Conversation with Fayne contains so many frustrations.  He seems to believe that he knows what I'm saying and how I view life, but his readings don't generally seem to intersect with mine.  He fears that I am living too much in the past, wallowing in it, and in my fears of the future.  What he fails to grasp and I somehow fail to articulate, is that I am meeting most of my past for the first time in a weird sort of way.  Then is now because this is the first chance the person I am now has had to react to those events.  I am no longer the person that any of those things happened to, so I can't simply accept the reactions of who I was at the time.

As to the fears for the future, it is not something that weighs heavily on me.  If it did, I would have left already or would be hiding somewhere in the depths of the castle hoping to be overlooked.  I can't do anything to change those big things right now, so I will enjoy the small things, work on my skills and watch what happens around me.  When I see something I can do, I will.  Not out of great loyalty to Amber although I am grateful for the haven I have found it to be, however temporary that haven may be.  Out of loyalty to those people who have come to mean something to me (Fayne included whether he wishes to be or not) and out of a sense that the things going on here are bigger than they seem on the surface.

Right now, I enjoy watching Russell and Brandon plotting their next adventures, thinking they're getting away with something.  I enjoy Rebecca's discovery of her independence and of the natural world.  I enjoy talking to Merlin when the subject doesn't pain him.  Time in the garden, painting.  The thought of getting a cat.  Trying to master a new fighting maneuver.  Foods that I'd never imagined.

I simply don't expect it to last.  The negatives are generally more in need of expression than the tiny things that build contentment.  Besides, I can just imagine the look on Fayne's face if I discussed the color of the sky or the joy of the wind in my hair.  Those things have deep meaning but are only used for superficial conversation in the two societies I know.  I wonder why the things that are valuable should be officially shrugged off as trivial.

At least Fayne has better things to think about now than the state of my mental health.  I'm fairly sure that, over the course of the last several days, I've observed a change in his relationship with Delilah.  I wonder what took him so long.   The new revelations and challenges also give him other things to consider.

Perhaps I should start that at the beginning...

Today was a combat lesson with Fayne rather than one with Tevis.  We didn't do much actual sparring because Fayne wanted to talk (Yes, the talk that inspired all my earlier commentary).  At the start of the session, I'd presented him with the Trumps I'd drawn for him and Delilah.  He seemed startled, as if he'd forgotten our bargain or hadn't expected me to really carry through.  (In truth, I'd have delayed longer in order to get more Trumps done for my own deck, but I wanted to say thank you for his and Delilah assistance with Tevis and the rescue of Aunt Gen.  Gifts are a more tangible way to do that.)

Fayne told me that I'd come a long way in improving my skill as a fighter.  I'm pleased by that.  It doesn't mean a lot by local standards, but it's better than nothing.  It also gave me the excuse to look up Uncle Benjamin, one of those on my list of people I don't know well enough to draw, to ask about "real" fighting lessons.  I can brawl and handle a knife at least sort of.  Swordplay is something else altogether.

After Fayne wandered away, I sat and thought for a while.  I have about 20 Trumps completed now, and that's enough to try a scrying.  It's not as many as I would have liked for my first attempt, but...

So I went inside and tried to use my Trumps to do a reading.  The results were odd.

I decided to use a simple layout for the scrying.  The full fourteen card spread that I normally use for tarot readings seemed too complicated, particularly with only eighteen cards to start with.

I shuffled and laid out the cards.  Hm.

First card.  My present situation.  Mariah reversed.

Second card.  The likely outcome.  Caspian.

Third card.  My pursuer.  Luke.

Fourth card.  My inspiration.  Evander.

Fifth card.  The manipulator.  Lancaster.

Sixth card.  The pivot.  Faulkner reversed.

Let's see...  Mariah.  What do I know about Mariah?  She can see whether or not someone's a member of the Family and how they're related to the rest of us.  She has sight that no one else has.  Reversed.  That sight blocked?  Something unseen, hidden from her, from me, from everyone?

Caspian.  Power but not in a form easily understood.  The theory of power.  How is that an outcome?  Perhaps power I understand the edges of but not the heart of.

Luke.  Hm...  He's helped me so far.  Is he actually an enemy?  Is he simply pushing me in a direction I didn't intend to go and don't yet know about?  What does Uncle Luke symbolize?  He's the ruler of another kingdom.  He supports Amber but isn't ruled by it.  Is that the important thing?  I don't like to think of him as an enemy.

Evander.  I don't know how to take him as an inspiration.  I don't want to be directly like him.  I don't want to be alone again.  I don't want the pain he's suffered.  Of course, he's survived, and he doesn't seem warped beyond his understandable rejection of his father and grandmother.  Perhaps I need his courage to face and survive evil.

Lancaster.  I know very little about him.  The King's bodyguard.  He's been on the scene so much.  After Robert died.  When Mythos tried to kill Sarah.  So far as I know, he's not Family.  That doesn't mean that he doesn't know an awful lot, that he can't persuade, influence, whatever.  He's trusted.  I hope that this is symbolic rather literal.

Faulkner.  Lots of talk but no threat.  As the pivot but reversed...  Action is needed.  Correctly directed action.  Perhaps a change is needed in Faulkner, but that seems beyond the scope of the reading.  I think this must be symbolic.

To be honest I think they're all symbolic.  I also think I need to discuss this scrying thing with those who know more about Trump than I.  Well, Father's a captive audience.

That left me a bit unsettled and wondering what to do next.  Fortunately, the daily schedule rescued me.  Lunch was just what I needed.

When Tevis and I arrived in the dining room, it was empty except for Ambriel.  Since I'd only met her the once and still didn't have a good impression of her, I encouraged her to talk.  Rebma sounds like a fascinating place.  To stretch my abilities and to see if the mental magics might help with a Trump impression, I kept my senses open.  Ambriel wasn't quite as distressed by her geographic dislocation as I would have expected.  That may be because she expects to get home relatively easily come the full moon.  It could be anything that I just don't know about yet.

She did give me a tidbit of knowledge that seems to be more important than either of us realized at the time.  Uncle Caine, yeah the one of the same generation as Aunt Florimel (who I still need to get a Trump impression of) and Grandfather Corwin, is alive in Rebma.  Everybody up here had assumed that he'd died.  This is apparently a big deal.

Fayne came in with Mythos, and Jared arrived shortly thereafter.  There were the usual jokes about the "Losers Club" which I've never quite found funny.  Fayne seemed somewhat--  Agitated isn't quite the right word, but it's as close as any I'm going to find.  Jared seemed normal, and Mythos--

Mythos was wearing the ring that Biscuit got just before she went weird on us.  I didn't want to mention it in front of the whole group.  Well, all right, I didn't want to mention it in front of Ambriel.  I stretched myself trying to see if there was anything mentally off from the Mythos I know, but everything seemed normal.  That kind of scared me because it meant that the ring was stronger magic than I could do.  It didn't really surprise me, but...  One of these days I'll run into something I can actually handle.

Anyway, I kept staring at Mythos' hand, hoping for a reaction or for Jared or Fayne to notice the ring.  I did get a reaction from Mythos but not what I was expecting.

"What?" she demanded.  "What?"  How very Mythos.

From there, things got interesting and weird.  I'm not sure of the real sequence of things, but Ambriel fled midway to go tell Geraint about Caine's being alive.  By that point, I realized that it could be considered important and offered it to her as an excuse since she obviously wanted out.  The rest of us abandoned lunch to go talk on a balcony where people were less likely, we hoped, to interrupt us.

The whole thing seems to go something like this:  At the end of the Patternfall War, Uncle Brand ended up in the Abyss.  This was generally hailed as a Good Thing.  The fact that he pulled Aunt Deirdre in was a bad thing but an acceptable price for saving the universe.  Brand's mind, unfortunately for him, stayed alive down there (Makes one wonder what happened to Deirdre, but nobody seems to be asking that, and I don't want to be the one to bring it up).  Somehow, this made him become sane.

Still with me so far?  All right, the ex-High Priest of the Serpent needed to find out what was happening in Amber and perhaps to influence events.  He dipped into the Abyss and pulled out what was left of Brand, bargained with it and stuck it in a ring.  How that ring made its way to Amber appears to be a tale for another day.

One of Mythos' male minions won the stupid thing in a poker game and gave it to Biscuit.  Once she put it on, Brand was able to take over her mind and body and start looking around.  What he found out seems to have scared the hell out of him.  It appears that the person we know and love as Queen Caroline is not the same Caroline who married the King originally and spent so many loving years with him.  No, what we've actually got is another figure out of the histories, Aunt Fiona.

The ring claims that Fiona is unbelievably powerful and quite thoroughly insane.  She has apparently gotten tangled in the same thing that made Brand so evil way back when.  (The fact that all of this got filtered through Mythos didn't help the sarcasm factor, but I find that I also can't talk about it without adding an edge.  None of this makes me happy at all.)  Nobody around now is strong enough to kill her or to stop her if she really wants to do something.  The odds are very good that she did kill Robert who was not, after all, her son, just another great-nephew and one who happened to be in the way.

Since Mariah can't tell whether or not Phoebe has the Blood, I suspect that she's actually the daughter of Fiona.  Mariah seeing that would really mess things up, so it's better to leave doubt about the poor kid's paternity (I find I kind of hope that she's not Geraint's.  If everything gets straightened out, it might be harder for people to deal with her being Fiona and Geraint's as opposed to Fiona's and someone else's).  The rest of the group was kind of startled when I pointed out that being Fiona's daughter would mean that Phoebe actually could walk the Pattern without that proving anything about her paternity.

Anyway, we need either to kill Fiona, which is likely to be pricey, or to somehow cut her off from this Fount thing that's making her monstrously powerful and insane.  Since dumping her into the Abyss isn't workable from this end of reality...

Mythos is all for going and trying to blow the Fount up.  I suppose it's worth a try, but I'm not sure at all that it'll work.

After all the grand revelations, Jared went off to talk to his grandmother, Aunt Gwyn, to try to find out more about the ex-High Priest of the Serpent, and the rest of us went to talk to Mythos' grandmother, Brand's daughter Bailey.  I might have stayed behind, but Bailey's another on my list of people I can't draw yet.  Besides, I was curious.

It was my second visit to Quentin and Bailey's house but my first in daylight.  A pleasant place.  Maybe I should think about something like that, assuming we avert the apocalypse.  If I end up with the other kids, I'll really need more space.  Ah...  Back to what's important--

A servant directed us to the kitchen where Quentin and Bailey were preparing to eat their lunch.  Our arrival caused some fuss and comment.  Quentin seems to have a thorough mastery of the art of sarcasm.  At any rate, Bailey laid places for us to eat with them.  Not being one to pass up good food, I filled in the gaps of what happened next by eating.

I can't recall whether it was Mythos or Fayne who first came up with the excuse for getting rid of Quentin.  (Apparently, Brand and Quentin don't get along.  I'm not sure how this came about, but it seems to be more than the general Brand-tried-to-destroy-the-universe thing.)  Caine is Quentin's father so news of his being alive in Rebma ought by Amber mores to be of interest to him.  It took some fast talking and some prying (I think he was being contrary) before Bailey sent him up to the Castle to hear the news first hand and to catch up on all the stuff that he should know but hadn't bothered to pay attention to.

Finally.  Mythos fumbled around with a lot of hypotheticals and just supposes that her grandmother wasn't buying.  Bailey seemed willing to humor Mythos to a certain point but wanted things to be concrete.  And so, the story of the ring came out again.  Fayne, Tevis and I watched through the mutual testing as everybody tried to see if the thing in the ring really was Brand or not.

After a few questions back and forth, Bailey took the ring and went into some sort of communion with it.  That lasted quite a while, more than long enough for us to make up for the interrupted meal back at the Castle.  At last, Bailey smiled and confirmed that the thing in the ring was in fact some form of her father.

Huzzah.

Bailey instructed Mythos to tell her mother the situation before Sarah did anything that would get her killed, and we left Bailey in the kitchen and trooped back up to the Castle.

Once there, we went our separate ways.  I assume Mythos went to talk to her mother.  I have no idea what Fayne did.  Tevis, of course, followed me.

I went to our rooms and called Uncle Luke.  I asked him if he could take the twins to Kashfa.  He agreed, saying that Brandon would be returning to Kashfa anyway so that he could invite the twins.  I thought that was important because I didn't want them to think I was sending them away.  When Brandon arrived with the invitation, both Russell and Rebecca seemed ecstatic.

After the kids left, I couldn't focus enough to draw Trump, so I just drew whatever came to mind.  Tevis paced.  I asked him what type of floor he preferred for pacing, and he growled at me.  An attempt at levity, perhaps misplaced, but we were both thinking very dark thoughts.

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