[tarot] Four of Coins

Remember when I said I was going to do a card a day? I lied.

Well, no, first Convergence happened, and then I had to ship all the orders taken over Convergence, and then I went insane. Also, I rewrote the page on the Arcana. It still needs translating from Academic to English but it's a little better.

Thank you, all who checked in. It's interesting to me to see who's reading these thoughts. :)

Onward.

Russian Tarot
A man in, I kid you not, purple and chartreuse and blue, sits on the edge of either a bed or a bench. At his feet are two coins, in his hand and balanced on his lap is a third, and in a treasure chest to the viewer's right is a fourth coin in a chest. There is a candelabra and a castle window behind him.

Crow's Magick Tarot
A golden textured almost cutout of a tree, with a red bird on a branch on the lowest right hand coin. Four coins in each four quadrants.

Spiral Tarot
A man who looks like nothing so much as Edward Norton from The Illusionist sits in a stone chair. Brick chair, actually; it looks like it was put together from bricks. His left hand holds a coin on an open palm and his right fist is clenched. His feet are on one coin each and a fourth coin is balanced on his head. There are bars on the window over his left shoulder, which evokes a prison atmosphere.

Keywords Miser, security, unfulfilled, longing, hoarder, userer, skinflint. Setbacks, opposition to further gain, suspense, spendthrift.

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[fic] Bad With Words

Title: Bad With Words
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters: Sheppard, Lorne
Word Count: 748 of 'em
Rating: PG
Summary: Sometimes secrets are hard to live with.
A/N: Still all age's fault.

Well, he'd found it. This was hell.

"... and apparently Ronon's taking her side on this one, and I have no idea what's going on..."

Lorne nodded, made the appropriate faces, and poked his food around on his plate as he listened to Sheppard ramble on about Teyla and her pregnancy. About how he'd snapped at her and removed her from active duty and how could she not tell him and so on and so forth. The fact that Sheppard was acting like an idiot did not help the discomfort he felt at hearing the other man ramble on about this woman he'd been working with side by side for a couple of years now, clearly nurturing a deep affection for her.

"I don't know." Sheppard rubbed his temples. Lorne knew exactly how he felt. "Maybe ..."

"Maybe you should try talking to her." He said it, but he didn't look up to see the other man's reaction, poking at what was supposed to be Salisbury steak with his fork still. At least, it claimed to be Salisbury steak. "I hear women like that sort of thing."

Sheppard made a noise that Lorne interpreted as I would but I don't really know a damn thing about talking to women and I don't want to betray my ignorance. Lorne could translate because he'd made that exact same noise quite a few times. Sheppard had even less excuse, as far as Lorne was concerned. He'd been married. He had to have at least done a few things right.

"What?" He finally looked up at the other man.

"I just..." Sheppard shrugged.

"You've had to have known pregnant women before."

His commanding officer gave him the sort of eyerolling look that normally would have gotten him more sarcasm in return. But this was Teyla, and Lorne actually liked Teyla. Lorne liked Sheppard too but there were times when he just wanted to smack the man upside the back of the head. Teyla came in for far fewer of those impulses.

"That's not the point. It's not that she's pregnant, it's..."

It's exactly that she's pregnant, you fool. It's that she's pregnant, which means she was seriously involved with someone because Teyla wouldn't do casual. Which means that she has someone and it isn't you. And that bugs you. Lord knows, it bugged Lorne, in his own relatively similar circumstance. He settled for conveying all that in a look, which had much the same effect.

"It's..." he gestured for Sheppard to go on.

The other man shrugged after a little while, evidently not finding anything to say that was to his liking. Or at least, nothing that would justify the entire tirade he'd just indulged in. "She didn't tell me. She should have told me, I wouldn't have let her go on the mission, get stunned..."

"If that's all you're worried about," and Lorne knew it wasn't, but he leaned back as though he had no personal stake in the conversation. "Keller should have told you. She's the chief medical officer, it's her job to know the status of the teams and whether or not they're capable of being in the field. If she had a concern, she would have told you." Granted, Lorne wasn't certain about the wisdom of letting Teyla get stunned or the advisability of some of the things they did in the field. But just because Keller hadn't anticipated every contingency, he reminded himself, did not make her a bad doctor.

It did make him a cranky Lorne. But this whole conversation was making him cranky.

"It would have been better coming from Teyla."

Lorne stopped even pretending to eat and said nothing, because there really was nothing he could say against that. It was true. John would have been less hurt if Teyla had told him, but she hadn't, and that was that.

And he wasn't going to be able to keep up this conversation much longer.

"I still think you should talk to her," he said, dumping the trash onto his tray and turning to go.

"Well, what do I say?"

Lorne was at least glad for the small bit of luck that his back was to the other man, just so he didn't have to deal with Sheppard's questions on why the wincing. He sighed, turned around. "I don't know, man, say anything. Say what comes into your head." Or your heart. Too sappy?

Too sappy. And Sheppard was beyond bad with words anyway, where feelings were concerned. They stared at each other for a second before he turned and left.

Lorne wasn't too good with words either.