Giggle listened to the bat speak as she slowly paced toward the bones. As she stopped, preparing to reply, another voice came--quiet and polite. She glanced back.
It was a small thing, dainty and pale, and pretty. She didn't like that. She hoped there was something redeeming to it; it was too... cute. Too cute.
She sighed.
"Well then, Tal'at, I will give you a lesson, if you want. I can look into the future of this... thing, that has given no name, and show you how I do it. And then, if you want, I can look into your own?" She felt slightly irritated that the fox had intruded; she'd meant to immediately speak to the bat. In fact, she felt some strange kinship with it, and looked forward to speaking with it at length. The fox hadn't even given her name! ...Never mind that Giggle hadn't done so, either.
Meanwhile, though, the bones turned no one aside--and so she would tell the fox's fortune, and then--when they were again alone--devote some time to the bat's.
"Hold tight," she said softly to Tal'at, and then more loudly, over her shoulder at the Too-Cute,
"Come on, then, whatever-your-name-is."
She picked her way into the pile of bones, and spoke softly to Tal'at as she moved among them.
"I see the bones, with my eyes. You have no eyes. But you have other things, and other things may speak to you, as the bones share their knowledge with me. I take one up to represent they who come for readings--this one... here," she said, and knelt down gently so that a small, dainty spine, pelvis and leg--still linked by worn cartilage--lightly touched the bat's fur.
"The one who has come for a reading is tiny, and light, and so are these bones. So I pick them up, and carry them to a high-place--hold on tightly--and throw them into the pile here."
For a few moments, Giggle remained motionless, so that Tal'at could touch the bones, sniff them, even crawl around among them if he wished. Then, with a glance back at the fox to ensure that she was still with them, Giggle picked her way up to the top of the boulder.
She then tossed the bone downward, and spoke as the bone arced down, clattering into the pile and sending bones sprawling and spinning every which way.
"I throw the bones, and off they roll. I watch how. They make shapes, patterns. There is meaning, in patterns."
Giggle took a breath, held it, eyed the bones over, and shifted her gaze to stare at Quix.
"I see a crossing in the bones, one like that of the black-cat. Where it should connect to others, it doesn't. Where there should be bridges, the bones fall away. For you, it means that you are unbonded to others--you do not get along, perhaps, or you are alone."
Giggle eyed the bones once more, and then spoke again, voice measured and calm, very matter-of-fact. "I see lines of bones, ending in piles. Whatever you start now, or have started, will soon come to completion; tasks that you set, learning you wish to achieve."
Giggle eyed over the bones one last time, sitting back on her haunches, then looked over to Quix once more, eyeing the slim fennec fox over.
"Last I see that the bones have fallen away in a ring, and rolled some distance. It is as water, sinking off; the sapping of power, or you will lose control of all around you, or perhaps you will leave what you know behind to begin a journey. That is all I see, for now--but do you have questions?"
Giggle then sat quietly, her dark eyes locked sharply on the slender fox.
When I think.
________________
Roll the bones.