The first time Nellie received a positive spread from her deck was when she asked it about the idea of buying a new deck.

April came with a flourish of life to Moscow, Idaho. The snow that had blanketed the landscape during the wintertime had completely dissipated at this point, leaving behind only small clumps of slush in select areas. When she walked around campus, Nellie could now see birds flying, even though spotting them could be sporadic. There were budding signs of new life everywhere she looked; proof that the cold winter was being left behind and a bright summer was their ultimate destination.

She now knew that she found herself in between the celebrations of Ostara and Beltane. What that meant, exactly, she wasn’t completely sure. There was a lot of information that the Wheel of the Year encompassed that she doubted she would ever be able completely understand. What she did know, though, was that winter was long past and the Wheel of the Year marked this time as one for rebirth; the snow was melting, the wildlife was slowly making its way out of its slumber, and, much as nature was doing, it was time for her to begin to live once again.

In a way, she could feel the change of the season affecting her too.

Subtle, miniscule shifts had begun to pop up inside of her.

At first, they had been so subtle that she had not managed to really notice them. But, eventually, she had managed to catch on to the fact that there was something fundamentally different within herself. Now she knew that, even if the soothing comfort of loneliness still pulled at her, she now found herself slowly but surely inching towards opening herself up once more to a world she had decided to escape from, if only for a moment.

Nellie now found herself smiling more often than not when she managed to see a bird flying high above her head. She had found herself capable of noticing the lively shift in the atmosphere and wildlife around her and that, in turn, had made her begin to feel like she was in the mood to try again.

What that meant in practice, she wasn’t completely sure. She just knew that she had this overwhelming feeling that had begun to consume her that begged her to do something with her life; to begin to find ways to seek out variation from the monotony she had fallen into.

There was this inexplicable buzz of energy within her, quiet and lazy as it still was, that was slowly building up into something real. And Nellie was fascinated by it.

As her environment changed, Nellie found that it was easier to dust off the weight that had remained over her shoulders from the moment that she had witnessed her ex-boyfriend on top of her younger sister. It was still there, just like it would always be there, she guessed, because this was a betrayal that she just couldn’t walk away from. But she felt… lighter now. Her eyes didn’t feel as heavy anymore and she didn’t feel as drawn to remain in the comforts of her dark bedroom to the same degree.

One afternoon, as she made the conscious decision to ignore her coursework and instead indulge in a craft she was not even sure may even be real, she had decided to pull out her tarot deck. In the background, yet another video from Ainsley's bountiful collection had played. It had been a video on tarot, so it hadn’t been as if this decision had come from nowhere. But it had been a video walkthrough of the vast collection the English witch had at her disposal- not one about how to read or understand the card system.

“Oh, this deck… it hates me.” even though she had been listening with only half an ear, that statement had stood out to her; she had begun to pay more attention to the deck that was on display at the moment and Tempest’s words.

After an explanation of the kind of horrible things that had happened to the witch in the past as they had stubbornly attempted to make things work between them and their first deck, Nellie’s mind had begun to turn with a question that had made her marginally uncomfortable at the same time she had begun to feel the faintest licks of hope appear within the depths of her mind.

And so, that’s how she found herself seated with the deck she had impulsively bought. It lay before her, sat on the bed as an unseen chasm distanced them. It loomed before her, no matter how silly she felt over being intimidated by an inanimate object that, realistically, couldn’t look down at her.

It still felt as if something looked down at her, though, and it felt like it was coming from the deck’s direction.

Nellie breathed in one final fortifying breath before she finally asked the question that had formed within her mind as she had watched Ainsley's video: “Should I buy a new deck?”

She was still wary about anything to do with this world of magic; there was still much to scrutinize over and be skeptical about. She had no proof other than a few posts on the internet to rely on for assurance that this was real. And, quite frankly, it wasn’t like she could even say that she was trying hard to figure any of this out. Sure, she had a tarot deck and knew a few important tidbits about how to care for crystals, how to make moon water, and what was truly supposed to matter in casting a spell, but that was it. She really didn’t know more than such bare simplicities.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Her hands did not burn as she shuffled the cards this time around. Her fingers did begin to ache somewhat as she tried to pick out the card at the very top after she had asked her question, so she instead continued to shuffle and hoped the burning would subside.

She knew that most people picked out three cards for any given spread. So, she went ahead and after a few more rounds of shuffling, she grabbed the three at the center of the deck that caught her eye. They had been slightly raised up from the rest… if she believed in this kind of thing, she may have even thought that they had specifically been separated to call her attention.

Once she had flipped them over and left them laid out before her… Nellie felt something deep within herself tug.

The first card at the very left of the spread belonged to the suit of Swords and held a man seemingly rowing away from something, a collection of swords at the front of his boat. The one in the middle held the simple image of a hand that materialized from a cloud, holding on to a stick- it was the Ace of Wands. And the final card, the third one from left to right, was packed with such an intense yellow color that, for just a moment, it felt like the card shined bright, especially in comparison to the rest.

THE FOOL seemed to ignore her as he faced in the direction of the Ace. It was almost as if… Nellie breathed in deeply before she shook her head. There was nothing wrong with thinking deeply about this kind of thing. Associations between cards were correct to make, even if they felt silly.

And she felt more than just a little silly at just the idea of thinking that, even if for just a moment, she thought that these cards were telling her something.

It was associations, she knew. Taking the question she had asked as a base, she was trying to find ways to create an answer through what little she knew about the cards she had drawn and the positive imagery they could convey. Sure, she felt a tingling sensation along the tips of her fingers, but she was very sure that she would need to go to a doctor to figure out what might be behind it if it kept up.

With a sigh, Nellie reminded herself that no one was inside of this room to judge her. She had, in essence, cut herself off from everyone in her life- or done as close to that as possible. No one would barge into her room unannounced and catch her seated with these cards, analyzing them; no one was around to question her actions and accuse her of the kinds of things that would probably get her disowned by not just her parents, but her whole family.

Skepticism wasn’t unhealthy, and a little hint of precaution could go a long way. But there was a small voice inside of her head shouting for her to ignore that skepticism and just look.

She was allowed to be silly and hope that these cards were talking to her, if only within these walls. And even though it may feel just a little bit preposterous, the more she looked at the cards, the more she felt like what this deck was telling her to do would involve spending more money.

----------------------------------------

Advice online about how to get a tarot deck was, much like with everything else that dealt with the world wide web, far too much. There were dozens of different kinds of schools of thought she had managed to find with just a superficial search with the phrase ‘best way to get tarot deck’. Sources consistently contradicted one another: where one person said that there was an undeniable need to be gifted a deck by someone that had been working within this craft for years, another stated that such an idea was archaic and based on crumbling foundations.

From the videos she had managed to watch that Ainsley Aimes had published on the topic, there really didn’t seem to be a consensus, either. At this point, they were the number one expert Nellie resorted to in order to get the most complete yet concise information that pertained to witchcraft. But even their video on tarot was a guide on how to read tarot, not a summary of the history of tarot and the best way to go about acquiring a deck. Granted, in their video, the knowledgeable witch did acknowledge that there were an endless amount of ways in which one could come about becoming the owner of a deck and, at least in their experience, there was no right or wrong way to get a deck.

But from the way that Nellie’s deck actively harmed her- even if, admittedly, very minutely- whenever she attempted to do any kind of reading, she could attest that there was a wrong way to do it. What she couldn’t understand, though, was precisely what she had done wrong.

No matter how many times she had attempted to cleanse the deck and no matter how many different types of cleansing techniques she had utilized, nothing had changed. She had exhausted all of the easy to access options she had managed to find on the internet and the deck still hurt her now as it had at the very beginning. No amount of cleansing had aided; and she had not been able to get many intelligible answers from the deck whenever she had been directed and asked it why it seemed to not want to work with her.

Nellie frowned to herself as she looked down at the spread before her. The cards, for the first time since she had gotten them, had given her a positive reading. Her hands still felt as if they had been marginally stung, though, which was just about par for the course when it came to dealing with this deck.

So… she was supposed to get a new deck.

Nellie breathed in deeply before she began to clamber out of her bed.

She clearly needed to do a bit more research on the best way to get a new tarot deck before she made any further ill-thought-out financial decisions. The last thing she needed was to mess up again and have two tarot decks in her possession that hated her very guts.