I've Seen It

"I've been thinking something this whole time. You're afraid of me, aren't you?"

A girl, clad in the light blue robes that signified her profession as a seer - or as people would say in common parlance, a fortune teller, or maybe even an oracle - rested her hand on her chin as she cast a doubting look at her partner across the table.

Opposite her was Malin, a girl one year older than the fortune teller, and tasked with a great destiny: that of finding a romantic partner. Not a quest she cared a great deal for if left to her own devices, but the situation changed when someone cast a curse on you, and your only way to survive the next week was to find true love, a concept the caster of the curse had not seen fit to explain.

And so, there she was. Rejected by most every prospect she intended to approach, facing down the one person who remained: not just another girl, but also the crazy seer living on the edge of town that nobody would have spared a second glance under normal circumstances.

"I'm not afraid. Just not used to talking to someone like y… Someone I don't know very well."

"You should be. I have seen your death, you know. It was painful. Happens ten years from now, almost exactly. No idea what's after that though. I can't see beyond someone's death."

The corner of Malin's mouth twitched in an unconvincing smile, and even she herself realized her attempts at appearing unfazed were a mild degree less than successful.

"Anyway, I just wanted to know if…"

"Get to the point. What are you here for?"

"I was actually going to ask you for a date. Will you go out with me? Wait…," Malin realised something she should have found obvious from the start, "given your line of work, wouldn't you know I was going to ask this already?

"I did know. And if my answer was going to be anything but yes, do you think someone of my profession would have deemed this conversation worth having in the first place?"

And so Malin's quest came to a sudden, and as it would turn out, more successful end than she had anticipated, her life still with her.

***

Ten years later.

A clear sky and a sun shining bright, tall grass at its brightest green flowing smoothly with the wind.

Among it all, a woman lying on the ground, and another kneeling above her.

Ten years the teller had waited, all too aware what awaited.

The same sight she had seen so many years ago, only this time brighter, more vivid, yet accompanied by despair bleaker than anything she had known before. What came after this? That, she couldn't tell, and that was why it hurt.

She saw this coming ten years ago and it was already painful back then. Spending the next ten years together had not done much to weaken the inevitable heartache, and had in all likelihood only made it worse. If only she could have known. If only, if only.

Malin's heart was still, still that did not stop the seer from trying. From casting the most potent of healing magic she knew, and praying, not knowing to who but willing to take whoever was willing to favour her.

And at last, after minutes of agony and despair, a miracle occured.

Malin once again drew breath.

The oracle's visions ended at death, but this time death was not the end.