Anja's Reading:
Mosa grinned up at the Drykas from where she was seated. The old woman was well aware of whom the creature was before her beneath the mask… she just didn’t know what the mask was made from. It looked too unusual to be real. The old woman peered at him, not because of his request for a detailed question, but because of the coin he dropped into her jar. “Do you really seriously think I’ll take your money, boy?” She said with a laugh. “That jar is for the affluent here. If you don’t take it back immediately, I’ll buy food for the kids in Tent City and pass it out.” She threatened with a toothless grin.
Then she picked her cards gingerly and began to shuffle them. Her gnarled old hands had no difficultly setting the cards into a fluttering bird-like motion as they fanned together, broke apart, and fanned together again. Then she spread them out before him and gestured eagerly to the cards that were face down and all looked alike.
“Pick me out twelve cards, young man. Any twelve that pulls to your fancy.” She said happily, waiting for him to sort through them, and delicately tease his chosen ten out from the fan she’d created. Once she had his pile secured, she picked up the rest of the cards, and laid out his cards carefully face down in the order he drew them.
The first two cards were laid in the center, side by side, with a third crossing them.
Mosa flipped the first of the two face down center cards over and looked it over carefully. She peered up at him once, twice, then chuckled. It showed an enormous bleeding heart skewered by three swords. “This is the aura of your life so far, think of it as the atmosphere you exist in.… three of swords, inverse. Upright it means sorrow, loss, emotional pain, grief, separation, and the end of the affair of the heart. But your card is inverted, which means these emotions are starting to wane and your bloody heart is beginning to heal. Your pain is not less, for the reasoning behind it still exists, but you have grown from it and are moving through it nicely. It’s a healthy card, young man, but still one I am sorry you have in your spread.” She said, shaking her head sadly and moving to the next card.
She flipped that one over dramatically. It showed a wheel on it, spinning, with a person’s face in each facet of the wheel… and the person ran the gauntlet of emotions in their faces in each rung space of the wheel. “Interesting. This is a major Arcana.. a very strong card. It’s your current situation… what elements are in motionyou’re your life. The Wheel of Fortune. It means change is coming. Your destiny is chasing you and almost has caught up. Fortune will favor you with good luck and you will find closure and an end in sight to certain troubles you have. You are moving onwards, forwards, putting the past behind you but not forgetting it.” She explained, tapping The Wheel of Fortune to the three of swords until she laid both cards down face upwards.
She moved to the card that was crossing the aura and the situation. It showed a short ugly man clutching a gold pentagram with others circling him. He looked angry and resentful and his grip on the pentacles were firm. “This is the thing that crosses you. Sometimes it can be a person but often it can be an aspect of yourself. I can’t tell you which. You need to decide for yourself.” Mosa said as she flipped the card face up and laid it across the other two that were side by side.
“The Miser. This means greed, selfishness, avarice, suspition, mistrust. It is the inability to let go of anything. This is an emotional deep dark pit and tremendous depression. That depression is almost always driven by fear, usually fear of loss.” She said softly, and then touched the card briefly. She shook her head, glancing up at him worriedly.
Then she flipped over the card that sat directly beneath the grouping of three she’d just revealed. It showed a huge vine strung pentacle interwoven into a wood. “This is the card that roots you. It has to do with your core and what your soul is made of.” She said, flipping the card over and chuckling. “Ahh… the Ace of Pentacles. So this is why ghosts and animals flock to you. And as of late, Kelvics it seems. This card is called Riches and Rewards. It’s not so much material riches, Anja, but spiritual richness. You have an amazing capacity to be content. You are attuned to the natural world and are inherently prosperous. Because of that, you have a steadfast stable core that such natural and supernatural things are drawn too. I suspect you have chosen the exact correct field of study for your nature.” She said, reaching out and patting him on the head.
The next card she flipped was one above the revealed trio. “This is your crown card. It’s what you strive for, wish for, and long for. It’s called Good Luck but it means so much more than that.” The card she flipped showed three dancing maidens waiving cups about themselves as they danced in a circle of ribbons. “It means good fortune, healing, harmony through some artistic or arcane endeavor. You are constantly striving to learn new things. You aren’t fulfilled unless you are learning and when you do learn something, you celebrate… you celebrate hard.” She said with an amused chuckle.
Then she turned to the card directly to the left of his trio of center cards. She flipped it over and displayed a man standing on the shore with his hand up over his eyes like a visor watching three ships sail into the harbor he was observing. “This card denotes your past… before a large change. It can be your childhood or before something drastic happened in your life… a move or death… something. This one is the three of staves… you sure have a lot of threes in your fortune. Make note of that. But anyhow… this card saddens me. Ships Come Home… as this card is named means that you had wealth, riches, and happiness beyond measure. That man is supposed to be a merchant who put all his fortune on tradeships that sailed out. He took a chance that they would manage to travel safely through rough seas, trade well, and return home safe full of treasure, coin, or exotic loot. And his chance paid off… he was rewarded and rich. But in this position… your past… it leads me to believe that is not the case now. That the big change was a loss of this profit, of the fruits of your labor…” She said softly, then moving forward flipped over another card to the right of the trio grouping.
“This is your immediate future.” She said, stroking the face of a card that showed a woman who was obviously daydreaming for there were seven cups floating around in the clouds about her hair and each cup held a different sort of treasure… a mask, a dragon, jewels, and even a crown. “The Dreamer. You are dreaming. You are hoping. You are stuck dreaming, boy, instead of doing. And until you break out of this current cycle… you will not progress much. You need to pick a dream and ride it hard… see it through.” Mosa said, pausing to take a drink of her water and look over the spread.
Then she tapped a card at the far right bottom in a row of four cards stretching upwards on the table. “This here.. this is the self card.” She said, turning that card over. It showed a man carrying ten staves with his shoulders hunched, working way too hard, as if hauling them down a muddy road. “Figures. The Martyr. Really, Anja? This is Overloaded… it means you carry heavy burdens, take on other people’s problems, and do so willingly. You have too many burdens that are not your own and that means you get in the way of your own life.” The old woman said forcefully, looking at him with a glare.
She tsks tsked a moment then tapped the next card directly above his self card. “This is your feelings card.” She said, flipping it to reveal a fiery queen brandishing a blazing staff. “The Queen of Wands… don’t worry about it being a queen in a place of feeling. It just means you blaze brightly and have an amazing amount energy. You are active, passionate, fond of nature, generous, and practical. You also have an incredibly nurturing mothering nature despite all the energy. Good for you.” She said with a smile.
Then Mosa tapped the next card up and grinned. “Hopes and fears. Lets see what you, my boy, are scared of.” She flipped the card and it depicted a giant full moon with a dog and a wolf howling at it. The only problem was the card was upside down. Mosa studied it a moment and shook her head. “The Moon. You are afraid of warnings, deceptions and enemies that are out of sight. But because its flipped, it also means you are afraid of lies closer to home. Tricks, mistakes, silence, stillness… you are terrified of unexpected gains with no cost exacted. You never quite relax because you think you have debt you don’t know about being accrued and that debt will be called in at a time and place you aren’t expecting it. In a nutshell, you are paranoid.” She said firmly, shaking her head.
“I can understand that in this city, Anja. I really can. And I can understand why its one of the most important fears you have. But this spread says nothing of that… there’s nothing lurking in here that shows a knife is waiting in the shadows to stab you.
Mosa tapped the last card. “This is the sum of all the spread… the final outcoming.. .what is barreling towards you.” She flipped it dramatically and showed a card upside down. It was two people bound in chains, trying to crawl out of a chest. They were locked in a dark room with a window full of bright blue sky high up out of reach. One of them, the man, was reaching for the window but it was painfully out of reach.
“Evil.” Mosa said ominously. “But its reversed. Right side up it means greed, vehement lust, desires… bondage to an ideal. Bad influences and even worse advice. It means dissolution and a choice upon which your fate rests. However, this card is inverted, like the moon. That being said, it means a release from bondage… a test. And a new direction in life. Right side up those people don’t get out. But since the card is flipped, they fall towards the light and can crawl out into it. Is that what you are doing right now, Anja? Crawling out of your own darkness and stepping foot back into the light?” Mosa said softly, her eyes shining – perhaps with tears perhaps not – at Anja’s pain. She let him look over the spread for a while, then quietly gathered up the cards.
“You are doing good, son. Really good. Stay true to yourself and keep making the kind of decisions you’ve been making lately. You want … no deserve … to be released into the light.” The old woman said softly, then reached out and touched his cheek as if he had good energy and she wanted to gather some of it to herself.
Her smile, while slow and toothless, was still brilliant with joy when she finally released him.