The Oracle & The Knight

Seeing the future was not the gift that people thought it was. In fact, oftentimes, people would straight up reject the fortunes that they were told - even when that was forced. My name is Cassandra, and I am an initiate at the Delphi Temple. I am considered “touched by the sun god Apollo” and potentially sacred. Potentially being the key word.

Cassandra looked back at what she wrote in the intricate leather journal that she was meant to write her everyday musing within. She pushed back the very strong urge to go back and remove the saucy quotations around the sun god Apollo, considering that the Temple at Delphi was a place of veneration and worship to the Sun God in this world. She did not feel she belonged at what was considered a training academy for young girls between the ages of 16 & 20 who expressed gifts of clairvoyance and foresight. These young women, if they graduated would be to be employed at many high houses and kings as their fortune teller. After all , great leaders and warrior kings required the advice of a being whom could tell them the future outcomes. The highest honor would be to eventually inherit the mantle of the Oracle. The head of the training academy was also the Oracle of Delphi; and considered the most powerful woman in the world in the eyes of the young ladies at the school.

One of the classes in the academy was to write down musings of daydreams as well as thoughts that would enter the mind. To be an oracle was to be a voice to the gods, a way to connect heaven and earth through oration. How the divine is translated, is a whole other matter - and one way is through written word.

Cassandra’s mother was a fortune teller in her home town, and a lucky one at best. Her means of telling fortunes were a combination of high intuition and cheap parlor tricks honed to impress those unwittingly able to see through the illusion. Cassandra remembered how her mother squealed at the top of her lungs when she heard that the High Priestesses at the Oracle of Delphi wanted HER daughter to come to the temple. HER daughter could be the THE ORACLE of Delphi. She could finally be validated as a legitimate fortune teller.

Well at least that is the main reason that Cassandra thought she was so excited. The other would just to be rid of her. Having yet another mouth to feed at the age of 16, and no suitors to take the poor girl off her hands.

Cassandra was not quite as excited about the prospect at going somewhere to be judged on what she considered a curse on the best of days. She was unsure about what the dreams and visions meant most of the time. Most of the time it felt like searching through threads of a spiderweb in sunrise after rain - some connections make sense, and others no consequence at all unless put in context with the correct feeling.

I think.

I don’t know.

“Ugh why did I write that?” Cassandra muttered and clenched her jaw. The urge to go back and cross out the words rang stronger.

“Did you say something?” a beautiful girl with long black hair to her waist and green eyes poked her head into the doom room that Cassandra was sitting in, at the small desk, struggling to complete her daily divination journal before the next class started.

“No,” Cassandra closed the book with a slam, pushing her self up and away from the desk to smile at her friend. “Esmeralda, why are you here?”

“To get you, you are late - or have you forgotten?” Esmeralda’s emerald green eyes registered the confused look on Cassandra’s face. “Ah yes you have. Also, please call me Esme. My full name sounds so proper, and I do believe I will have a whole lifetime that will be full of proper things.”

“Esmeralda is a character in a movie I love from a past… or future lifetime… I think,” Cassandra furrowed her brow to think about it for a moment, defending her use of Esmeralda’s full name.

“Ah yes, so I see how you managed to forget that the Knights of Eternia are visiting the temple today and we get to meet with them! Cass, we are going to actually get to talk to boys - how fantastic, yes?” Esme’s green eyes, flashing against her caramel skin told of her girlish excitement.

“Oh, right - " Cassandra took the outstretched hand reaching out to her and stood up, allowing Esme to pull her out the door and to the main courtyard where the Knights of Eternia were meant to arrive.

Portals were one of those things that are a known, yet unknown temple secret - but the sheer force of when one was opened was still one that shocked Cassandra. One of these said portals was just closing behind a group of about 12 Knights clad in shining Armour and bejeweled in crystals from worlds that most the girls of the academy of oracles had never seen before.

As the girls entered, the sight of one of the Knights nearly took Cassandra’s breath away. His eyes, blue as the depths of sapphire crystal streams of water that reminded her of home, caught hers. In a flash of a moment - she saw everything, she saw 3 thousand lifetimes hit her like a spark of infinite light in a split second. She knew that she had loved him now and many lifetimes before, and afterwards.

However, in this lifetime, in this timeline - she was a priestess oracle of Delphi - never to take a lover, never to have any other partner than the sun god Apollo. After all, that is where the ability to have prophecy comes from? Or so, that is what was believed - what allowed the power of the Oracle of Delphi to flourish To believe.

To see the future, means to see all possible futures. And in that moment, Cassandra decided. She walked up to the Knight with the sapphire eyes, the hair like a lions mane, his armor sparkling in the high sun in the courtyard.

She placed a hand on his cheek, and he looked shocked for a moment and before he could open his mouth to say a word, she spoke:

“Hello Leopold,

I am Cassandra. In this timeline I meant to be the Oracle of Delphi. But I know, that you and I have been lovers and in love for many lifetimes - ones before, and ones in the forever after. And for the life of me, I cannot give you up in this life to be the Oracle of this world.”

Leopold smiled at Cassandra. A knowing smile.

“Shall we begin?”