The Orphan of Saint Olette

Nineteen

The interior of the Oracle's shack betrayed its shabby exterior. The walls were dressed with red and purple stretches of gossamer, all delicately embroidered with gold and silver coloured beads depicting, amongst other things, intricate floral patterns. At the sight of it, Rin almost forgot himself in his eagerness to examine it. He had never seen such a thin fabric embroidered with such expertise and delicacy before, and he would have given anything to admire it up close. He righted himself before he made a beeline for it. Embroidery was something he had left back in the Aur Valley, with his mother. It had been something they did together, and while needlepoint was, in his opinion, one of the finer pleasures in life, it didn't feel right to continue his hobby without the woman who had taught him it in the first place.

At first glance, one might be forgiven for thinking the Oracle was indeed swimming in money. Her abode was clad in finery one might expect to see in an upper class Lady's bedchamber, or in Shay's experience a higher grade prostitute's boudoir, but when one looked close enough, all the finery was a mockery. All the gold and silver adorning the place was too dull and too poorly crafted to be the real thing, and the silk spread out across her bed, for the shack was comprised of one room, caught the light in the same shoddy way the back alley girls' dresses did in Olmaea. If all her possessions were fake, it didn't bode well for the Oracle herself, but curiosity had gotten the better of the three of them.

At the heart of the room sat a small table, barely tall enough to allow someone's legs to rest under it. Like the rest of the shack, it too was dressed in a deep red imitation silk, that same embroidery as before sewn into it. Atop the table was a small wooden dish, and a tiny stick was propped up on it, gently spewing smoke into the place and filling it with that exotic scent that had drifted from the doorway to greet them. It was at this table that they would finally glimpse the Oracle, though their curiosity was not fully sated.

The girl, and she was a girl for she could not have been much older than Aoife herself, sat with her back to them, dark hair draped over her shoulder and brushing against the floor, for it was far too long and had not been cut in years. Her skin was exposed with only a series of thin, fake gold chains to cover her modesty. The table concealed it from the trio for now, but were the Oracle to stand they would discover it wasn't only her top half that was naked. Her caramel complexion reminded Aoife of her dear friend, but the Oracle seemed a little darker.

"Who seeks their future?" spoke the Oracle, back still turned to them.

The question threw the three of them. They hadn't come for a fortune telling, they had only come out of morbid curiosity. They certainly couldn't afford to have all their fortunes read, though Shay had already removed himself from the runnings. He was already twenty three. In the slums, that meant his life was already half over. Aoife and Rin stood to gain more from the woman, even if she was a fraud. After a few minutes of bickering, it was decided Aoife would be the one to cash in on the Oracle's offer. She knew nothing about her past, it only seemed fair that she should know something about her future instead.

The Oracle turned to face them then. She had known who would speak up regardless, but there were customs that needed to be followed and traditions that needed to be upheld. Her chains were one such tradition. Oracles had drifted from favourable view when the mages were hunted down, since the two were often never far from the other, and it was only the recent bastardisation of their gifts that had cast a more favourable light on them. As such, the old traditions were forgotten by the public. According to the old texts the Oracles followed, an Oracle was not a person, she was a vessel. The chains she adorned herself with served to remind her of this fact, and once upon a time her chains would have been melded to her skin. Thankfully a high mortality rate put an end to that practice, since true Oracles weren't that easy to come by. Her state of undress—something which caused Rin's face to explode a vibrant shade of red and his gaze to linger anywhere but the Oracle—served much the same purpose as her chains; to remind her she was an object, and not a human being. Men would come to her under the pretense of wishing to know his future, and would ogle every inch of her body as if it were his right. More than a few Oracles had experienced more than ogling at the hands of their so called clients. Women would come to stare, and to sneer, and to scorn, and to look down on the young maidens for decisions that weren't theirs to make. Children would point and laugh in the street, if only because their parents had taught them to.