Stormkissed

Your story started in silence.

“Who will speak for this woman?” the guildmaster intoned — just as he had for every other would-be performer’s audition.

But for your audition? For — I glanced at the call sheet — for Aisling Gale, the 31-year-old fortune teller from Glensdale?

No one spoke for you.

I looked at your application again. You had no references, no prior paid experience in your craft of tarot card reading and street performances.

You’d scrawled “Do trading favors count as paid?” in the form’s margins.

I blinked. You’d just...walked into open auditions for the High Spire Guild’s season performances with nothing but a small folding table, a deck of tarot cards — and an admittedly charming smile in the face of uncertainty.

For every other audition, without fail, a guildmember witnessed why this performer deserved a chance to serve this season.

A rogue (serious for once during Official Guild Business™) might discuss the performer’s wit, or a fighter testify to the applicant’s strength - often to fulfil a forfeit of sponsorship after losing a challenge.

I’d fought two such battles myself in the previous week, but no challenger had won the marshal’s sponsorship that year.

A surprise sponsorship from one of the noble players had stirred the auditions that year. Lady Cecilia, the glacial Ice Queen, had stood for a golden-haired princeling who proved to be a surprisingly good trick shot. His gallantry had even seasoned performers sighing.

But you, Aisling?

You let the silence lengthen while you stood center-stage before me, the guildmaster, and other longstanding guildmembers at the judges’ table.

The guild watchers grew restless.

Washerwomen and rogues — known even in mundane clothes, for their blatant disregard of formal proceedings — began to shift and grin in their seats, sensing blood in the water.

The noble players started to mutter out of the corners of their mouths, stings at the auditioner’s expense that could be plausibly denied.

Frowning, I opened my mouth to call the watcher’s gallery to order —

“I can speak for myself, Guildmaster,” you said.

You smoothed wrinkles from your standard green faire gown, trimmed with Celtic knotwork ribbon. A pair of practical brown boots peeped out beneath the hem. You wore your frizzy hair smoothed back into a low bun, with clips trying to contain the flyaway strands. Two had already popped out to fall into your face. Dark brown eyes nearly disappeared behind large black-framed glasses that still somehow seemed to see everything at once.

Seers eyes, I thought, then mentally shook myself. Don’t be a superstitious fool.

“I saw the open call flyer at the library, sir, and I thought I’d try,” you continued, unaware of my silent critique while unfolding her table with practiced ease. You set a battered, slightly curved deck of long cards on top. “The worst you can say is no, and then at least I’ll have tried something new.”

You propped a fist on your hip. ”Would you let me try, sir?”

The guildmaster’s mask did not slip, but I would’ve sworn the man was fighting back a smile.

“Are you aware, Mistress Gale —” he began.

"Miss Gale, if you please, sir.”

My mouth almost dropped open. Only years of carefully built control kept my expression neutral.

You had the audacity to correct the head of the entire guildduring your own audition.

I leaned forward, shifting my center of gravity as though watching a fight — or preparing for one.

“... Of course, Miss Gale,” the guildmaster said slowly, carefully, as though re-evaluating what he’d been about to say. “Are you aware of the position for which you are auditioning?”

“A season’s performance at the High Spire Faire,” you said. “A test season to see about full membership into the guild, with a contract for next year if successful.”

“You are correct, Miss Gale. And do you know how many slots there are available?”

“Three,” you replied promptly.

“Correct again. And there have been nineteen auditions so far this afternoon.” The guildmaster looked down his hawk-nose at you, standing easily with your cards and table before the judge’s table.

“What makes you think you can beat those odds, with more still to come? Why should we spend our time judging you — who has no references, no experience, nothing at all?”

I couldn’t help but admire your composure as you kept your nerves clutched in your skirt while daring to respond.

“You spent a fair bit of time with the washer lads when they dropped a soapy sponge into your lady’s lap, my lord guildmaster.”

You nodded at Isolde seated at the judge’s table, damp spot in her linen skirt still drying.

Isolde smiled her fan-thin polite nothing while the watchers tittered and you went on, “I’d wager you’ve time enough to spare for a single reading from me.”

Even as the watchers tittered at your callback and observation, I realized that you’d already picked up the pattern. I fought back a grin. She’s relaxing into it — and he’s giving her the room to do it, even without a patron! She’ll not leave the stage disgraced, at least.

The guildmaster combed his beard with his fingers. He was acting as if... as if the guild’s chief puzzle maker had unexpectedly seen a new piece for some grand design click into place, and he was considering how to position it next.

I realized, with dawning horror, that he was honestly considering whether to let you truly audition.

You’d be eaten alive; the guildmaster had to discourage your folly and gently redirect you to audition for easier faires before trying again next year.

After all, the High Spire Guild was one of the best historic performing guilds in the country. Other acting troops sent their performers to the High Spire Faire to learn about crowd work, weapons demonstrations, choreography, and narrative acting from this guild.

As admirable as your spunk was, surely the guildmaster couldn’t seriously think that -

“Not I, Miss Gale.” The guildmaster cut through my spinning thoughts. “Sir Carver, if you please...?”

I froze as the watchers whooped and turned to me, anxious to see this next audition as though it were a true play put on for their benefit.

I could almost hear the creak in my spine as I faced the guildmaster completely, though I saw nothing but stern command - no other hint at what he wanted from me beyond simply to... have a reading.

What a hellish trial, to read someone like me.

Automatically, I placed my sword onto the table, then stood to give a half-bow in your general direction.

“Tell our marshal’s fortune true, Miss Gale, from what you see standing before you,” the guildmaster commanded. “Then... we will see.”

You turned to face me for the very first time — and your flashing gaze pinned to the stage as you pushed up your glasses for a better look.

I fought the urge to shift on my feet under the weight of your examination, as though I were a green lad in the fighter’s line inspection.

I’d surveyed opponents before, evaluated strengths and weaknesses before a fight — hadn’t that been why I’d served as judge? Isn’t that what I’d done to you moments ago?

This review shouldn’t have been any different, coming from a woman half my size and less than a quarter of my reach.

It wasn’t any different, I told myself sternly, forcing my body to the alert stillness I’d trained it to for the field.

I knew what your inspection would reveal, after all: an older gentleman with all his mouse-brown hair yet, with a trim neat beard and a tiny hoop in one ear — my sole extravagance as a man who wore leather and plate as easily as others wore cotton or linen.

No jangling metal or sigil marked that marked me as a knight or even showed my office. I didn’t need it for command.

I kept my face in its normal granite mask, showing nothing but polite interest: high cheekbones with a dusting of a sunburn that tingled despite the aloe I’d managed to slather on that morning, a nose too big to be handsome and flattened at least twice after fights gone wrong, and a full mouth carefully set in a resting neutrality that gave away nothing.

For all the years I’d spent perfecting the stone face required of the guild’s marshal, however, the laugh lines at my blue eyes must have given me away — because you suddenly smiled at me, almost laughing at some secret joke you seemed to think we shared.

Nonsensically, my sunburned cheeks grew warmer as the audience murmured with interest as you turned back to face both the guildmaster and the watcher’s gallery with a performer’s instinctual turn and position.

“From what stands before me, my lord guildmaster,” you said, the smile brightening your voice like a bird’s to carry to the furthest reaches of the general audience, “your marshal will break before he bends his honor.”

A wave of surprised laughter spilled from the watcher’s gallery and general audience.

I fought to keep my mask in place, with the appropriate marshal’s implacable sternness. With a single sentence, you’d hit me harder than any blow I’d taken that week in practice or challenge.

But you weren’t done.

“I’ve a friend who makes a good salve for those calluses on your hands. Get new boots, please, or else you’ll feel it in your back soon if you don’t already. Trust me — get the jelly inserts.”

You grinned — an irreverent imp’s smirk that had no place on a grown woman’s face, talking to the man who would be a leader in the guild you were auditioning for. My hands tightened at my sides at the disrespect I’d never tolerate on the fighter’s green.

“That’s not your fortune, mind, just a few observations from one older lady to another, even more...distinguished gentleman,” you added casually, as though you didn’t know you’d just delivered the killing blow.

One washerwoman in the watcher’s gallery gasped, “Distinguished! My lord marshal —distinguished!” and collapsed into laughter at the thought before the guildmaster glared her back into respectful attention.

The corner of my mouth twitched upward. You — a some unknown fortune-teller — had become the first to crack my marshal’s mask in years.

You’d impressed the guildmaster — I could see that much from a swift glance at his hand covering what I was sure was a grin at my expense.

And... you had impressed me, too, I could admit. A point to you, Miss Gale.

Aloud, I said, “What do your cards say, madame fortune-teller, about this man who already feels the ache in his boots, but cannot seem to stop marching into battle?”

I’d continue your audition, certainly, but on my own terms. It was time to test the fortune teller’s mettle — and I swear to you, a wind picked up as I said those words.

Slowly, so slowly, you tilted your head to regard me again, lips pursed in a frown.

You reminded me again of a bird: this one considering a new gleam in the garden, and trying to decide if it was a tasty morsel or coiled predator.

Carefully, you reached behind your back to draw the top card of your deck without looking. Impressive, that you hadn’t knocked everything over, I automatically observed in a judge’s mindset. It must’ve taken practice. The move added dramatic flare and tension while forswearing anyone who thought you were selecting cards through some fancy trickery.

My admiration doubled when I noticed you’d drawn both the top and bottom cards to answer my question.

“The Chariot as your answer, crossed by the Hanged Man,” you said quietly — though all in the suddenly captivated and silent audience could hear. You twirled the cards in your hand, showing them to me and the watchers alike to see the details you clearly didn’t need to reference.

“The deck has granted you a hard, driven pair of cards, my lord marshal. You are harried forward, tugged by one responsibility to the next — constantly forcing your will to forge a single coherent path when you could be split between many.

“It’s impressive.”

You suddenly interrupted your serious recitation to offer me a small, self-deprecating smile. I blinked. “I couldn’t do what you do without breaking, and I can see it’s the result of long, hard-fought battles to forge such discipline.

“However... There’s a warning, too.”

Your expression darkened again, and I caught myself leaning forward to catch your words. Instead, you offered me the Hanged Man card. Gingerly, carefully, I took it, running calloused fingertips over the blunted, battered edges of the offering.

“What do you have that goads you forward, sir?” you asked me gently, kindly, while you watched me gaze at the illustration — as though you hadn’t slid a blade between a chink in my marshal’s armor I’d never realized existed before that moment.

My head snapped up from the card, eyes narrowing at the sudden confrontation.

But you’d already moved on, not expecting an answer... as though you knew I didn’t have one to give.

“This man — the Hanged Man — is willing to wait for what he wants,” you continued, somehow addressing me and everyone at once. I was frozen: unable to stop you from speaking, unable to halt the truths you were now spilling out to the audience at large.

“His will focuses solely on the end rewards for the hard path he follows — trusting that if he continues, no matter what, he will achieve the desired goal... and that it’s one worth attaining.

“Conversely, your Chariot is pulled forward by responsibility, my lord marshal, and not an endpoint.”

You’d shrug, casual, even as you laid me open bare for every member of the guild and auditioning audience to hear with two painted cardboard rectangles.

“Someday, sir, you will have to reconcile the fact that you have fought very hard to drive in a single line — straight off a cliff — because you haven’t picked a place you’re driving to.”

Your smile, somehow, miraculously, returned at that moment. I’d have sworn it was like a beam of sunshine, melting my frozen panic.

“By all the gods, though, I’d pray for whatever got in your way when you finally decided what was worth steering towards! Nothing would stop you.”

You turned to the guildmaster then, as I stood there silently reeling from that reading, and inclined your head, asking something about whether he thought that would do.

A fighter who lived his life in lines and drills, in strikes and parries, in rehearsed violence... being handed the Chariot and the Hanged Man felt like being stripped down in front of the whole panel.

Because you said aloud the thing I rarely admitted, even to myself: that I was always driving forward, never toward.

That my whole strength was in endurance and responsibility.

And that — not once — had I allowed myself the luxury of naming what I actually wanted.

I could hear my fellow judges snickering at the table behind me. “Hear that, Tristan? Careful, or you’ll drive us all off the cliff with you.”

But I’d have barely heard them. I’d be staring down at the Hanged Man card in my hands, fingers tracing its edges, the softness of your voice that had cut deeper than any sword strike echoing in my ears.

When I lifted my gaze back to you, gods, the grin you wore! It struck me to my marrow, Aisling. Half mocking, half merciful.

And I’d know — just knew, in that exact moment — that I wanted more of that, and of you.

I wanted to hear what else you’d divine if I let you keep drawing cards.

More than that — I wanted to see if you could read the thing I hadn’t yet put words to.

I wanted to see if you could help me find words for that ache of not just marching forward, but the longing for something or someone worth marching to.

That ache must have been why the next words that fell out of my mouth were: “Perhaps I’ve just found what’s worth steering toward.”

A saccharinely idiotic courtly statement, to come from the granite-faced lord marshal - but you didn’t know better, and I couldn’t take them back once they’d slipped free.

You, though? You grinned like you’d just found a new favorite sparring partner.

“I have no doubt you have foundaworthy something,” you said, just as quietly as I’d spoken - for me alone, not the audience or judges. Again, that kindness glimmered from you. “Alas, my lord marshal. I’m afraid that target never sits in one place, waiting for a tilt or lance to spear it.”

More loudly, you’d say, “Sir, try not to tilt at storm clouds. They’ll whirl about and drive you most dizzy. If you must, though, at least replace your boots. Please. For me. My back hurts looking at you. Put those artifacts in the medieval exhibit where they belong and get arch support!”

Even then, your flare for dramatic timing — and knowing how to break dramatic tension with a joke, not unkindly — was unparalleled.

As the crowd roared at the unexpected callback, I actually had to physically duck my head, so that no one could see how close you came to completely cracking my marshal’s mask in front of the whole panel and watcher’s gallery alike.

You could’ve thrown any card — any fortune — and it wouldn’t have landed half so hard as you dismissing me like a foolish squire in that bright, teasing voice.

“You’ve been undone by an insole, marshal!” a rogue called out above the applause. On the outside, I bore the taunt stoically, wiping the grin from my face before facing the crowd once more.

But inside? I’d be a mess of raw admiration and confusion and indignation.

Because I’d heard the quieter words meant only for me, the ones behind the mask.

You’d told me, without saying it plain, that if I pickedyouas a destination? The one to make the aches worth it? Chasing after you would be no simple tilt.

That you’d never sit still for me to charge at, and I’d be better off not trying at all.

And something in me — some stubborn, granite piece of me that remained despite your best efforts — lit up at that gauntlet you hadn’t intended to throw down, Aisling.

Because you weren’t some lily-gilded prize waiting in a tower, or another swaggering oaf to put down in his place.

You were a storm, a moving target — a fire to be matched stride for stride, to prove worthy of doing so without getting burned myself.

And that? That challenge was more intoxicating than any easy fortune you could’ve granted, or any gauntlet thrown down at my feet in many, many years.

So, I let the laughter roll, tapping the Hanged Man against my palm.

And then, low enough for only you to catch it under the noise:

“Then, I suppose... I’d best learn to chase after storms.”