Title: Considering Cards
Fandom: The Silmarillion
Challenge: Deal
Bingo prompt: Did What Where
Rating: G
Length: 250
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: Thanks go to Morgynleri for encouragement & sanity-checking. The deck I had to hand while writing this was The Considerate Cat, though I don't think that is the deck in the story. It might be though. The Chariot is an alert tuxedo cat sitting atop an old-fashioned blue and white VW bus.
Summary: A three card spread that changes everything.


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“Deal me in.”

“This isn’t a game, it’s a reading, a meditation, a thought-clarifying, idea-generating device.” The current wheel spread was not particularly communicative in any of those ways, but still. Looking at the cards was better than looking at the flickering, ephemeral people around him in the cafe.

“I know. Deal me in.”

“That isn't how it works. And I don't do readings for other people.” Not anymore. Not ever again. And ever was, would be, a long, long time.

“I know that. I’m not asking for that. Deal me in.”

What did that even mean? Exasperated, he took the top three cards from the deck and snapped them down face up in front of this very persistent, insistent, almost familiar (could not possibly be familiar) person.

The Star, the King of Cups, the Chariot.

They could not remotely mean what they seemed to be saying. Not literally. Especially not in combination with/commentary on the previous cards, opaque unhelpfulness transformed into something well past hope.

He looked up, meeting bright grey eyes in an ageless, un-ephemeral face framed in shining dark hair.

“Elrond?!”

Elrond smiled — no, grinned was the only word for that expression — “As you see.” Then abruptly more serious, but still with a sense of underlying delight and relief and hope, “The way is open, will you come home?”

Dealt in indeed. The cafe’s sound-system was playing Peter Gabriel’s Solsbury Hill. As if he needed another sign.

“Yes.”

Grab your things, I've come to take you home.