Anamnesis - The Hermit

[WickedCadrach]

Quote

Draw one card from the Major Arcana deck. This card is your Shadow and represents who you were in your past. Keep your Shadow face-up next to you. Use this card as a guide for uncovering your past. 

The Hermit

IX - The Hermit : The Hermit has associations with solitude, contemplation, and self-reflection. It is symbolic of leaving the voices of the world behind and finding stillness and silence enough to hear one's inner voice speak. He lights the way ahead by his own lantern, looking to no star or sign to guide his path. 

 

when you are ready

take a deep breath

and wake up

[WickedCadrach]

ACT I: Pentacles

First Pentacle Draw: Six of Pentacles
Prompt: There is someone at your side. Who is this person? What do they say to you?
Major Arcana: The Fool

I gasp, choking immediately on a haze of sawdust and rat feces. My eyes shoot wide, but I'm met only by darkness, and as I blink stinging particles from my eyes in a flow of tears, my hands knuckle against a plane of rough pinewood above me, unable to reach my face. The seizing in my dry throat turns to a painful, wheezing cough as my body jerks from the epileptic effort of trying to draw a single full breath from the prickling miasma filling my lungs, and in a panic, I beat the sides of my hands and wrists against the wood containing me. 

"Hold on! Oh, this ain't right. No, sir, this ain'tnt right one bit." 

Metal bites the wood and draws a groaning crackle as the pine lid pops above me. Greasy yellow lantern light leaks in. 

"Hang in there! Don't fuss, I have you!" 

I can't draw enough breath to reply, but I press my palms to my stomach as I try to steady my breath and stop myself from hyperventilating into a faint. It takes three impacts of the prybar before the flat iron bit can separate the coffin nails from their meal of rough cut pine.

The young man on the other side grabs my arm, pulling me upright into clearer, if not clean, air. He pats my back in a handful of anxious swats as if he's beating a rug, his baggy tunic sleeve flopping about his scrawny arms as he puts his pock-marked face directly beside mine. His crooked smile has a guileless innocence to it as he lets out a whooping sigh that falls through the floor into a laugh by the end. 

"Not for nothin', miss, but you did look dead. Mind I'm not the one 'sposed to check the drop and flop what come in, not on the regular anyway, but given the sir is away and left me alone—shovel and key and 'whatever will be', as it were—I feel somethin' responsible. Oh, but you are a mess." Wincing apologetically, he reaches up and plucks a jagged splinter from my matted hair. "Anyways... sorry."