Penumbra: Sleight of Heart

The following takes place in the year 3002, about the time of the Moebius Effect ...

It is a pleasant day on the main terrace of New Valsho, Antimone...which means that hawkers and customers are out in droves. Stands and stalls of varying shapes, sizes, and quality line up in disorderly rows while tourists and natives flow through like particularly thick molasses, oozing in and out of each nook and cranny as it makes its slow but inexorable way through the channels left as afterthought between the aisles of 'wares. It would behoove any being wishing for business to stake a claim somewhere within this ideal of the free market...and yet there is one that, for whatever reason, remains stubbornly apart. Shrouded in the soft chime of charms and mirror-bits and the smoky embrace of incense, a 'stand' composed of nothing more than a sturdy framework of wood struts and wide linen sheets seems to huddle in the shoulder of mountain and plateau, all but hidden in the shadow of a broad knuckle of stone.

The erratic pathways of the almost tidal-driven marketplace seem to have no effect on the determined pace and stiff gait of the dark-suited human with the stovepipe top hat and gold-capped mahogany cane. Ian Penumbra moves, slow and measured, not so much out of grace as control. He holds himself rigidly, but shifts slightly as needed in anticipation of any possible collisions with the meandering patrons who clog the way. He seems utterly disinterested in any of the brass knicknacks, good luck charms and silken clothes hawked from the main market. Instead, his steps carry him unerringly toward the near-forgotten tent where the mountain and plateau collide. As he stops at the tent, he raises his cane and taps it against one of the struts - once, twice, three times.

"Hush! Hush!" a voice admonishes from within, dreamy even in its remonstrance. "Even once is too many; I do not wait here instead of in the market for nothing, good Sir." Precise enunciation is teased into new shapes by alien accents as a shadow shifts within the strange 'shop', a long-fingered hand sweeping the front curtain aside with a sleeve that nearly blends in with its layers of colors and cloth. "The future comes soon enough, without us rushing it. What can I tell you today, Sir?"

Brown eyes narrow under a slowly furrowing brow as the man in the top hat quietly observes the hand - odd-looking to him, with the extra knuckles extending the length of the woman's already comparatively long fingers. He presses the tip of the cane into the dirt in front of Ora's tent, resting his hands on the cane's golden top, which takes the shape of a serpent entwined about an egg. "Normally," he says, "I don't have much truck with fortune tellers and soothsayers and the like. But just now, the way things are in the universe, I figure it can't hurt to investigate every option."

Ora smiles easily, unoffended and unconcerned, her eyes with their off-color scheme seeming to focus somewhere other than where they are looking. "So all who are secure in good fortune natural disbelievers, for when fate obliges you in the present, what need have you to look ahead?" She steps smoothly aside, a wave of her arm like the full sweep of a bird's wing, inviting him inside to a simple layout of rugs and cushions of varying sizes, interspersed by candles that seem to have miraculously found all the corners where the occasional draft that finds its way in will not put them out. "Please."

Upon Ora's invitation, Ian Penumbra steps into the tent, removing the top hat as he does so. He looks around at the cushions arrayed amidst the candles. His mouth twists a bit in perturbation as he considers the situation. Clearly, this is a man accustomed to chairs, hat racks and other amenities designed to promote civilization and discourage clutter. Rather than complain or query about logistics, Penumbra clutches the hat in one hand and the cane in the other, saying to the Timonae woman: "Such a remote location can't be good for business."

"And yet, business has found me, has it not?" Ora returns, even going so far as to allow amusement to ferry her words as she lets the curtain fall closed again and sweeps toward a particular puddle of pillows; obviously favored from the hollow worn into them and which she settles into so easily. "While I do not expect you to find ease outside yourself when you have so little within, Sir, please; the attempt must still be made for peace of mind or I will be forced to send you away." She smiles at him through a fringe of silver-tipped autumn, animate despite her seated position, hands sketching intentions with small, unconscious sweeps. "I will not take currency from one whose fates are so knotted by their anxiety that they become an unreadable morass...and I do not see myself going hungry tonight."

Penumbra sighs. "Very well." He sits on the steadiest clump of pillows he can find. He sets the hat on the ground to his left; the cane gets angled against a pile of pillows to his right. He sits Indian-style, knees bowed outward, wrists resting on his ankles as the fingers of both hands lace together. He gazes across the sun-dappled shadows within the tent at Ora and says, "I am not entirely sure how this works. Should I give you hair? A chronometer? Or do you work your act without props?"

Ora chuckles, as airily as the windchimes hidden somewhere in the softly billowing cloths surrounding them, only heard and not found. "The only 'prop' I need is you," she assures warmly, shifting across the small space to kneel before him instead, reaching out slowly to disentangle one of his hands and enfold it lightly between her own. They are soft, cool; uncallused. Whatever the seeming quackery of her trade, at least the Timonae has never had to resort to a craft or labor. "Just relax, and let yourself listen. You said yourself that there are no options left; there is no harm to allowing yourself to be receptive now. Business, was it, that you sought advice on?"

As his hand is taken in hers, Ian Penumbra at first resists. His eyes widen, his jaw clenches and there's a moment as he starts to jerk the hand back. In the end, however, he relents, seeming to accept that this fits into the greater scheme of things. He does his best to relax, loosening his shoulders a bit, and nods at Ora. "Business," he agrees. Ora's hold neither tightens or pulls away at his reaction to her touch, her smile only widening as her gaze sharpens...almost enough for their focus to seem to reach him. "Perhaps I shall throw in some advice upon your relationships as well for free. But why don't you tell me what has so vexed you, first."

The relationship comment brings blossoms of crimson to the man's face, but his response remains measured, controlled, delivered in precise timbre: "I hardly need your advice about my relationships, although I do appreciate the effort to add some value to this sham." The barest twitch of a smile creeps across his face. "As to the matter at hand, the matter which brings me to your charlatan's tent on the fringes of a veritable sea of charlatans, I have suffered setbacks as a result of the Moebius Effect. I hope to acquire capital for a new project, one far less reliant on a single location, and I wish to know the prospects for success."

"Sham?" Ora echoes, hurt, for all the world as if he had just kicked her favorite puppy. "Dear Sir, you have already stepped within my demesne. You could have just as easily remained without." And with a last, reprimanding look, she bows her head. Perhaps focusing upon his hand, which she has turned palm up - but not so much to read the lines etched upon it, as Terran soothsayers may have done, but simply to examine its form and texture, stroking her own fingers lightly over the palm before turning it over to do the same of its back. "As all things in this existence, the Effect shall pass in time," she murmurs, still gently stroking, a soothing rhythm that follows the cadence of her voice. "And as with all gambles, what you propose is not without risk. But you are strong - perhaps too strong - and you would see things through to the end. 'Ware your inner desires, however, the whispers of your feelings..." Her hand finally pauses in its lulling rhythm, paused with fingertips poised upon the heart of his palm while the other cups it beneath. "...heed them, 'lest they catch you unprepared. You might challenge a world and win...but one must always bow to one's self."

Penumbra finds himself closing his eyes as the alien woman's fingers play along the skin of his hand, taking some comfort in it despite his grudging demeanor. Quickly, however, he opens his eyes and struggles to maintain a sense of rigid composure as he listens to the final summation of Ora's analysis. Any pleasure he might have been feeling just seconds ago evaporates into a disdainful: "That's the best you've got, is it? Risks are risky and desires can have unpredictable results. Huzzah. I could guess that much without wasting my time on this nonsense. Can't you tell me something even vaguely useful?"

"But you were not looking for something useful, were you?" Ora returns simply, finishing the last stroke before she folds her hand over his and looks up, head tilted like an inquisitive fox's russet head. "If I understand you correctly, Mr. Penumbra, you were looking for reassurance."

"Reassurance? I can get reassurance from a goddamned Irish set..." His voice trails off and this time he *does* jerk his hand free of Ora's loose grip. When he speaks again, it is in a humorless near-whisper: "I never told you my name."

Ora folds her hands in her lap when they are abruptly emptied; unperturbed. "No, you did not," she agrees with a small, off-center smile. "And now that I finally have your attention instead of your ill-conceived stereotypes...why did you come here? Your plans have already been made and set. There is no more that you can find to aid them here. You say you did not come here for reassurance...and yet you have not enough faith yourself to go to any other deity but for a supposed charlatan. Tell me what you think your purpose was in seeking out my tent, despite my efforts to remove myself from notice."

"Don't go changing the subject, my dear," the man counters, pushing himself to his feet. He bends over, plucking the hat off the ground with his left hand. "How is it that when it comes to the information I want about the future, all you can offer are vague blatherings with no detail, but you nail my name spot-on without so much as a proper introduction?" He straightens, about to bend to grab his cane, when his right hand brushes the vicinity of his back pants pocket. His *empty* pants pocket. He doesn't say anything ... not at first. Instead, he completes his acquisition of the cane, stands straight, and then flings the hat aside before holding the cane at both ends in his hands and throwing himself at Ora, aiming to press her into the pillows, pinning her with the cane and his weight so she can't escape. "Where is it?" he growls.

Ora's pale brows, left to their natural hue, rise at his accusations before his motion toward the pants pocket widens her eyes. A blue that is nearly black, violet that shares with silver...for once, a gaze that cannot even decide upon its color converges to a point of intensity that is nearly palpable in comparison to its vagaries before. She is already moving to push herself up, an explanation about to spill from her lips, before his violence wrings a soft gasp from her, one arm pinned between them when she had thrown it up in an attempt to ward his cane aside, the other lost behind her amongst the pillows. "Ian, please! There...there is no need for this..."

"No?" he asks, leaning close to her face, keeping his weight on her. "Maybe I should search you. Not exactly a gentlemanly approach, I agree, but I am not a gentleman who takes lightly to robbery. I may freely pay you to spout gibberish about the future. I may freely pay you to lie with me. But I will not be made a victim of unwilling theft. Not by you. Not by anyone." Penumbra's voice is a sibilant whisper when he concludes: "Where is it? No obfuscations. No lies. No half-hearted excuses. Just tell me where it is and we may proceed to the topic of compensation - yours and mine."

"*Your* compensation?" Ora whispers, but this time, her voice has lost its winsome airiness to acquire a sharper hiss...almost as sharp as the point that pricks warningly into his side, a blade 'found' amongst the sea of pillows which liberally cover the tent's floor. "You came here looking for something that doesn't exist - a future that is already written - and when given the present which you refuse to acknowledge, you scoff and insult me. You have already been aptly compensated for your blindness by frustration! Do not compound your payment with foolish actions!"

Ian Penumbra's reaction to the blade poking at his side shifts rapidly, from an initial shock to a crimson fury and finally to a calming spread of a smile across his face. "You entertain me," are the three words he finally utters before rolling off Ora, removing his weight and the pressure of the cane from her body while moving away from the blade. He gets to his feet, cane in hand, and kneels to pick up the top hat once more. He puts the hat on his head, then extends his right hand, palm exposed, toward Ora. "My wallet. Now."

Ora sniffs as he rolls away, making no effort to follow up with any further threats with the blade as she pushes herself up, her brow creased with a frown but her expression already beginning to smooth out into its usual vagueness. "Entertainment; is that not why so-called 'charlatans' exist at all, despite how those like you look down upon them?" Her free hand seems to flutter through one of its usual restless gestures, but somewhere along the way, the billfold appears between those multi-jointed fingers, extending out toward him.

"Oh, don't feel so put-upon," Ian replies, casually accepting the wallet and proceeding to explore the contents to ensure nothing is missing. "Truth be told, I'm as much a charlatan as you. I just have the means and the connections to provide my brand of entertainment somewhere besides a flimsy tent on the fringe of a market." He returns the wallet to his back pocket. "Rather than turn you in to the authorities or have you answer to my investors, I'd just as soon give you a new start. A job. A place in my operation."

Ora blinks as she processes what he says, and her first reaction - surprise and derisive amusement - flits across her face. "You are offering me a - ?!" she begins, before something else seems to occur to her, and she cocks her head, examining him with new interest. Then, her lips twitching in self-deprecating humor, she murmurs in her native tongue, *How just like them. All but bullied into their design, and still they make me work for it.* The blade is gone as she rolls to her feet, the same motion carrying her to another corner of the tent where, hidden beneath a particularly large mound of cushions, she unearths a pack and swings it onto her shoulder. "Let us go, then," she says tranquilly.

Penumbra smiles winningly at Ora. "After you," he says, gesturing at the flap of the tent with his right hand while extending his left, palm up, toward the Timonae. "Fair's fair. You can have this back." In the exposed palm of his hand rests a glittering diamond stud piercing which *had* occupied the fortune-teller's belly button until their little confrontation.

Ora pauses to eye the adornment for a moment before she looks down at him and smiles. "If my other hunches prove as accurate as today's was, you can keep it for now. You'll have a chance to put it back in yourself later on." And then she slips past him to begin the walk toward the spaceport, unfettered feet bearing her with a smooth, unhurried pace.

This is a prelude scene for Penumbra: Long Way Round, which helps establish a character foundation for the fourth New Journeys arc.