harrow dispensation i: the hidden truth

The Hidden Truth
This is the lawful good card of intelligence. It represents the discovery of the greater truth within.

Winalils' copy of The Hidden Truth is a little bit esoteric, even for their definitely-not-standard set of hand painted cards. Hell, the deck's got 64 cards- they're ten OVER. It's a singularly detailed portrait of a window that takes up the entire card, from corner to corner. Set on the left of the windowsill is a stuffed robin- tattered wool edges catching the last few motes of evening light, too realistic to be a comfort item. On the other side of the windowsill, drooping over the edge of the card itself, is a potted plant. It's one thick, belligerent looking brown vine speckled all along its surface with wilted looking blue flowers. If asked, Winalils would explain that it's a mountain flower known as Quartzbloom- they found them wrapped around crystals of the stuff deep in the earth, improbably enough. You could pry them up, and whoever had furnished their hospital room had done so, but they never quite grew right above ground. It made Winalils upset.

Oh? Yes, they said hospital room. Well, not really a hospital room. A ten foot by ten foot stone cubicle, pasted together by the oread of the village as so many of their buildings had been pasted together. Neat, orderly rows of cut stone with just enough room between the little black stone tiles that the wind could get in in moderation. A modest bed, thick woolen cloth sewn around thick woolen stuffing. Textile at that altitude had to be thick and woolen, because the only things you could mill fabric from were the sort of thick, woolen sheep that could survive a tumble down thirty feet of vertical cliffside.

[ON A CLEAR DAY, YOU COULD SEE FOREVER. BUT YOU COULD NOT TOUCH IT.]

Not now, Oolong.

But yes, they make a good point. When they woke up, they couldn't do much of anything. They weren't spared the shock of their own smashed stonework by any sort of blanket, or gown- it wasn't something that was supposed to register. You were born, you worked in the mines, there were mining accidents, you retired. This meant their retirement would be a bit early- oh well.

[BUT]

But. They spent several days lying there, seeing people come and go. They didn't recognize any of these people, and those people seemed to recognize them. They would stare at the window, and work on their fine motor control by swishing their hand back and forth at the Quartzbloom. They didn't know how it was supposed to help, really, but there wasn't much else to do in that room. Food came three times a day, a healer came by once a day to ask them how they were doing. They stared at the window. Over the course of a few weeks, they managed to wring enough answers out of the healer during their allotted hour to piece together a picture of what had happened.

A distracted pickaxe swing in a virgin tunnel had triggered a cave in that had reverberated all the way up to where Winalils had been digging- and several tons of rock had landed on top of the oread. Then, apparently, *something* happened after that rock landed on them that brought down half of the mountain. There were names, and faces, and deaths, and none of it meant a damn thing to Winalils.

[OOLONG REMEMBERS THEIR MEANINGS.]

Do you know what happened down there?

[WILD MAGIC]

Oh. Will you ever tell me more about those people?

[NOT TODAY]

Someday?

[OF COURSE]

The last thing they could remember was that they were due to start preparations for the minor holiday of mine-flooding; It was one of the few holidays the mines could accommodate for a full day. Work had to cease every eight months or so in order to flood the mines with water- moisture in the air was essential to preventing the ignition of firedamp, and more generally kept oread lungs from drying out. Fine, aerated clay could last twenty lifetimes, if you kept yourself in line. Stayed to the paths, because the cliffs are close, kept your thoughts to yourself, so the others could achieve peace in their silence. Ten lifetimes of mediocrity was exceptional, in a way. But if you cracked open the ribcage, and exposed that clay to air... it could create a single hairline dryness that shortens the life. A fifty percent reduction, if Winalils was not exceptional.

Apparently, that particular festival had been two years ago. And I sat, and I thought on what that meant, what everything meant, and I stared out the window, and I stared at the Quartzbloom, and I stared into the shimmering amethyst that had been smashed into oh so beautiful visibility, and I felt... I felt. It was raw, and howling, and pulse pounding, and sad, and tragic, and too new to be shameful. And I didn't know what to do with it, so I just stared at that window, and felt, and thought, and...

After two years, that feeling crystallized into a single point of purple, and that purple exploded into spitting purple fire. It was unrestrained, it was indelicate, it was a whirling dervish of broken pieces and spite and rot. It was, and I was, calling something.

[WAS IT ME? :0]

Yeah buddy, it was you. And you sprouted out of that Quartzbloom so quickly it threw the pot off the shelf, remember? Back when you were just a strange little dog thing, with petals for teeth. You dragged me all the way up to the mines, laid me down in a bin of scrap tin, and... just like that. The fire was caged. Subdued. It had become me, and you had become you, and I was... well. I was an angry little hellion made of scrap tin and broken rock. Maybe it was the poor material, maybe it was simply who I was deciding to become, but that feeling had decided itself upon mad. So I grabbed my favorite scarf, and we were down the mountain the next day.

Because they'd gotten what they'd always needed- the unilateral permission granted by being 'special.' Who else was magic like this? Who else had an Oolong?

[WHO'S LIKE US?]

Damn few! And we knew it, and it was... messy.

But, they snicker, that's a story for another time. They set a little scrap of paper on the table- your bill for the evening. It's a reasonable four silver.