In numerology, all words, names and numbers may be reduced to single digits which ...
But can you do it backwards?
Lightly, I touch a finger to the mole beneath her chin. "You
have so many," I tell her, and she does; they are all over her neck,
her arms, her legs, her back. "A spotted hyena, you."
Sitting very still beside me, she doesn't say anything. I take my hand off her neck.
"I'm going to count them, you know. All of them. Not now, another time. I'll need time-- and pens. I'll have to cross them out as I go, to make sure I don't tally the same one twice."
She frowns. "And then I'll be covered in ink."
"I
have a book on numerology. For when we find out how many you've got.
Then," I joke, "I'll know if you're my blessing or my curse."
"You're going to look it up?"
"Numbers
are the Universal language offered by the deity to humans as
confirmation of the truth," I quote.
She looks baffled and I laugh, looking away. "Forget it," I shrug. "I'm just jealous because I don't have any."
"Oh," she breathes, and we lapse into a long silence while I wonder
whose name she's hiding in the spatters of her skin.