I take a deep breath, savoring every nuance of aroma that speaks of fall and the county fair. My mouth waters as the scents of candied apples, cotton candy, and deep-fried dreams mingle in the crisp air. I turn my head from side to side, trying to see everything at once. As Artie pulls me toward one of the tents, I focus on our direction. I let out as derisive snort as I read the name attached to the tent: “Oracles Den.”
“Really? You want to know our future?” I laugh.
“Don’t you?” He looks slightly offended that I am not falling all over myself with joy to have a charlatan take a wild guess at what my future holds.
Artie lifts the flap for me and I step into a sweetly perfumed circle filled with vibrant colors, sparkling sequins, and a haze induced by incense. A tiny woman with silvery grey hair and dark, penetrating eyes smiles up at us from a cushion.
“You wish to know your future. You wish to know your dreams. You wish to know they shall become one.” She waves a tiny hand toward two round cushions in a dark orange fabric that sit just inside the door. “Please sit. I will tell what you need to know.”
I struggle to hold my face neutral to avoid offending the believers in the tent with me. She glances at Artie as we sit before focusing those eyes on me.
“You don’t believe I can see your future, child?” The grin widens as she places her hands in the middle of the table and slowly raises them, revealing a crystal ball. “Let us see what your future holds.”
She closes her eyes and breathes deeply of the murky air. She waves her hands over the magic ball. Words pour from her mouth, an almost imperceptible song in a language I do not know. Soon the crystal ball goes from clear to murky. Then images appear. I lean forward to peer at them as they come into crisp focus. A young woman in her early twenties smiles back at me from within the arms of a broad-shouldered man
“That looks like you,” Artie smiles, “I bet those are my shoulders.”
The image scrolls, revealing the face of the man wrapping me in his arms. He has the same blue eyes as Artie, but rich dark curls spill down his cheeks and the right one dimples as he smiles back at me.
“I’ve never seen that man before.” I say, unable to take my eyes off of the unfamiliar face.
I look at Artie to gage his reaction, surprised to see how pale he is as he mutters. “That looks like my cousin Chip?”
“Seriously, aren’t we supposed to meet him here?”
“Not anymore,” Artie mumbles.
“What?” I jump up from the cushion. “Because of some digital image she conjured up somehow.”
The woman laughs and I turn to see that the crystal has returned to a clear ball again. The woman grins at me, pointing at me with one of her surprisingly long fingers with an even longer nail stretching out toward me.
“I did conjure up an image, but it is not digital, it is yet to come.” She turns her freakish finger and dark eyes to Artie. “And you can not stop the future from happening. Trying to do so will bring it to pass sooner and with a lot more heartache for you.”
“Let’s get out of here,” I reach for Artie’s hand.
He doesn’t take it. Instead, he grudgingly puts a few tens in the open palm of the fortune teller. I shake my head and step outside right into the arms of the younger version of the man from the crystal ball. He laughs as he places a hand on each shoulder to keep me from falling to the ground. And that is how Artie finds us, me gazing into Chip’s face mystified while he smiles down at me in a pleasantly surprised kind of way.
~~Ah. The romance of pumpkin spice season. I know many of my friends are so excited to drink and eat their way through hundreds of servings of pumpkin spice before peppermint season starts. Since I made a delightful amount of apple butter yesterday, I have to wonder where apple season is in all this.~~
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