Roll the Dice, Turn the Wheel, Flip the Cards [Open]

[Kadarus]

Season of Fall, Day 1
City Streets and Marketplace
Open to any and all interested

The wooden crate had been used, at one time or another, to carry and store apples, until one day, it's use expended, it was tossed into one of the many alleys of Syliras. As absurd as the thought was to apply emotions to a box of cheap oak, it had, perhaps one time, been proud of itself, full, with a lush bounty of fat, juicy apples inside. Now, it merely looked depressed, and at the end of its rope; splotches of a dark mystery liquid had stained some of the wood inside of its hollow body, and the nails of one corner had rusted and broken, causing it to sag. Kadarus mused that it looked like a shoulder, slumped in defeat. Leaned against the side of a small dress shop, his arms crossed over his broad chest, the hunter briefly chastised himself for his foolish, silly thoughts. But it was, at times, difficult to remain grim when Fin was torturing herself over something stupid.

The crate had its rather disgusting, empty mouth pointed towards the street, laying on its side, and the pycon was at that edge, muttering and cursing breathlessly. Through random boon of a god - surely, not the one she had been calling a rotten bastard for the past ten minutes - had granted her just enough strength to work her fingers under the box, lift it up nearly to her head, then realize she could do no more. A little clay vein stood out on the pink of her smooth brow. Despite the fact that they were muscleless, her arms were shaking fiercely; surely, in a few more minutes, they'd pop off, smashing her hands under the weight of the crate.

Smirking, Kadarus stretched out one of his legs, set the toe of his boot against the bottom of the old apple box, and flipped it up onto its top with a simple push. Finn immediately lost her balance, staggering backwards drunkenly, flailing her arms until finally she fell on her rear hard enough to flatten out the rump and dress she'd sculpted for herself. "Ouch! You're a real arsehole, Lagh'ratham! I was counting on this shapely, feminine bottom of mine to help draw in the crowds, now I've gotta remold it!" The hunter made a snorting noise as he choked back a mocking laugh, dropping his head for a moment, before glancing to the left and the right, surveying the day's market crowd. It was an unsurprisingly busy afternoon; he could see some azure skinned faces of the Akalak, one or two sternbrowed Isurs, but the crowds were mainly composed of humans.

"This is a stupid idea, just like all your other little plots. You'd get a higher turnout in a town like Sunberth. Those people love to gamble. You may as well wait until we move on..." Kadarus and Finn had travelled into Syliras days ago for supplies, primarily for himself; the pycon's only realy need could be dug up from a deep hole or scooped out of the bottom of a creek bed. But Finn liked beiong around people, and she was enjoying herself in the city, wheras the hunter's only pleasure here was getting drunk. He'd already been planning on moving onto Sunberth, truth be told; he needed money, and his only trade was killing, which was in rather higher demand in the cutthroat town. On the surface, at least.

"Don't be dumb, mutt. There's too many cheaters and card players there; I'll never get a haul from that place. I mean, there's a sucker born every minute here in Syliras! We're gonna make some supper money out of this! The odds, after all, are too high for me to lose."

"The odds are one to four, you twit," he shot at her, rolling his gold eyes in exasperation. Finn had swiped the four cards from some poor drunk's deck at a tavern she'd ran into the night before, managing with some degree of luck to have snatched the right ones. Climbing on the crate, the pycon grumbled under her breath as she pushed at the sides of her weight, forcing clay north and south, which she used to plump up her cleavage and rear. Kadarus merely groaned at the show, and lowered himself to the ground, folding his legs over each other. The cards were nearly as tall as she was, and wider, and she had to carry them with both hands as she trotted across the bottom of the crate, laying them out in neat rows. The game was a common one, seen and played often enough; Kill the Queen, otherwise known as Witchhunt. It was seen on both streetcorners, like now, and in the bar, where it had been adopted into one of the world's most simple drinking games. The object of the game was simple; try to pick the queen out of the four, facedown cards, after they've been shuffled by the dealer. Find her, and win the prize; whatever was being offered. Today, the wager was a twenty copper mizas, stacked ten a column, arranged perfectly beside each other. Kadarus glared at the money suspiciously.

"Hmm. Have fun losing your money. Even copper counts when we're low on supplies," he sighed, pulling his hat down over his face in an attempt to seperate himself from the nonsense. Walking towards the front of the crate, Finn took up position in the middle, thrust her little clay chest forward, and began to shot. The hunter immediately cringed, wondering how such a tiny thing could be so gods damned loud.

"YOO-HOO!!!! LADIES AND GERMS, KINGS AND QUEENS, SUCKERS AND PLAYERS ALIKE!!! C'mon, c'mon, c'mon over! Lose your money or make a fortune, don't matter to me! Hey! Hey you, Elefun! You got a wallet as fat as your gut?! Get over here, play some Kill the Queen! I know one of you people has gotta be bored with this market, take a break and play a game!"

[Fia Eaven]

Syliras was rich with suckers. Wide-eyed idiots who managed to defy natural selection through a combination of dumb luck and Lhex's sense of humor. Perhaps Lhex found them entertaining to watch. Most were enamored with the idea of their competence and could harrumph and pontificate with a roundness that dumbfounded wiser men.

Finn's little clay heart would need to be stretched to contain the glee this new self-important glaze inspired. A man fresh from some menial trade glanced both ways before huffing towards her. A little extra girth made his trot entertaining. He wiped his floured hands on his apron before looking at the assembled scene. Very little seemed to enter his brain save the shine from the stack of coppers. The money in his pocket wasn't his, what did he care if it was lost? He'd tell the master some sob story, the man was a sap for those.

"How's it go, eh?"

He jiggled his hand over the arrangement of cards as he began to pull a tied bag of coppers from his pocket.

In the midst of Finn's undoubtedly persuasive explanation, came a woman's voice.
"That's not your money to lose."

She was slipping from the throng, towards the man's elbow. A half eaten roll in her hand showed she was a likely witness to the transaction between the master baker and his apprentice.

"Eh wha?" he rounded on the girl. It made her falter, but she stood her ground.
"I just saw him give that pouch to you. For wheat."

Realizing she had stepped too far in, the redhead began to check her surroundings: The indignant apprentice, the clay huckster and a pair of feral eyes. Even sitting, the yellow-eyed man seemed to be crouching, waiting for something to twitch in a way that displeased him. Her hand flexed and closed nervously.

"No harm yet," she tried. When jangled, Fia resorted to her grandfather's platitudes whether they fit or not.
"Just be honest about things, you can't cheat an honest man." It only made marginal sense and she knew it.

The apprentice began undoing the cords to the pouch and appraised Fia head to toe. A recent peasant import he gauged by her rustic dress and calloused hands.

"Shouldn't you be churning butter somewhere and suckling brats?" he grinned, "Git."

The fact she blushed was an easy sign that she was not something tempered by the rush and rudeness of city existence.

[Malia]

Malia didn't really need anything from the market, she just liked to go outside on the first day of the new season and listen to what people had to say about the change. Not that there was much of a change anyway, at least nor in weather neither in the crowd's mentality. She knew that the situation would be different if she walked a few miles away from the city – had seen the circle of seeding, dunging, harvesting, storing and seeding again. However, last night she had accidentally witnessed the color change at Syliras' Watchtower, so that was the first visible change in the city.

While she was walking some unusual noise caught her eye. A voice … a high-pitched voice and a lower one. The high-pitched obviously was a chatterbox, because it didn't get out of her head, rather kept talking. She turned her head, a medium sized figure in a violet and yellow flower dress, mistaken for a human by most, but her black hair and that old, knowing glance in her black eyes let assume something else. Although she had concealed the black eye bags and hardly ever showed the pitch-black tongue Malia couldn't hide what she really was: Nuit.

And, to be honest, she didn't really want to.

She spotted a man leaning casually against a house wall and walked closer. Recognized that he had to be talking to the small creature with the crate and cards in it. Small creature with clay-colored skin … Suddenly Malia's eyes widened. That she was able to see such a creature in a city like Syliras … The next thing she recognized was the strange fierceness of the man, the fact that he wasn't human, but only disguising himself. And her interest in the duo was growing with every second.

Still she walked past them to turn around after a few steps and come back to repeat her previous action – but stopped. The small girl started calling out, and her voice painfully vibrated in Malia's ears. What the hell?! She couldn't continue observing them, was drawn to speak and exchange experiences with them.

However, two humans approached the pair before she could do so. A young man and a girl. Malia placed herself at the next corner and observed for a while. Apparently she wasn’t content with his decision to participate. He flashed a mean grin into her direction, and she blushed. Well, apparently they weren’t really have fun, but the conversation was getting more and more forced. Could it be even called conversation? The girl was uneasy, that much was clearly visible.

So she eventually crossed the street to interrupt whatever the man was doing. “I would like to try this game”, she announced, speaking with her usual emotionless voice, ignoring the humans and glancing up at the Kelvic man. She, the physically lifeless, was just meeting someone with more energy than she would ever possess. Then her attention turned to the girl, a grey Pycon she had to kneel down to speak with. She had heard that they had been created as an experiment just like her own people. “Would you please explain it to me?”