Soothsayer Ch. 1, Pt. 1

Notes: Here it is, the beginning to Soothsayer! I'm really excited about this, I just wish I could have posted it earlier, but I needed some time to recover. This story is the result of the prompt contest I ran back in June--huge thanks again to Lisa T for her excellent prompt! It's quite inspiring.

I'll be posting this story in chapters, and I plan to include various works of custom art along the way. The first is this beautiful banner courtesy of the very talented Caitlin Ricci. Remember, this story probably won't be on the blog forever, so read along and enjoy it now, darlins. Never fear, there's always more to come from me. Anyway, enjoy!

Title: Soothsayer, Chapter 1, Part 1

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“Sleep, those little slices of death—how I loathe them.” – Edgar Allen Poe

                Sleep was an insidious thing, in my opinion. It was bad enough that the body required you to shut down—forced you to drop your defenses and make yourself vulnerable to any old person who happened by. To compound that insult by giving your subconscious free reign, letting it sort through its damage and parade all your conflicts, shameful desires and unacknowledged fetishes through your head while you’re too out of it to resist…that was just goddamn sadistic. Whatever had made us, whether it was the slow crawl of evolution or some bored intergalactic deity looking for laughs, it didn’t have a concept of mercy. When your own mind was made to turn on you while you were at your worst, you couldn’t deny the heartless humor of it

Not that I had personal experience that particular cosmic joke, but the things that filled my head when I slept were more than awful enough to make up for missing out on standing in front of a class of my peers butt naked or having fumbling, awkward sex dreams that left my sheets glued to my crotch. Instead of providing a distorted window into my own mind, I dreamed about the things I’d seen in other peoples’. Not just their wants and desires, although those were bad enough, but their endings. The things they came to me to find out, what their future held, how they were going to die, or worse yet the things they were going to do on the way to that final end. I saw different things in everyone, but the one common denominator with my visions was this: whatever I saw, it was true, and most times the truth wasn’t going to be what you were hoping for.