Fortune Helps Those [Open to first taker only] Who Help Themselves

What a slow day.

Weekends were getting to be a grind. With her pals out... being pals without her, it got lonely just walking around in circles and coughing quietly into her hands that still smelled like burning styrofoam and soggy bonfires. Smoking cigarettes was no big deal, but the smell was something that often irked at her. So instead of sitting around doing a lot of nothing, Alice had cranked up her Pinto and took it over to The Bean for a bit of fun.

Not only was she in a bit of a college town, it was an art school town. The folks that worked and ran The Bean had seen it a hundred times and had zero objections to her setting up shop at a cafe table outside. A handwritten sign, black marker on white card stock read simply this-

Tarot Reading
Price- Small Chai Latte, Hot plz! <3

Shuffling her Tarot cards idly, she waited for someone to show up. Her cards danced in flashy little two handed cuts that looked much more complicated than they really were- it was just a matter of keeping the linked stack strong and building adroitness with the ring and pinky fingers, no big deal. Two way cuts, three way cuts, she even built an eye out of the sections, floating in the air between her fingers.

Gosh. She loved her cards. But even better, it was a damn good way not to feel lonely sometimes. Some people are prone to freak out when they see 'the tongue of Satan' at work, some people just give her funny looks and roll their eyes at a scam artist. But for Alice, it was all about the energy and anticipations of a new face. It was a way to talk about things important to someone else without having to know their life story.

In short, it was therapeutic- for both the customer and herself. It was a way to have a damn good conversation.

Though when it was over, she had to admit... it was a short term fix. After the fact, she normally felt lonelier than ever. To open someone up, to see them think about their fears, their hopes, their dreams... and then have them walk away.

At least there was a Chai Latte in it for her. Those were always welcome and warming.

It was early in the weekend and Nikki was tired already. She had been up early and had driven MonaLisa out to the dump to find some pieces for the art project she had in her head that was aching to come out. She had navigated the old car out along the highway to the town dump and had parked her nice and safe before jumping down into the muck and starting to paw through the refuse of the town after donning her heavy duty gloves. She had dressed sensibly in an old jumpsuit that she wore for just such expeditions over her ususal saturday tiedye teeshirt and old pair of jeans, and her oldest, dirtiest tennies. Carrying her small toolkit, she looked for just the right metal pieces for her latest sculpture. She found an old rusting bed frame with a real metal box spring. She carefully snipped the wires holding the springs and pulled out an even half dozen. She wasn't sure that they were really necessary but they had a good vibe and she would use them somewhere. If not in this project, then the next. Her teacher was good in letting her store a small amount of metal pieces for her projects, otherwise she would have a hard time getting to her bed and her roomies would complain about the mess. Sometimes roommates just didn't understand her creative urge.

After about an hour of hunting and a large box of miscellaneous pieces, she pulled off her gloves and headed for the car. She had picked up enough to get started with. After she had processed the pieces and figured out exactly what she would need to finish this project, she would come back. Hopefully it wouldn't snow before she had a chance to come back and get enough supplies to last the winter. Otherwise she would be stuck with searching ebay and other odd websites and having pieces shipped to her. That was the only problem with this school, it snowed and took away a prime location for her forays into metal heaven.

After removing her overalls and changing her shoes, and throwing them in the back with the metal pieces, she headed back to town. A nice hot mocha would go down good right now, and the Bean was the place to get a decent one. Outside there was a girl, A-a-alicia or something like that, she had seen her around the school. She was doing tarot readings for the price of a Chai Latte. That might be good for a laugh and Chai Lattes were cheap. She ordered a mocha for herself and a Molto Grande Chai Latte for the girl outside. Carrying their drinks, she walked up to the table and put the huge drink in front of the girl. "I'd like a reading if you don't mind, I've brought you a Latte." She smiled at the girl. Just the idea of having a reading was worth the price of the drink.

I'm using my personal cards, OOC, for this reading. It would be like a real reading, except that it is for and by fictional characters. Xp

"Absolutely! Have a seat," Alice chirped as she flashed a smile that opened up her whole face. The first impression was always important when doing a read, cause this shit got personal sometimes. It was important to let someone know before they even sat down that she wasn't here to judge, that she wasn't anywhere she didn't want to be...

that, and the good energy was just something the cards needed to feel right.

Putting down her cards for a moment, she sipped the latte and nodded to herself. The staff was certain it was for her most of the time- the hot Chai Latte wasn't the most common order in the shop, and it wasn't hard to connect the dots when Alice was posted up outside. Brandon was pouring a little heavy today- he probably had a crush on her, it wasn't the first time he had made her a drink above and beyond the call of duty. Of course, it could just be part of being in the service industry. Alice was a familiar face, and she made it a point to tip the baristas personally rather than use that awful tip jar that they had to split with every other slacker on the shift. It wasn't important anyway- he wasn't that cute, not enough to worry about harboring a crush or anything.

Alice eyed the Chai Latte before her. It was the biggest size The Bean sold, which was a shame. It would probably get cold before she finished it and likely end up in the garbage before it was halfway done. But people had a tendency to buy a bigger size just to try to be cool- it happened almost every time. Rely on kindness and ask for less, and somehow people just felt compelled to give more. People were so strange.

She looked at the girl and smiled as she shuffled the cards, trying to focus on the girl's persona. Alice ignored her looks, her gestures, and all of the little things that people do when they meet a stranger. Alice just let herself feel what it felt like to be around her as she shuffled. The cards would do the rest.

"What's your name, hon?" she asked as she shuffled, hoping to get a feel for the girl's voice to add to the intuitive energy she was trying to focus on.

Alice nodded briefly at the reply, hardly hearing the words and forgetting the name almost as soon as she heard it. It was the voice- eager underneath, a hopeless and naive brand of savvy, an independent and fierce voice to an extent. It was something to work with.

"If ya would and could, couldya cut the cards? Take as many off of the top wherever you feel like and lay that section next to the rest of the deck," Alice said, building up a patter and easy rapport. It was acting to an extent, some of the reading was about the showmanship. "If there is anything on your mind that you wanted to ask my cards about, try to focus on that in your mind as you choose where to cut and I'll do my best from there."

After the girl complied, Alice began to lay the cards out, using a celtic cross layout and looked at the results to try to get some ideas. "If you don't mind telling me, what did you want to ask about?" Alice asked as she tried to puzzle out the story her cards were telling her, starting with The Fool, covered by The Queen of Wands.

Of course, there were... one, two... five really powerful cards in this reading, the heaviest of which had to do with the girl's role in her question and the outcome. It was a strange thing to see- Alice hadn't expected more than a couple of Arcana to pop up, but hey- the unexpected was half the fun.

"I'm Nikki, Nikki Johns. I'm a senior at Harriman. I hope the latte is okay, the boy inside said that you would like the large one, he said that it was a better buy, you got a better deal per ounce that way." She smiled at the girl. She reached out with her left hand and cut the deck in almost half placing the cards on the left hand side of the deck. She vaguely remembering her mother saying to do it that way when she had taken up tarot reading 3 summers ago. There was probably several decks of tarot cards stashed in her mother's office. She and her brother had numerous readings that summer til mom's interest waned and she tore off on another tangent. Composting, she thought, that replaced Tarot reading, or was it mosquito fish for the local ponds, doesn't matter. She thought of her question and was ready when the girl asked for it.

"I was thinking of how my Senior year was going to go, would I be successful in things this year. Was I going to be happy and succeed or would I look back on the year as a total failure?" She looked expectantly. "I would really like to know. That way if it is going to really suck, maybe I can do something about it to head off disaster. Like move back home or drop out or something." She would do nothing of the sort, really but the other girl didn't know that. She had plans that did not include dropping out of High School OR moving back home. That would be a disaster in itself. The best way she knew of to piss her parental units completely off. They had spent a ginormous amount of money to send her and her brother here, and she would not be dropping out or returning home if they had anything to say about it. It was the one thing that her parents agreed on, and that was their children's education.
"So what does it say?