Author Topic: PC730: The Augur and the Girl Left At His Door  (Read 500 times)

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on: April 12, 2022, 10:19:49 PM
PodCastle 730: The Augur and the Girl Left At His Door

Author: Greta Hayer
Narrator: Wilson Fowlie
Host: Matt Dovey
Audio Producer: Peter Adrian Behravesh

Previously published by Beneath Ceaseless Skies

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Show Notes
Rated PG-13



The augur looked at the bridegroom’s back and sighed. He bent close to the bridegroom’s skin, examined every bump and line in his flesh. Most apparent were the red lines, claw marks from fingernails. A less experienced fortune teller would have seen those marks and spoken of the satisfaction of the young man’s new bride, perhaps suggested the imminent birth of a child, but the augur had done this for many years. He knew how to read the skin of a person, living or dead. He knew that there would be no happiness for the couple. There would be a child — there was already a child quickening in the belly of the bride; that much was obvious by the angles of the cuts, the swell of the muscles by the shoulder blades — but that child would be the end of them. It was as clear as dark moles on pale skin; as obvious as the ridge of a spinal column.

The augur told the bridegroom to put his clothes back on. He did not tell the bridegroom about the darkness in his future. The augur had seen other soothsayers punished when they told people things they did not want to hear when he worked for the emperor many years ago. But the augur did not lie. He never lied. And to not tell the whole truth — that was no lie.




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