One tail flick means sorrow, two luck. I wonder if the pivotal moment, the one when the voice from wherever gives you your choice, the choice you have to make right then that settles everything (three wedding, four death — or, an alternative, birth), I wonder if it comes when you're asleep, the better to get to your subconscious mind (five silver, six gold). I wonder if it has come, and my answer kicked out before I could consider, the one I never wanted to give, yet still it came out immediately, and I woke with all memory of it blanked out. Neither reason nor intuition gives me a hint that this has happened. Seven, a secret never to be told. Which makes me doubly suspicious.