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The soothsayer’s face goes dark, his eyes clouding over as he becomes a vessel of the universe. His lips move – wordlessly at first – as thoughts and images swirl and coalesce within him. At last, he speaks: “Your greatest foe lies at the heart of your greatest love,” he intones, voice monotone.
Blinking, Terithia stares at the fortune teller. “Uh… thanks, Stillwell. I’ll… keep that in mind.” Then, in a lower mutter as she walks away, “What a waste of tesserae. Again. Why do I keep going back?”
~~~
Days later, the ex-soldier-turned-fisherwoman boards her dinghy and rows out to the middle of the bay, rod at her side. It’s a fair summer day without a cloud in sight, the salty sea air occasionally gusting and blowing around her tufty gray hair. It’s a perfect day and she plans on spending it with her love; the sea. After selecting her lure, Terithia casts her line and sits back, some skewered grilled squid in hand and a cold beer procured from The Sleeping Dragon Inn close by to quench her thirst. She watches as a school of sardines swims beneath her boat, a liquid cloud of silver scales that ebbs and flows around the dull rocks and colorful anemones under the water’s surface. Her eyes slip closed, though she keeps a firm grip on her pole.
A tug at her pole causes her to crack an eye open and she tightens her grip.
“What have we got?” he muses quietly to herself. She lets the line play out just a little bit, waiting for the bite.
And here it comes! It’s a big one, she can tell immediately by the way the pole is nearly yanked out of her hand. She drops her dried squid and grabs the rod with her other hand, barely securing it in time before it goes overboard, and she slams her feet against the front thwart, putting all her weight into heaving against the taut line. The reel spins, and she grabs it before her catch can get any further away. The fight is on! Her knee knocks over her bottle of beer, spilling it across the bottom, but she’s got no time to bother with the mess. A massive red sail pokes out from beneath the surface of the water, and she recognizes the jagged tear in the membrane – it’s Duke, the fifty-foot oarfish that has hunted in this bay out of season for over a decade and The One That Got Away.
Not today!
Terithia grits her teeth and wrestles with the rod, teasing the line and then reeling it in as fast as she can. Duke puts up one hell of a fight, though, darting and surging away just when she thinks she’s got him. Neither gives up the fight, and though it’s a tiring battle, Terithia is slowly winning, the oarfish getting closer to the boat one meter at a time. Sweat drips down her brow as she hauls on her pole, and a flash of silver and red on the surface shows the fish struggling to escape, but she’s got him. She’s got him!
With one final yank, she pulls him out of the water and into her boat, though he’s so large he’s still halfway in the water. And that’s probably why, with one strong flick, Duke breaks the line and, too large for Terithia to handle on her own, slips back into the water with one last powerful wriggle. Salt water splashes the boat, soaking her, and she collapses against the back of the dinghy, exhausted. She chuckles, and then it blossoms into a full-blown belly laugh, bubbling out of her like sea foam. That damn Duke; she’ll have to repair her pole after all this. But it was a good fight – he fought well and she gave as good as she got. What a day! She can’t wait to go back to the inn and tell everyone that he got away from her again, but it does her soul good to know that her adversary is still out there, drifting through the currents of Mistria.