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Drawing Inside
Jun. 27th, 2011 02:24 pmContest :Brigit's Flame
Genre:fantasy
rating:G
Prompt Deviant Divinity
Word Count 850
You have to know about the town of Laurel. It exists here, and here, and on occasion there. In short it exists wherever it is needed to exist. The one entrance to the town is over an old and battered covered wooden bridge. The bridge has been patched together more times than one would think possible. Once you get across the bridge things are roughly the same no matter where Laurel has placed itself at the moment.
The one constant to be mentioned here, and a special one at that, is the pub Highland. Highland has it happens is always in two places. One is in Laurel, wherever that is, near Joshua the giant spreading Sycamore tree. The other is at the edge of the University area of a Midwest City. This, as it happens, could explain the card game transpiring on the rear deck of Highland.
Regulars at Highland outside Laurel would remember a rather large Sycamore tree growing in the centre of the rear deck. But tonight there was a rather ornate circular table there. And around the table were four card players. Oddly, one had to try hard to focus to see them or else the eyes would just slide off like watching a mirage of water fade away on the interstate on a Summer day. Or, if looked at from a slightly widdershins sideways fashion, on could see an assortment of animals around the table.
But under the flickering once was Christmas lights and the paper lanterns with their shifting painted scenery, some of the real regulars, the ones who knew better than to look out certain windows inside Highland, were watching the game regardless of the visual stability of the players.
At the end of the table was Kitsuni, in a russet vest and a pair of black cargo pants. Her ginger hair was in a long braid that hung across one breast and her bright dark eyes seem to compete, not reflect the light. On her left arm was a tattoo of a fox that almost seemed to move from time to time.
Facing each other across the table were Coyote and Raven. Both were dressed in black, but Coyote had a low slung Stetson hat with a silver conch band that matched the silver fob and chain on his grey vest.
Raven was also in black, but it was a shiny black, jeans and a silk shirt covered by a black leather jacket that had a Celtic embossing that seemed to shimmer in the night. He wore a short top hat which at one time carried a feather but no longer did.
Across from Kitsuni was Badger, who was dressed in a grey three piece Seville suit with black dress boots and a raked black derby. He spoke in a heavy, faked, British stage accent to disguise the fact that he was, in fact British.
Poker is an odd sport, but never so unique as when it is played by four tricksters sitting in a pub that straddles the world between the mundane and the magical. Generally the rules change often during the night, sometimes in the middle of a game. And the stakes can be anything from areas to the use of powers for a specific time, which is one of the reasons the game is played in a fairly neutral area such as Highland.
At the moment they were playing 5 card blind double flip. In this variation 5 cards are dealt face down and if any two end up matching the pot is split among all four. The pot so far in this case includes a brothel in the middle of Nunavut, although everyone in it thinks they are still in the Northwest Territories. Also a forgotten ocean liner in Yorkshire, a bodega in New York which sells honesty in the back room. All this just for starters.
4 Tricksters, a dozen bystanders watching from a cautious distance. And one woman. Who walked through the door with hesitation, as if she were not sure she should be here. In her hand she was twirling a single raven's feather. She was not sure why it had brought her here. It was just one more thing in a series of changes that the feather seemed to have brought in her life since it had appeared in her purse mysteriously three months before. She knew she had never felt more vibrant and full of expectancy in her life. But she also was still confused. It had taken her half an hour just to get through the three rooms of the pub on her way the outside deck she knew somehow was her destination. She had ordered a cup of herb tea (she was still not sure what sort of herb was in the tea), perused all the books, tapped a few of the piano keys, looked at the grouper who seemed to be just as intently looking back at her. And all the while the feather twirled in her fingers, like a small child waiting to see the next trick in the circus.
Raven looked up sharply as she came through the door. There was something unique and something special about her. Then he saw the feather and remembered her. She had been in a coffee shop but slowly disappearing and he had felt a need to help by slipping a raven feather into her purse. He wondered if the feather had caused her to glow or if she had given the feather the power he could feel from the table he sat at.
And Raven did something he had never done. He pushed his pile into the table, powers and memories, even an hour in the Dublin Jungle, and stood up.
“Enjoy the game” he said and moved to the woman standing there in the doorway and in the beginning of the next stage of his life, where his deviance would be in not being that deviant, and brought her to a dark corner of the room where he held her hand and her heart.
And the three tricksters left stared. This was something totally unheard of. Raven not bargaining? Raven not sliding cards from sleeves that had not existed? They actually had a chance to beat him now.
They turned up his cards for him. Five cards, all pictures of Raven. An unsettling thought occurred to them. They each turned over their cards. And in each case the hand was five Ravens.
The pot in the table slowly slid into a grey bag and appeared next to Raven. A card appeared as Raven turned back to wave to them “Goodness,” the card said, “is like the difference between love and lust. It starts in small steps.”
Badger looked at Raven and the woman and could not help but laugh. In a moment all were laughing as the night rearranged into a deck with a large sycamore tree in the centre instead of the table, with branches that rustled like laughter.
Genre:fantasy
rating:G
Prompt Deviant Divinity
Word Count 850
You have to know about the town of Laurel. It exists here, and here, and on occasion there. In short it exists wherever it is needed to exist. The one entrance to the town is over an old and battered covered wooden bridge. The bridge has been patched together more times than one would think possible. Once you get across the bridge things are roughly the same no matter where Laurel has placed itself at the moment.
The one constant to be mentioned here, and a special one at that, is the pub Highland. Highland has it happens is always in two places. One is in Laurel, wherever that is, near Joshua the giant spreading Sycamore tree. The other is at the edge of the University area of a Midwest City. This, as it happens, could explain the card game transpiring on the rear deck of Highland.
Regulars at Highland outside Laurel would remember a rather large Sycamore tree growing in the centre of the rear deck. But tonight there was a rather ornate circular table there. And around the table were four card players. Oddly, one had to try hard to focus to see them or else the eyes would just slide off like watching a mirage of water fade away on the interstate on a Summer day. Or, if looked at from a slightly widdershins sideways fashion, on could see an assortment of animals around the table.
But under the flickering once was Christmas lights and the paper lanterns with their shifting painted scenery, some of the real regulars, the ones who knew better than to look out certain windows inside Highland, were watching the game regardless of the visual stability of the players.
At the end of the table was Kitsuni, in a russet vest and a pair of black cargo pants. Her ginger hair was in a long braid that hung across one breast and her bright dark eyes seem to compete, not reflect the light. On her left arm was a tattoo of a fox that almost seemed to move from time to time.
Facing each other across the table were Coyote and Raven. Both were dressed in black, but Coyote had a low slung Stetson hat with a silver conch band that matched the silver fob and chain on his grey vest.
Raven was also in black, but it was a shiny black, jeans and a silk shirt covered by a black leather jacket that had a Celtic embossing that seemed to shimmer in the night. He wore a short top hat which at one time carried a feather but no longer did.
Across from Kitsuni was Badger, who was dressed in a grey three piece Seville suit with black dress boots and a raked black derby. He spoke in a heavy, faked, British stage accent to disguise the fact that he was, in fact British.
Poker is an odd sport, but never so unique as when it is played by four tricksters sitting in a pub that straddles the world between the mundane and the magical. Generally the rules change often during the night, sometimes in the middle of a game. And the stakes can be anything from areas to the use of powers for a specific time, which is one of the reasons the game is played in a fairly neutral area such as Highland.
At the moment they were playing 5 card blind double flip. In this variation 5 cards are dealt face down and if any two end up matching the pot is split among all four. The pot so far in this case includes a brothel in the middle of Nunavut, although everyone in it thinks they are still in the Northwest Territories. Also a forgotten ocean liner in Yorkshire, a bodega in New York which sells honesty in the back room. All this just for starters.
4 Tricksters, a dozen bystanders watching from a cautious distance. And one woman. Who walked through the door with hesitation, as if she were not sure she should be here. In her hand she was twirling a single raven's feather. She was not sure why it had brought her here. It was just one more thing in a series of changes that the feather seemed to have brought in her life since it had appeared in her purse mysteriously three months before. She knew she had never felt more vibrant and full of expectancy in her life. But she also was still confused. It had taken her half an hour just to get through the three rooms of the pub on her way the outside deck she knew somehow was her destination. She had ordered a cup of herb tea (she was still not sure what sort of herb was in the tea), perused all the books, tapped a few of the piano keys, looked at the grouper who seemed to be just as intently looking back at her. And all the while the feather twirled in her fingers, like a small child waiting to see the next trick in the circus.
Raven looked up sharply as she came through the door. There was something unique and something special about her. Then he saw the feather and remembered her. She had been in a coffee shop but slowly disappearing and he had felt a need to help by slipping a raven feather into her purse. He wondered if the feather had caused her to glow or if she had given the feather the power he could feel from the table he sat at.
And Raven did something he had never done. He pushed his pile into the table, powers and memories, even an hour in the Dublin Jungle, and stood up.
“Enjoy the game” he said and moved to the woman standing there in the doorway and in the beginning of the next stage of his life, where his deviance would be in not being that deviant, and brought her to a dark corner of the room where he held her hand and her heart.
And the three tricksters left stared. This was something totally unheard of. Raven not bargaining? Raven not sliding cards from sleeves that had not existed? They actually had a chance to beat him now.
They turned up his cards for him. Five cards, all pictures of Raven. An unsettling thought occurred to them. They each turned over their cards. And in each case the hand was five Ravens.
The pot in the table slowly slid into a grey bag and appeared next to Raven. A card appeared as Raven turned back to wave to them “Goodness,” the card said, “is like the difference between love and lust. It starts in small steps.”
Badger looked at Raven and the woman and could not help but laugh. In a moment all were laughing as the night rearranged into a deck with a large sycamore tree in the centre instead of the table, with branches that rustled like laughter.
