Chapter Text
“Okay, so I have some questions.” Kim said.
“I have some answers. Let’s see if they match.” Tea deadpanned.
It was evening now, and this was the first time KIm had seen Tea since the ritual. Those who had stayed up during the cleansing ritual had pretty much immediately passed out, and had only recently come out of their rooms and congregated around the dining room to eat something.
“What was with the visions? Is that something that happens? I know those trained like you have your secrets, so is this one of them?” Kim asked, watching the shaman with vapid interest.
“My answers were purple and forty-two, so not really a match, however what I can say is,” Tea paused to take a sip of Oolong. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Talay’s eyebrows shot up.
“Nope.” Tea shook his head. “That’s not normal. At all.”
“It isn’t?” Macau questioned.
“No. Typically what happens is I get impressions of when and where something might happen and to what level of danger it poses, but never full on visions.” Tea answered, nudging Fang with his pinky in order to get the other mer to pass him a biscuit. “There are very few times we get visions, and those have only been during extreme, national-level disasters.”
“So it does happen?” Akk was writing all this down in hopes that if he saw it visually he’d make more sense of it.
“Rarely, but yes.” Tea nodded. “I’ve only heard of it happening a few hand-fuls of times. The last vision was during World War II, when a shaman warned of Japan getting hit by the sun twice. Those who headed the warning left, and managed to outswim the radiation of the two atomic bombs.”
“Damn.” Fiat muttered.
“But that doesn’t match with what I saw.” Tea puffed up in frustration. “I mean, how is Fang choosing to eat a sandwich for breakfast and Peem getting a harem of boyfriends, a national-level disaster?”
“He gets what?” Q burst into laughter.
Fang pulled back from where he was about to take a bite of his sandwich and looked at the food with a contemplating eye. “It’s not poisoned, is it?”
“No. You’re fine. And yes, he does. That’s not the point.” Tea waved off. “The closest we get is with the one focused on Mama Kim, but that only really affects the pod… and maybe a few others… and now that I think about it, depending on his choices, Kim could end up altering the entire nation, so I guess you could logic it-But it’s not a disaster!”
“What exactly is the decision Kim has to make?” Kamol asked.
“I… Don’t know that, either.” Tea grimaced. “I got a general sense of the who, what, when, and where… but not so much the why. Which is actually how it normally goes, only with the added bonus of visions flashing across my vision at the speed of light.”
“Huh. Okay.” Kim hummed, nodding to himself. “So other than our impending doom, is there anything else you saw?”
“Well…” Tea thought about it for a second. “Your brother should check his trunk more often, Chay is about to have a puppy start following him around, and, uh, our group chat would benefit from remembering that not all is what it appears at first glance.”
“His trunk, huh?” Kim already had his phone out to text King.
“I get a puppy?!” Chay asked brightly.
“Sort of?” Tea’s nose scrunched up as his eyebrows furrowed. “It certainly seemed puppy-like.”
“Huh?” Chay was now confused.
While the table debated on what ‘puppy-like’ meant, no one noticed Sky’s contemplative expression as he plotted.
That just gave him an idea.