Lindsay may not have known anything about palm reading, and had never had her palm read, but she could imagine that palm readings and arithmancy readings bore some similarities that she could understand. Both used information that, for better or for worse, existed in the world and couldn't be changed. You couldn't change the lines on your palm and you couldn't change your date of birth. What you could change, however, was the person doing the reading. You can only report what you see, and people see differently. The girl who'd done his palm reading was clearly looking for bad news, and so she'd found it. It was true that Lindsay tended to find bad news when reading her own numbers, but when doing readings for others they were often sweet, positive little things. Lindsay had already decided, on a subconscious level, that she was going to do a nice reading for Nigel. 

“Everybody has significant numbers. You just need to know where to find them, and which ones are important, and then how to, um, how to put them all together, sort of,” she tried explaining. The concept wasn't complicated, but the execution was tricky, particularly for those who weren't particularly organized or good with numbers. “Numbers have different meanings, and so do different groups of numbers, so when I look at them together I can tell you what that probably means. What I can find out just depends on what's there to start off with.” Numbers were particular like that. With the right sort of formula you could find out more specific things, but even those were open to interpretation. Lindsay was planning a nice, simple reading of his basic significant numbers – third year stuff, really, but good enough for their purposes. 

“Relax, love,” she urged with a small smile when he began asking what sort of information she needed, and about who. She didn't need the serial number on his great uncle's left work boot to be able to give him a basic reading. “I told you I don't need anything private. Just – um, how about... why don't you just write down your full name and your birthday, and the same for anyone in your family that lives with you, and, um, if you want to, close friends. And any important dates would be good. Don't think too hard about it. Just if it seems important. And then after that, I can just ask you if I need something, alright?” She thought that seemed pretty straight forward – she wasn't asking for anything he couldn't have scribbled on a scrap of parchment five seconds before she sat down to do it. 

“I could never do my whole big family. There's just too many people for that. Even just doing all of my cousins would take a really long time,” she explained, thinking about how long it would take if she were to include every living relative she had in a reading. She'd still be plugging in numbers five years down the line, and by then she'd have to adjust for births and deaths that happened in the meantime. She might never finish. “Do you have a very big family? I don't remember if you told me before.” 


we don't realize our faith in the prize unless its been somehow elusive
how swiftly we choose it - the sacred simplicity of you at my side