Fortune is a Fickle Mistress (Rugs)

[Lemur, The Kool-Aid Guy]

Selene Andalara drummed her fingers against the tabletop before her and wondered if she'd made the right decision in stopping on Aiaru. The captain of the ship she'd been traveling on had recommended the planet, referring to it as 'lovely,' but in hindsight she was wondering if it hadn't been a stunt to get her off his ship before they reached the Core Worlds.

Demas was a nice enough city in her estimation. It was clean, the architecture was excellent, and her own accommodations were adequate, draped with the silk she always carried with her in a large trunk. That only left work to find and money to make.

Selene Andalara was a fortune teller. Contrary to the beliefs of others, her own business was far from genuine. As near as she could tell, there was no connection to any spirit world that she could exploit, no accurate way to detect the future, and no way to talk to the souls of the dead. But, through the careful application of trickery, one could do all three.

So far she'd done a dozen card and palm readings for satisfied customers, and last night she'd even done a seance. But now she was on her third night, sitting in a tavern with some sort of alcoholic beverage before her, in a dark corner, her pet perched on her shoulder.

Zafirbel was quiet, but alert. The ash owl from her native Dara IV ruffled its feathers and made a very soft noise, which prompted slender, charcoal-colored fingers to reach up and stroke the bird, though unflinching, glowing, red eyes continued to survey the room.

Selene was waiting for something. She didn't know what, but she was waiting. Maybe it was for new clients, or maybe it was something else. But she had a hunch, and after over a century, she'd learned to trust those feelings.

The Daravin woman sat quietly and sipped her drink, watching.

[Rugs]

Patrols were supposed to be simple.

They were meant to be routine, ordinary affairs. Get your orders, go out for a time, and be sure that all was well. If something came up, deal with it. That was the way things were supposed to be.

That was my first mistake. Just thinking things would go the way they're supposed to.

Nothing had happened on the patrol--or rather, no one had done anything. The streets of Demas were safe as is, and no one was fool enough to try anything near Kvothe's presence--not with everyone on Aiaru knowing what that circular star emblem on the back of his cloak meant.

The Unum were quiet, as they often chose to be, any word or whispers of potential activity was hard to come by out in the open on Demas' streets.

It should have been a normal day, a normal patrol. A duty that, while perhaps annoying, wasn't anything to worry about.

Yet, here Kvothe was, pushing his way through the crowd, looking harried. Fas trotted anxiously at his heels.

Everything had been fine. The patrol went as planned, and after a few hours, Kvothe had been preparing to leave Aiaru's capital city and make his way back to the Tower. But that was when everything went wrong.

He'd just glimpsed at a young boy, leading his mother and father along through a small market square. It was nothing--something so ordinary he shouldn't have given it a second thought.

But it triggered another episode.

Memories from Celena--that damned Cather--assaulted his mind, took control of his consciousness. When it was over he was on his hands and knees in the middle of the street, with Pietas laying two yards away from him and Talio half hanging out of its sheath. Fas had been standing protectively near him, and a knot of people looked on worriedly.

Kvothe had run away from that place, staff in hand, cloak flapping loosely behind him. It'd been weeks since he last had an attack, and he'd dared to hope that the memorias spiritus ultim had lost its effect.

He was wrong. The dead girl was still with him, and it terrified him.

Finally, the Rilan found a place to stop. It was a little bar, a quiet one. He hurried in, Fas still walking with him.

His white armor managed to keep some manner of dignity about him, but the look on his face, the disarray of his hair, the daggers of yellow that pierced his hazel eyes--all spoke of something that was troubling Kvothe, and very, very wrong.

He brushed past the waitress, found a quiet corner and slumped into a seat, holding his head. His staff nearly fell, so hastily did he prop it up against the table.

Fas came along behind him and sat on his haunches, tail curled around his rump. The three ends of it bobbed gently in the air behind him, their lights glowing a soft blue. The flickercat looked with worry to his bondmate and master. It was all, he could do though: just sit and worry, and keep an eye on the strange woman with a bird, even if Kvothe didn't...

[Lemur, The Kool-Aid Guy]

An armored man walked into the cafe and immediately captured Selene's attention. He was a force-sensitive person, and indeed a highly trained one. She could easily tell that much with her own highly-attuned senses. A normal lifetime of training in the Jedi had left her with considerable talents. And what was more, she could sense something about this man. It was... troubles? He was worried. Something was weighing on him, most likely his past.

There were telepathic techniques known to some in the universe, to the elite masters like Selene Andalara had once been. They were techniques to passively read a mind, to take the thoughts that leaked off, the dominant concerns of the person, and take them in without detection. It was a touch so light as to be unreadable, and she used it now with all her finesse to gather up the first words she needed to build off of.

It was that impression and context. He was obviously one of the Mythics, judging by his staff and his armor, and undoubtedly one of their warriors, perhaps tasked with stifling dissent. An enforcer.

This was a potential mark.

Unum. Death. Dissent. Troubles. Yes, he was a burdened man, and that burden would easily be transferred with the right words.

The charcoal-skinned woman rose from her seat, Zafirbel perched on her shoulder, and she crossed over to the man and his cat. She slid into the chair opposite him and put on her best enigmatic face, letting her rich, Daravin accent well up. When she spoke, every word was exotic and foreign, wholly unlike her normal Coruscanti Basic.

"You are troubled. The shadows of your past lie heavy upon you, and you fear the Unum you stand against."

[Rugs]

Kvothe slumped forward in his chair, head held tiredly in a hand. He wished desperately that he could order a drink and drown his worries away, but it was forbidden of him. Not by rule or precept dictated by his order, but by blood; alcohol was a poison to him, and any more than very light drinking on occasion could spell disaster. Disaster he was not yet ready to risk.

Not while he's still alive.

He knew well that drinks would only serve to mask his problems, rather than solve them. Their grip would leave him, and his troubles would be waiting for him, as patiently as an old, loyal dog.

But for the shaken Sword, even a mirage of peace was better than having to think of the nightmare his life had been. Better than the alternative.

"We're not sending away because we doubt you, Kvothe. We're sending you away because we fear for you."

Those had been Bors' words, when he'd ordered Kvothe to leave Aiaru for a time. The stresses of Kvothe's personal struggle in the larger war against the Unum were becoming troubling. That was what he'd been told. He need to get away from Aiaru and its worries for a time to clear his head and steady his hands.

So he had. And after a time he'd been called back, just as they said he would be. But here he was again, wondering how far his limits could go. Not two months had he been back before he found his brother again. And now the dead girl lived in his mind...

How much could he take? How far could a sword bend before the metal finally snapped?

But I can't turn away, he quietly told himself. I won't. I have a duty, no matter wha-

A flicker of apprehension rippled through his bond with Fas. A velvety voice spoke from beside him.

"You are troubled. The shadows of your past lie heavy upon you, and you fear the Unum you stand against."

Kvothe snorted. "I do not fear the Unum," he said, voice muffled by his hand. He hated them, but his fears were more direct than that. It wasn't the flies that flocked to a festering wound you feared, but-

His head bolted up of a sudden, eyes quickly filling with a warning orange as he looked at the woman next to him. Hadn't she just been sitting at the next table. And why was she speaking to him. Either she's very good at making generalized statements, or she's playing around in things that are not her business.

The orange in his eyes darkened. Fas stood, alert, but stayed by his master's side.

"Who are you?" Kvothe asked warily. "And what do you want?""

[Lemur, The Kool-Aid Guy]

(OOC: Let me know if I cross any lines you want to keep private, I’d hate to powerplay you with telepathy, but I also want to keep it going along.)

“Is that any way to greet someone? I didn’t think the mythics were so discourteous…”

Selene folded her hands on the table, interlacing her slender, charcoal-grey fingers. She smiled enigmatically, a small half-smile that served to soften the barb in her words. In her experience that was a very good way to get someone to sit and listen to a rebuke without much anger.

Also in her experience it wasn’t wise to keep someone waiting too long on an answer, even if you chose not to give a direct answer.

”My name is Selene, and I can see into your past, your present, and your future. And really, I think the question should center around what you want… Kvothe.”

Plucking a name from the mind was easy. There was always a plethora of memories near the surface, remembered greetings, and it was so readily given out that the mind attached little secrecy to it. That made it one of the easier nuggets of information to glean.

”You have an opportunity here, to learn something about yourself. Or perhaps there is someone special departed from this plane of existence, one that you’d want to see again. Perhaps you have final words you wished to exchange? So that you believe me, here is the first demonstration. Free of any charge.”

Nimbly, she reached into her robe and slid out paper cards, spreading them out on the table. Through the Force she could sense the images on each one without looking, and she produced three she felt were applicable from the impressions she’d made, and what she’d learned of the mythics’ current predicament.

“For your past…” Selene flipped over the first card. “The Satellite. You have seen deception, and felt betrayal. Those you trusted proved less than true.”

“For your present,” Another card. “The Commander of Staves. Messenger on a fool’s errand. But it is not your current task that is impossible, it is your personal task. All seems hopeless for you. Whether that is true the next card will tell.”

The Daravin fortune teller flipped over the last card.

“And the future. The six of sabers. The end of a journey. You can see this too, the end that looms in your future. You fear this most of all, don’t you?”

[Rugs]

Kvothe snorted softly. The woman came and stuck her nose where it didn't belong, and he was the discourteous one? Stupid moon-cursed telepaths. Trouble, the lot of them, he mulled, cautiously eyeing her. Except Rhissai. I can trust her.

”My name is Selene, and I can see into your past, your present, and your future. And really, I think the question should center around what you want… Kvothe.”

Kvothe's eyes narrowed further. Under the table, Fas hissed softly, the fur on his back standing up slightly. The bond ensured that Kvothe's emotions were echoed to a degree in the flickercat, but Fas wouldn't do anything rash; he was too well trained for it. Still, Kvothe didn't make any efforts to calm his familiar, either.

The woman, this Selene, went on, playing a game with cards and acting the part of some fortune teller from a story. Kvothe didn't trust her. Fortune could be told; his mother had been prone to visions, and had even proclaimed the one that reigned supreme over the lives of him and his brother. Yet this...

"Drop the act," he said flatly, his voice hard. Rude? Perhaps. But Kvothe's mood had been poor from the outset, and this wasn't helping in the slightest. "If you want to play fortune teller, go find some backwards village on the plains where someone might actually buy it."

The sound of his own voice in his ears gave him pause. Abruptly he realized his fists where so clenched that his hands were shaking and his knuckles were turning white. He felt so angry, so violated.

But why?

Kvothe looked down at the cards, unaware that stains of red were splashed around the burnt orange in his eyes. He forced himself to take a shaky breath and try to calm down.

Betrayal. Hopelessness. A looming end.

"Where's the shadow?" he muttered listlessly. Suddenly, he felt very weary, as though the weight of his tasks and trials came all at once to rest on his shoulders. He leaned back in his seat with a tired sigh, orange and red fading entirely from his eyes, leaving only a dull, listless grey in their place.

"If you want to talk to me, talk," Kvothe murmured. "But leave your fingers out of my mind."

A pause.

"Please."