RSGNM Chapter 12.4
Author's Note: This chapter will be told in 3rd person, rather than the usual first person perspective.
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For as long as Prosper Bachelor could remember, it had been just him and his Uncle Mo. He thought he could remember his mother's face, sometimes, but the features which belonged to the picture he kept of her in his mind were fuzzy. He remembered her smell, more than anything. She had always smelled of coffee beans, and some fancy perfume.
Sometimes he would lie awake late into the night, just thinking about her, and trying to keep every detail he could fresh in his memory. As he grew, though, his memory faded to almost nothing. He had been so young--not even four--when he'd lost her. Uncle Mo said she'd been "stolen from them." Prosper didn't know what that meant, but he could only assume it meant she was dead. Uncle Mo wasn't always...lucid. Especially when it came to his sister; Prosper's mother.
Every time Prosper had asked about her--about his life before--Uncle Mo would go into one of his fits. Mostly, he'd start talking to himself agitatedly, but none of what he said made any sense. Prosper thought he could almost remember the house he had lived in with his mother. He was sure he remembered passing through some big iron gates the day that Uncle Mo had "saved him," as his uncle always said.
Uncle Mo had taken him far away from the person who had stolen his mother, he always told Prosper. He'd taken him someplace safe. Twinbrook, where no one would find them, and no one would ask questions. Twinbrook's inhabitants liked to keep to themselves, and would rather mind their own business than somebody else's. Prosper had always assumed whoever had killed his mother must want to kill him, too.
He loved his Uncle Mo, and was grateful to him for saving his life, but Mo was a hard person to live with. He had trouble keeping a job, and so he began farming the land, as he said his mother had done. Unfortunately, Twinbrook's swampy soil didn't produce well, so money was always tight. Prosper helped out sometimes, with the plants, but he just didn't have the right color thumb for gardening.
He preferred to stay inside and read. They didn't own a computer, or even a TV, so reading was just about his only option for entertainment. But given the choice, he would have chosen books over movies or video games, anyway. There was something to be said for imagination; for having the freedom to create your own images to go along with the words of a book, instead of just watching what someone else had dreamed up.
Uncle Mo never really wanted Prosper to go anywhere outside of school, and, in fact, seemed most frazzled and unstable when Prosper had been away for long periods of time. As he grew, Prosper began to resent never being able to make friends, or see any of the kids from his class after school hours. Sometimes, he'd take the long way home, just to feel like he had a choice in the matter. Uncle Mo was almost in tears, the times he did that, however, and it made Prosper feel so guilty he didn't do it often.
Still, the day of his sixteenth birthday was one of the days he did. He had been feeling so boxed in recently. He'd wanted a party for his birthday, but Uncle Mo flatly refused. He said it was too dangerous to have strangers in the house. Prosper was disappointed. It had been over thirteen years since they had moved to Twinbrook. Whoever they were running from must surely have given up on finding them by now!
But Uncle Mo would have none of it, and Prosper, angry, took the most winding route he could possibly imagine after school on his birthday. He was sick of their run-down little house, and tired of feeling like a rabbit caught in a trap that the hunter had probably forgotten all about anyway. Brooding and sullen, he only slightly registered the fact that he had wound up way out in the swampiest part of town. A wash of bright colors caught his eye suddenly, and he looked up to see a garish trailer sitting in the middle of the wetlands. It looked for all the world like a gypsy's house, and Prosper was intrigued.
He'd read books about gypsies, but he'd never met one, of course. Curiousity slowed his step, and turned toward the bright structure. No one was outside, but the door was ajar, and Prosper could smell a delicious scent wafting his way. Someone was baking! He and Uncle Mo hardly ever had a real, home-cooked meal. Mostly they ate canned food or ordered in. The smell of baking bread--that's what he thought it was; bread--was a treat, and cemented his resolve.
I'll just go and introduce myself, is all, he thought to himself. How many chances am I going to get to meet a gypsy?
He stepped up to the door, and knocked. "Come in!" called a cheerful woman's voice. Prosper pushed the door open, and stepped into the small, one-room house. An elderly woman was removing fresh bread from her oven and placing it on the counter to cool. She took off her oven mitt and shook Prosper's hand.
"Nice to meet you, son. I'm Jasmine."
Prosper stared at her contemplatively. She didn't look anything like what he had imagined a gypsy would look like. Her silver hair was cropped short, and she was wearing fairly normal-looking clothing. "You don't look like a gypsy," he blurted.
The woman chuckled merrily, and her violet eyes danced. "Sorry to disappoint," she replied. "I never claimed to be one. How many gypsies have you met?"
"Well, none..."
"Then how do you know what they look like?"
"I've read about them in books." Prosper felt a little defensive, and lifted his chin slightly.
"Ah, books," Jasmine repeated. "You must be a well-read young man."
"I love to read," Prosper affirmed. "Do you like books?"
Jasmine broke off a hunk of the fresh bread and took a bite, considering him a moment before she replied. "I read a lot. But not the same kind of reading you're used to."
"What do you mean?" She offered him a bite of bread, and he shook his head distractedly. How could anyone read differently than anyone else? You look at the words in a book and decipher them in your head to make a story...right?
"Come sit down, then, and I'll show you." Jasmine took one of the three chairs of the little table that was pressed up against a wall, and gestured for Prosper to take another. He hesitated only a moment before joining her. "Have you ever heard of Tarot?" Prosper shook his head, and then took a closer look at the deck of cards sitting in front of them on the table.
The cards were more elongated than the cards in a regular deck, and had different designs on the back. Jasmine explained. "There are four suits in a Tarot deck, just as in a regular deck. They are staves, swords, cups, and coins. Besides the numbered cards, there are also the Major Arcana, which are similar to the face cards of a regular deck. A reader of Tarot can use these cards as tools to learn things about someone's past, present, and future. Sound intriguing?" Prosper could only nod, eyes wide. Could she really infer things about his life just by looking at some cards?
"Each of the four suits represents a different emotion, and it's by connecting emotions with card combinations that I can 'read' things about you. However, I can only see what you choose to show me. Would you like to give it a go?"
"How much does it cost?" Prosper didn't have any money to offer, and nothing of any value to trade, either. He was extremly interested, though, to see if she could tell him something about his past, and what really happened to his mother.
Jasmine smiled. "This one's on me," she said as she began shuffling the Tarot deck. She placed it in front of him, and asked him to cut it. He took about half the cards off the top of the stack, and set them down right beside the other half. Jasmine put what had been on the bottom on top, and then began laying out cards in an intricate design on the table.
As she turned each card over, she would murmer "hmm," or "very interesting." After several cards had been placed, Prosper could take the suspense no longer. "What's very interesting? What do you see?"
"You have had an eventful childhood. It hasn't been easy for you. You were taken from your mother, yes? When you were very young."
Prosper felt unexpected tears well up in his eyes. He looked away, embarrassed, but Jasmine wasn't even looking at him. Her eyes were trained on the Tarot spread in front of them.
"A very difficult childhood, indeed, and yet..." Jasmine laid out a few more cards. "...your present life has the feel of a calm before the storm. Things are in stasis, now." She turned over the next card, which showed an image of a man on a horse carrying a black flag. The title of the card was Death. "But that's going to change very soon."
"Death?" Prosper asked. "Does...does that mean I'm going to die?"
"The meaning of each card in the spread depends on the cards which surround it. If you read the middle of a book, for instance, and leave off the beginning and the end, you won't be able to understand much of the story, now will you?" Prosper shook his head. "The card Death usually means a big change. A 'letting-go' of the old to prepare for the new. It can sometimes be a good thing, and sometimes not so good. The only time the Death card actually indicates death is when.." Jasmine turned over the next card in the deck, and all color drained from her face. Slowly, she set the card in its place after the Death card. It was The Devil. Speaking softly, she said, "The only time the Death card indicates true death is when it lies next to the card of The Devil. I'm sorry, son. You, or someone close to you, is in grave danger."
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Prosper heard the door close softly behind him as he stepped down Jasmine's porch back toward the road. While he walked, he thoughtfully fingered the smooth, round stone she had given him. "Keep it with you at all times," Jasmine had told him. "Even while you sleep. Pour all your hopes and wishes into it. It's not much, but it may have enough power to protect you. Just...always keep it with you."
He wasn't sure if he believed in all this stuff. She had been right about his mother and his childhood, but...those could just be guesses, right? She'd even told him that the passage of time was hard to measure with the cards. The even the cards predicted could happen tomorrow, or several years from now. It all seemed a little far-fetched and unbelievable.
And yet...It couldn't hurt to keep the orb around. If it wasn't all true, then great. If it was, though, he had to hope this item would do what Jasmine had hoped it would, and protect him. So, that evening, and every other evening up until his twenty-second birthday, he slipped it under his scratchy pillow case in his room, and imagined his wish to stay alive as a glowing stream of light moving from his body to the stone.
Even after his twenty-second birthday, when he finally left Uncle Mo to make a new start for himself in Bridgeport, he would close his eyes every night and picture the stone glowing, itself, for just a moment...absorbing his dreams.
Little did he know, the stone wasn't just absorbing. It was also transmitting.
And one little boy's invention, across the span of space and time, had received the signal, and passed it on.
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Guest sims in this update (and in Prosper's case, the past few updates) are: Prosper Bachelor, from BlackRoseBronwen's Lestiana DITFT, and Jasmine Tailor from The Simself Collaborative Legacy. (She actually descended from gypsies, so I thought she would fit the part well!)