The Teller of Small Fortunes

by Julie Leong

“How much wealth makes a fortune depends on how much one already has, for it will always be more than that,” said Tao.

Tao took the cup and looked intently into it. A wet blob looked back. But she took a breath, sucking the grassy, floral scent of the tea in, and held it for a count before exhaling slowly. She looked again into Cam’s cup and saw more now than just leaves: brief flashes and glimmers, glimpses of scenes yet to come. Most of the images were dark and indeterminate blurs, but a few small and clear images she was able to catch hold of just long enough. These she fixed in her mind; remembering, comprehending.

Familiarity could look very much like love from a certain angle, if one didn’t look too hard.

“And the suspicion turns to fear, and the fear, as it always does, turns to anger.”

the Daughter was the last-born of the gods, who had claimed for her own dominion all that was unwanted by her Brothers—the silence in forests unknown; the chaos of ocean storms; the darkness far from fires of men. It was the Daughter, Tao knew, who was said to take any souls unclaimed by the other gods after death.

“It must be comforting to believe that a god watches over you. Someone who will protect you and care for you because you’re one of his. Who belongs to you, as much as you belong to him.”

“All cats are slightly magical, don’t you know? It’s why they’re so smug all the time.

Aye, our lives are short and shaped by circumstance, and maybe we can’t control most of what’s to come. But we can control how we feel. We can savor the sweetness of a blackberry scone, and the company of our friends, and the warmth of the summer wind at night, and be grateful for it. We can be nothing, and choose to be miserable about it, like you—or we can be nothing, but choose to be happy, and let that be purpose enough. Which sounds more worthwhile to you?”

And there’s no inherent virtue in suffering.”

“I am sad that you have lost so much,” said the old man, empty hand falling back against his side. “I hope you find new joys to take their place.”

“There is a Shinn saying: ‘You cannot paint stripes on a donkey and call it a tiger.’

“You’re wrong. There’s no such thing as greater good—there’s just good, and the more of it we can do, the better.”

“Fear is the cost of power, Tao. Every mage is afraid. We just learn how to push past it—to use it instead of letting ourselves be imprisoned by it.”