding', but it was apt, in this situation. "I hadn't noticed," she said dryly.
"Head line, let's see..." He studied his palm. "Mine is separated from the life line, which is supposed to indicate a taste for adventure. Which I should certainly hope I've got, since my life was one right after another for a good thirty years."
Catelyn scrutinized her own palm. "Mine are not, but then I did not ask for all the so-called adventure I found. I do wonder," she said, looking back at the book and at her cut-off life line, "if this means I cannot die a second time. I suppose, technically, I am still dead." Interesting.
"Now there's a thought." He grinned slyly. "Then again, we're here, in a castle where nobody can rightly die, so the point's moot as long as we stay. You'd have to move out somewhere in the world to test the theory out properly, I'd imagine."
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She glanced at the pictures in the book. "You can divine by reading someone's palm?" How? A palm was a palm. Everyone had one, at least everyone with hands.
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He nodded. "Supposedly. This is one of those techniques that's very easy to fake out in the wider world, but I suppose here it could have some basis in reality. If memory serves, the lines and creases on your palm mean different things. The life line is the only one I remember offhand. So to speak."
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She looked at her palm, as if seeing it for the first time. "We know nothing of such a thing in Westeros," she said. "Do all these lines have a meaning?"
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