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Chapter Thirty-Six: Fortune Cookies
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There was a rule in the Kinsella's house against bringing up subjects at dinner that were not understandable to everyone in the house; this rule was bent a bit to allow Taberah to explain his discovery. Dinner was over before they realized it; Taberah unwrapped his cookie, put it in his mouth before anyone could stop him, started chewing, stopped, and then spat out a piece of paper. He said, "What is this?"
Fiona and Clancy were both laughing too hard to explain; Aed said, "It's a fortune. You're supposed to take it out of the cookie before you eat the cookie. Look at it."
Taberah wiped off the piece of paper and read, "Exciting prospects come. Don't miss the opportunity."
He looked at the paper in disgust and said, "Why do you have this in the house?"
Nathella said, "It's a prediction or a piece of advice. It's just for fun."
Taberah looked at Aed and said, "Aed, you told me not to do astrology because divination is sin. This is divination. It is sin."
Aed said, "Taberah, it's not serious. Or at least we don't do them seriously; nobody believes that a fortune cookie will tell the future."
Taberah said, "If you cast a spell just for fun, is it less of a sin?"
Aed said, "I would never cast a spell."
Taberah said, "But you got fortune cookies."
Nathella said, "We didn't ask for them. They come with Chinese food."
Fiona said, "We are studying China in school now, and the Chinese do not eat fortune cookies, but fortune telling is very big in Chinese culture. People will not enter a building if a Feng Shui practitioner was not consulted about where to lay its foundations."
Clancy was looking at his fortune. The expression on his face was slowly turning to disgust. "Taberah is right. Mom, you've talked about how we let sin into our lives without challenging it; this is sin."
Fiona said, "The fortune in a Chinese cookie certainly comes out of fortune telling -- and when fortune telling is done, it varies from serious to lighthearted -- like we take fortune cookies."
Nathella said, "If you would rather, we can throw the fortune cookies away when we get Chinese, or ask them not to provide fortune cookies."
Aed didn't say anything. He had expected Taberah to know things about whatever culture he was from that Aed didn't -- but not to be able to see things in American culture that Aed couldn't. He had shifted, in his mind, from wondering why Taberah objected to fortune cookies, to wondering why he hadn't objected to fortune cookies.
What else would Taberah show him?
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Firestorm 2034 >
Chapter Thirty-Six: Fortune Cookies
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