The Might of Magic

*crude language throughout*

"For the last time, Mom, I don't want you to read my future!"

Hyde loved his mom very much. He could take or leave his twin brother Axel but that's just the nature of being related to a douchebag. What he did not love was his mom's insistence upon meddling with his life in any kind of magical or mystical way. Occult meddling was how the woman made her living, he knew, but it still irked him.

"Why can't you keep your work life and your home life separate like a normal person? I appreciate that you want to help me understand my potential or whatever but it kinda feels like you don't trust me to make an honest living for myself without your divine intervention."

Hyde had tried to make his voice sound as earnest and wounded as possible to get her off his back, and by the solemn look on his mom’s face, it appeared to be working. His mom walked over to him and lay a hand on his shoulder, her eyes sparkling with what he hoped was pity.

"Oh sweetheart. I had no idea you felt that way."

Hyde let out a dramatic sigh and shrugged.

"Yeah it's fine I guess. I just wish you would have a little faith in me, you know? Learn to trust me a little more."

His mom pulled him into an embrace and held him. For a moment they swayed together and finally she pulled away to smile up at him.

"You really think I don't trust you?"

He shrugged again and nodded somberly. She shook her head, a grin spreading across her face. Suddenly her hand shot out and pinched his cheek, latching on as he yelped.

"Damn straight. Trust you my ass, you little faker!"

Hyde's mouth fell open as she smirked at her son and walked off towards her office.

"I'm going to get my oracle deck," she called over her shoulder, "and together we're gonna take a look at your past, present, and future career plans!"

Joke's on her, Hyde thought as she disappeared from view, I hid her deck somewhere she'll never find it.

"Found it," his mom called out from deep within her office. Hyde felt his shoulders droop immediately in defeat.

How the hell did she find the cards that fast? I hid them far away from here yesterday.

"You know," his mother continued as she strolled past him and into the dining room, "Next time you find yourself in the mood to hide my oracles, do me a favor and let me know which ones I should expect to live without for however many hours it takes me to find them."

Hyde rolled his eyes and begrudgingly plopped down in the dining room chair across from his mom, who had already begun to lay out a spread of oracle cards.

"Funny stuff, Mom, really. All I'm hearing is that you spent money on more than one deck of useless cards that do nothing but feed the imagination."

His mom chuckled at his typical display of skepticism and placed one final card on the table. She had purposefully laid all the oracle cards face down so she could relish in Hyde's look of astonishment when he was forced to face the truth of the cards for himself. Until he was ready to push his cynicism aside, however, she would settle for poking holes in his version of reality.

"I don't think they're useless in the slightest. Neither do my customers, as you very well know. But if you need any proof that my magic oracles work, just take a good long look at that dagger you've got strapped to your leg. That little present was paid for by my customers who've seen and believe in my gift."

Hyde sighed in mild irritation and began drumming his fingers against his knee.

"I'm not saying people don't believe your gifts are real, Mom. I'm just putting it out there that your customers in town are not particularly known for their hard grip on reality."

He couldn't help but smirk at his own remark and waited for his mother to fire back at him. Though he despised her profession, he enjoyed the witty conversations it allowed him to have with his mom. She gazed at Hyde with her deep-set violet eyes for seconds that felt like hours until he decided he had no choice but to look away, embarrassed that she was refusing to dignify him with a response.

"Sorry. I know you bring in a lot of money for us and without the believers I know we wouldn't be as well off as we are."

His mom continued staring at him with a stoic expression, one eyebrow slightly raised as if encouraging him to go on. He continued, "I mean we have you to thank almost entirely for our comfy lives, me and Axel, so...yeah. I'm sorry. You can read my cards if you want"

She nodded, satisfied, and laid an elegant hand over the first card in the spread.

"I just want you to understand that it's okay to be afraid of your future. But facing it rather than denying it gives you the power to change if you don't like the way it appears to pan out. I've only been pushing you because you're getting older. You don't have unlimited time to cash in on a career, especially one that doesn't involve pickpocketing."

Hyde's eyes grew wide.

Me and Axel have never told anyone where we get our stash every month. Unless...

"Did you ask the cards to spy on me?!"

His mom couldn't help but laugh at the ignorance of his words and the sheer indignation in his voice.

"Of course not. The cards can't spy on anyone, kiddo, nor would I ask them to."

"Well okay, sure," Hyde rambled, "But why would you assume I'm some kind of petty thief? Do I look like Robin Hood to you?"

His mom chuckled and shook her head.

"Definitely not. You know your mother would kill me if I tried to raise you as a martyr without her supervision."

Hyde huffed and leaned back in his chair thoughtfully.

"I guess you're right. But I still wanna know why you think I steal from people. Does it have anything to do with your magic stuff?"

His voice dropped to a whisper as he said the word 'magic'. In Hyde's opinion, magic was just something people shouldn't have. He had ranted one too many times about it to his brother in lieu of trying to convince his mom to give up her practice, though it wasn't long before Hyde started arguing the merits of other professions to her when it became clear she had her heart set on being a prophet. One of the main reasons Hyde cast so much doubt on his mom's profession was because no one else in their immediate or distant family appeared to have such clairvoyance, nor any particular affinity for the occult. His mother, unlike his mom, was an asset to their town in more practical ways, which is what confused him most about their family. How they operated with a clairvoyant and a huntress as the adults of the household was beyond him, especially since it seemed like his mother indulged his mom's love for the supernatural and the mystical despite being a relatively no-nonsense type at this point in her life. In her past, their mother had been a rather infamous thief, a fact that Axel and Hyde loved to pry into whenever they could.

"Before you insult my intelligence and say it was a lucky guess," his mom interrupted his thoughts, "You boys have always wanted to be like your mother. The idea that perhaps you'd want to embrace her old lifestyle isn't exactly hard for me to wrap my head around, but that's not how I knew."

Hyde's brow crinkled as he tried to deduce what kind of spell or card reading she could have used to figure out what he did with his brother almost every weekend when they snuck out.

"Fine," he finally snipped, "Who told you? Cards or crystal ball?"

She squinted at his snarky tone and flicked one of her cleansing crystal chips at him from where it had been sitting on the table. He failed to dodge it and flinched when it nailed him square in the forehead, though he didn't protest since she had more than one valid reason to be pissed at him.

"Mrs. Larson. You two idiots nabbed her dog's flea medicine and her lunch while you were busy swiping bags out of her shopping cart two days ago."

Hyde grimaced and cursed himself, but mostly Axel. He had chosen the target that day after all.

"Well to be fair," he reasoned hopelessly, "It wouldn't have happened if Axel had taken what he was supposed to so technically if you really think about it, the blame is mostly on him."

His mom shook her head at him and he grinned sheepishly. She blinked her round eyes at him and sighed deeply.

"You're lucky she has a sense of humor otherwise you two would have been in jail by now, I swear."

"True, thank god for Mrs. Larson and her humor. Speaking of which, I'm hoping maybe you can find some in all of this and forgive me?"

He gave her his best puppy dog eyes and she raised an eyebrow at his pitiful display.

"Afraid not, kiddo. Prepare for a lashing when your mother gets home."

Hyde called her bluff.

"Our mother has never hit us a day in her life."

His mom shrugged and flipped the first oracle card over.

"Who knows? Maybe the cards will tell us she'll start today."