The old woman, pleased that someone had finally responded to her question in the affirmative, took a moment to grin with satisfaction.  Allowing the girl an opening, however, proved to be her undoing.

“It’s like, all my life, I’ve felt that I was different, you know?  That I was special.  That maybe, just maybe, I was put on this Earth to accomplish something.  Something real, you know?  Not like being an actuary or a dentist or a mailman or a . . .

“My psychiatrist says that I’m just using fantasy to explain why I was picked on so much as a kid.  But I’m all like, what the hell does he know about my destiny?  He’s just some moron who flunked out of med school and now gets paid a hundred bucks an hour to pass off his psychoses onto other people.  And anyway, I totally started learning Elvish before they stopped inviting me to their birthday parties, so really he’s just completely full of . . .”

At first the old woman remained calm.  She needed time to think—it was obvious that she hadn’t planned what to say if she ever got this far.  Once the tirade passed the five-minute mark, however, she looked more and more exasperated, waiting for any gap long enough to get a syllable in edgewise.  Eventually the patient lioness was rewarded when the flying gazelle stopped at a water hole.

“Good!  Good.  I can, uh, sense that your . . . spirit is ready for your quest.  But first I must ask: can you play a musical instrument?”

“Huh?  No.  Mom was always trying to get me to learn piano, but I was like, ‘No, Mom, I’m not going to be the perfect little girl you always imagined I’d be.’”

“Oh . . .”

Escobar was becoming an expert at recognizing when the old woman was disappointed.  This was no mere tropical depression: this was a full-blown Category 5 crestfallen.  “Well, in that case, I—I sense that your destiny lies elsewhere.”

The gazelle, spotting the lioness for what she really was, fled.  As she left, she made sure to get in a few parting shots.  “Okay.  I get it.  Fine.  You mystics are all alike.  You’re all like, ‘Sure, you’re special, but your destiny lies elsewhere.’  You know what?  My destiny does lie elsewhere.  And when I figure out where that is, oh man, you’re totally going to wish that I let you in on it.  You sylrehy-rydehk cyjyka!”

The lioness, wounded and perhaps upset at her own lack of good taste, limped back to her pillar to lick her wounds and wait for another unsuspecting antelope to pass by.