“Did you do that?” Isobel asks.
“I diverted her attention, yes,” Celia says after blowing gently on the surface of her steaming tea. It is not exactly what she means, but the invisible veil she has drawn over the table seems too difficult to explain. And the fact that the feeling they are being watched has not faded despite its presence bothers her.
Isobel stops shuffling and places the deck facedown on the table.
Celia cuts the deck in three without waiting for Isobel to instruct her, holding the edges of the cards carefully as she places each pile in a row across the table.
“Which one?” Isobel asks.
Celia regards the three piles of cards thoughtfully while she sips her tea. After a moment she indicates the center pile. Isobel stacks the deck once more, keeping that section of cards on the top.
The cards that she places on the table have no immediate clarity to them. Several cups. The two of swords. La Papessa, the enigmatic Priestess.
Isobel only barely manages to contain her involuntary intake of breath as she lays Le Bateleur over the already placed cards. She covers it with a cough. Celia appears not to notice anything amiss.
>
“I’m sorry,” Isobel says, after staring silently at the cards for a few moments. “Sometimes it takes awhile for me to translate properly.”
“Take your time,” Celia says.
Isobel pushes the cards around the table, focusing on one and then another.
“You carry a great many burdens with you. A heavy heart. Things you’ve lost. But you are moving toward change and discovery. There are outside influences that are propelling you forward.”
Celia’s expression reveals nothing. She looks at the cards and occasionally up at Isobel, attentive yet guarded.
“You’re … not fighting, that’s not really the right word for it, but there’s a conflict with something unseen, something shadowed that’s hidden from you.”
Celia only smiles.
Isobel places another card on the table.
“But it will be revealed soon,” she says.
This catches Celia’s attention.
“How soon?”
“The cards do not make for the clearest of timelines, but it is very close. Almost immediate, I would think.”
Isobel pulls another card. The two of cups again.
“There’s emotion,” she says. “Deep emotion but you are only on the shore of it, still near the surface, while it is waiting to pull you under.”
“Interesting,” Celia remarks.
“It’s nothing that I can clearly see as good or bad, but it is … intense.” Isobel pushes the cards around a bit, Le Bateleur and La Papessa surrounded by fire-tinged wands and watery cups. The crackle of the fire next to them mingles with the rain pattering against the windows. “It almost contradicts itself,” she says after a moment. “It’s as if there is love and loss at the same time, together in a kind of beautiful pain.”
“Well, that sounds like something to look forward to,” Celia says drily, and Isobel smiles, glancing up from the cards but finding little to read in Celia’s expression.
“I’m sorry I cannot be more clear,” she says. “If anything comes to me later I will let you know, sometimes I need to ruminate on the cards before I can make any real sense of them. These are … not unclear, precisely, but they are complex, which makes for a great deal of possibilities to consider.”
“No need for apologies. I cannot say I’m terribly surprised. And thank you, I very much appreciate the insight.”
Celia changes the subject then, though the cards remain on the table and Isobel does not move to put them away. They discuss less substantial matters until Celia insists that she should be getting back to the circus.
“Do wait until the rain lets up, at least,” Isobel protests.