[ionu's wager] trickster moon.

[Victor Lark]

A strike of a laugh, as compulsory as it was candid, affirmed their mutual contempt for Caelum’s celestial sister. Unlike his snow-capped companion, however, Victor recalled her offense and was fascinated by it. This one seemed harmless, but so had the other. Were they as alike as Seven seemed to think? Victor bet himself that Caelum would eventually attack them without warning, because of some mistimed transgression alongside the insecurities innate to a fallen angel. The question was: when?

If they gambled until dawn, he could watch another one shift, without intent or effort or desire. Victor itched his scarred palms on the edge of the table as his knee replied to Seven’s with a harder shove. The poor man was clearly tired and irritable, but his companion was not feeling merciful. The beginnings of a game flared white around thin silver rings; the suggestion was as vague as it was exclusive to the fatigued crimson beside him. “Thank you very much!” He said as he took Seven’s money and faced forward. His legs rebounded to brush those of the masked ethaefal, and then they settled to bounce alone before him.

The dealer nodded, the curl of a smile offering his obligatory amusement in the conversation. The next card was another Six.

To Victor’s inebriated mind, talk of stars and eyes might as well have been a riddle he didn’t care to solve. He leaned to Seven. “Leave it to Caelum to see something more than numbers in the sky,” he mumbled, as if this stranger was a dear friend in need of teasing. The insult was as much for one man as it was for the other. His eyes swept towards Caelum’s, but he did not move any closer. “Why do you say that? Do they talk to you too? Do they tell you stories at dinner and scold you when you’ve been bad?”

He had been flipping one of the silver coins loudly over itself as he spoke; he stopped for a second, peering eyes softening to a look of consideration. Then he pushed them both towards the center of the table, saw that friendly humility and raised him a smile of daring.

[Seven Xu]

oocForgetting to post and formatting a hard drive makes for one discouraged shell of a formerly awesome reply. I’m so sorry it took so long.

Seven snorted.

“There was a time the stars were not blind,” he conceded, before a curt shake of his head sent a tide of white bangs across his forehead. “I can only imagine what the world must have been, when Zintila still reigned in the sky. Have you lived enough lifetimes to know, Caelum, or are you just as ignorant the rest of us?”

He wrestled with a smile, reached to quell distraction in a pair of bouncing knees. “They aren’t watching, not anymore. If there was divine justice, She would have ascended by now, and you would never have suffered a similar fall from grace.” Seven’s free hand traced cool wet lines in his dew-kissed glass of ale. He lifted it, swallowed a mouthful of wet amber, and relinquished his hold on a knee that failed to grasp an unspoken request. The heavy glass mug clattered to its wet crescent shadow on the tabletop again. Seven wiped the corners of his mouth with a thumb and index finger.

Then, the smile flourished; an oddity on an otherwise bitter mouth.

“I will not discount justice, I’ve seen justice brought down on those deserving of it; I’ve lived in Lhavit beneath the watch of the Shinya and I’ve seen the power of Sylir’s Knights.” The stool creaked beneath his paltry influence as he rocked backwards, straightening his back. He stole a glance at the back of Victor’s head. “I’m sorry, I’m rambling. I’m … tired.”

That was an understatement, if there ever was one.

[Caelum]

“Only the most hypocritical of them, Victor,” Caelum volleyed, tongue in cheek. Or was it? “Mostly they’re content to douse me with duty. Two silvers?” There came a tilt of his head, a twist of his mouth. Guarded eyes strayed toward Seven and he observed for longer than was either polite or necessary. He had been too long on the road with nothing but his mount and the hegemony of the stars for company. “Astonishingly strong for so dead a god,” he remarked, the consonants growing tangled against the backs of his teeth. His pint glass clinked a counterpoint, resettled to the table half-empty in the eyes of most; and stacked four of his last silvers on the table one by one: call and raise. “And the stars are surprisingly still blinding for being fallen,” he continued in their puzzle piece metaphor, accidentally adding milk and honey to their bitter tea. “Well,” and his smile returned with a slide of elbows to the table, “Some of them. Part of me’s old enough, Seven, and I remember. “ A hesitation stilled his tongue before he extended it with a swallow of ale. “Don’t let me keep you,” he murmured. Weariness was a thing he understood, and he’d not begrudge a man his rest even if he would his own for loneliness’ sake.

[Victor Lark]

Victor turned to Seven when Caelum did, noted the fatigue, the patience, the typical cynicism. He could find was nothing unusual on the face of his friend, and he disliked that this stranger seemed to linger on something he could not see. A glimmer of a frown, more a distraction than a threat, turned back to the chatting ethaefal. Like Seven, this man seemed more content to talk of cities and stars than of himself. It was an honorable thing to most, and an irritating one to the man that sat between them.

“Justice is fickle,” the Ravokian insisted. “Just like honor, and duty. Just like the Knights and Gods who invented them.” It was not an original argument, but it was one that could usually spark some retaliative flare. He winked at Seven, ignoring his polite objection for the sake of the game, then trained his gaze on the dealer’s hands.

The final card unsheathed nine swords to the table. Eyeing its brothers the Glassbeak, Five, and pair of Sixes, Victor bent to his hand one more time. His brow raised high behind a mat of travel-mussed hair and he fished around in the purse beside him, ultimately matching the silver confidence at the table’s center.

Issuing a playful confrontation to Caelum’s forearm with the back of his wrist, Victor echoed, “But you’ve found some duty for yourself, you say. To whom?” He was not good at nuance; he thought he could detect a hint of bitterness on that ink-marked face, but did not think to consider sarcasm. “To the stars and moon, or the goodness of the world? Why answer them at all? Seems you’d be better off answering your own conscience.” The word jumped from his tongue like a joke.

He raised a gold-rimmed piece on the growing pile of coin. This was the den of the risk-takers, after all. “Or your purse.”

[Seven Xu]

Politeness could easily escape his Ravokian.

Seven’s knee knocked against a thigh, as if to make a point; more often than not his unspoken insinuations went over the human’s head—or maybe they did not reach him at all. Then, his eyes were drawn to a flash of cards in an olive-skinned hand, and he dipped his chin to compare them against the table’s challenge.

“I’m not so tired I’ll brave those streets again by myself,” Seven remarked beneath a dying grin, “I’m afraid I’m stuck here until this one has his fill of ale and cards.”

As if to make a point that nuance could not, Seven’s fingers stole across the human to grab his mug. Too-long canines clinked against a thick rim and froth swarmed his upper lip; molested glass in hand, the halfblood took a mouthful of tepid amber and considered that goal. A new bed, with fresh sheets (though any would do) and room to stretch his legs; a morning not plagued by relentless rolling and seasickness; the smell of fresh bread and bacon from a market, rather than rotting fish and salt.

“Your accent,” Seven’s observation was belated at best; at worst, it was a feeble change of subject, “What is it?” It did not sound like the harsh tongue of the east his companion carried, nor did it resemble anything he had heard between traders and merchants in the labyrinth Citadel of Stormhold. Being that the world was vaster than the sheltered halfblood had experienced, the possibilities were endless. “Where are you from?”

[Caelum]

Breath left him emptier than before, but he collected his pint glass before slumping back. The tumble of coins constituting the pot and what was now the sum of his theoretical wealth was brooded upon. He drank deep. “Cheap,” he pronounced Victor’s conclusions on justice, calling him out for the shine with the raise of an eyebrow. Cheap, he said, and meant unworthy. “As for my conscience, who said I already don’t?” Shoulders rolled back, uncomfortable; but maybe it was just due to the skin he was in. His glass, coming up empty, was returned to the tabletop and he flipped over a hand in revelation of a gold rimmed miza. It was as well weathered as his eyes, some unearthly gleam worn down to an eerie shine. He nodded to seven before nudging the gold piece in, matching Victor’s bet with a stifled sigh. “That’s the last of it,” he confessed, irony in his mouth. His regard slanted toward Seven and without warning a chuckle caught in the back of his throat, catching too off his guard. “Up there,” he jutted his chin. “It’s the language of the gods, man. It fucks up all my words. The celestial language all my kind once spoke. It gets trapped,” he clicked his tongue. “Behind the teeth.” Or between, but he didn’t say that.

[Victor Lark]

The final bets were in, the House’s hand exposed. Victor tossed his cards and frowned.

His eyes fell to the money that was no longer his, as if to mourn its passing. But a lighter purse was not the thing that stilled him, then. This was another ounce of resilience in the infallible tonic that was Caelum’s patience, and Victor was losing the secret game of anger. It seemed the stranger was too tired for it, as Seven sometimes was. The heavy-lidded Lhavitian had gotten more out of him with idle prattle.

Cheap, he heard, and did not understand. Deciding he could play the part he was given, Victor stole his mug back from Seven and returned a puckish knee. He raised an affectionate hand through the back of that white scalp, silently eyeing some poorly constructed promise at him before the gesture dropped and turned to the third man. It might have been in his best interest to heed their growing weariness and treat patience with patience, but the drink he tipped from the nearly empty mug begged different.

“Good game,” he admitted. “How about another?”

That obliging server of theirs began to gather the cards and shuffled them. Victor ignored him. “I’d like to get behind those teeth, down here where the stars cannot see.” He leaned sideward at Caelum, assuming but unimposing, and his chin alighted on a slouching threadbare shoulder. “Five gold says I won’t.”

[Seven Xu]

Language of celestials was the culprit of the ethaefal’s cadence, caught behind his teeth; Seven should have known, but he could not bring himself to remember their voices, or their faces, before the sky-gods had swept them from the mountains to heed their call. She had not had it, the bitter girl with a love for vengeance. That or Seven was unwilling to notice.

Carefully forged steel and heedless fingertips caught and pulled him from his stupor and lingered long after they had gone; it woke tired skin and churned up strands of impossible white that Seven moved to smooth as he fumbled for his bottom lip with jagged line of teeth. He thought to say something of the exchange. Simple minds make simple warnings. His nostrils flared. Don’t.

This was no dust-ridden shop in the bowels of Stormhold, and Caelum was no red-faced maiden. One part of Seven wanted to witness the fruits of Victor’s efforts—the other part wanted for a bed where he would not spend half of the remaining morning nursing the inevitable bruises his bird would reap. Inevitably, the latter won; his joints felt heavy as stone and beautiful scarlet had bled from his irises into the dry and pink corners of his eyes.

There was an audible, fleshy slap as Seven’s splayed palms hit and pushed the table. He was too tired for the game of philosophy and the emotional barbs his companion faithfully dug in both their sides. Wood scraped on wood as his stool tripped across an uneven floor. “On second thought, I think I will go back to the ‘Inn. It cannot be that hard to find,” a bold statement for any Alvad, however seasoned. Seven stood and looked over Victor to Caelum, offering an apologetic half-smile, “Best of luck to you.”

Ambiguity became him.

[Caelum]

"Would that be to leave your companion the worst of it?" Caelum muttered. Those strange eyes of his, too old for his teeth, had settled hard upon Victor with the gambler's last toss. If it was anger Victor wished to conjure from him, he had yet to shove hard enough against a sore spot that was not already long accustomed to agony. He had won, the cards spilling from his hand; and he missed the dealer's smirk, somehow self satisfied at the outcome of this strange game that seemed, in the end, to have little to do at all with cards. "Your name's proved false," he cleared his throat and leaned forward, stacking up the coins that constituted the pot with off key clinks. He was supposed to be ever so much better at song, what with the real name of this vespertine face being Kasb'el Sunsinger. "What do you want with me and my teeth? Other than your gold back." And that, that was funny, wasn't it? Humor breathed out, stammered as their cards, until he was shaking his head at himself and looking from Victor to Seven and back again. "What makes you think the stars can't see? The pair of you have a great many opinions," and he was not calling them wrong, but calling himself curious. "Dream deep, Seven." There he cut his chin, an upward sort of nod that slid a heavy braid against his temple. His words dropped with the finality of bricks, too competent and casual for him to possibly have understood their weight. Weren't they? "We'll have to talk of Lhavitian justice another time." The coins ratted, tucked into a purse and that into his belt as he leaned back. He was hungry, but for more than just the nourishment daylight would offer him again. "Define get behind my teeth, Victor, and I might play."

[Victor Lark]

Victor watched Caelum’s lips move from where he hung close, parched and thrashing with tired ripostes and patient observations. He had not expected that this one would be so good at holding his temper (his mild demeanor could not possibly be the fault of Victor’s strategies gone stale, at least) but in the face of defeat he chose fascination over disparagement. It seemed the ethaefal were as unpredictable as humans—but that was all they were, wasn’t it? Just humans, with a pair of fickle horns and a few more years on their side.

“I want your mouth,” he answered sloppily, the drink on his breath more an excuse than a motivation. “I want it like you want the heavens.”

It was a generic assumption, but ale and inevitable fatigue had gotten the better of his senses. He had lost his focus long ago, and in those moments he was losing his resolve. Seven had already risen and, despite the show, Victor would not let him leave alone. All he had left was a dying argument. “I want it like the stars want to see.”

Then he rose the short distance to meet the lips that danced so readily before him, reached for the tongue that teased behind Caelum’s teeth. The breath he stole had only touched its drink, and without that mask Victor thought he could taste the voice of moonlight on hot, infinite darkness. He would insist on the kiss until another body pushed or pulled him away; but when he was finally removed, he reached into his gaping purse and withdrew a small handful of coins at random. “Looks like I lose again,” he said, watching keenly for a glimpse of a reaction, a conclusion to the game.

Whatever it was, Victor was already on his feet, groping blindly behind him for Seven’s hand to grasp. “Luck,” he echoed when he found it, offering a nod and a wink before he found his feet shuffling toward the door.