Divination is not prophecy. You must understand the difference if we’re to get along.
No, no, no, this is not a matter of an oracle’s condescension for your practice. I’m sure your cards and carved stones and whatnot have their uses and guide you well.
They just don’t hurt.
What? Blood divination? No, please, you don’t need to demonstrate here and now just how much you know how to suffer for the knowledge you pursue.
This is not meant to be a competition, and… Well, in any case, the pain of the cut is not quite what I am trying to describe.
Maybe you open your skin, draw your precious ruby dribble, and you find and trace the threads woven from yourself to the others in your life. I see how hard you work for each tiny morsel of truth you wrest from your capricious gods.
Your pain is the price of hard-won wisdom.
When I bleed for my visions, it is because my gods demand it of me at any time they please. They hollow me out. They pull and twist and fuck me to bursting till I split from the strain.
I never chose my gods, you know. Whyever would I?
It’s a dagger of divine thought that pierces me. My eyes bleed tears. My tongue bleeds words. I am no more capable of holding them back than you would be able to hold back an arterial gush from a well-placed dagger in your neck.
That’s the difference between divination and prophecy. It’s not that prophecy comes at a price…it just happens to be a side effect of the gods gripping an oracle.
Divination is something you work for, prophecy is something inflicted upon me.
It’s in our blood.