The Guardian:
Fortuna seems to take a very long time to organize her thoughts.
"It's always extremely complicated to try to pass on knowledge like this: there are futures and futures tangled up with each other. Your future. Mine. Things you've yet to do and people I have yet to be. I think I've at least got the picture, that the Time Lords conceived of me, figuratively and literally, to be the bridge to what comes after them. Here and there I have found out enough to understand that. The problem, of course, is that you can only ever set a child on their path; you can't walk it for them, and there was never any guarantee that it would turn out in any way that they would have wanted."
She holds the TAROT in her palm. "But let's see what our friend makes of this particular crossroads."
Fortuna briskly turns three cards off the top of the deck, laying them left to right in front of Trav in sequence. Trav reads the Ten of Wands, the inverted Two of Coins, the Six of Swords.
"Well, that is you in a nutshell, I think. Trying to carry the burdens of the universe on your back, trying to hold them in balance, and not having an easy time of it." She looks at the last of the cards. "But there's a suggestion here that the way forward is in working to spread that burden around. There are a lot of players on the board now. More than Gallifrey ever permitted to exist. Some of those have real ambitions of their own -- and the question is how those ambitions can be held in check. By showing each one how they can work toward a common way forward -- or by imposing that path>" A dark look comes over Fortuna's features. "Warlock thought that way. Bless old Zheng Ru for his patience in trying to teach another path. But I can't truthfully say that I've set that possibility aside."
Fortuna starts to deal out more cards -- but a breeze comes through just then, making the candles flicker, and Trav feels a ripple in time as several cards scatter to the right of those already laid. Fortuna gives a start, and then looks down. Two pairs of cards have spilled askew on the table. The Queen of Wands lays athwart the King of Cups, while further the King of Wands crosses atop the Page of Swords.
"That... that seems to be no coincidence," she says, indicating the first pair. "These showed themselves the very first time I-as-me scanned for I-as-Phillipe, In hindsight it wasn't hard to map them onto my first companions. A woman, strong and fire-hearted, bold and independent? A man, generous, kind, a healer? I don't think I have to paint you a picture.
"Over here... another man, stern and just and just a little bit arrogant. And yet he's being held up by this person, just discovering her own power, and not really seeing it yet." She looks up at Trav. "Normally this part of the spread is all conjoined. I think a little bit of Time blew through here, though."
She pauses as if waiting for stillness, before she turns two more cards. She lays down the World, horizontally. "Change, renewal, the end and the fulfillment of things... but which way it will turn, will fall on...." She places the final card, the Tower. "Great strife, I am sorry to see."
Fortuna looks up at Trav at last. "You surely know know more of the challenges that might be ahead than I do. I'm afraid that trying to choose a future any more precisely than that, might end up creating some very unfortunate fates for you, for me, for an unfathomable number of people and places."
Trav takes her phone and snaps a picture of the spread.
"No, this is exactly what I need. This is the transmission of information without the direct breaking of causality or the laws of time, by metaphor and simile. Always, you're wonderful. I'll be staring at this and thinking about it." She knows that something terrible must happen to Fortuna, to burn her away that she becomes Evers. It breaks her heart. She needs to spend time with him - she spent a lifetime as Louise, and only knew her time lord legacy,
as Loise Simons, for a grand total of 4 minutes, before having her throat ripped out by a monster and regenerating.
"Instead, I think I'll work with the possible futures in a reasonable negotiation, like I always have. Does that sound like a plan? I'd be an idiot to deny that time doesn't have plans for me, but I have my own plans for my time. I'm sure we can reach a compromise. After all, all I am are my choices."
Trav leans back and considers when talks about spreading around the burden. "
Yeah, imposing. I find myself sometimes being like the old me more than I like. I find that I was like the old me before I had red hair. That's a bad Time Lord trait, girlie. Watch when you feel like doing it." She remembers all those years ago, after she killed 12 Daleks, the 5th Doctor and Teegan, staring in shock, her eyes behind her glasses staring back at them, and how she had felt no shame. Even going back as far as her first incarnation, the urge to impose her Time Lord will upon a problem - that was a character trait she shared with The Doctor and the Master. The better impulse - to collaborate, to compromise - was a hard won skill developed over centuries that was all hers. They often conflicted. She's have to watch that.
"So, are you seeing anyone these days? As the closest thing you have to a concerned parent, I want to know. Also, are you still in working with Zu?"
This message was last edited by the player at 18:18, Mon 02 Nov 2015.
