WHO: Fitcher, Marcoulf, Bartimaeus (+) & YOU WHAT: Ye Olde Catch'all WHEN: Nowish WHERE: Kirkwall, The Gallows, le Misc. NOTES: Starters in comments; if you want something/someone who isn't here, just hit me up and I'll scrape something together.
Laura ventures out to Fitcher's card game late in the evening, for the first time in quite a while. She has been busy--she has been in Nevarra, briefly, and fighting people in a tavern for money, among other things--and in the last week, she has been hiding.
What draws her out, she cannot quite explain; by the standards of good ideas, she doubts it ranks as tactically sound or likely to result in any appreciable improvement in her situation. And she does not know what Fitcher thinks about the news from Nevarra. Meeting her is a risk she does not actually have to take. But she does.
The result is a girl dressed in black, hooded tonight, moving with the selfsame uncertainty she'd brought the first time they'd met, back when she hadn't known how cards worked. She pauses where someone else might take a seat across from Fitcher. Given the circumstances, Laura suspects she should ensure she is welcome first.
Nothing good, Fitcher thinks, ever came out from under a heavy hood. She should know; she's worn one once or twice.
But as it just so happens, she can think of worse (and less advantageous) company and so when her attention rises from her papers and the task of packing the bowl of her pipe, one might almost find her pleased to find Laura standing there across from her as opposed to some other, less prepared for figure. Not that she expected the girl to surface tonight or here, really-- but maybe then again, she did. Maybe this instance or ones very like it are why Fitcher, a woman with no last name, has made herself so casually accessible, so easy to find. It does someone in her business no good if the people who wish to discuss matters of the head and heart cannot locate her at the simplest impulse.
"I'm pleased to see you out and about, my darling." She nods to bench across from her.
Laura does as she is told. It feels not unlike the first time they met, however much things have changed: she owns things now, has tasted oranges, went to a school and pretended to learn things. She does not lower her cowl--it is comforting, despite obstructing her peripheral vision, to shut some of the world away from her face right now--but does settle her hands atop each other, deceptively soft on the surface of the table.
"Will you teach me?" she asks, nodding at the cards. (Perhaps this is new, too, saying more than two words in a row.) "I want to learn a game."
She knows one, the game Fitcher first showed her, but that can only be played alone.
There is work to be done. Never mind the stack of papers, at best half sorted and hardly notated whatsoever; there are questions she could be asking. She could say, Let's forget the game for the evening, shall we? Isn't there something else you'd rather discuss? and she might even get away with in tonight.
Instead, she shuffles the papers into a single heap and sets them aside. The stalled game of pyramid is similarly undealt until the disparate cards have resolved back into a deck.
"All right. This is a game better played with more than two people, but I shall teach you the rules and then you can play it with whoever you like. When we play properly, don't show me your cards. But for the sake of demonstration--" She shuffles, then deals four cards to each of them face up.
"The object of the game is to get four of the same kind in your hand. We do this by drawing from the deck, then either keeping the new card in favor of another or passing it on. See here, I've drawn from the Song of Charity. In my hand, I have the corresponding Knight, so I will keep the song and discard this Angel which is now passed to you. You can either choose to keep it and discard one of your other cards into our collective discard pile. See here, you already have a matching Serpent and Angel of another denomination, so were it me I might pass that along. Understand?"
Laura takes the card handed to her and looks at it, then at the four cards laying on the table before her. It is pattern-matching, something easy--but it is reliant on chance, which is more complicated. Keep something in hopes it will pay off later, or hope for something better to come along. The strategy must be in remembering which cards have already been played and refusing to pick one up if you
"Must the names of the cards match? Or can it be...the kinds they are?" Suits, is what she means, the name for them slipping her mind for a moment. "All Songs. All Angels."
But even as she's asking, she's setting the card she's been handed aside. All of a suit would be a game too easily won, she suspects. From what she knows of Fitcher, Laura cannot imagine she cares for games that are too easy.
"The names must match. But it's a clever question - best to assume you never know the rules of a game without asking. Someone will eventually take advantage of that impulse. Now," Fitcher continues. "We go on and on like this until one of us gets four of a kind. Once you have a full hand, you indicate it like so."
Here, she sets her forefinger on her nose and pushes faintly upward to flaunt both her nostrils. From behind her hand, Fitcher smiles.
"Would you like to know what this game is called?"
Laura is listening, but her eyes stay on the pretty, well-worn designs on the cards--until Fitcher directs her attention up once more. She frowns at the woman's nose, this baffling choice to make it flare just a little up and open.
"Yes." Not only because she knows that she is expected to ask, but out of genuine curiosity. (And because she wants to move as far from Fitcher calling her past question clever as possible; that is something she wants to keep for herself, to think about when Fitcher cannot see her do so.)
Laura stares, disbelieving, not unlike the last time Fitcher told her something funny. This time, there's a moment of surprise--and then she smiles, just a little. And she nods.
Ah, now that is pleasant. Chuckling, Fitcher lowers her hand.
"Now, the most important rule of Pig is to know that if you're playing in a group, only one person needs to get four of a kind. If you see someone else put their finger on their nose, you must hurry to copy them. The last person who realizes what's happening is out. So," she says, gathering up their test hands so she might shuffle and deal again. "When you play this with your friends, the joke is to see who is so focused on their cards that they don't notice when the game changes."
"It's a much more complex game that way," she agrees. "But in the most basic sense, it can be done with just the two of us. For the sake of posterity, let us play one round. That way I can be certain you're familiar so that none of your companions think they can cheat you."
Not that they would of course, says the sidelong look and the crooked smile she gives the girl as she deals them both out a series of cards. She gathers her hand up and subtly rearranges it until the pattern of cards satisfies her.
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a.
What draws her out, she cannot quite explain; by the standards of good ideas, she doubts it ranks as tactically sound or likely to result in any appreciable improvement in her situation. And she does not know what Fitcher thinks about the news from Nevarra. Meeting her is a risk she does not actually have to take. But she does.
The result is a girl dressed in black, hooded tonight, moving with the selfsame uncertainty she'd brought the first time they'd met, back when she hadn't known how cards worked. She pauses where someone else might take a seat across from Fitcher. Given the circumstances, Laura suspects she should ensure she is welcome first.
no subject
But as it just so happens, she can think of worse (and less advantageous) company and so when her attention rises from her papers and the task of packing the bowl of her pipe, one might almost find her pleased to find Laura standing there across from her as opposed to some other, less prepared for figure. Not that she expected the girl to surface tonight or here, really-- but maybe then again, she did. Maybe this instance or ones very like it are why Fitcher, a woman with no last name, has made herself so casually accessible, so easy to find. It does someone in her business no good if the people who wish to discuss matters of the head and heart cannot locate her at the simplest impulse.
"I'm pleased to see you out and about, my darling." She nods to bench across from her.
Go on. Take a seat.
no subject
"Will you teach me?" she asks, nodding at the cards. (Perhaps this is new, too, saying more than two words in a row.) "I want to learn a game."
She knows one, the game Fitcher first showed her, but that can only be played alone.
no subject
Instead, she shuffles the papers into a single heap and sets them aside. The stalled game of pyramid is similarly undealt until the disparate cards have resolved back into a deck.
"All right. This is a game better played with more than two people, but I shall teach you the rules and then you can play it with whoever you like. When we play properly, don't show me your cards. But for the sake of demonstration--" She shuffles, then deals four cards to each of them face up.
"The object of the game is to get four of the same kind in your hand. We do this by drawing from the deck, then either keeping the new card in favor of another or passing it on. See here, I've drawn from the Song of Charity. In my hand, I have the corresponding Knight, so I will keep the song and discard this Angel which is now passed to you. You can either choose to keep it and discard one of your other cards into our collective discard pile. See here, you already have a matching Serpent and Angel of another denomination, so were it me I might pass that along. Understand?"
no subject
"Must the names of the cards match? Or can it be...the kinds they are?" Suits, is what she means, the name for them slipping her mind for a moment. "All Songs. All Angels."
But even as she's asking, she's setting the card she's been handed aside. All of a suit would be a game too easily won, she suspects. From what she knows of Fitcher, Laura cannot imagine she cares for games that are too easy.
no subject
Here, she sets her forefinger on her nose and pushes faintly upward to flaunt both her nostrils. From behind her hand, Fitcher smiles.
"Would you like to know what this game is called?"
no subject
"Yes." Not only because she knows that she is expected to ask, but out of genuine curiosity. (And because she wants to move as far from Fitcher calling her past question clever as possible; that is something she wants to keep for herself, to think about when Fitcher cannot see her do so.)
no subject
She snorts through her pressed up nose for effect.
no subject
no subject
"Now, the most important rule of Pig is to know that if you're playing in a group, only one person needs to get four of a kind. If you see someone else put their finger on their nose, you must hurry to copy them. The last person who realizes what's happening is out. So," she says, gathering up their test hands so she might shuffle and deal again. "When you play this with your friends, the joke is to see who is so focused on their cards that they don't notice when the game changes."
no subject
"That is why you need more than two people," she observes. Her expression turns serious again as Fitcher collects the cards back up.
no subject
Not that they would of course, says the sidelong look and the crooked smile she gives the girl as she deals them both out a series of cards. She gathers her hand up and subtly rearranges it until the pattern of cards satisfies her.
"You may draw first for this round."