Constance was not in a good mood. Something was happening and she had become unavoidably aware of it. There were portents everywhere, her morning walk had been positively full of them. The average person might make the mistake of thinking that being able to read portents would be a neat ability to have, and the average person could not have been more wrong. Constance had learned, through experience, several unfortunate rules concerning the art of reading portents.
First of all, most portents rarely told you anything of any real importance. The wealth of minutia that could be read in portents was staggering and of almost zero use. It often took years of study just to learn how to look past all the pointless garbage. There were reasons why it was the way it was, but they were mostly the sorts of cosmically unfathomable tenets that made Constance want to punch something.
Secondly, the rules regarding the meanings and interactions of portents were mind numbing in their intricacy. Location, time of day, weather patterns, it all mattered. Constance had once forgotten to turn her watch ahead for daylight savings time, read a sign wrong, and spent the rest of the day thinking she was going to die in a fire when she was actually just going to get her period early (which, it turned out, would have been very useful to know).
Then there were the illusionists. As it turned out, portents were extremely easy to fake, so a large part of a seer's training was spent learning to tell the difference between real and artificial signs. If you weren't careful even an amateur illusionist could royally fuck up your day.
The thing that Constance like the least about scrying, and by a considerable margin, was the fact that, once you learned how to do it, you couldn't not do it. If there were three ravens sitting on an oak branch facing east at sunset somewhere nearby you'd see it, whether you wanted to or not.
It all added up to one the most incredibly annoying and utterly useless talents one could possess. So, of course, Constance had a natural affinity for it. Thankfully it wasn't her only skill.
Now she was on the toilet, pointlessly brooding over the impending whatever it was, and getting more irritated by the minute. She normally liked going to the bathroom, not so much for the act itself (that would have been weird), but more for the serenity of it. It was a personal, quiet time where one could be reasonably sure one would be left alone. No one, apart perhaps from poorly raised children and those bearing the most dire of news, would dare to intrude on a person's bathroom time. Except now that stupid sense of foreboding had followed her there and spoiled it. It was almost depressing.
Constance finished her business, cleaned up, and prepared to return to the non-bathroom world. She stood, turned, and reached to flush the toilet, which was the precise moment when her heart stopped.
There are many things in the world that may give a person pause, like someone approaching them brandishing a gun, or witnessing the eruption of a volcano, or watching their child take its first steps, but few things have the sheer stopping power of seeing blood in a toilet. Particularly when one has just finished using it.
Constance stared down at the bloody horror her body had produced, her mind grappling with the sight, locked in the grip of that sinking feeling one gets in presence of the truly horrifying. Slowly the all-too-bright red swirls began to flow and shift of their own accord. Constance's eyes widened even further as the swirls coalesced and started to form shapes. A bitter, acidic taste developed in the back of her throat and her stomach rolled alarmingly. It was only when part of her mind started to recognize some of the shapes that her paralysis broke. She slammed the lid down, slammed the door shut, dashed out her door without bothering to put her shoes on, and stood on her front porch shivering in spite of the days warmth. She hadn't bothered to flush. It wouldn't have worked anyway.
A tiny wisp of smoke, barely visible, coming from nowhere at all, drifted lazily past Constance's ear. As it passed she heard the tiny breath of a voice.
“Come back,” it whispered.
Constance lifted her head and faced in the direction of the voice.
“Absolutely not. I am not talking to that... thing in the toilet. If you're going to address me then find another way.”
Another wisp of smoke drifted by. “Fine,” it whispered, “just come back inside.”
Constance turned around, regaining some of her composure now that she had asserted some control over the situation, and went back inside.
Just inside the door, dangling on from the ceiling in front of the window, there was a plant in a hanging basket. Constance had never been much good with plants, most of them died on her quite quickly, but for some reason this one had survived and flourished in her care. As she walked inside the plants leaves began to rustle. She sighed and seated herself on the arm of her couch to watch. With eerie speed the vines lifted and twisted around each other, intertwining here and braiding themselves together there, until they had achieved the semblance of a face. It was a face Constance knew well. Under normal circumstances it was an imposing, even intimidating, face that commanded respect and occasionally, in the right light, awe. Being emulated by an hibiscus, however, seemed to lessen the effect. When its verdant transmogrification was complete the plant spoke to Constance in a voice that was also, under normal circumstances, much more peremptory, but then it usually wasn't accompanied by the ceaseless rustle of tiny leaves.
“Constance...”, the plant face began.
“That was disgusting,” Constance interrupted, “what possessed you to appear like that?”
The plant face paused. “I thought it was funny.”
“Funny!? Do you have any idea how terrified I was? I thought that had come out of me!”
“How do you know it didn't?”
Constance eyed the plant for a minute. It was difficult, even when it had taken the form of a face, to tell when a plant was fucking with you. She decided it was and further decided to move on.
“You have, unquestionably, the most horrible sense of humor of any sentient being in the whole of existence.”
“And you should have seen the look on your face,” The plant face chuckled and shook its many leaves in amusement, “priceless.”
“It's amazing,” Constance said with a sigh, “I'm already tired of talking to you.”
“You know, most people tend to address me with a little more respect.”
“Yes and most people aren't addressing you through a plant. What do you want?”
The plant face affected, with limited success, a look of solemnity. Apparently playtime was over. “Something is happening. Forces have been set in motion and your particular talents are required.”
Constance rolled her eyes and let a thick lock of her auburn hair drop down across her face. She had somehow gotten the idea into her head that this lock of hair, when positioned in such a manner, made her appear both intimidating and irritated, a combination of emotions she often had cause to convey to others. She was mistaken.
“Something,” the plant-face continued, “has begun to stir in the void. Minds that have long slept are beginning to awaken and turn their attention towards your world.”
Constance stared intently at the plant and tried her best to look put upon. “And what, Mally, do you expect me to do about that?”
There was a heavy silence for a moment. The vines of the plant began to shiver and several tiny tendrils of smoke drifted up from within the leafy mass. A few of the leaves turned black and disintegrated. Constance knew she had pushed things too far. She wasn’t necessarily afraid, at least not of this one, he was hardly more than a trumped up messenger, but it seemed a shame to see the only plant she’d managed to keep alive destroyed.
“Forgive me Great Malacath.” She intoned with cleverly concealed mock reverence, “I meant no disrespect. How may I serve the Masters?”
“There is one who seeks to awaken He Who Dreams. This cannot be allowed to happen. This person must be stopped.”
“Wait a minute. Who’s this ‘He Who Dreams’? I’m not familiar that name?”
“That is not your concern.”
Constance frowned. She didn’t like being kept in the dark, but she’d learned long ago that if the Masters didn’t want you to know something there was no use asking twice.
“Okay, so any idea where I can find this mysterious interloper?”
“He has hidden himself from us but we believe he hides in the city. He is, as we speak, being pursued by Mr. Sound and his people. They may be of use to you.”
Constance groaned. “Wonderful. I’m sure they’re going to be remarkably cooperative.”
“Time is of the essence. Find this man before he achieves his goal.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Then I shall take my leave. Good luck… ‘Connie’.”
The plant-face twisted into the closest approximation it could achieve of a malicious grin and burst spectacularly into flame.
Constance hung her head and sighed. “Fucking demons.”
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