Oh, you came on a good night.

A fictional character Telling. Meet Kyleah.

Oh, you came on a good night.

I don't always do the Telling, you know. Some nights I'm front-of-house, some nights I'm prop storage. But tonight I felt like it — and when I feel like it, I'm very good.

Sit there. No, further back. You want the full effect.

Here's the thing about the Broken Circle that nobody tells you until you're already in it: rank is not power. Power is attention. I have been at NAM-TAR for — I've lost count of how many years, and I have more of it in this room right now than Sigurd has in that entire obsidian hall of his. He sits on a throne. Nobody watches a throne. They watch me.

I'm going to do something now. You're going to see it and you're going to think you understand it. You won't. That's the part I enjoy most — the gap between what you saw and what actually happened. That gap is where I live.

Watch.

You're going to spend the rest of tonight deciding what that was. You're going to tell someone about it tomorrow, and you'll hear yourself describing it, and the description will be wrong, and you'll know it's wrong but you won't have a better one.

That's mine now. That confusion. I collect them.

The Circle asks us to give something at each rank. At ABZU, you give your name. At NAM-TAR, you give your original face. I don't remember what I looked like. Sometimes I try to picture it, the way you try to remember a dream — not the content, just the feeling of it. There's nothing there.

What I got in exchange: I look like whatever you need me to look like. Not on purpose. It just happens. You'll describe me differently to everyone you meet after tonight.

Don't feel bad. Most people enjoy not remembering correctly.

Visual

Large ram horns curling from the crown of her head, black and polished. Black corset laced tight over a ruffled lace petticoat. Long black gloves. Striped stockings. She is turned away, looking back over one shoulder — the pose of someone perpetually leaving. Behind her, a full moon sits in a heavy golden frame, the kind you'd find in a theatre dressing room that has seen too much.

The tarot border is not decorative. It is structural. She requires the frame.

Faction: The Broken Circle · View the Gallery