[PM to Join] When You're Strange

Open for Play
Brunnhold's college town, located inside the university grounds.

User avatar
Tom Cooke
Posts: 1485
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2018 3:15 pm
Topics: 87
Race: Raen
Location: Vienda
Character Sheet: Character Sheet
Plot Notes: Notes & Tracker
Writer: Graf
Writer Profile: Writer Profile
Post Templates: Post Templates
Contact:

Fri Oct 04, 2019 9:47 pm

The Plover’s Song The Stacks
In the Evening of the 67th of Roalis, 2719
A subtle blush warmed Jean’s pale cheeks. If a half-second’s flicker of surprise twitched across Tom’s face, it was gone in an instant, behind another drink of whisky. Was it pleasant surprise? Something, oes, settled in him, warm and reassuring, maybe – maybe that was the word for it – some reminder he was still a man, still a man who could make another man blush. Still had it, whatever it was.

But he wasn’t mung, and he wondered, for the first time: had it been too much? Had he made him uncomfortable? It’d been easy, back then, back when he’d been himself. Back when he’d worn the face he knew, back when he’d known who he was. Now, he thought about what he reckoned Jean De Silver must’ve seen – sitting across the table from Anatole Vauquelin, his lined face flushed with too much whisky, drawling out fumbling attempts to be funny and charming. He pictured himself like that, like he must’ve really looked. Felt his skin crawling –

He didn’t have much time to dwell on it. The half-Gioran snorted his Neverbetter at his toast, a sloppy sort of laughter, teary-eyed, the kind you got out of someone who wasn’t expecting to laugh. Tom couldn’t help it; he laughed, too, soft and a little relieved. It’d always eased something inside him, making someone else laugh.

And Jean had his cigar back in his mouth, and he was grinning, and he was listening intently. It was Tom’s turn to be rapt when the kov started throwing around monic blackstops; he found himself wondering, again, just how much Jean shared with this sister of his, despite all his protests. He was wondering, too, at the luck of meeting a kov like this in some watering hole in the Stacks.

Well, they were both gamblers, and he reckoned they were both taking a gamble. Tom grinned at the question, laughed at Robart’s baffled reply. Sounds like something I’d’ve said a year ago. Has it really been less than a year?

“That’s a hell of a way of looking at it.” He raised his brows and took a drag, blowing out a thoughtful plume of smoke. “You’re quite the open-minded gentleman, Jean. You know, I reckon –” He shot a grin at Robart, before meeting Jean’s eye again. “We gollies think we know everything about magic and the mona, but – there’s a hell of a lot more inexplicable than there is explicable, eh?”

At the word ghost, Tom felt a little thrill of danger. Gambling, he thought again, his smile warming. “I suppose I do,” he said after a moment, sitting back with his smoke. “Mean ghosts, that is. Or, uh – whatever it is we call ghosts. Monic imprints, echoes. But you’re right on the mark.”

Maybe Jackson Robart was too drunk to be unsettled; maybe it was too bizarre and baffling. He was sitting quiet-like now, listening, a bemused expression on his worn face.

Tom sat up in his seat, ashing his cigar. “A relevant book, you said?” He met Jean’s eyes through the drifting smoke. “I wouldn’t want to impose, but I’d be grateful.”

The seeking of knowledge is always laudable, he’d said. Oes, Tom liked him. Maybe Jean should’ve been a professor; not that Tom knew much about it, but he reckoned he’d’ve been a good one.
Image

Tags:
User avatar
Genevieve De Silver
Posts: 98
Joined: Sat Aug 31, 2019 6:00 pm
Topics: 11
Race: Galdor
Character Sheet: Character Sheet
Plot Notes: [url=http:/fullurl/]Plot Notes[/url]
Post Templates: [url=http:/fullurl/]Post Templates[/url]
Contact:

Wed Oct 09, 2019 8:42 pm

Evening of the 67th of Roalis, 2719
There was something about Tom, Genevieve wasn’t sure what something about the eyes and the way he spoke. Made him seem, younger somehow? That and she could not shake the fact that there was something familiar about the
distinguished gentleman. Genevieve's mind scrambled to try and remember what they had been talking about, she was distracted. She coughed smoothed her waistcoat and ashed her cigar before taking another swig from her tankard, drunk again and getting distracted by a charmingly odd and mysterious gentleman. Not the evening she had planned, and one she would have to be very careful how she handled.

"Ah yes, I recall I have a volume on strange monic phenomenon. I have a card somewhere, one moment.”

She pulled a silver engraved calling card holder from her trouser pocket and a took a cream coloured card with ‘J S De Silver’ and the address of his apartment in the stacks printed in blue ink. The cards had been an extravagance, but then so much of the life she had built for Jean was, but she loved it, sometimes it made him feel more real than her life at the university as Genevieve ever did. She extended her hand towards Tom, card between two fingers.

“Here you are Tom, I am home most evenings. During the day, well I’m often asleep or paying calls. However my man Cadoc is likely to be in and will take any messages.”

She grinned to herself at the idea of Tom coming to her apartment, if she was sober she wouldn’t have taken the risk, but drunk she found the idea thrilling.

“Now gentlemen, I think that it is time to show what we have.”

She placed a slender hand on the back of her cards waited a breath and then flipped them. Two Soldiers, two nines and a Queen of Sparrows. Two pairs!
Genevive looked over at Jackson’s cards, a pair of Judges and little else. She looked over to Tom, last to show his hand a grin played on her face.

"Well, don’t keep us in suspense Tom.."

Clock it she thought, and shot him a wink for her own before taking a long drink from her tankard.


User avatar
Tom Cooke
Posts: 1485
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2018 3:15 pm
Topics: 87
Race: Raen
Location: Vienda
Character Sheet: Character Sheet
Plot Notes: Notes & Tracker
Writer: Graf
Writer Profile: Writer Profile
Post Templates: Post Templates
Contact:

Thu Oct 10, 2019 5:26 pm

The Plover’s Song The Stacks
In the Evening of the 67th of Roalis, 2719
Dangerous, Tom reminded himself. Fair.

He stared at the card between two of Jean’s long, elegant fingers, the candlelight picking out glisten of blue ink on the swirl of an S. His head swam with the whisky, with the hundreds of things he knew he ought to’ve been thinking about; his heart fluttered up in his chest. ’Course, he had to take the gentleman’s card, only to be polite-like. Didn’t mean he had to pay the kov an evening visit. Didn’t mean he couldn’t disappear, the tall, fine-featured half-Gioran and his book on monic disturbances and all his strangeness forgotten.

So he didn’t wait too long to take the card, flashing Jean a grin. He made a show of giving it a look-over, sucking his tooth, raising an eyebrow, thoughtful, before he tucked it away in his waistcoat. “I’ll be sure to call on you before I leave Brunnhold, Jean,” he said, casual but careful. Non-committal.

Jean was grinning, and Tom was smiling back, swirling his whisky, and the funny thing was – the funniest thing of all, he thought as he took a sip – he was actually considering it. It was the drink, maybe, made him think the risk was worth the reward. If you’d asked him to weigh all the ways this could go wrong against what few it could go right, he’d’ve said – well, to hell with it.

But it wasn’t just the drink, was it? There was something about this Jean De Silver, and it wasn’t just his macha face. It wasn’t any one thing, and maybe that was what worried Tom the most.

Jean’s hand, when he finally turned it over, wasn’t a keja one. It was better than Tom’s, though, and when Jackson Robart showed his, Tom could scarcely it. What a flooding mess of a game, he thought appreciatively. Finally, Jean prompted him to show his hand, and when Tom looked over to meet his eye, Jean shot him a wink.

Couldn’t be much doubt there. This time, Tom couldn’t quite hide the pleasant surprise that fluttered across his features. It was his turn to blush, just a little, underneath his freckles: like for all his bluster, he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. He recovered himself in a half-second, smiling wryly again as he showed his own hand.

Wasn’t even a godsdamn pair. Two of moons, eight of moons, three of sparrows, five of rooks. The soldier of stars, last of all: his meagre high card, brandishing its solitary spear, the flecks of gold behind glittering against the worn, dark blue paint.

Tom didn’t say anything. He looked Robart in the eye and then Jean, mock-serious. Then, he burst into laughter, quiet but clear and genuine, and knocked back the last of his whisky.

When the laughter drained out of him, some of the cheer went with it. He felt strange, suddenly, like maybe he’d given too much of himself; he hadn’t had such a good time in awhile, and he felt a funny kind of melancholy creep into his heart. A night like this wasn’t for a ghost like him. His drunken complacency wasn’t quite so complacent, and there was a chill to the air, and he’d finished his glass.

So he took another drag on his cigar and ashed it, and sat enjoying it for a few seconds longer. Then, he got to his feet. “Been a fine evening, but it’s getting late for me, I’m afraid. Good to meet both of you, Jean, Jackson,” he said, tipping an imaginary hat at Robart. “Thanks for the hand.”

Pausing, he cast Jean one last look, like he wanted to say something else. He didn’t; smiling a sad sort of smile, he turned and headed for the bar, paying his tab before he went. The smell of Mr. De Silver's fine cigars followed him out into the night, dark and smoky, with its twist of caramel, even as the sounds of the Plover burbled out behind him.
Image
Post Reply Previous topicNext topic

Return to “The Stacks”

  • Information
  • Who is online

    Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest