"Al right, have a look", I conceded with a grin, extending my upturned hand to her.

She squinted at the middle of my palm, I tried to hide a smile at the concentration she was putting into this. It was a joke, ridiculous, of course. I'm a goddamn rationalist, I don't believe in this crap.

After an eternity of her peering at every nook and cranny of my fingers, she looked up, eyes dead serious. "You don't believe in this stuff, do you?". "No, of course not."

She relaxed, smiled even, albiet it was a smile of wax, ready to melt at the slightest provocation. "What it says is," hesitating slightly, she looked up at me, and there was that smile again, the one the slightest change in my mood would melt. "The arrangement leads me to believe that you will not... get very far professionally. Your career line is quiet weak... " I just stared at her, smile frozen on my face but rapidly slipping at the corners. She looked away, smiling reassuringly at my siblings, who were laughing heartily and, possibly my own perception, a little cruelly. How many times had I taunted them with words, wickedly delighting in my own verbal strutting? People, nature, life, love, they can all be altogether too cruel, just give them a fraction of a chance.

I stared at my hand after they all left. I felt like ripping out a line, carving out a new one like the kings of yore who would defiantly stand atop a cliff and laugh into the face of a tornado, "Is that all you've got?!". Trouble was there were no cliffs in this dark room and certainly no wind. It's easier to jeer in the face of the external, pinpoint and blame something howling outside as the source of your trouble and grab your armour and just go face it. If you lost, they would tell tales about you for generations to come and death would be quick and the herald of eternal peace to come. When the demons are inside and need no rest, they're harder to laugh at.

In the murky territory of the subconscious and the conscious and the damage we do knowingly and unknowingly to ourselves, I do wonder some of us have a little time bomb ticking away, awaiting only activation to start counting down to complete self destruction of its host. I also wonder if that day I activated mine and what's worse, that I brought it on to myself or that I did it knowing full well what I was doing.