[right]Content warning: Vent art Depression Dark themes[/right] [i]The Wheel of Fortune[/i] Stella doesn’t believe in chance. She understands implicitly as she contemplates this card that she drew it from a deck of dozens just like it; she could have drawn so many other arcana and yet this was what appeared. But is it truly so random? She was the one who shuffled the deck, she set herself up for this outcome, regardless of whether she had been conscious of it or not. Things don’t just [i]happen[/i], no matter how improbable they may seem. She flips over the next card. [i]Reversed Justice[/i] But events ought to have a reason behind them, shouldn’t they? Stella looks up at the night sky. Shimmering streaks of light ribbon across the starry canvas, party streamers hung up for the world’s cruelest celebration. The stars look down upon her world with blithe indifference. There is one gleaming pinprick up there which has grander intentions for this planet. What reason is there for any of this? Because somewhere, millions of light years away, a collision of some big hunks of rock resulted in one of them setting on a course that would one day lead to it crashing into the planet she calls home? It’s a joke is what it is, and the punchline is going to be the extinction of everything that she knows. No dinosaur could have done anything differently to avoid this outcome. In the end, all that reducing and recycling would be for nothing. Next. [i]Two of Wands[/i] She stands up from the iron table and walks around the yard. There are familiar furrows etched into the grass from her tail dragging behind her. The earth is cool and inert beneath her feet. What would it feel like for it to erupt beneath her, bursting into a fiery conflagration? She wonders what difference it might make if she were to leave home right now. Hitch a ride along the highways as far as she can go. She wishes more than ever that she had been born a pterosaur instead of a stegosaur, so she could just fly away from here. There haven’t been any announcements about where the asteroid might hit. It could be right in the middle of Caldera Bay, incinerating everything for miles in every direction even before the catastrophic impact. It could be somewhere on the other side of the world, sparing her and those close to her of instantaneous annihilation but dooming them to a slow suffocation as the planet chokes on its own atmosphere. Moving elsewhere could stall or just as easily hasten her fate, but it would ultimately be the same no matter what. She settles wearily back into her seat before drawing another card. [i]Knight of Cups[/i] It’s still better to act than to sit idle. Stella raps her knuckles on the table as she thinks, and the cards rustle faintly. At the very least, it wouldn’t hurt to get away from home for a while. Perhaps she could pack a bag with the intent to go for a long hike through the pines, and if she just happens to decide to keep on walking then that’s simply the way things go. She leans back, staring listlessly up at the sky, and for a few moments she feels satisfied, the urge to scrutinize her untold future absent. But then she considers that leaving here would entail everything she knows behind. Every[i]one[/i] she knows. Her friends. Even her parents. The idea of venturing through the unknown with no one else to fall back on weighs heavily on her. It’s enough to get her to draw again without thinking about it. [i]Reversed Two of Cups[/i] She has to suppose that she isn’t surprised. Her friends…well, sometimes, when she’s in a dour mood, as she is right now, she hesitates to even think of them that way. Sage is the only one in that group who regularly checks in on her, and lately he’s been increasingly preoccupied, frittering away in the kitchen to distract himself from his anxiety. Perhaps it can be said that all of them are similarly afflicted at the moment—the band doesn’t seem to be holding together from what she’s observed, in spite of their recent success. No one is taking things well, unsurprisingly. She didn’t grow up in Caldera Bay like the rest of them, has yet to fully put down roots no matter how much she’s tried to. She’s too used to packing up and moving to get completely invested in a new group of friends each time. What reason does she have to be so invested in anything that happens here? [i]King of Wands[/i] Stella clasps her palms over her face and massages her forehead. Her scales feel hot, like her brain is overheating. With her eyes closed, she takes a step back and contemplates. How much of it is really on them and how much is on her? No one ever invited her to Reed’s tabletop campaign, but she can’t recall ever expressing interest in joining. She could have tried harder to be their friend. [i]Three of Pentacles[/i] She can understand quite readily that what they [i]need[/i] is to stay together. No one’s going to accomplish anything by themselves. Maybe leaving town would functionally be no different than sulking in her room. Or in the backyard, for that matter. She rubs her fingers slowly on top of the deck of cards. [i]Page of Swords[/i] All Stella wants is to be able to understand what’s happening around her. She enjoys using tarot to tell others their fortune. The experience is different when she’s doing it for herself. There are no expectations upon her, leaving her to contemplate for as long as she needs to. She can tease out meaning from anything. [i]Reversed Ace of Swords[/i] “Chaos,” Stella mutters under her breath. But there is order in chaos. There is order in chaos. Order in chaos. [i]The Devil[/i] She flings the card away from herself as soon as she sees the leering horned face. It flips through the air until landing on the grass. Face-up, but now it is reversed. She can’t remember for sure if it had been like that when she drew it. She decides that this is satisfactory enough. Still, though… [i]Nine of Wands[/i] She brushes the velvety surface with her thumb before holding the card to her chest, feeling the dull thumping of her heartbeat under the surface. Again she stands, and she walks to the edge of the yard to look out over the fence, over the rooftops sloping down toward the bay. Far in the distance, the rippling of the waves casts a reflection of moonlight, mirroring the ghostly auroras in the sky. She crosses her arms over herself and shivers, feeling chilly in spite of her long-sleeved sweater (not like her shorts are helping). As much as Stella thinks that it would be fun for the whole lot of them to pack up and leave—she knows that Fang already intended to do that after high school anyway—it’s clear that they can’t leave now. Caldera Bay is where they belong. It’s their home. It’s a part of them just as much as any individual dinosaur is. She takes out her phone and takes a scroll through her contacts. Sage is on do not disturb. She won’t try texting him, but maybe she can walk over to visit him. Maybe she can see all of them. She won’t go out of her way to insist that they need to patch things up and band together, but she feels that if she can at least spend some time with each of them then they’ll gradually converge. It’s all they can hope for at this point. Back to the table, she sets the card down on the stack of drawn cards that she’s accrued. She only scarcely stops herself in the process of reaching over to draw yet another one. Her arm trembles, fingers slowly clenching, and she bites her lip. Anguish wells up in her soul at the thought that she simply cannot be satisfied. “What’s wrong with me?” she whimpers. That is the question that prompts her to draw one last card. [i]Reversed Sun[/i] Stella stares at the card for a long time—not really thinking about it, for she understands it completely; just thinking—and she sighs. Eventually, she pools all the cards together, reshuffling the deck with her eyes closed as she’s practiced dozens of times, before leaving them on the table and walking away. She suspects she’ll come back for them sooner or later, but just for tonight she wants to act on her own power, without trying to tease out what the future might hold. Whatever happens, that will simply be what happens. She doesn’t believe in chance, after all.