Making the Cards Move
By Tarot

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Marvel Comics.  Not making any money off
this, yada yada yada.

Notes: Well I guess I should have posted this story about my namesake first,
but being second is not too bad.  I want to thank everyone who sent me the
wonderful e-mails on my first story "Twists and Turns", it gave me the
confidence to write and post this second story that has been rattling around
in my head.  Please I love feed back and any comments about this story or my
writing style or whatever would be greatly appreciated.

Making the Cards Move

	'Dieu I love this feeling', Marie-Ange thought as she lay in bed.  Her young
naked body was pressed close against him, and she could still smell their
sweat mingling.  Manuel was snoring loudly, as he always did after they slept
together.  She placed her hand on his chest and felt it rise and fall.  Her
finger slowly traced the outline of his nipple, and then recoiled.  He had one
arm wrapped around her small waist.  
	Marie lay in his arms; feeling the heat of his body and dreaming of being
able to lie with him like this every night.  She wondered what her life might
have been like if she hadn't been born a mutant.  Would she have come to
America, or would she still be living in Paris?  Would she still be working
with mother as twenty-dollar fortune-teller?  Maybe  she would have met a
young man, fell in love.  Maybe they would be married.  She could be living in
a small apartment above a tavern somewhere. During the days she would work on
her paintings, he would be an aspiring actor, or writer, or whatever.  At
night she could work as a waitress or a bartender, or whatever.  They would be
happy, living on whatever they could scrape together.  The sex would be wild,
exciting and passionate.  And they would be in love.
	It wasn't a wild dream, in fact most people would consider it setting sights
too low.  But she didn't think so.  She had grown up in a small three room
apartment above her mother's fortune-telling business.  It hadn't been a
thriving business, mainly tourists getting a kick out of a quick burst of fun.
Fortune-telling  had paid the bills, and kept food on the table, not much but
enough to survive.  It had been a difficult life, but she had enjoyed it.  She
thought it was wonderful seeing all the exotic people from different
countries.  Marie remembered looking through a small hole in the back room,
and watching her mother give cryptic predictions and vague descriptions of
customers' pasts.  
	Marie thought back to when she was twelve, and the first time her mother laid
down the Tarot cards before her.  Her mother began to teach her the meanings
of each card, and how to read them in a spread.  How hard she studied the
cards.  How many nights did she sit up and do readings for herself, learning
to interpret the cards.  After countless nights, she had finally become quite
good. 
	Her first correct prediction was still burned into her memory.  She had been
reading the cards, and suddenly she received a vision.  It was a vision of
power.  Two days later, while lying in bed, she was staring at the Lovers.
And suddenly it came to life.  On the card she saw the two lovers begin to
kiss and caress each other.  Marie jumped back, and the card stopped moving.
The Lovers were in their original position.  She was scared, but curious.  She
picked up the card again and concentrated on it again, and it moved again.
All that night she experimented with this ability.  She was afraid of this
ability, but she loved doing it.  She stopped reading the cards for herself,
and starting focusing on her power. 
     Her power seemed to fill her with wonder, she was so content to simply
make the cards act out any scene she wanted them to.  From watching the Lovers
being intimate with each, to watching the poor souls trapped in the Tower, to
making the Wheel of Fortune spin.  She eventually learned to pull characters
from one card to another, such as causing the Emperor to appear on the
Empress's card, and watch the Emperor try to seduce the Empress.  It was when
she made the cards move that she was the happiest.
	Manuel rolled away from Marie, and pulled his arm out from under her, he had
stopped snoring a few minutes ago.  She tried to press herself against him
again, but he jerked away.  
	One night, when Marie was 14, her mother decided to let Marie do some of the
readings.  Marie loved it.  She was able to look at the cards and see what was
in other people's futures.  She was excellent at it.  Women would come in and
ask to be told about their future husbands, and Marie could see a man in a
bar, or at work, or on the street.  Details of these men would come to her,
and she would tell them about the tall well-built man in the tan sports jacket
who would be sitting two bar stools down from her.  The women would come back
and thank Marie.  Customer would start coming in and asking for Marie.  
	Her mother became less and less involved in the business.  She would let
Marie run the shop, and she would go out to the bars.  With Marie at the
table, the business began to boom.  Her mother began to drink even more.
After the bars closed her mother would come home and yell at Marie.  Jealous
of Marie's talent and beauty, she would scream at her.  Telling her that she
was ugly, and a tramp.  If business had been exceptionally good, she would hit
Marie, demanding Marie to tell her who she had been sleeping with to make this
money.  
      Marie thought back to all the friends she had lost because her mother
had forced her to stay and work the business.  She was no longer allowed to go
out, and one by one her friends drifted away.  All she had left was the cards,
they became her only friends.  She would talk to the Hanged Man about her day,
the Queen of Cups became her confidant about her impure thoughts about the
good-looking man who had come into the shop that night.
	Marie remembered the happy nights in her room, making the cards move,
learning to project them off the cards, giving them substance and making them
real.  After the shop closed she would run up to her room and experiment with
her abilities, waiting for her mother to come home.  Eventually her mother
began to drink away all the profits from the shop.  Marie could barely keep up
with her.  The money for food was being drank away.  Marie sat down and read
the cards for herself again.  
	That night she saw a queen, dressed in white.  This queen would come and take
her away from this life.  This queen would take her to a far-off place where
she would meet other young people with special abilities.  Marie remembered
waiting for months for this queen to come.  She would stare out the window and
watch for this regal woman to come and remove her from this life.  She dreamed
of leaving her mother, and being treated like someone special.    Finally, she
gave up hope and forgot the vision.  Two years later Emma Frost walked into
her life.  
	Ms. Frost paid off her mother, giving her enough money to live quite
comfortably for the rest of her life, and enough to forget about Marie.  Ms.
Frost explained to Marie that she had powers, and that she wanted to help
Marie learn to control these powers.  Marie still remembered how Ms. Frost had
seemed to make becoming a mercenary sound.  It was years later when she realized
that Ms. Frost had mentally manipulated her.  All she had gained from moving
from Paris to Massachusetts was getting away from her mother.  She had no real
friends here, the other Hellions were cruel, or egotistic, or childish.
Manuel didn't love her, she knew that.  She knew he used his powers to
manipulate her, to make her think she loved him.  The sad part was that he
didn't need to.  She would have slept with him anyway.  It made her feel that
in some small way  she was loved.
	Manuel had woken up.  He muttered something about having to go back to his room.
He grabbed his pants and put them back on.  Snatching up his T-shirt he left
the room without another word.  Marie was still lying on the bed; she had
pulled the sheet up to cover her breasts.  Getting off the bed, still wrapped
in the sheet, she walked over to her mirror.
	"This is not the life I wanted"; reaching up she touched the bags under eyes.
Too many nights with Manuel, too many early training sessions.  Her looks were
starting to go.  The stress of her life, Ms. Frost's constant pushing -- it was
all taking a toll on her.  Her hair was too long, and her muscles ached.  She
often had migraine headaches at the end of the day, most likely from the
intense use of her powers.  Looking at herself in the mirror she began to cry.
In four hours she would be training again and tomorrow night Manuel might get
back into bed, or he might not.       
	She picked up her cards and lay back down in bed.  She took out the Lovers,
stared at them and, for the first time in a long time, she only made the pictures
move.       
 
The End