*Soon all fiction will be on a designated page, so look for it there (meaning: as soon as I figure out how on earth to stick it over there)

Suppressing the urge to smash the globe in front of her and run; she sat quiet and firm as she had always done. Eyes sparkling with delight of revealing the pain to come, the Gypsy woman rubbed her hands together in front of her.

For hours the young woman had listened to her past spit vilely in hopes of just one moment of beauty in the future to be revealed from this Gypsy. She didn’t really believe in the future being written or a life defined, but she was past the point of her own truths and wanting to cling to the thin material of hope. It was pure chance that she had found this place. By nature she never would have stopped or placed the few coins she had left into the birdlike hand of the Gypsy.

Sitting in the gloom and suffocating in her own despair, her eyes tried to peer with intent on the crystal ball. The smokey globe transfixed the Gypsy with the past that held the secrets of her future. The malicious sneer that crinkled across the Gypsy’s face gave her a moment’s pause as a truth she should have suspected all along shone brighter than the beads that draped the old woman’s face.

Bony fingers caressed the globe as a lover as the list of her past transgressions were thrown tauntingly into her heart. Nightly these dark demons haunted her and she needed no help in seeing where her path had led her. Every choice she had made had not been where her heart longed to be, but rather the natural progression of just trying to last one more day. A blush of shame colored her cheeks as she resisted hurling the globe in the small hope that perhaps there may be something waiting for her at the end of the path that would make everything worth it.

With a shriek the Gypsy threw up her hands and cast the coins back onto the table.

“Your coins can’t purchase what you seek, child. A glimmer of beauty flickered for a moment, but cruel claws ensnared it before it could burn bright enough to see.”

She left the darkened tent and stepped into a darker night. Eyes filled with tears blurred the path in front of her. She quickly wiped them away and stuck her chin out in defiance of what was to come. She looked back for a moment at the path that had brought her here. There was no sign of her footprints in the clearing among the towering birch trees; as was if she simply had never existed there.

Taking a step off the path, she felt the tears of pain, humiliation, anger and regret begin to choke her throat. Steps tentative at first became stronger as she made the choice to never travel on that path again. Pushing past limbs that tore at her hair and clothes, she stumbled into another clearing as the moon revealed it glow on the soft bed of grass.

Collapsing to her knees, she pushed away everything that had been and what was to come. She couldn’t make out what was beyond the open field, but she knew she was willing to journey forward after she caught her breath. Allowing the tears to finally come and the desire to be broken washed through her with a cleansing touch. As her hands wrapped around her in a desperate embrace she felt the coins laying heavy in her skirt’s pocket. Fishing them out she glanced at them before closing her eyes and flinging them behind her. Let someone else find them and spend them in a foolish way.

Pushed to her knees by anger and hope she crossed the clearing and began to form her own path.

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