Luck, Be A Gentleman

[Victor Lark]

54 Spring, 512

That was it: the clatter of painted ivory cubes, the bounce and spin and sway of fate. It made him feel his heart, to watch them roll.

And then four little black dots stared up at the small throng of faces that watched them. The next instant saw half of them fall and half of them rise, thrown in the realization of a loss or a win. Muttered groans and excited murmurs were exchanged on the sweaty clink of metal-rimmed coins between so many hands. And when the payments were done, the House’s representative satisfied, the dice dropped into palms of the next man.

Victor wore a winner’s smile, even though the small velvet pouch by his feet had been made lighter by the last round. There was strategy in the act: the belief in confidence, in luck, was just as good as the real thing. With people on his side, certain of his victory, he could play long enough to get to the interesting bets—or at least gain some sympathy if he ever lost too much. The rules were rules enough, but with enough people to argue them, they could always become something less.

He tossed the dice up and, has they fluttered and clashed in the air, looked around him. A space had been cleared on the far wall from the door for the game. The tables that had been pushed away were soon filled again by later customers, leaving sporadic spectators back to back into their soft, scarred chairs. Cards cracked and money rang among the murmuring din of a full house, and the brown-haired man at the bar wore his usual frown of a smirk, hiding behind a glass of something good. Victor felt his fingers wrap around the dice, as they returned to him.

He kissed them, aimed his fist at Thorren Belvaire, and tossed.

They knocked against the far wall and fell again with a single inelegant jump. Eight dots flashed up at him. It was a good roll, and threw a few heads into appreciative nods. The woman in charge wielded her stick against the dice and rolled them back to Victor, who scooped them up and shook them readily. Lips flat, he glanced at Thorren again, but he had disappeared from the bar and was occupying himself elsewhere. With a trained frown, the Ravokian looked in his general vicinity for someone else to give him his luck.

There he found an impossibly tall man with curling horns and silver-green hair; somehow it comforted him, to see a face that was so similar to that of a long lost friend’s, and instantly he chose it above the rest. Victor opened his fist to the ethaefal and teased the dice a little too close to his chin. “A breath for my luck?” He asked, and poured a humble request on his eyes.

[Pash'nar]

Whether it was the mischievous tug of Ionu's hold on the city or the kind of bravado born of surviving Laviku's wrath, Pash'nar had been spending (or wasting, really) more time on games of chance than was his usual want. Usually, he'd be much less sober and much less sociable, but usually, he just didn't feel so petching lucky. While his collection of mizas had yet to feel significantly heavier as the night wore thin, at least they weren't any lighter, either. If the ethaefal had learned anything over the past several decades, it was that he was absolutely abysmal at cards—not that they ever really felt like a true game of chance anyway. No, cards still had some calculation behind them, and if Pash was going to be calculating, it had better be nautical miles and astrological motions. Cards were too much of an easy loss if you weren't quite lucid enough to pay attention. Now, dice on the other hand, dice were real chance … as long as they weren't loaded. You could flick your wrist and waste your wishes all you wanted on those cubes, but it never mattered. The numbers facing you in the end weren't of any calculation or skill. Just luck, if you believed in that, really. The setting of the sun may have muted some of the warm blur from an afternoon spent enjoying a bit of whatever sounded interesting in terms of local drink, but as he stood like some pale shard of misplaced moonlight amongst the shorter, earthier gathering at the table, he was still feeling less rough around the edges, softened by the sort of sway he seemed to have over the various games he plied his newfound luck at. Never a dull moment when he found himself the only ethaefal in the— there were dice at his chin. Like the rush of the tide, his cerulean gaze washed over the marked game pieces outstretched in his direction, flowing over an olive palm and down past a well-tailored sleeve to come ashore upon the dark-haired human holding them just so in his personal space. He blinked, feeling a sudden heat across the opalescent flesh of the back of his neck as the entire table piqued with interest. It was not the first time someone had mistaken him for being a more blessed example of his kind. "Oh, aye, if you're sure that's what you want," came the bemused response to Victor's teased humility, and something mischievous spread across Pash's aquiline features, broadening into a wider, crooked grin, finely hewn nostrils flaring as he dramatically inhaled. The navigator exhaled without so much as a flourish upon the uplifted dice, sea-water eyes twinkling with only a hint of darkness in their depths. A pale eyebrow arched for emphasis as he added a quiet taunt with the last of his breath, "Fortune can be such a fair-weather friend."

[Victor Lark]

“The best kind,” Victor refuted, closing his fingers around the blessed dice. “You’re betting with me, aren’t you?”

It did not matter, he knew, but it was poor form to ask the kiss of luck from the opposition. It seemed he had given more power than he anticipated to the horned man; others trusted the assumption, and a few more coins rattled in the dealer’s bowl. Biting his lips like anxiety, Victor tossed.

The four settled first, a promising half. When the second finally settled into a five, a mutual exhale whispered beneath the room’s rolling chatter. The roll had no meaning, except perhaps to build the suspense. A cousin to the Eight he had rolled previously would give him, and the people who bet on him, their share of the winner’s pot; a Seven or Eleven would do the same. Two, Three, and Twelve would leave him with a loss, and he would bring half the house down with him. But Nine was nothing, so the dice returned to him again, warm and ready.

The clatter of collected coins sounded again. Only the meek dared not raise, and this late in the night, only the bold remained. As a gold-rimmed piece dropped into the bowl from between Victor’s fingers, the ethaefal pulled at the corner of his eye. He turned to him, shaking the dice in his hand. “I haven’t seen you around here, friend,” he mentioned. This place was hardly the first to attract a newcomer, but perfectly false assumptions often teach the truth. The steel in his eyes tipped against those milk white horns, tactless and invasive. “How long since the moon kicked you out of the sky?”

He rolled again.

[Pash'nar]

I rolled some dice! : Yep, I sure did. Here they are: "I come in with the tide often enough." Pash'nar replied with a buoy-like bob of his head, though his eyes remained fixed on the table. Mizas moved from loosened fingers, the evening having already washed away those with tight or shallow pockets like the surge of an undertow. He felt the swell of interest, hints of a smirk tugging at the opalescent corners of his thin lips. He watched the dark-haired man toss, ignoring for a moment his smooth-tongued yet still pointed question. Instead of watching the fate of fortunes unfold on the tableop, the ethaefal faced the storm head-on, watching expectations bud—and then blossom. The first dice fell, all six marks gleaming upwards, eliciting a few hisses of doubt a chime before the second rolled into place, just one less mark than the first. Voices hummed and faces brightened as rimmed gemstones shifted in various happy (and a few unhappy) directions, Pash's included, though his expression remained unchanged. A few more glances lingered in his direction, though he was no god to hear their offerings of thanks land silently at his feet. He waited, then finally looked downward, enough amusing wind in his sails to cover any thoughts ruffled by the asking in itself. The navigator thumbed his aquiline nose with uncalloused fingertips, mind stretching briefly over the vast waters of time that had passed under the hull of his current existence, "It's been more'n a handful of seasons over a century, I'd say. Possibly longer—" Cerulean eyes sparkled like sea glass, though they were clear and just as hard, "—was I s'posed t'be keeping' track?"

[Victor Lark]

The air moved like molasses around the dice, turned a moment into a minute as they danced like delay. Victor could only watch them fall with certain impatience on his brow, hoping most for a win but more for a loss than another worthless sum. And when they fell in his favor, he was almost disappointed by the idle satisfaction that failed to fill his heart. Still he gave them a wide smile, pulled a hand into a triumphant fist. “Ha!”

Words were exchanged over the pervading shuffle and clink of mizas, but he did not hear them. The black velvet pouch at his side found itself a little heavier, and Victor turned to his lucky friend. If he heard the answer to his long forgotten question, he ignored it; when it had not sparked a flame of annoyance or disproval, it ceased to interest him. Instead he fell against him, as if consumed by the ecstasy of victory. He embraced distant shoulders with a pair of outstretched arms and, even as the mark of a previous vow glistened boldly on the side of his neck, pulled his lips up to this stranger’s.

Time had already been stolen from him by the will of the dice. Victor could not tell what length of time he had shared with that man, but no measure was enough to grant him the thrill he had hoped to achieve.

“Thanks,” he mentioned finally on a hot, close breath, exchanged for the one that had blessed his dice. As his heels fell to the ground again, he caressed the ethaefal’s jawline with a withdrawing hand. The dealer, apparently accustomed to her guest’s various antics, waited with waning tolerance beside them. When Victor noticed her, his lips smoothed into a honeyed smirk, easy for experience. The dice tipped into Pash’s hand. “It’s your turn.”

[Pash'nar]

Sea salt. Old booze. A bit of teeth with that flesh—not in objection or even necessarily surprise—just a little returned moonlit mischief with an almost divinely soft inhale. The ridiculously tall creature leaned against the game table, pale, opalescent fingers curling over the dark velvet lip with the sudden gesture. Petching gamblers. Everything was a game. The dark-haired stranger pulled away with words the ethaefal didn't hear above the sound of eyes all washing like the tide in his direction. He exhaled through his too-perfect teeth, thin lips still warm where someone else's had been, sliding coins around before holding his palm upward in expectation. Bone cubes weighed in his other hand and he languidly stretched back to his full, statuesque height. His expression neither brightened or darkened. Even keeled, serious, he cupped his hands together and prepared to roll in silence. Another breath and a handful of heartbeats passed before bleached bone horns tilted in the shorter man's direction, the unlikely sailor's words deadpan, as if he understood that this was hardly about mizas for either of them. "Y'ain't gonna be that lucky tonight." It could have been a taunt, but the tone was dragged over sea shells and sand. Pash'nar was hardly insulted, though also suspect by the table manager's expression that he was not the first to be caught up in such an experience. He preferred to make his own choices on certain matters. At least when sober. He didn't ask for any breathy blessing, releasing the dice into the air without flair, watching them slip from the heels of his palms like familiar souls slipping through a familiar seeming. He blinked.

[Victor Lark]

OOCI rolled a 1 and 4 in chat but forgot to copy+paste. Pash stands witness. :P

An old, familiar warmth buzzed around Victor’s eyes and in his shivering heart. He knew well enough the effect of a night’s worth of ale, but even if he were sober, he was not a man of regrets. He considered the ethaefal’s refusal as a tide examines the rolling sand at its toe. It was a detail in the scheme, a clue in the mystery. He could only hope other surprises might earn a better rise from this creature, whose race had proven its perplexing stoicism on more than one occasion. If he could glean some spark of irritation from this one, Victor thought, perhaps he might glimpse the long lost face of another like him, a man who had been so good at anger...

When the dealer came around to collect bets, Victor feigned to drop his coins in one bowl before depositing them into the other. He would bet against this stranger who had all but negated his advances, but he would not let him know as much. Grinning eagerly, he returned to the horned man’s side like an ally.

The dice slid after they landed, refusing to tip and roll to any worthwhile number: One and Four made Five, turning the otherwise meaningless quantity into luck for any purse that had bet on the green-haired sailor. Victor clapped loudly, though failed to assemble any real appreciation in the false gesture. The human’s wandering mind noted that his own point had been Eight. Paired with this man’s Five, together they summed to the luckiest number of them all. With a perfunctory flourish, the dice were returned to the moon-kissed fingers that had tossed them.

But before he could roll again, Victor pushed his low shoulder against the ethaefal’s upper arm, insisting their proximity. “You must be Ovek himself, to have lived for so long and still be amused by the games of the little folk.” He offered his hand, despite the circle of people who waited on them. “Name’s Victor. It’s not a coincidence.”

[Pash'nar]

The moonlit navigator hummed at his result, unaware of the other man's decision to place his coins elsewhere. Even if he had been, it would have mattered very little to the sailor. They weren't his mizas, and by the looks of things, there were more than enough where those came from to do with as he pleased. At least the dice were playing in his favor. Encouraged enough by his roll, he turned the bone cubes over and over in his pale fingers, only to almost drop them as the dark-haired man leaned against him. Pash'nar smirked, pulling his gaze from staring past the table to look down at the pair of steel eyes that waited for him with a joke lingering on his apparently troublesome lips. He curled his hand around the dice, leaning knuckles against the table edge to turn and shake the rather forward man's hand. The people could grumble and wait. Given his lengthier perspective on time, a few extra chimes could only build anticipation, and the depths of their concerns hardly rose to the surface of the ethaefal's thoughts regardless, "Pash'nar." He returned simply with a firm, warm, uncalloused squeeze of his opalescent hand. Figuring the constellation of his namesake was obscure enough to go unnoticed, he chose not to elaborate, trailing his introduction into a chuckle with a dismissive shrug of his statuesquely carved shoulders, "Ovek ain't gotta make a livin', so he's free to get bored. Those of us fallen from grace still need coins in our pockets t'get by like the rest'a'you mortals, an' it ain't like mizas have been droppin' from clouds lately." Really, the petching djed storm had turned gambling into an occasionally more profitable enterprise than sailing. "Mayhaps it's myself who'll have to hope it ain't a coincidence tonight, eh?" A flash of too-perfect teeth in a wry grin and a toss of milky horns sent the ethaefal rolling his dice again, tide pool gaze washing away from Victor only after the carved bone left his fingers.

[Victor Lark]

Dice Roll :

“Don’t they?” Victor did not pause when the dice flew, but still he turned to watch them fall. He ignored the ethaefal’s wary afterthought, not wanting to let his harmless trick be discovered by the man he had bet against. “You haven’t been in Alvadas long, my friend. I recall a day when the skies rained money, every currency known to this world and others. It was painful to go outside, but lots of men did, to collect the gold.”

He shrugged. “It had all turned to dust by day’s end, but you should have seen the happiness on their faces before it did.” When Victor smiled, it was an attempt to mimic the ecstasy of the Alvads that day; marred by the ale in his blood and the subtlety of a bad actor, his botched version managed only to slap a loose smile beneath remembering eyes. The reflection looked almost like contentment.

It was not until the dice had been scooped to the table’s head that he noticed the lack of any significant reaction to the roll. He could only assume that it was another dead-end round, that Pash’nar’s beloved suspense was prolonged again. Without a second thought, Victor rambled on. “You could call it unfortunate... unless you had a debt to pay, and feet quick enough to deliver it before dusk.”

Another man chuckled knowingly. Victor had not realized he had made a joke, but he laughed at it all the same. “On with it,” someone else said.

Victor rolled his eyes. When they inevitably landed on Pash’nar, they lingered there for a moment in contemplation. He may not have been in his rightest mind, but he knew the rules of pleasantry. A story for a story, and perhaps he would be one step closer to breaking this mask of stoicism. “Are you the kind of gambler who pays his debts with Ionu’s false coin, or do you have a real job?”

[Pash'nar]

After all the strangeness he'd experienced in Alvadas, the statuesque shard of moonlight found none of the other man's words surprising or strange. Mizas falling from the sky … well, petch, he was sad he missed that, even if they only lasted a short while. Was this during the djed storm? After? He'd been here long enough, though restlessness was starting to crawl underneath his ever-shifting skin. He held this Victor's steel gaze while he spoke, amused, willingly ignoring the landing of his dice and any reactions the results may have caused. It wasn't really like he gambled for the coin anyway. The people were always much more interesting. Nothing was exchanged, however; nothing lost or gained. The other bodies gathered around the table murmured, but Pash was too busy to be particularly concerned. He chuckled at the smaller man's question, cerulean gaze finally washing away as he held an opalescent palm open for the return of two little cubes, "I s'pose I work, though it depends on who you ask as t'whether or not it counts as working' most days." The pale sailor answered ambiguously, mischief in the sea glass of his eyes. It was always difficult for him to consider sailing work, even if there was profit in it on occasion. Whether on his own casinor or as a crew member on another ship, the sea was a comfortable place for him, "I've got a boat. I've ferried cargo across the Suvan—breathing' or not. An' I'll hire myself out as a navigator when nothin' else is payin' …" Fingers curled around the dice again and he rolled celestially-carved shoulders with a disappointed sound escaping through too-perfect teeth. Winning or losing was much more exciting than being stuck in the no man's land of meaninglessness. He was already bored, despite the suspense of everyone watching. His next toss was with half a heart, though it was less visible than he might have felt, adding to his previous words with the full weight of his current disappointment, transparent under the metallic gaze of his mysteriously friendly acquaintance, "… though, right now, not even that's been matterin' much since the petchin' storm. Ain't been an issue for yourself, by the looks'o'things, eh?" He arched a seafoam brow with idle curiosity, despite keeping his eyes on the dice this time.