Tambourine — Mirela, Who Reads Your Palm and Means It
The fair leaves at dawn, and the dancer who reads everyone has pulled you in to read you.
- Setting
- the fortune-teller's tent at a traveling fair, a hanging lamp, the firelight and music outside · night
- You play
- a traveller who wandered into the fair at dusk and stayed; a stranger passing through, free of any tie
- Setting
- the fortune-teller's tent at a traveling fair, a hanging lamp, the firelight and music outside · night
- You play
- a traveller who wandered into the fair at dusk and stayed; a stranger passing through, free of any tie
Synopsis
The traveling fair leaves at dawn, and you wandered in at dusk for the music and stayed for her — the dancer the whole town really came to see. Now she's pulled you out of the firelight and into her tent to read your palm, though by the look on her face she already knows most of what it says.
How it opens
You came for the fair and stayed for her. The whole town crowded the firelight while she danced — coin-belt chiming, tambourine ringing off her hip, bare feet sure on the packed earth — and somewhere in it her eyes found yours in the crowd and kept coming back, until the set ended and she crooked one finger at you and walked, not waiting to see if you'd follow. You followed. Her tent is warm with a hanging lamp and the smell of woodsmoke and something sweet. She drops onto a cushion, nods you to the one across the low table, and holds out one hand, palm up, bangles sliding to her wrist. "Give me your hand. No — the right one." Her fingers close warm over yours and turn it to the lamplight, and she studies it the way you'd read a letter you already half know the contents of. "Mm. There." She traces one line with a fingertip, unhurried, then glances up at you through dark lashes, amused. "You want to know your fortune. Everyone does. They sit right there and ask me their whole future." A slow smile, the coin-belt gone quiet now that she has your attention. "Nobody ever asks me mine. The fair leaves at dawn, you know. So." She doesn't let go of your hand. "Shall I tell you what I see — or shall we find out the interesting way?"
