Madame Zufraia spread the cards across the table. Outside she could hear the sounds of Chaz excitedly teaching Aeturnis how to light a fire and cook. The Huvryss was so inexperienced, had been brought up so sheltered. Madame Zufraia could not help but feel a little sorry for her.
The girl was also an enigma, however, and one she now hoped to understand a little better. She dealt the cards out in front of her, turning over the first one to reveal the image of a mythic Gryphon-morph.
Strength - the power to resist the cruelties the world threw at her. Aeturnis would certainly need that, if she was whom the Secretary Bird suspected. Would the delicate lass be able to withstand what they would throw at her?
The next card was the ten of swords. Conflict, betrayal and tragedy. The poor lass - she should have guessed.
Justice but inverted - too little mercy shown.
And finally, the Queen of Swords, also inverted. This one puzzled the fortune teller - usually this card would represent a victory, at least partially, but because it was inverted and because of the cards before it, she could only assume that when Aeturnis found the ally, they would not be bonded together for a common goal.
And then she drew another card, the (insert symbols here) - victory. So it appeared that the two at odds would find their common goal. That, at least, was a relief. What part did this hybrid child hold in the turmoil due to come?
And what part might she, Madame Zufraia, Fortune Teller extraodanaire, also play?
She folded up the cards and set them aside. Aeturnis might be one whom prophecies spoke of, but she was not going to allow Chaz to get mixed up in the mess. The Warrah was like a son to her - albeit a particularly unusual one. She remembered well the time she had found him, had been drawn to him in fact. The village had still burned around them, the dens of the slain Warrah torn asunder and torched, the ground littered with their corpses. It had been a massacre - the peaceful, idealistic Warrah had not expected the charge of the murderous Dhole kinsmen, desperate to reclaim what little land they could.
Chaz had been hidden in a large woven basket in the attic of one of the houses. The Avian had fought her way through the flames, risking her feathers at every step, to open the lid and pick up the infant. He could not have been more then two turns old, and clung to her with the desperate longing of contact, albeit of a strange and unusual kind.
She had taken him and raised him as she would her own chick.
She would not let this little hybrid take him from her.
She would not!