[OPEN] deal me in

[unshut]

WHO: Fitcher + you and also you
WHAT: A weekly card game
WHEN: At some point every week, without fail
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Catch-all mingle space; threadjacking encouraged and time is an illusion. Threads are not required to have anything to do with cards or even include Fitcher; may be before/after the game etc. No rules, just right; get your banter and gossip on.

There are really only two rules to play at Fitcher's table: you mustn't be a bad sport, and come prepared with conversation.

In theory, an invitation and the lady in questions presence are also required but both those guidelines have been broken: anyone who shows up in the the dining hall on the right evening who displays any interest in the game being played at one of the tables earns themselves an invite; and at least once Fitcher has appeared, slung back a single glass of wine, then announced, "I've work elsewhere tonight, but I expect a full account of all that occurs," before disappearing into the night.

It's sometimes loud and it's sometimes quiet. There are nights where more drinking is done and others with only a single shared bottle. Sometimes there are enough players to warrant splitting the game and sometimes it's just Fitcher, lying out a spread for Solitary as she smokes from a pipe and occupies herself with a little evening bookkeeping.

It's pleasant. It's a good distraction. One should never think too hard about these things.

Comments

john | ota

[hornswoggle]

John isn't a reliable fixture at these games. Most of his own paperwork and free time is spent in taverns closer to the dock, where his men have freer access to him.

But there's some benefit in cultivating familiarity with those he theoretically lives with. John doesn't deny this. So he attends from time to time, occasionally to play a few hands or split a bottle of whatever's on the table while he observes the gameplay. Winning a little coin is always nice. (Remembering how to cheat at cards is always nice too.)

"Quiet tonight?" is what he asks this time as he enters the room.

"Quiet" is a mutable term. The Gallows houses too many people to ever be truly quiet, and too many people pass in and out of these games for the dining hall to be quiet either. Really, quiet might mean "has anyone had a fight yet?"

fitcher (ota)

[unshut]

a. break the bank
[The stakes are never really that high and Fitcher rarely spends more than her pocket money over the course of the evening, but occassionally the cards are simply against a person and one has no choice but to either bust out of the game for the night or--]

Oh, it's early yet. [--to get creative. Fitcher fetches one of the long pins from out of her hair and tosses it into the pot.]

b. smoke break
[In the aftermath of some rowdier evening, Fitcher can be found just outside sitting on one of the steps leading down into the Gallows courtyard. The ember of her pipe glows at intervals, smoke twisting ribbons about her in the dark. At the sound of approaching footsteps, she pauses. Tips her face and smiles through the haze:]

Nice night.

c. wildcard

b.

[elegiaque]

So far, ( lightly, sweeping her hands beneath her skirts to sit on them, not quite close enough to touch upon the step. the smoke is oddly soothing, for all that she doesn't; associated with some of the memories she doesn't entirely dislike from what feels like a lifetime previous. ) There's still time.

( what a little optimist she is. )

[unshut]

[A laugh, low and pleasant in the evening's fading heat.]

That hand you played in the last round was neatly done, and in spite of the gentlemen being so distracting. [It is sometimes a trial to keep the table from dissolving into bickering; she imagines women with children must sometimes feel this way.] I appreciate a level head in the room.

[She fixes Gwen with a crooked, conspiratorial sidelong look, setting the pipe back between her teeth.]

[elegiaque]

( gwenaëlle's laugh is musical, rueful— )

Oh, it's been a while since someone called me that.

( orlais, in point of fact. an unopened letter from the last person to praise her level head is tucked in her sewing basket, up in the central tower, an irritation under her skin, a psychological loose tooth. eventually, she will have to read it. but not tonight.

he did not feel an urgency to respond sooner. she will read it at her leisure, and for now breathes in smoke and twists her fingers absently in the folds of her skirts. light, for the summer. )

Rutyer took me gambling a while after he arrived here. I made some money at it.

[unshut]

"Why serah, we are as peaceable as lambs this evening." This as Fitcher turns up one of the unused cups on the table, gesturing for the bottle-- "Pass me-- ah there. Good lad." --and filling the cup accordingly.

It is quiet, due in part to the fact that they've strayed this night from Wicked Grace. Having to pause to think has, she finds, a tempering effect on most things.

"Are you familiar with Hen's Head, Mr Silver? I've just lost my partner and could use a fresh replacement."

[unshut]

[Ah. Rutyer.]

Pretty little goldfinch like you? I'm sure he did.

[elegiaque]

Rutyer, ( with an air of great confidence, only somewhat bolstered by more mediocre drink, ) had rather put his prick in a rift than this pretty little goldfinch.

( theirs is a—

well.

it's something. she's not going to dispute she's pretty, though. )

[unshut]

[She snorts, blowing smoke out through her nostrils in a great huff. It's not quite a cough or a laugh, but surely is some cousin to both.]

I find 'had rather's to mean very little to most men. In the practical sense. [But, says the easy tip of her face and she languid motion of her long hand with which Fitcher clears smoke from the air about them, fair enough.] Have you known Messere Rutyer very long?

[elegiaque]

Of him, ( judiciously. ) My lord once—

( he is dead. she injures no one by calling him so, and this is going to get confusing if mrs fitcher believes her to be speaking of her husband, especially since it isn't as if thranduil is anyone's lord, so: )

My father favoured him, for a time. ( a ruminative pause. ) Not sexually.

( to the best of her knowledge, but she doesn't think byerly his type. )

Now he occasionally makes a nuisance of himself. To me, specifically, I mean, he makes a fucking nuisance of himself all of the time, otherwise.

[unshut]

[And what was your father like?, she feels next to no reason to ask. The shifting way in which he is referenced seems telling enough.]

Does he? I must admit to being surprised. [No she isn't, says everything but Fitcher's mouth with its crooked smile.] He's gone to such great lengths to make himself useful to me.

[elegiaque]

I'm certain, ( ever so tranquilly, in a manner that would be more droll if she had had less to drink at cards, ) that he would say he's done the same for me.

( he did once literally throw himself between her and a wyvern. that did happen. )

[unshut]

Now there is no surprise. [Which is fond in its way, curling as smoke in the dark does.] I can think of no circumstance in which he might not find something to say.

[No, that's not quite true either.]

You must forgive me my curiosity.

[elegiaque]

( there is something feline about the wide, slow blink of gwenaëlle's eyes. )

Everybody here is terribly—

( her nose wrinkles. )

Some people here are terribly interesting.

( agreement, of a sort. )

[unshut]

Some people. [Breathless with the mock indignity of it all. Or just holding a lungful of smoke.] My word, Madame Baudin. Now there is a cutting thing to say about Kostos Averesch.

[elegiaque]

Do you know, ( and she leans forward, her chin in her hand, her eyes bright, ) it took me the longest time to realise that he's twins? I thought he just sometimes got fat.

( that is a worse thing to say about nikos. )

[unshut]

[Now isn't this pleasant? Two girls on a step in the dark, saying cruel little things where no one else will hear them. Fitcher laughs. It's a low, honeyed sound made faintly sharp from the burning medicinal tang of the smoke.]

I suppose it goes to show that we all have some basic nature to be serves. I imagine the pair of them led very different lives as boys, yet they both make that same expression with their face.

[elegiaque]

( the impression of it that gwenaëlle does, immediately, as if fitcher has pulled a string on a doll, is fucking uncanny. )

[unshut]

Kostos, take off that wig at once. You're fooling no one.

[And here, with a last exhale, the pipe is turned and tapped with a rap, rap of the well worn basin against the step. Ash and dying flecks of light scatter and melt away. She sets her chin in her hand.]

Tell me, is the rift shard what brought you to be here among this illustrious band of scowling ne'er-do-wells or is that merely a byproduct of hard work?

[elegiaque]

( the way she glances down at her hand is almost as if she'd forgotten it were there, which she can't have done. the hand, or what it bears. anchoring her to this new life— )

Hard work is the byproduct of poor fortune, ( is a little glib, but not untrue, except for the part where she calls her fortune poor. obviously, it isn't ideal that they are at war. obviously having a rage demon land on her was not her idea of a rollicking jaunt in the countryside.

but there's a sort of bruised pride about the admission, that slight cattish air as if she might at any moment feel moved to defend herself and the awkward truth that choices came later, and not first. she flexes her fingers— )

My father had to carry me to the carriage, ( an idle recollection, not idle at all. ) Because I couldn't walk, from my injuries, and because I wouldn't have fucking gone. I'd never even been out of Orlais before I went to Skyhold.

[unshut]

[A soft clicking sound of the tongue and a flicker then of something like-- it's hard to say exactly. Annoyance doesn't seem quite right. Resentment, maybe? Not for the girl, but for the circumstances. The world was a dangerous place before it started popping stitches and opening at the seams. How fortunate, to have a father to be carried by and a carriage to be delivered in; how wretched that the demand was made of them at all.

But her smile is there regardles, faintly softened.]

And now here you are in the Kirkwall, alive and well, wed to a Rifter and playing cards with all of us. Your father must be very proud.

[It seems like a genuine statement. Or at least a genuine question. Isn't he?]

[elegiaque]

Oh, he's dead.

( she could sound a little bit more broken up about it, but she doesn't; blithe, instead, for all that she studies the shadows in front of them and not fitcher's smile, how the smoke curls in the night air and maker, but she is difficult. )

Ghislain, you know, it's all heroes and martyrs and him.

( mightn't he have been proud of her, regardless?

it doesn't matter. )

b.

[bouchonne]

Dreadful night.

[ This has been a dreadful showing for By. Which is frustrating, given that it wasn't even a deliberate loss of any sort. At a few points, he even resorted to cheating, but the odds were just so overwhelmingly against him that he still lost. Which really is just embarrassing. ]

Decent night for you, I suppose.

[unshut]

[The woman beside Gwenaëlle makes a soft sound, and then her hand is there: touching her lightly on the shoulder. It's a brief thing - a squeeze and then gone.]

I'm sorry. Fathers are difficult creatures.

[Alive or dead, she thinks, and can't help some small habitual pang of homesickness. But such things are natural and when complicated.]

Do you miss Orlais?

[unshut]

[In response, her smile widens - cat that ate the songbird satisfied with her own good fortune - and then she pats the step beside her encouragingly. Come sit.]