It shouldn’t have felt so much like coming home.<br/><br/>Aisling sighed. The breath billowed outwards in a cloud of white menthol smoke from her cigarette. She ashed idly on the sidewalk as she gave the familiar building a dubious once over. Yellow eyes scanning for any sign of the passage of time. What had she really expected to change? Lifting the nearly spent cigarette to her mouth, she inhaled deeply before tossing the glowing bud onto the ground and crushing it beneath the toe of her black leather boot.<br/><br/>Another sigh. Another cloud of white smoke.<br/><br/><i>Home </i>had been the place she had been pulled from to come back here.<i>Home </i>was certainly much nicer than the dreary looking storefront in the bad part of a worse town. But the fortune teller was at the whims of the goddess who plagued her with vague and prophetic dreams that had filled her with a desire to return that couldn’t be ignored.<br/><br/>What was she supposed to find here?<br/><br/>She rearranged an ill-fitting jacket over her shoulders. It was leather like her boots, but clearly designed for a person much taller than she was. The article had stopped smelling like the woman it belonged to a long time ago, and for a moment, Aisling’s heart ached with the loneliness of her missing partner.<br/><br/>The oracle considered lighting another cigarette to stall. Though, she didn’t know exactly what she was avoiding. Clawed fingers pushed through curling red locks. “Just go,” she urged herself forward in an unmistakable Irish brogue. Seemingly unwilling feet carried her forward and through the door that lead to the interior of her apparent home away from home. She reached up and touched one of the runes above the door out of habit more than anything else as she crossed the threshold.<br/><br/>Everything was exactly how she remembered it, and Aisling couldn’t decide if that was disappointing. Mostly empty with the lingering scents of smoke and sex. Somehow it felt like entering another world.<br/><br/>She continued to move forward. No bartender... no surprise there. Her head turned to and fro, scanning for any signs of life.  Aisling shrugged out of the jacket and left it hanging over one of the barstools as she walked behind the counter. Heavy boots marked her steps in a steady cadence. She opened a beer cooler, that was fully stocked despite no evidence of anyone working there. Aisling had long since stopped being wowed by this.  Retrieving a green bottle from within she popped the top of with a bottle opener attached to the back of the bar and took a swig.<br/><br/>Aisling lifted the bottle to toast the empty room. “Good to be back,” she said to no one in particular, before taking another long pull from the bottle.