Foretold in smoke

My polished greeting pulls you a few steps closer into the dimly lit room, where you stare at the artwork on the wall, trying to decipher its abstraction. You fumble over a compliment when I admit I painted it myself. Your nose twitches at the cloud of earthy smoke hanging in the stagnant air, and your ear tilts toward the sharp plucking of unfamiliar instruments—music trilling softly from a hidden speaker. The sound is heady, exotic, and makes the hair on your arms rise. The caricaturistic experience you expected is something different—its alive, sacred, and it smells like singed aloeswood. I sense the conflict within you—to stay or to flee, to grasp hold of your future and drag it into today, or to return to life as normal and submit to the natural process of discovery. You twist and wring your hands, afraid you’re damning yourself, or cursing your bloodline by setting foot in this den of witchcraft, or whatever it is they’re calling it these days. But I am no one to fear; I am a respectable businesswoman. But you must make your own choice, so I remain silent, waiting for you to remember whatever it is that brought you here. At last, you move. You approach me like I am an oasis in the desert, doubting what you see, but desperately wanting it to be real. You are afraid to ask, afraid of the answers. I sense your struggle; I see your soft heart, your goodness and warmth, your suppressed potential suffocating under self-doubt. You are afraid to know what lies ahead because you have grown comfortable letting life rush by you. It is a river, coursing where it wills, and you are a leaf at its mercy. What I tell you will alter the course of your life, not because the words on my lips drip with inherent power, but because you will believe them.