Smoke Reading
Smoke Reading. Smoke Reading is the oracle's daily communion with the unknown. Once each day, they may bend over a small fire — cedar, sage, or the temple's black incense — and ask the smoke a single question. The smoke answers in two images. One is true. One is false. They arrive together, woven into the same curling thread, and the oracle must know which is which. There is no trick to the knowing. It is a muscle, built over years of practice and failure, a slow education of the inner eye. The oracle has been wrong. They have acted on the false image and lived to regret it. They have also dismissed the true image as the lie, and watched the consequence arrive on schedule. The gift is not kindness. It is a test, administered daily, and the oracle has not yet passed it perfectly.