Astra Recalls a Prophecy

"Did we dream it all?" Astra asked eventually.

"Only if whilst we slept we tore up our clothes and threw around the pieces. And haven't you noticed yet? The moonlight is illuminating your arm, but the blister seems to have vanished. She must have somehow healed you."

"What was she? Could you make sense of what she said?"

"Not really," Fred confessed.

"Let's move on from here," Astra suggested. "It may seem silly, but I won't feel happy till I've put the area where these events happened a good way behind us. Yes, it's still the middle of the night, but I don't think that either of us could sleep now."

As they walked on, Fred said: "Surely we must have reached the bottom of our fortunes? We're lost and alone in a strange, empty land, without any possessions, not even clothes now."

"When I was born," Astra replied, "they called in a fortune teller to prophesy my future. It is a long established ritual for births in the royal household, though the predictions are no longer taken very seriously. Anyway, I've been told that in my case the seer went into her trance and then said: 'A princess she may be, but there will come a time when she will lose everything and will have less than the poorest beggar in the realm.' This rather alarmed my parents, as you might expect, but before she could regain consciousness and be questioned about what she had said she suddenly dropped dead. The physicians said that she died of natural causes, but naturally the superstitious thought it was an ill omen. Well, it seems that her prophecy has been borne out. But at least now, as you've said, things can't get any worse."

1. They carried on walking.
2. Perhaps Astra had tempted fate by saying that things couldn't get any worse.

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