“Whither you go next, be wary and warned. Dangers can be soft, and spirits can be touched by evil so slowly they hardly notice the change.” She shook herself like a cat, from the feet to the tip of the head, and the beads in her long tight messy braids clinked and shook.
“I understand. Thank you,” he said, even though she knew he didn’t understand a word. It didn’t matter – he would be touched by the meeting, and the steps he took would be more hesitant, more thoughtful. It would have the same result to him truly understanding, and he would shake off that monkey that hung from his back.
She sat up abruptly. “Go,” she snapped, her nostrils flaring as she scented the air. He stammered, then rose and quickly retreated, his polished shoes scuffed as they tore heedlessly through low piles of trash. She licked her dry lips, tilted her head so her long braids touched her knees where she squatted. She ran fingers lightly over her leather vest, scratched under one sagging breast. “Well?” she asked. “Step into the light, little wanderer.”
He snorted. “Gimme a break,” he said, but he came forward anyway – runners held together with duct tape and determination, worn jeans and a ratty jacket with nothing underneath. His steps stopped just shy of where the shadows ended, like he was afraid to give up their company.
“You are the one who sought me out, steps in the dust and over the roofs. Come here.”
“This is bullshit,” he said. “Danny told me to check you out, but come on. ‘Wither you go dangers can be soft’? What are you, some kind of… fucking fortune teller? You’re just bilking naive idiots. I can’t believe this. What a fucking waste of time.”
She sniffed, straightened, her back cracking from the hour of bending almost double. She cleared her throat, hawked up something black and green and spat it across a pile of discarded metal. When she spoke her voice was softer, without the cigarette burn she had adapted for her last client. “Some people need the frills,” she said, shrugging, and ran a hand through her braids. “It’s hard to believe someone’s seen centuries when they say ‘hot damn’ and ‘fuck that’ every second word. But it’s a skin I don’t need, if it bothers you so much.”
He raised an eyebrow at her, took in the outfit, the persona she had discarded like a snake’s unnecessary skin. “So it’s a scam.”
“It’s a coating of chocolate on a bitter pill,” she corrects. “People don’t want to do what’s good for them. They’re more liable to listen if they think you’ve got a foot in another world.”
“But you don’t,” he says, and she can see the weight of disappointment, the serpent with its tail wrapped tight around his neck. She hissed and the snake blinked, snarled, but she saw the coils loosen. Not a lost cause, then. Good.
“Of course I don’t,” she said, and smirked when he began to drop his head. “It’s only one world. It’s just two different ways of seeing.” He raised his head at that. She could see he didn’t believe, but that was nothing new. They never believed at the beginning. “Now take a knee, leave that snake behind, and tell Mama Laaku what the problem seems to be.”
Today’s image comes to you courtesy of Rene Blais. Check out his work on His Facebook Page, and see more about him on Lucid Dreaming’s Contributors Page; with model Deb Graffenstyne.