The Call of the Alpenhorns

The young woman flipped the card with a freckled hand and blew a curly red lock away from where it hung in front of her eye. After gazing at the card for a moment she stated, “So you’re going to get some news, like, important news from a long ways away.”

“The Eight of Wands,” the querent said, tapping on the table where the card lied. “I have a different meaning for that. I guess it could mean news. But in my readings I interpret it as something approaching swiftly, or impending arrival, maybe even travel, something like that. But I’ve never seen the Eight of Wands depicted this way. These look more like… cups?”

“They’re eleven alpenhorns.”

“Alpenhorns? That’s not in any Tarot deck I know of.”

“This isn’t a Tarot deck, it’s an oracle deck.”

The querent snorted. ”You can only get authentic readings from actual Tarot decks. I never bothered with those-“

The buzz of her cell phone vibrating against the table as the screen lit up truncated her sentence. She snatched it off the table and grimaced as she looked at the face of it. ”Hold on,” she said with a raised finger, ”Huh. It’s from my aunt on the East Coast. I’d better take this, she never calls me so something must be up.”