"Can you skip this part?" Abrial frowned grumpily, waving her hand. "I'm not getting married, and I'm not interested in love. Next."
The woman cackled, her eyes glittering with amusement. "As I said, you're not very self-aware. All right. Next it is, then! I also see that you care about your friend deeply and are very worried about her. You have undergone chronic stress for many years. And you have just experienced some traumatic event, which I suppose landed you here in Gananjag. That is all, from your face."
"That's all just from my face?" Abrial blinked, surprised. Even though there hadn't been much at all about Finley, that still seemed like a lot to tell from a person's face! "But, is there anything else about my friend?"
"Nope. Ha! Now, clear the lamps off the table for me, feisty. I need space."
Reluctantly, Abrial moved the few rather heavy lamps from the table to the carpeted floor. When she was done, the woman flourished a large jar she had retrieved without Abrial noticing. It was made of opalescent blue glass.
The woman stuffed one hand into the jar and withdrew it full of some sort of tiny white crystals — that must be salt, for those salt-scatterings, or whatever had been on the sign. She scattered them over the table with a swishing motion, and they landed on the wood like snow.
Then she set the jar down and kneeled intently over the table, tracing the paths of salt with her eyes. Abrial watched her, rubbing her knuckles together restlessly. Should she leave? Was this a waste of time? The fortune so far, besides that love part, of course, had seemed pretty accurate, though…if something came up about Finley, even something small, it could be useful…right?
The woman looked up suddenly. A knowing grin crept across her face. When she spoke, her voice was somehow more gleeful than it had been before.
"You…were born in the Year of the Lotus."
"No, I was born in the Year of the Magnolia," Abrial scoffed. This woman really didn't know what she was doing. Then, she froze. Her obsidian eyes widened. "W-wait — I was! I was born in the Year of the Lotus, not the Year of the Magnolia! Holy shit!"
Hearing someone else say it felt strange — especially when she'd been told she was born in the Year of the Magnolia all her life. It was like a confirmation of something she'd pushed to the back of her mind for the past day, and all of her curiosity and confusion came suddenly bubbling up like hot water in her chest. She sat straighter, very intrigued now. This old woman had to be at least pretty legit if she could dig up something Abrial hadn't even known about herself for eighteen years, right?
"Lady, does that mean something? Me being born in the Year of the Lotus?"
The fortune teller had been watching her reaction. Now, she smiled crookedly and looked back mysteriously to the salt, tracing over a shape with one knobbly finger.
"Mm…You see, some people's paths of life are solitary and unique, running mostly apart from others'. Yours, however…is intertwined closely with another's. It has its own direction, but it closely resembles another person's path…You two live along very similar paths of fate, indeed…"
Abrial peered at the salt curiously, trying to see what this stuff about destinies in the salt was. She frowned. All she could see was random piles of salt.
"Okay…Then, what's the path? And who's the other person that has a path like mine?"
The woman grinned with her yellow teeth.
"I'm afraid the salt isn't telling me the answers to that."
Abrial scowled sourly, huffing in irritation.
"Great! So they just give you hints, like little crumbs of candy or something, and then don't give you anymore! What help is that?"
"Hmmm…Well, dearie, I do happen to see something about your close friend here."
Abrial's frown melted away. She leaned forward so that she was almost falling off the pouf, and her obsidian eyes glittered with hope.
"You see something about Finley? What is it? How is she? Is she okay?"
"Mm…I see…" The woman moved her hands over the mess of salt, squinting at it and tracing invisible shapes with her fingers. "Her path of life appears along with yours. How interesting…"
Abrial's lifted herself off the pouf and stared at the salt, trying to make out Finley's path. Maybe…it was that line of salt along the edge? Or that pile in the bottom right?
"Hey, lady — do you see anything about her right now? I mean, is she safe? Will she be safe? Am I going to — " Abrial's voice faltered as the thought she'd been suppressing and beating down for a day now bubbled to the surface. "...Am I going…to see her again? Soon, hopefully?"
The woman examined the salt crystals slowly, her dark, gold-glittering eyes narrowed. A tension seemed to build in the air, like the tightening of a rope. Abrial held her breath, watching the woman's face in suspense.
The woman suddenly blew a raspberry, shocking Abrial so much that she jumped and knocked half the salt crystals off the table. Abrial swore and started picking crystals up and tossing them back onto the table frantically.
"What the heck? What was that for?! Why'd you make that noise?!"
The old hag shrugged, grinning with her crooked, yellowed teeth.
"Sorry, dearie. Leave the salt there, it's healthy for the ground. I'm afraid there wasn't anything else about your friend in the salts. See, salt scattering's no good for examining specific things. Only the general course of events."
Abrial puffed a furious breath from her nose and vaulted to her feet, shaking off salt crystals from her robes. She snatched up her sack and whirled around to leave with a huff.
"Hold on! Two more important things!" called out the woman. "Very important!"
Abrial stopped, her fist clenched around the neck of her sack. "What is it?! If it's not really important, I swear I'm gonna — I'll knock over your salt jar and eat all of it! Or something!"
"Trust me, these last things are important, dearie." The old woman's voice suddenly lowered, becoming serious for the first time since she'd started speaking. "First thing: you ought to listen to your good friend and meet her where she told you to. At that camp, wasn't it? In the north, under the largest star."
The faintly purple smoke shifted around Abrial. Her fist tightened on the sack.
"And the second thing. Make sure to keep that tattoo behind your ear safe as long as you can, or you might end up in a bad state."
Abrial's hand went to the back of her ear.
"Tattoo…? I — have a tattoo???"
"Yep! Sure do, feisty. Behind the other ear, the right one. Yep. Right there, you got it. It's a nice tattoo; just remember to keep it safe, hm? All right, I won't keep you any longer. I've had enough amusement for a long while. Go on. Don't stomp too loudly on your way out, it shakes dust from the bottom of the stairs, eh?"
Abrial lowered her hand from the back of her ear, where she'd been incredulously feeling the smooth skin. Did she…really have a tattoo there? She'd never seen behind her own ear, obviously, and the spot that old hag spoke about was practically hidden in her hairline. Was this some kind of joke to mess with her?
Abrial turned her head back to the woman, who was reclining on the heavily shadowed couch, already smoking a purple roll in her yellow-toothed mouth again.
"...Thanks, old lady," Abrial forced out.
That old hag only waggled her fingers in a goodbye wave and threw her feet on the table, scattering more salt onto the ground. Abrial made a sour face. Where had this woman been raised, a pig pen? Putting your feet on a table with your shoes on was one thing, but that woman wasn't even wearing shoes, and her feet were wrinkled, with very long, yellowed nails…
Come to think of it, how could Abrial know whether that old hag practiced proper hygiene? Did she even wash her hands? She'd put her hands all over Abrial's face not long ago…
Feeling slightly nauseous, Abrial turned and ran up the stairs, shaking a fair amount of dust into the utterly dark cellar. Like that, she left that underground room of purple glittering haze and dim yellow light behind.