The consultation room was smaller than Raen had expected. She had expected something ceremonial. What she found was a room with two chairs, one window, and a woman of indeterminate age who looked at her for a long moment and said: you have no reason to leave.
Raen had not yet stated her question.
She had come, after two years of considering it, to ask about leaving the city where she had grown up, gone to school, worked for seven years in a job she was no longer certain she had chosen. She had come because she had exhausted her own thinking on the matter and because someone she trusted had suggested the oracle and because she had run out of other ideas.
The oracle had looked at her and said: you have no reason to leave. Then she had looked out the window.
The consultation was over. Raen understood this, though she did not know how.
She went outside. It was raining. She sat on a bench across from the entrance and tried to understand what had happened.
A man sat down next to her. She had seen him leaving the consultation room before her. He looked at her with the expression of someone who recognized what she was doing.
He said: first time?
She said: yes.
He said: she told you the opposite. That's the first thing you learn. Whatever she says, she means the other thing. She told me I had no family to go back to. I have been home every month since.
Raen looked at him. She said: then she told me I have reason to leave.
He said: that's the start of it. It gets more complicated.
She looked at the entrance to the consultation room. The oracle had already spoken. The question was what Raen would do with the answer.