Major Arcana

 📅 November/December 2023

Meeting Briar turned out to be much more of an Experience than Kato had anticipated. Willow had told him her roommate/business partner wanted to meet him, and he’d agreed without question, because of course; she’d met his friends, it only made sense he meet hers. But he wasn’t really expecting to be sat down in a dark, plant-filled foyer and divinated at.
After ‘cleansing’ him with a clear quartz crystal—with a rather terse “for negative energies” in explanation as she touched it to the top of his head, then to each shoulder and both sides of each of his hands—Briar thunked a tarot deck in front of him, and he tried his best to look like he was taking it all very seriously—because Willow, who stood nearby, looked more apprehensive than amused.
“I’m going to do a reading,” Briar said inflectionlessly; “You will draw three cards to represent you—without looking at them. Shuffle the deck and draw when it feels right, putting each one in front of you, face down.”

He awkwardly shuffled for a minute, and—since nothing felt like anything other than a bunch of cards—drew three at absolute random.
“Okay. You have your three. Flip the first one over,” Briar instructed.
He did: A tower, in flames, struck by lightning. People casting themselves down from the burning windows, as a crown toppled from the crest of the destroyed, storm-battered spire.
It didn’t look promising. Briar’s eyes narrowed.
“Destruction, trauma, upheaval or sudden change. Chaos. Very well. Next card.”

A skull-faced figure in black armour astride a white horse, bodies strewn at its hooves. In the rider’s bony grasp, a black flag bearing a white rose, fluttering ominously over the head of some pleading saint kneeling before the mounted reaper. ‘DEATH,’ the card read, superfluously.
Kato grimaced. “Not looking great, huh?” he joked awkwardly. 
Briar’s eyes flashed with irritation. “Everyone thinks that. Fool, it means change, transformation, or transition. Flip your final card.”

An angel leaning down from a cloud, blowing a trumpet; to the awe of a crowd of pale, nude people gathered beneath; their arms spread wide. ‘Judgement,’ it read.
Fitting, he thought to himself, looking back up at Briar. Her expression was indecipherable.
“Absolution and rebirth...” she muttered; “Three cards of change in a single reading, all of them major arcana...”
“To be fair, I’ve needed to change a lot of my shit in my life,” Kato said. “I’m only just getting it on track now. Like, the past couple years, so...”

“Hmph. Shuffle again and draw another card. For your relationship here,” she said, with a nod to Willow. He chanced a glance at her but didn’t draw much reassurance from her ambivalent grimace. He drew a card and waited for Briar to nod before flipping it over.
She made an immediate sound of disgust and recoiled, but when he looked down he found he’d pulled the ‘Lovers’ card.
“What?” he asked, baffled; “Isn’t it a good card?”
“Of course it is!” she exclaimed, as if she hadn’t chastised him for thinking the Death card was bad; “The arcana is just disgustingly trite! Fine, take my blessing for now, then, Lovers-boy—but if you keep changing like you have been I’ll be the first to know when it’s for the worse. Only a snake sheds its skin more than once and by my count you’re up to three.”
Kato blinked. 

“Actually, it’s not just snakes…” he said, unable to help himself; “Spiders do, too: My friend Athena has a tarantula named Beatrice and she strings the molts up as a garland; she has, like, ten or so...”
Willow stifled a giggle behind him.
Briar looked like she might want to hit him with the quartz crystal again.