royalstraightflush | Fortune Telling

When he was bored, Spider came up with a way to "fortune tell" with his playing cards just a little (though he does practice with tarot cards). It's nothing like actual spreads; mostly, someone just picks a card and he tells them what the card they've picked means. The meanings themselves are mostly just made up by him, though he has picked up a few of these from elsewhere.

> Hearts

Ace of Hearts
The Ace of Hearts is a special and very rare card. This card is completely positive and symbolizes love -- true, deep, and forever love, the love with a person who could be considered your "soul mate".

That's the reason the card is so rare; few people ever truly feel that kind of love, and even fewer find that the one they feel that love for feels the same for them. For Spider, this is a very dear card, and one he has never seen come up... not for himself or others.

King of Hearts
The King of Hearts is a card that symbolizes a duality between loving warmth and fierce strength, a type of person or creature that is like a river.

When at peace, that power is serene, soft, flowing gently and letting those who have need of it float or drink as they want. When at war, the power becomes fierce, indomitable, protective, and unyielding, drowning those who attempt to harm it or those who rest in its waters and bringing about a fresh, clean flow by washing away those who would dirty it.

> Diamonds

Jack of Diamonds
The Jack of Diamonds is a card that symbolizes strong will. Whether it's in life, in battle, or in anything else, this card represents that the person it relates to has the strength of mind and heart to see their trials. Maybe it's alone, maybe it's with help, but those sorts of people will never back down from the challenges that come before them, necessary or otherwise.

Negatively, it can also reflect this sort of will in its opposite incarnation of stubbornness. People who should back down, for their own good or the good or others, but who never retreat or turn their backs, no matter how much they should.

6 of Diamonds
The 6 of Diamonds is a card of wealth, but not of the money kind. It represents a deeper sort of wealth, that of gratitude, friends, and self-satisfaction. This card represents the "wealth" one gets when they help out others selflessly, or the "valuable" friends that one can gather whenever they step a bit out of their comfort zone or accept the hands stretched out to them. Even simple thanks are counted as valuable.

Negatively, however, it can represent a feeling of needing to get those sorts of things on your own. Those "valuable friends" might be too important to feel like they're something you can lean on, especially if the way you give of yourself puts you in danger. Or it may be that giving so selflessly also brings the fear of those "friends" being only beside you because of what can be given to them.

> Spades

3 of Spades
The 3 of Spades is a card that represents clashing, such as two personalities butting heads. This card can be either negative or positive, and depending on the person who drew it. People who don't mesh well could cause disaster in some situations, for instance, such as groups that have to work together for the safety of others or ones that have to collaborate on a certain project.

On the other hand, they could bring out excellence in other situations, giving both sides a rival to test themselves against and a reason to keep improving and do their best.

4 of Spades
The 4 of Spades is a card that represents the "caging" of something. This can be a positive meaning, such as something good becoming permanent, or tying together fates that wanted to be forever tied.

Most often, however, it represents the negative side of permanence, or attempted permanence. Things like being stifled by someone dangerously overprotective, or being "locked away" from the word in one way or another. It can also represent death as the worst kind of permanence, though whether that's good or bad depends on the situation of the person who drew it.

9 of Spades
The 9 of Spades is a negative card, and one that no one ever wants to draw. This card represents the worst in social bonds of any kind: betrayal. Whether it's in a relationship with one deeply hurting the other, or a betrayal of a more lethal and selling-out kind, it means that, soon, someone the person who drew the card trusted is going to put a knife in their back.

Whether literally or figuratively... is impossible to know.

> Clubs

7 of Clubs
The 7 of Clubs is a card that symbolizes both sides of innocence. When positive, it's a sense of almost childlike thoughts, a way of seeing difficult situations in a different light to solve them and enjoying even the most simple of things like they were something amazing. It's the way that things can be easily forgiven, or others can be easily accepted, and thoughts or ideas that can become something grand that "adults" would ignore or never consider.

But innocence is, at times, cruel. Negatively, it represents the ability to only see situations in black and white, not recognizing that the world exists in shades of gray rather than stark colors. This sort of innocence fails to recognize that "good" and "evil" rarely ever exist in such clear definitions, and makes snap judgments about others without seeing their perspective at times.