The woman enters the dining room and announces: "I'm going to tell your future".

She has carefully curled her dark hair into a youthful bob, thinking it may remind the man of his first love, a pretty, young Italian thing who passed of the influenza 30 some-odd years ago. She knows he still yearns for the girl; he cries her name in his sleep, sometimes. The woman never mentions it come morning.

She sometimes wonders if she utters the names of any of her past lovers in her sleep as well. She rather doubts it.

"I'm not one of your damn clients," the man grunts in response, rustling the pages of the newspaper imperiously. But he can never resist her for long, and so, at her insistent look, he sighs and sets the paper aside, making room for the tray the woman holds.

She has chosen the blue and white china set- the one she claims was inherited from a great-grandmother but was, in reality, bought for mere pennies from a street vendor- and sets it down carefully in front of the man. An earthy aroma fills the air as she fills the cracked cup. 

"No milk or sugar?" He asks despairingly.

"Drink," the woman says with a huff of laughter. "Then swirl three times, clock-wise. Go on, now."

The man raises his greying, bushy eyebrows appraisingly but dutifully does as she says, sipping at the loose-leaf tea and grimacing comically at the taste. 

"This is why you should never marry a witch. They are far too bold," he says, and although his words are pointed his tone is not, and the woman knows her superstitious husband is enjoying this rare opportunity to catch a glimpse of what his future may hold. 

Her skills as a fortuneteller are a wonderful little party trick, which is how she and he first met, several months prior. Of course, she was someone else's wife, then. But when she had informed the man a new love awaited him, she did not need to read her own leaves to know her future was intertwined with his.

The man often tells her he loves her, but what he really means is I love your body and I love the way you make me feel.

The woman says she loves him, too, but what she really means is I love the silk gowns you buy me and I love that we pay someone else to do the cooking.

It's a tricky thing, love. Hard to define- harder still to achieve, but the two of them seem to be making it work.

The man clears his throat and sets the teacup down.

"There. Now tell me what it says before I leave to meet the magistrate. Perhaps you can ask the leaves if the good judge will recommend me for the board position?"

"It doesn't quite work that way," the woman says with an impish grin, though of course, the man already knows that. 

She peers into the cup, where dark clusters of seeds and bits of fibrous plant cling to the sides of the china.

"Interesting..." the woman says, turning it this way, then that way.

"What is?" The man has kept his voice uninterested, but the woman knows she has his undivided attention. He clears his throat again.

"Well," the woman says. "It would seem you have two conflicting symbols. This is quite rare." 

"Load of pish-posh, anyway," the man says abruptly, as he often does, waving his hand and standing.

"Sit down," the woman suggests, her brow furrowing.

The man coughs and clears his throat nervously, then does as she says.

"Well?" he demands.

"Aster flowers," the woman says, her voice hesitant. "Near the handle of the cup."

"And what do-" The man coughs again. "-Aster flowers signify?"

"Generally, they signify a good future, full of sound decision-making." The corners of her mouth turn downwards. "But these flowers seem to be arranged in a circle."

"And what does that mean?" The man asks, before succumbing to wracking coughs that shake his entire body.

The woman looks up then, her painted eyes round and wide.

The man's face has turned purple with the exertion of his coughing, and the woman notices his wrinkled hand is speckled with spots of red; he has begun coughing up blood.

Abruptly, the man slides from his chair and to the ground, pulling the tablecloth with him.

The tea set shatters around him, shards of white-and-blue china skittering across the glossy, hardwood floor as a puddle of brown tea pools beneath the cracked pot.

The woman remains in her seat, staring down at the man until his coughing quiets and his gurgling breaths cease. 

"Death," the woman says, in the long silence that follows. "A wreath of Aster flowers signifies death." She folds her hands and places them in her lap and offers a short, silent prayer for the dead man.

The woman has never tried to read her own future in the tea leaves; she doesn't need to. Because now, with her fourth husband dead at her feet, she's relatively certain her future contains copious amount of alcohol sipped from colorful drinks on the white, sandy beaches of the Bahamas.

The woman often claims to foretell the future, but she never mentions that she only foretells the futures she can control.

When the money runs out (because it always runs out, eventually) and she finds someone new to keep her bed warm, the woman wonders if she will ever call out this man's name in her sleep.

She rather doubts it.

---

Haaaaa so this story is inspired by a real woman I read about who correctly predicted the deaths of a bunch of people (including several ex-husbands). Turns out she was poisoning them all.

Thank you @LeeSplash for this entry's prompt: TEA.

This is part of my collection of short stories, Everyday Objects, in which I write an original story inspired by an object provided by a reader.

Comment below with a RANDOM OBJECT to inspire my next tale, and thanks for reading!