"I can't, sorry. It might be Selaliel, it might be some other spirit - I guess it could be one of the other patrons which were offering? Could just be Fate itself, as far as I know it's not a person but a lot of these drawbacks seem to be weird whims like Fate wants our lives to be... stories with more adversity in them. Which is a lot like a personality even if it never seems to act directly where we can see it."

"Gosh. Well, I guess I'll take it... and put back the being light one so I only have one problem to think about when shopping for clothes. And maybe take off my sweater right now because it's wool."

"That makes good sense. Okay, other ones worth suggesting... One of the warlock ones is Witchknight - this would mean that your power is actually not yours, but a child you're close to, probably a sibling, who's - subconsciously rejected their power and pushed it onto you. If they died, you'd still be a siren but wouldn't be a witch until and unless you could resurrect them. Which is possible, to be clear. Sort of the reverse would be Natural Only - leaving your power buried deep, far enough that the guided awakening won't entirely take. After you leave today, the Veil will snap back, you'll forget about me and the choices you made, and you'll stay mortal until you awaken naturally, though all the choices we made for you will stick. Then, after something that will suck badly enough that you might wish you'd died instead, you'll awaken, and gradually regain the lost memories. Either of those would give you a nice big chunk, good for three or four ranks of something."

"Would Witchknight - that's one of those weird retroactive ones, isn't it - would that mean that whichever sibling can't be a witch?"

"It would. And it's not as bad, but yeah, it definitely is at least somewhat retroactive."

"If I do the natural one will I definitely awaken? Will it take a long time?"

"You definitely will, and you'll definitely survive it (or recover from death) no matter how bad it gets, but it might take a while. I currently have someone who picked that and is... three years and change in, and four years is the longest I've seen personally. As I remember the statistics, a couple years is normal, the normal high end is a decade, but there's been one or two outliers out of a few thousand who went higher. The longest on record is thirty-two years for a woman who didn't awaken naturally until she died of cancer in her seventies, and it's her opinion that the long time was actually required to make her awakening traumatic enough to happen naturally, and wouldn't have been needed had she been a different sort of person."

"Hmmmmmmmmmm.

"Maybe I'll take that one. Will I be able to like, find you again, if I have questions?"

"After you remember? Almost certainly. Natural awakenings get attention, usually from ORC but in your case maybe from the Watchers, and they'll look up if your name is listed with any of the awakeners, which it will be, and they'll give you my hexmail address. You might be able to find the store again, but once or twice a year I close my doors in one city and open them in a different one, and I might do that for Chicago before you get back - currently I'm in Toronto, Chicago, Dallas, and San Jose."

"Is there a way to be sure that it's not going to be like. A car crash killing my entire family or something, that wouldn't have happened."

She's silent for a couple seconds. "...No. Absolutely no way. It could happen, and we'd never know for sure whether it was because of your awakening or not."

"Wow okay then I'm gonna skip it! Brrr!"

"That's fair. Fate's a bitch, giving it more ammunition to throw at us is never great. Couple others..."

"One piece of advice I got when I was awakening was that it's usually worth getting things that that are temporary but very annoying, because you'll live for thousands of years and the benefits you get from the extra power will last long past when the initial problems have become a distant memory. Losing your family would stick with you, but some stuff is more temporary. And given the pagan prophecy you got, maybe these have less downside for you than for most people. ...These are also both warlock complications."

"Betrayal - some time reasonably soon, someone you trust, care about, and expect to be on your side will blindside you and betray you. Maybe they'll be coerced, maybe they will actually think badly of you unexpectedly, maybe they'll think they're doing the right thing... but they'll hurt you, badly. What happens after that is up to you."

"And a slightly smaller one, Marked - some nasty people will put a bounty on your head. Hespatia, Alphazon, and maybe the Outsiders. You'll have to fight off bounty hunters who want to capture or kill you, for a few months or years, until they collectively decide you're too much trouble to be worth the bounty."

"I think... that possibly... being betrayed by someone I trust would also stick with me? Also, like, heck, I don't know how to fight, what if I mess up at it and instead of living for thousands of years I die in my teens."

"Witches are hard to kill, and harder to keep dead. I'd be more concerned about capture, if I had that after me, and the relics Selaliel is giving you would make you very hard to keep captured. But it's a fair concern. For the betrayal... I think it would stick with you for years, maybe a few decades, but not for centuries. If you're five hundred years old, someone who betrayed you when you were twenty is... like someone who fought with you when you were a toddler. I mean, I don't know first hand, I'm only sixty-five, but I know people that old, and a couple of them were deadly rivals for fifty years and now they're best friends who laugh about the stupid shit they did to each other back when they were 'kids', by which they mean eighty."

"But like if it was my sister or something."

"It could be bad. But you'd have a long time to fix things, and all Fate promises is that it will be very bad for a little while."

"Man I'm just really nervous about all these fate things poking me! I think I would rather they did not!"

"No one has ever met Fate, as far as I know. Which is unfortunate, because we all want to punch them in the face. Repeatedly."

"I can see why! I think I will not let any of the Fate things poke me extra."

"Understandable. Let's see, anything else... There's a smallish warlock one which is making animals dislike you and plants grow worse nearby, like a reverse Disney princess. Also ones which make you dislikeable or make it hard for you to form emotional attachments. And a large warlock disadvantage which makes you really outstandingly ugly. That's everything that seems like worth suggesting."

"It is literally my life ambition to be a Disney princess. - like by voicing one for a movie but still. And I don't want to be ugly or hateable either.

"I could take the one where I stand out, that one seems kind of neat maybe."

"Hah! Fair enough. Eye-Catcher seems to have more downside and upside for you than for some other people? Your decision, ultimately."

"What's the extra downside?"

"I think I said - you'll probably be trying to avoid notice more often than most witches, fulfilling mortal prayers without them noticing. So it could be tricky."