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Chapter 2: The High Priestess

The Lion was taller than Rex, but that wasn’t the first thing I noticed about him. First, I noticed his biceps. They were so large, they seemed fake. But there they were - exposed because the sleeves of the Lion’s t-shirt had been cut off.

I wondered if he’d been in the army, or if he’d played football. It takes an unimaginable number of hours in a gym to get biceps like that.

Next, I noticed his mane was cut into a mohawk.

And I also noticed that this Lion looked fierce - almost hostile, even - with his mohawk, and his muscled physique, and the chain around his waist that served as a belt. Not to mention the jagged edges of the shirt, where sleeves had once been. However, he gave off a very peaceful vibe, a vibe that was quite at odds with his appearance.

Rex usually noticed things like that. Like the vibes other folks were giving off. I rarely noticed. In the army, I’d been trained to observe, to look for subtle clues, to read body language. Sometimes I could do it, but often - in spite of my training - I could not.

The Lion looked at us, studying us. He stood behind a folding table piled high with clothing. All around him, plastic crates and cardboard boxes were filled to the brim with things - clothes, food, tools, books, weapons, anything and also, pretty much, everything.

“Whatcha got?” He asked. His eyes traveled from my face to Rex’s.

“Some batteries,” I replied, as Rex lowered his backpack to the table. “Various kinds. Also, a full can of fuel for a portable stove, and some porn.”

“I’ll take everything,” the Lion said, with a slight smile. “Whatcha need?”

“Socks?” Rex looked at the goods piled high in front of him. “Brand new socks?”

“I have all kinds of socks, in unopened bags,” the Lion said. He used his wide foot to push a plastic crate forward, up to the side of the table. “What else?”

“If we had electricity, we could take that desk fan.” I said. “Summer is almost here.”

“We’ll need more than that,” Rex said, digging through the socks. “If we had power, yeah.”

“I know some folks who might be getting some AC units, and some generators,” the Lion said. He had started to test the batteries, seeing what kind of juice they still had left.

I reluctantly passed on the desk fan, and I started going through the food the Lion had stockpiled. None of it looked very appetizing.

“Holy shit, these batteries are mostly new,” the Lion said, his smile growing. “So - gentle folk - sky’s the limit. I’ll say again, whatcha need?”

We walked away from the Lion’s table with our backpacks full. Rex had found plenty of new socks, as well as some plain t-shirts still sealed in their packages. We planned to share those. We’d also picked up two books, no less than six new bars of soap, a few candles, and about a dozen movies on Blu-ray. The Lion had considered the batteries we’d given him to be very valuable - which came as no surprise to us. In a world without power, unless you had a generator, batteries were incredibly precious.

“Well,” Rex said, “We can’t do a movie night, but we can have a movie day. Pretty much any time we want.”

I nodded. We had found a clinic which - so far - no one else had gotten into. The place had a generator, and the basement had a small lounge (for employees, probably) - and the lounge had a tv and a Blu-ray player.

We wouldn’t go to the clinic at night, of course, because 1) we didn’t want to travel the city’s streets at night, and 2) we didn’t want to run the generator at night. The lights from the tv, or the ceiling lights, might shine through a window, and that would alert folks to our presence.

Such were the decisions we had to make, the things we had to think about, now that the world had fallen apart around us.

We continued walking through the building - a vast labyrinth which had once been a warehouse. The Lion had taken up residence in a remote corner. As we turned, then passed through a door, we found ourselves in the main space.

Every inch of the walls was covered in graffiti. A small group, a mix of humans and anthros, clustered around a makeshift bar. There were pool tables, and comfortable chairs for conversations, and a few beds as well. Some folks had set up folding tables, as the Lion had, so they could buy and sell goods.

The folks who’d set this place up had a generator which provided power to this room only, so the ceiling lights did work. However, the bulbs were dim, and the glass fixtures around those bulbs was smudged and dirty.

“Want to get a drink?” Rex asked me.

“Sure. In a moment?”

I had noticed something . . . In the darkest, most distant corner, another Lion - a female - had set up a table of her own, and it looked like she was - yes - moving in closer, I could see she had a deck of Tarot cards in front of her.

She looked at me, as she sat, casually, in her plush chair. Her mane was in braids, she wore a loose and flowing blouse, and the look in her eyes was enigmatic. She had a tall candle, close at hand, illuminating the shadows.

“Would you like a reading?” she asked, gesturing to the chair on my side of the table.

“I would, yeah,” I replied. I looked at Rex. “Cool?”

“Of course,” he said, surprised. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

And so I sat down. The Lion drew one card from the deck, which she placed face down. The rest of the cards she began to shuffle.

“Are you familiar with Tarot?” she asked.

“I used to have a deck,” I said. “When I was in the army. I - um - I was never very good at giving readings. Still, I used to - I used to give readings to anyone who wanted one.”

“You weren’t as bad as you think you were,” the Lion said. “And you would have gotten better, if you’d kept at it, kept practicing.”

I didn’t know how to respond. Obviously, she hadn’t known me back then, back during my army days, so I assumed she’d said that to - I don’t know - make me feel better? Put me at ease?

First, the Lion flipped over the card she’d pulled from the deck before shuffling - it was the Knight of Cups. She placed it in the center of the table.

“This represents you,” she said.

She then laid out nine cards in a pattern I had never seen before. After, she studied them, for a moment. The first card she had placed directly on top of the Knight.

“The Hanged Man,” she said. She looked at me. “You are at a crossroads. You don’t know which way to go, and, more importantly, you are in no rush to figure it out.”

The rest of the nine cards she had placed in a circle surrounding the Knight of Cups and the Hanged Man. I looked at them. As I noted, the Lion was using a pattern - a layout - for the reading which I hadn’t seen before. Back when I’d first gotten interested in Tarot, I’d read a book which informed me that there was only one correct way to layout the cards. Immediately after that, however, I’d gone online, where I’d learned there were dozens, if not hundreds, of acceptable ways to layout Tarot cards for a reading. Plus, of course, some folks just made up their own.

She tapped a card. “The Knight of Swords. This one -” she nodded towards Rex, my Great Dane friend who stood next to me. “This one will help you make a decision. In time. So far, the cards reveal their message quite easily, yes?”

She looked at the rest of the cards.

The next two were the Eight of Wands and the Five of Swords.

“In your distant past, there was flight. Yes? You fled from someone, or something - and you did so with haste, without much planning ahead. And in your more recent past, let’s see, there was a great loss. And I’m not talking about what’s happened to the world -” She waved a hand, briefly, as a way of indicating all that was around us. “No, I am talking about your personal past. This loss - it brought, perhaps, shame and degradation. Perhaps it was a reversal of fortune? It continues to influence how you think and act, today. Perhaps this explains why you are at a crossroads.”

She paused, while studying my reaction. The candle flame danced.

“Next we have the Hermit. Interesting. Normally, this card could be about either looking for or already having wisdom, or enlightenment. However, it’s in the spot that shows your goals or desires. Are you seeking enlightenment? Or is the card telling me you literally want to be a hermit? Not entirely, of course - you’re not completely alone. You have your friend, here.” Again, she looked at Rex, then she turned her attention back to me. “And then we have the Four of Cups, reversed.”

I looked at the card, which depicted a young male sitting under a tree. He stared at three cups that stood before him, while ignoring a fourth cup that was being offered to him. The card was, as the Lion said, reversed, upside down.

“You are going to be tested,” she said. “Your time of sitting still, of taking no action, is coming to an end. It may be that you want to continue sitting still, but you won’t be given a choice. The Hermit may be indicating that you have withdrawn, hidden yourself away - and that your goal, your hope, is to continue doing so. However, the test is coming.”

She pointed at the next card.

“This shows your environment, or the situation you find yourself in - a situation which may work either for or against you. And we have the Wheel of Fortune. Well, that’s no surprise, yes? The world has changed, and is changing. Notice the dragon, riding on top of the wheel? The ongoing changes do not affect him. Some folks think that they can be like that dragon - living in a world of flux, of change, but being somehow able to rise above it - somehow able to control change, rather than be controlled by it. Sometimes they are right, sometimes wrong.”

“Did you drive, or were you driven . . .” I said, softly. For some reason, the expression popped into my head. One of my instructors, in the army, had said that, quite often, while teaching us how to deal with chaotic situations. It had stuck with me, and it was something I told myself, whenever things got rough.

“Control,” the Lion said, simply. “Yes? Making your life the way you want it to be, even if the world’s gone crazy.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding my head. “Of course -” I gestured at the cards. “The test is coming.”

“It is,” the Lion replied, firmly. “So. The next card will show you something you fear. We have the Queen of Wands, reversed. Interesting. It could refer to someone in your life - but I see, from your expression, this is not so. The card is reversed, so, it can have either a positive or negative meaning. On the plus side, it could mean someone helping you, or welcoming you, or offering you hospitality. But why would you fear such things? On the negative side, it could mean jealousy or opposition. Well. Perhaps you fear that someone will try to help you choose a path, at the crossroads you’ve arrived at. But if you do not want things to change . . .”

“Perhaps,” I said.

“And the last card,” the Lion said, leaning forward. “This one will tell you a secret.”

I stared at it. The Ace of Cups. A golden chalice floated above still waters. Rose petals and water lillies floated on the surface of the pool, and streams of water emerged from the chalice - they gently flowed into the still pool. A dove perched on the chalice.

“Love,” the Lion said, quietly but firmly. “Love is going to play a part, in some way. Perhaps you love the world, even though you have withdrawn from it. Perhaps you feel love, for someone, or someone feels it for you. Or, perhaps love will - someday - motivate you to make a decision, or take a certain action. Do not run from it, my friend. Embrace it, when it comes. That is my advice.”

After the reading, Rex and I went to the bar. We found two empty chairs, and we set our backpacks on the dirty floor.

“So, what did you think?” Rex asked. “About all that?”

“In some ways . . .” I said, holding my bottle of almost-cold beer, “In some ways, it was kind of accurate.”

“Kind of?”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “Maybe more than kind of. Maybe very accurate. In some ways.”

“You have pretty much withdrawn from the world,” Rex pointed out. “I guess we both have. But it’s what we wanted to do. Right?” He paused, taking a drink. “Can I ask you a question? It’s a big one.”

“Ask away.”

“Are you happy?”

“Yeah,” I said, without thinking. “Are you? I mean, everything’s a mess right now - everything fell apart, there’s no electricity, everything closed down, there are no cops and the streets are seriously dangerous . . . we have to find or barter for food, any way we can . . .” I smiled, amused. “I’m making it sound like there’s no reason to be happy, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Rex said, also smiling, also amused. “I went through some stuff. Most of it I haven’t told you about.” His expression turned serious, for a moment. “I will, someday. I’ll tell you about it. And, you know, after I went through some stuff, everything - like you said, everything fell apart. So how can anyone be happy, living like this? But I am. Happy. I like what we have, our little shelter, all that. It might sound weird, it might sound funny -”

“It doesn’t,” I jumped in. “I get it. I like what we have, too.”

“Cool,” Rex said, simply. He pointed his bottle in my direction, and I tapped it with my bottle. A toast without words.

We sat back in our chairs, and we drank, and I thought about the cards the Lion had read for me.

I didn’t mind that I’d turned into an almost-hermit (as the Lion had said, I wasn’t entirely alone - I had Rex). True, I was a hermit that had nothing to offer - no wisdom, no enlightenment to teach others about. Instead, I was a hermit (almost) in the sense of hiding myself away.

But, it was a good thing, I reminded myself.

A good thing.