Luck, Be A Gentleman

[Victor Lark]

OOC :

I’m not gonna lie to you, you gave me your roll and I rigged it for the sake of plot. For shame, I know. I’ll make it up to you somehow.

Victor’s eyes turned to the cellar door, and with it his memory crawled to the Underground. It had been the safe haven for most Alvads during the horror that was the Djed Storm, full of wanderers and doomsayers and the wails of the injured. In those frantic first days, he had held close the bloodied body of a lover, battered by fire and half-mad for the pain. Not even the bond forged by the god-seen vows could have consoled them from the terrible red darkness, the heavy stench of hopelessness. When Alvadas rose again, her people were desperate for their divinity’s frivolous illusions and colorful games. Their world righted itself quickly; Seven healed; but Victor would never forget the smell of reality, like ash and tears and charred flesh.

“Nah,” he replied, with a contemplative shrug. “Not really.”

And there it was. Defeated groans rose alongside triumphant fists from the din, and Victor tore his gaze from the glistening brine in Pash’nar’s. He turned to the table and saw snake eyes staring back at him. As feeble satisfaction replaced his old curiosities, the Ravokian’s lopsided smile melted momentarily into peculiar nothingness. Then he realized that his latest companion had just lost.

Victor gave a few apologetic pats to the shoulder beside him. “Sorry, friend. Guess you weren’t so lucky after all.” The dealer came around to him then—there were not many others who saw through the ruse of this horned angel and his luck—and dropped his winnings in the black velvet purse at his side. “I might like to see the boat of a gambler. Then again, I guess you could say all sailors gamble with the tides.

“As for me,” He couldn’t resist a little vanity, at least if it disguised hesitation. The dice exchanged hands, and new bets were placing. “I’m doing fine. I’ve invested in a tavern nearby.” Or as near as anyone can guess. “A night of drinking is the best way to survive the second Valterrian, isn’t it?”

He grinned. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

[Pash'nar]

Pash'nar wasn't listening to Victor talk about himself or his employment; he was watching the mizas travel across the table. His mizas. Well, petching near the end of them, too. That would make for a tight rest of the month. He was about to sigh and return his sea water gaze to the shorter man still hovering in his proximity when he noted that his so-called friend had bet against him. The dark-haired bastard had stolen a kiss and was going home with his money. Somehow, this stung a bit, and yet the moonlit sailor knew how things always went at the Wager. It was not entirely unexpected. But, petch, he had nothing to show for being broke. The hint of a frown creased his opalescent, aquiline features, but he finally tilted his ornamented head back down toward the steely-eyed man with a silver tongue, attempting to pass off his expression as something closer to a smirk. See his casinor, too? The chances of anything good coming from such an excursion were perhaps a little bit higher than the chances of him having any coins left at all if he stayed. Well, no. Probably not. "A tavern, eh? There's one I've seen 'ere where th'indecisive sky o'this petchin' city plays out on the ceilin'. Y'been there?" He offered his thoughts in conversational ignorance, having no idea that he may have been describing the other man's exact place of business, "It was a'right. Decent company made it worthwhile." He sniffed and let one pale hand stray downward, thumb hooking in one of the belts slung low enough over his hips to compliment the emphasis in his tone, "Here? Now?" He was coy enough despite the expression on his face, "Is there gonna be some bettin' on that, too? Might have better luck with that than dice ..." Ah, well, there was a grin, but it was slow and reserved on his sharp, hand-carved features with just a hint of something more mischievous. "Oh, you meant m'boat." Pash'nar feigned a taunting pout, "You've got some o'my mizas in your pocket, so why not? It ain't like I've got more to lose, though I s'pose that depends... 'Less y'know how to sail, too."

[Victor Lark]

A pang of jealousy flared in the back of Victor’s mind. The sky-ceiling could only be his home, and the decent company encountered beneath it could only be the man who shared the mark on his neck. He could not imagine what sort of worth had made Pash’nar’s while, orthe faces that might have been made where Victor could not see them. The thought was remarkably unnerving.

It was then that Victor decided he did not want to go to that particular tavern with this particular ethaefal, who was beginning to seem so much like the others. One had left him to bleed in the sand on the other side of the sea; another had torn into his mind and made him wonder whether it was his own. But the prejudice was rooted deep, and so it was easy to bury. He was thrilled to learn what this one could do, as long as it was far from home.

Ignorant to the horned angel’s discontent, his probing steel eyes eagerly followed that marble hand to the belt where it hung. What he heard reminded him to smile, and to forget to look up. The gesture was imperfect, meant to reflect the joke that swam in the shallows of silver-blue eyes, but it fell short enough to be mistaken for intimacy.

“There’s always something to lose, if you think you can win. What’s your price, Pash’nar?” He fingered the hard coins in his purse as he swept it from the table. When he finally looked away, it was in favor of the door. “Don’t get cheap on me just because you’re losing.”

The hall moved around their mumbled proposals, never stopping for unprofitable play. Even Belvare caught Victor’s attention long enough to glare at him from afar. The Ravokian knew where he was not invited, and where he would rather be. He stumbled swiftly toward the door and opened it to the cool the street beyond. Once there, he cried over so many busy heads, “Alas, I donnot know how to sail. Ten gold rims says you can’t teach me!”

And he flew into the night.

[Pash'nar]

The statuesque shard of moonlight didn't miss the flow of Victor's gaze, following the movement of silver eyes downward with a more genuine expression of amusement carving itself into his opalescent features. He laughed at the other man's taunt—not because he felt capable of winning at anything so much as he often simply refused to play the game—and rolled his eyes as he watched him slip away toward the door. What the petch would they do on his casinor? Was this a proposition? Sailing, really? What was he offering mizas for, honestly? Did it matter? No, not at all. Pash paused for a moment before weaving his way through the crowds, curiously interested in this turn of events instead of bothering to question the motivations of the other man. He'd surely stumbled himself into stranger situations and still seemed to be breathing last time he checked, so with irreverent disregard for even Victor's warning about losing, he ducked out the door of the Wager and into the still-crisp air of the mid-Spring night. And sighed. The streets of Alvadas weren't always in his favor, but he was so entangled with his own ship, it was hard to get lost as long as he was headed in that direction. It was nearly an extension of himself at times, and apparently Ionu had no qualms with that. At least it didn't matter which way he headed, hooking a pale thumb in the direction he felt suited his mood, cerulean gaze washing over his dark-haired companion with a wry smirk, "Keep your petchin' mizas—or mine—if you're jus' offerin' charity. It ain't like I'd keep 'em long if I had 'em anyway. I'd jus' find somethin' else to waste 'em on, I'm sure." The ethaefal began to weave his way through the shifting streets, outstretched hand straying to rub the back of his opalescent neck where familiar inked lines would be had Syna been shining instead of Leth. A tilt of an ornamented head in the steel-eyed man's direction and Pash'nar all but purred, "'Sides, it's no fun to pay for somethin' before you know what you're gettin' out of it, eh?" He chuckled again, tossing his head away. He wasn't quite sure of Victor's intentions, but he wasn't sure if he was in a mood to care. He supposed easy mizas were still easy mizas, no matter what he ended up entangled in to earn them.

[Victor Lark]

Victor was already walking into the balmy night alone, ready to let Pash’nar dismiss his half-hearted challenge for the promise of a real gamble, when the corner of his eye noticed noisy light pour out from the Wager again. Preparing a smile, he pivoted back with a sweeping Ravokian bow and watched as that high silhouette turned to a pearly white shadow in the moonlit dark.

Pash’nar pointed in the opposite direction and Victor obliged with a few long strides on short legs. The raps of hasty steps reverberated loudly from the walls of the narrow street. “Sure it is,” he replied, his voice tipped on a poor imitation of the sailor’s accent. “The not knowing’s the most fun!”

The night was a pleasant one, for once. It was warm and breezy and, for now, devoid of illusory inconveniences. At first, Victor found that Pash chose every turn that he would not have, irritating the intuition he had come to trust over the seasons. But eventually he found himself following the foreigner despite, too aware that their path moved at the whim of the city and not for any choice he could have made. If something greater than guesses drove the ethaefal, Victor could not tell.

“So your rub’s not the money,” observed the man who had never known a day of poverty. “Neither is mine. But I’ve got it, why not make it sing?” He produced a gold-rimmed coin that glinted as he turned it in its fingers. With a deft twist of his arm, he threw it before them and listened to it ring and rumble against the cobblestones. Before it stopped, it rolled onto something softer and quieter; soon enough, the pair would discover the street had become a mat of black fur beneath their feet. It rose and fell in steady, sleeping breaths, like the city rested atop a giant beast.

Victor craned his neck in search of the city gates, not once bending his gaze toward the ground. “You’re fooling yourself, pretending that you can’t be bought. There’s no shame in doing what you can to get what you want.” He gave a perfunctory pause before his tongue danced on so many practiced words, “What do you want, Pash’nar?”

[Pash'nar]

The ethaefal sailed his own current through the streets, though he hated them, the familiar sea-worthy lines of his casinor his pull through the illusions. It might as well have been a piece of him, or he of it, so old was their history together already. More constant than any mortal he'd watched fade away, the ship was more than just his home and transportation. Pash'nar ruffled then, at his companion's seemingly harmless question. A hint of defensiveness changed the slant of his narrow, well-carved shoulders. The rhythm of his steps faultered for a chime or two. He didn't like the not-knowing. The silence. The unknown. The mystery behind his fall from the heavens, his inability to return or if he even could. Victor's casual dismissal of the unknown caused the tall shard of moonlight to scowl a little, his heart stung at the thoughts the other man's words brought up to the surface of his century-old mind. It was never the money. No coin could buy his way home, no pile of mizas could loosen Leth's tongue or Syna's lips to tell him the truth. No coin could purchase his contentment, and the mizas the steel-eyed human so casually tossed around like toys could hardly purchase anything more than physical entertainment at best. The change in their footing caught him off-guard, and he cursed a few lines of sailor's words, watching what they walked on breathe and move. He hissed in surprise, more at Victor's words than anything else, staring at his strange companion sideways from under stray strands of seafoam and iridescence, even as he took another turn, undulating with the breathing illusion, "Petch," he smirked, "No one can really pay for what their heart wants, they jus' think they can. I know that, an' I can tell you do, too." Perfect, aquiline features drew together into a scowl, "I can buy distraction, but I ain't ever gonna be able to buy my way back t'where I came from." There was no light-heartedness in that answer. It was heavy and Pash'nar wasn't interested in being too serious. It hurt, souring his mood more than it should have. A flash of discomfort crossed his aquiline features, and the ethaefal forcefully dismissed decades of bitterness in an attempt to resurrect the more easily distracted, entertainment-seeking state of mind he had been in even before Victor slipped himself into his field of vision at the Wager's table. It took effort, though it was invisible to the man with too many mizas for his own good. "Oh, aye," if his revived coyness was at all lacking sincerity, it was hidden well enough, "I'm sure I can come'p with somethin' you can buy me for …" Mischief was there, distant but slowly dragged over the sea floor of his thoughts by the undertow of his own desire to be distracted from too much seriousness, drawn in by the tide in his eyes. He was unsure of what Victor really wanted, though he was more curious than fearful. Trouble didn't necessarily intimidate him, unable to tell what exactly what the other man was looking to do with the ethaefal. He had so few boundaries, anyway, when the opportunity presented itself, "How much you talkin', eh?"

[Victor Lark]

Only then did he notice a shred of disquiet in the tall man’s jaw, his stiffened posture, and only because he was looking for it. An absent smile itched at the corners of Victor’s mouth, but he managed to turn them down in something like an appreciative frown. If he was good at anything, it was hiding that which he did not want others to see in his own expression: what he felt, what little he felt, did not often merit such outward exhibition, and so his delight at this glimpse into Pash’nar was his own secret. He reached out to offer a consoling touch to the meager meat in his upper arm.

Alas, seconds later the frown had washed away. Either the ethaefal was not as moved as Victor had expected, or he had developed a similar talent. His gut told him to assume the former, despite how he craved to believe the latter. As the weight that had been dropped on Pash’nar melted into old jokes, Victor altered the course of his rising hand to instead satisfy an itch on the back of his neck. A belated thought told him to regret reneging on the gesture, and he hoped that it had been noticed, anyway.

“Nothing’s impossible,” he asserted. He wasn’t sure how much he believed his own words, but that wasn’t the point. He cringed inwardly at the sound of his mother’s voice mingled with his own. “Money helps more than you’d think, getting you places. The question is not How Much, but For What.”

Their path led them away from the hairy surface and turned again to something harder, a street full of high cobblestones and the deep puddles between them. Victor was forced to look down to mind his steps. In the dim moonlight he could not tell if the liquid seeping into his shoes was anything but water. ”I want to learn how to sail,” he repeated innocently, pitching a hopeful look at the stars. If he lowered his eyes, it was not to look at the man to whom the he alluded, and yet the hint of a wink lingered on at the edges of his words. “In my experience, the customer doesn’t set the price.”

[Pash'nar]

Pash'nar hid much under the surface, but not for the same reasons as Victor. What he drowned in his own sea of faces was just to bury the past under so much brine, to keep others at a distance he found comfortable and felt capable of dealing with. When he allowed others free swim in his reality, he'd come to the decision it only made things complicated. Difficult. Eventually painful. His conclusion had been to keep his depths to himself, and enjoy the general warmth of the shallows whenever possible. He simply assumed no one else understood, especially not those whose lives were a candle burning at both ends compared to his own. Whether he noticed Victor's intended gesture or not, the ethaefal kept it to himself, distancing himself behind his mischief and coyness because it was easy and at least remotely entertaining. The places he'd talked about could hardly be reached with gold-rimmed mizas, even if one had enough to stack like a tower to the heavens themselves, "I s'pose I already have what some folks'd pay handsomely 'nough for. I don't age an' it doesn't look like I'm gonna be returnin' to th'cycle without some help. That's worth some mizas to some. Not to me, not anymore, but to plenty'o'thers for sure." He smirked, but he couldn't bring himself to laugh. He didn't necessarily find his situation at all amusing all the time. Their path changed and the pale shard of moonlight found himself mired in a puddle for a moment with a hiss of uncomfortable surprise. It was cold. He couldn't tell if it was water or not, either, and the thought of potential alternatives made him uncomfortable. He longed more for the unchanging sanity of his casinor, and made a point to attempt to really remember it clearly in his mind, as if somehow that made a difference to Ionu's city of illusion. An ornamented head tipped to his dark-haired companion, "I ain't gonna teach y'to sail inna night, y'know. Dark really ain't the best time to learn, neither. You can see what it's 'bout, though, if that's what you want." He looked away again, watching the buildings and wondering when anything remotely familiar would enter his vision. He said nothing else right away, not knowing how to reply to the strange younger man, "I've been paid coin for many'a'weird request, but teachin' someone to sail in the dark ain't one of 'em. If y'ain't petchin' with me, we'll see 'bout a price. I'm sure I can come up with one for th'likes'o'you … 'Sides—" Pash'nar shrugged, taking the risk to remove his eyes from their path to look directly at Victor, "You even been onna boat b'fore or didja jus' now decide it must've been a better thing than gamblin' for th'evenin'?" His tone wasn't teasing, but curious. Their frustrating, unusual path had made him a little more aware of his personal safety.

[Victor Lark]

Victor’s deep-carved smile did not falter against the ethaefal’s buffeting incredulity. It only opened for the air of a sigh and he continued onward. He engaged the marked glance for a moment and then he broke away, replying to the continuing game with idle eagerness. “Who says it’s not gambling?” He answered, eyes wandering downward—Or petching?—to the difficult terrain. “It’s the ocean at night with a man I’ve known for an evening. Life’s a gamble.”

His hand brushed the velvet pouch that hung from his side, and its contents reminded the pair of their melody. “You could take all my money out there, and not even teach me to swim.”

The insinuated weakness was only partially a lie. Victor trusted a little too much his ability to save his own life, and so the idea of risking it had always been something of a joke to him. But he knew well enough that others did not share that confidence. He wondered whether Pash’nar would renege on his promise, if it involved taking a sinking rock into the bay.

Whatever the case, he would not let it distract his latest mentor for long. He rushed ahead and the Trickster, in his cruelty, led them around a corner and to the narrow face of a too-familiar tavern. Victor’s lips ached where they remained in an upward turn, inching carefully away from the sight of it; lucky for him, the Sanity Center had also risen up further down the mountainous street. Just opposite, there stood the yawning gate that was their escape. Before he knew it, the half-damp leather around Victor’s feet was pressing against slick and constant grass of the city’s environs. He was drawn to the forest of masts that sprouted up from the black water, just behind the glow of the patchwork suburb.

Gesturing clumsily toward it, he mentioned, “I came into that port half a year ago. I’ve known the water longer than I’ve known you, and I trust you more than it.” As his hand dropped, his voice lifted like mischief. “I’d call that a good bet.”

[Pash'nar]

Oh, gods, it was about petching time that something familiar came into view. Once Ionu’s city finally gave way to the Maw, to the outside, to the docks and the scent of the sea, Pash’nar nearly sighed with relief. The opalescent shard of moonlight seemed almost instantly more comfortable, more at ease, more wry. Sandaled feet met the docks with a more confident stride, and he waved a pale hand in the general direction of his casinor, which was, fortunately or not, moored as far from the larger ships that loomed like black, roped beasts above them. He finally laughed, salt-worn and coarse, paler than bone horns catching lamplight with the toss of his head, “Oh, aye, I petchin’ hope you consider that a good bet, ‘cuz I ain’t as convinced as you, even ‘bout myself.” He often felt the opposite, though he hardly let such a thought pass from his thin lips—Laviku had proven himself more reliable than mortals … no less dangerous, and yet, to the ethaefal, always a surer bet had he ever found himself with enough mizas to wager on such a thing. “We’ll see what kind’o game this turns out to be, eh? Then I’ll come’p with a fair ‘nough wager whether or not you’ll need to swim in th’end.” The celestial navigator all but purred, comfortably leading them over salt-worn wood in darkness, passing all manner of impressive ships moored comfortably for the night, the sound of the waves against hulls a melody Pash’nar found to feel almost like a second heartbeat. The docks creaked and moaned their protest as he wandered out of the forest of tall, silhouetted masts until the forest of sea vessels thinned considerably. Finally, nearly nestled alone was his old casinor. Had it been daylight, the Timeless surely would have shown her age compared to the more impressive ships in the harbor, but it certainly didn’t matter in the dark. Not that the ethaefal cared either way; he’d taken care of the thing and it meant more to him than he would ever be willing to explain. With only a sly bit of purposeful flourish, the moonlit thing hopped from the worn wood of the dock to the equally worn wood of his deck. He turned and swept an uncalloused hand across the dark bow of his meager ship, “Well, ‘ere we are then. You’re welcome aboard. Ain’t much anyways.” He chuckled teasingly, though he didn’t wait for Victor to set foot on his ship before turning to wander toward his mast and light the small lantern he’d hung there. Fitful orange light cast a pitiful glow across the old ship, highlighting the slow rise of his cabin, snagging on the glass of its skylights, and casting long shadows across the ethaefal’s acquiline features. His sails had been neatly folded away, leaving the whole deck looking bare, skeleton like, with all the lines still in their proper places, anticipating each of their particular roles once needed at sea. Leaning against the mast, Pash’nar crossed his arms over his mostly bare, opalescent chest, leather vambraces hardly reflecting the dull lamplight, “She’s th’Timeless,” he offered just in case the dark-haired human had even been wondering, “An’ there’s a story to that, but it’s long an’ I ain’t drunk ‘nough for the tellin’. Y’want me to raise anchor’ an’ unfurl th’sails or didja wanna tour first?”