An Introduction to Tasseography

I wonder what they're all for. I come home and they are simply there, in rows on the tree stumps in our back garden. My brother treats them delicately, with ginger touches, like treasures.

"They tell your fortune," he swears to me, gesturing with a fluorish. But all I see are cracked and filthy teacups with dirt and leaves and the dregs of tea in the bottom. 

"They give advice sometimes too," he whispers, as though it is a secret he must keep safe or everyone will start seeking these tea cups for guidance. As though prophetic teacups will soon be all the rage. 

I pick on at random and fill it with mint tea. The tea is sweet, the cup is a calm shade of blue. I can't imagine it being anything special. I can't imagine any of them being special.

I watch my brother walk around his maze of cups, washcloth in hand, voiding cracks and elaborate handles of year old dust and earth. Soon the cloths are loam brown but he looks with satisfaction at his less repulsive collection. 

I finish my tea, it tasted sweeter than when drunk from the white mugs with the forget-me-nots that sit on the kitchen shelves indoors. I sift the dregs and poor them onto the ground, watching steam rise from the soil. 

When I look back and my cup there are words around the rim. No philosophical questions or long analogies with fairy tale messages. There are the words "BELIEVE" and "IMAGINE". They seem to have been born from the tea themselves. 

My brother wanders over and looks at my teacup. "Hm," he seems mildly intrigued. "I've never seen that before." He shrugs and leaves, finding more interest in his unused and fateless dishes. 

The words faded. I left the cup outside and someone else has drunk from it by now. I've gone back to drinking from the white and blue-flower mugs in the kitchen. I can't help thinking that my mint tea isn't as sweet. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay