Post by Tout-Perd on Nov 25, 2015 14:26:22 GMT -5
You sit comfortably at the ritzy table, a smile upon your face. You see no reason not to smile; after all, your chair is ridiculously comfortable, you’ve got a platter of fancy cocktail weenies all to yourself, and you just beat the pants off of half a dozen wannabes.
You fan yourself with the last hand dealt you, waving cordially as the final schmuck you played against excuses himself from the table. He flips you the bird, and though such foolishness would typically prove grounds for a swift and devastating rebuttal, your immense stack of chips has placated you enough to ignore the boorish upstart.
“Do come back again! It was delightful playing against you!” You lean forwards on your elbows, resting your chin on the backs of your hands.
“I’d love to do so again, well, provided that you didn’t just blow every last penny you had on that little game of ours. That would be most unfortunate, especially at the start of a long, luxurious voyage.”
“Ass,” He spits, his eyes narrowed, his shoulders trembling. The muscles in his neck are taut and his fists are clenched, his nails digging into his palms, and yet you still know he wouldn’t even think of lunging at you. For better or worse, the type you’re dealing with here considers themselves above fisticuffs. He’ll probably just end up going back to his bunk and sobbing into his pillow.
“Oh, so it seems that WAS the case...” You shrug mildly, and then harpoon one of the sausages with a toothpick, “Sucks to be you.”
You drown the weenie in the small bowl of barbeque sauce before bringing to your lips. As the youth sulks away and impotently punches the wall, you bite it in half. Life is good.
“Here you go,” You flick the cards back across the table to the dealer, who seemed to be fidgeting uncomfortably through that last exchange. They nose up against the deck he’d been dealing from. You could’ve probably landed them directly on top of the stack, had you bothered, but other things are more worthy of your attention at this present time.
After all, you are on the King Thomas, the first pan-global passenger train, and with how much you paid to get here, you plan on utterly, absolutely luxuriating in the entire experience of this train ride. You are going to soak this locomotive into your pores by the time you’re through.
“So?” The dealer inquires, taking a shaky swig from his bottle of water. He’s a real party animal, that one.
“I’m here til Hawaii, unconsciousness, or we run out of players. Since we’re through the liftoff jitters, I’m betting we’re going to get a better flock settling down here than the last one.”
The last one was what you liked to think of a “chum game”. It got a lot of people who fancied themselves as ‘experts’, but really what it did was advertise that there was some serious poker going on here. Soon enough, the big fish would start rolling in, and then-
A dire hush rolls across the car, conversation ceasing and heads snapping towards the rear entrance. It’s the sort of reaction only prompted by either a drop-dead gorgeous woman entering the room, or somebody getting horribly injured. (You’re quite familiar with both of these stimuli; sometimes stacked at the same time.)
Much to your disappointment, it turns out that it was just a dame. Instantly, your well trained eyes begin scanning her for pixels to prove that she’s photoshopped. Her skin is the color of a perfectly poured latte, and she has legs that end somewhere in the stratosphere. Those godly gams are accentuated by her outfit, a scintillating feathery number that pleasingly would be quite at home in any Vegas chorus line. A train of unfrayed peacock feathers conceals her sculpted posterior, which otherwise is threatening to burst forth and attack hapless onlookers. She inhales deeply, causing every man (and some women) in the car to instinctively crane their necks. With the breath held, she raises an arm above her head, the diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires adhered over her nails wildly glittering in the light.
You sigh, and put the cocktail weenie out of its suffering.
“Woe, woe is upon you all! For you have yet to have met the great Narcissa Iago Zaghetti, scion of the elder gods!” Her voice is imperious and clear, carrying so flawlessly that you notice a withered up codger at a table to your left plucking out his hearing aid in order to listen better.
“Now, having been granted awareness of this wretched state of being, you shall regret the entirety of your lives leading up to this moment! For what pittance have you accomplished, that it may compare to merely basking in the presence of divinity? You may have saved thousands of lives, made more money than most earthly nations, and yet it is still nothing more than a trifle in the face of the grandeur that you presently behold!” Her luscious, sensuous lips pull back in a fierce, inhuman smile, baring lambent teeth. At the very edge of her grin is a premolar, capped in gold. Its lack of symmetry only seems to accentuate the deific perfection of the rest of her body.
“All is not lost, however! Having shed the veils of ignorance from your eyes, gaze upon me, and let revelation enrapture your mind! However banal and frivolous your outlook and actions have been up to this very moment, you have gained the opportunity to become an acolyte of the demigod who walks among you!” She inhales deeply once more, preparing for another doorstopper of a monologue.
“Oh, shut up,” You hiss, and she reels as if you had bodily struck her across her supermodel-perfect cheek.
“You dare to question me?” She roars, the entire car’s worth of passengers bristling along with her, “You, a mere crumb of mouse dung, possess the audacity to subject a vessel of omnipotence to your insolence?”
“I didn’t two hours ago, I’ll admit,” You roll your shoulders, and then square yourself in your seat, “But for God’s sake, lady, this is your fourth fucking pass of the evening. You can do without the thunderous introduction, we’ve heard it all already. I’d probably have it memorized, except that I’ve been too preoccupied trying not to laugh.”
Narcissa’s nostrils flare, and her stunningly blue eyes seem almost ready to come popping out of her head. The hairs on the back of your neck begin standing up.
“Churl! You act as if anything you seek to do could be more important than venerating my holy presence! You, a mere mote before the towering grandeur of the eternal, and yet you intend to question me?” The car shakes ever so slightly, a bit of turbulence so sudden that the conductor had no chance to announce it.
“Lady, I intend to play some fucking poker. I’m just brushing you aside so that people will stop gawking, and I can get on with the main event,” You realize that through the entirety of the exchange, you have yet to stop smiling.
“If you want to start shit with me, you’re welcome to,” You meet her gaze with your eyes half shut from grinning so hard, “Provided that you do so by sitting your flighty ass down, and joining me for a game.”
“So be it!” Narcissa pronounces, stalking over to the table. She pulls out a seat. Somehow, she manages to settle into it with her train perfectly settling to either side of its back, an event as miraculous as Moses parting the Red Sea.
“Dealer, I wish to engage this impudent wretch in a game of chance, so that I may smite her with the thunderous wrath of the divine!”
“Table rules here state that we’ve got a minimum of five players to start a game. And where I come from, the rules of the game are more sacred than anything else,” You declare, and suddenly Reba Winset realized that she had approached this narrative from the wrong point of view. It was embarrassing how frequently she got confused about that. However well she’d accounted for herself in school, to the present day she still kept having troubles distinguishing between second-person and third-person, and present and past tense. It was most fortunate that she’d managed to deduce the error before the end of this first post, lest authors and readers launch into their story unawares of her identity.
Reba drummed her calloused fingertips lightly on the tabletop, while fondly regarding consternation clouding Ms. Zaghetti’s face. If it hadn’t been for the occasional twitching of an eyebrow, the woman could have all but passed for an idol caught without its coating of gold leaf.
Reba’s many opponents through the years had made a vast variety of unlikely claims. She’d spanked so-called professional poker players, grim ‘mercenaries’, and even a few men who had declared themselves to be high ranking Mafioso. And yet, this’d be her first time beating the pants off of a god.
You fan yourself with the last hand dealt you, waving cordially as the final schmuck you played against excuses himself from the table. He flips you the bird, and though such foolishness would typically prove grounds for a swift and devastating rebuttal, your immense stack of chips has placated you enough to ignore the boorish upstart.
“Do come back again! It was delightful playing against you!” You lean forwards on your elbows, resting your chin on the backs of your hands.
“I’d love to do so again, well, provided that you didn’t just blow every last penny you had on that little game of ours. That would be most unfortunate, especially at the start of a long, luxurious voyage.”
“Ass,” He spits, his eyes narrowed, his shoulders trembling. The muscles in his neck are taut and his fists are clenched, his nails digging into his palms, and yet you still know he wouldn’t even think of lunging at you. For better or worse, the type you’re dealing with here considers themselves above fisticuffs. He’ll probably just end up going back to his bunk and sobbing into his pillow.
“Oh, so it seems that WAS the case...” You shrug mildly, and then harpoon one of the sausages with a toothpick, “Sucks to be you.”
You drown the weenie in the small bowl of barbeque sauce before bringing to your lips. As the youth sulks away and impotently punches the wall, you bite it in half. Life is good.
“Here you go,” You flick the cards back across the table to the dealer, who seemed to be fidgeting uncomfortably through that last exchange. They nose up against the deck he’d been dealing from. You could’ve probably landed them directly on top of the stack, had you bothered, but other things are more worthy of your attention at this present time.
After all, you are on the King Thomas, the first pan-global passenger train, and with how much you paid to get here, you plan on utterly, absolutely luxuriating in the entire experience of this train ride. You are going to soak this locomotive into your pores by the time you’re through.
“So?” The dealer inquires, taking a shaky swig from his bottle of water. He’s a real party animal, that one.
“I’m here til Hawaii, unconsciousness, or we run out of players. Since we’re through the liftoff jitters, I’m betting we’re going to get a better flock settling down here than the last one.”
The last one was what you liked to think of a “chum game”. It got a lot of people who fancied themselves as ‘experts’, but really what it did was advertise that there was some serious poker going on here. Soon enough, the big fish would start rolling in, and then-
A dire hush rolls across the car, conversation ceasing and heads snapping towards the rear entrance. It’s the sort of reaction only prompted by either a drop-dead gorgeous woman entering the room, or somebody getting horribly injured. (You’re quite familiar with both of these stimuli; sometimes stacked at the same time.)
Much to your disappointment, it turns out that it was just a dame. Instantly, your well trained eyes begin scanning her for pixels to prove that she’s photoshopped. Her skin is the color of a perfectly poured latte, and she has legs that end somewhere in the stratosphere. Those godly gams are accentuated by her outfit, a scintillating feathery number that pleasingly would be quite at home in any Vegas chorus line. A train of unfrayed peacock feathers conceals her sculpted posterior, which otherwise is threatening to burst forth and attack hapless onlookers. She inhales deeply, causing every man (and some women) in the car to instinctively crane their necks. With the breath held, she raises an arm above her head, the diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires adhered over her nails wildly glittering in the light.
You sigh, and put the cocktail weenie out of its suffering.
“Woe, woe is upon you all! For you have yet to have met the great Narcissa Iago Zaghetti, scion of the elder gods!” Her voice is imperious and clear, carrying so flawlessly that you notice a withered up codger at a table to your left plucking out his hearing aid in order to listen better.
“Now, having been granted awareness of this wretched state of being, you shall regret the entirety of your lives leading up to this moment! For what pittance have you accomplished, that it may compare to merely basking in the presence of divinity? You may have saved thousands of lives, made more money than most earthly nations, and yet it is still nothing more than a trifle in the face of the grandeur that you presently behold!” Her luscious, sensuous lips pull back in a fierce, inhuman smile, baring lambent teeth. At the very edge of her grin is a premolar, capped in gold. Its lack of symmetry only seems to accentuate the deific perfection of the rest of her body.
“All is not lost, however! Having shed the veils of ignorance from your eyes, gaze upon me, and let revelation enrapture your mind! However banal and frivolous your outlook and actions have been up to this very moment, you have gained the opportunity to become an acolyte of the demigod who walks among you!” She inhales deeply once more, preparing for another doorstopper of a monologue.
“Oh, shut up,” You hiss, and she reels as if you had bodily struck her across her supermodel-perfect cheek.
“You dare to question me?” She roars, the entire car’s worth of passengers bristling along with her, “You, a mere crumb of mouse dung, possess the audacity to subject a vessel of omnipotence to your insolence?”
“I didn’t two hours ago, I’ll admit,” You roll your shoulders, and then square yourself in your seat, “But for God’s sake, lady, this is your fourth fucking pass of the evening. You can do without the thunderous introduction, we’ve heard it all already. I’d probably have it memorized, except that I’ve been too preoccupied trying not to laugh.”
Narcissa’s nostrils flare, and her stunningly blue eyes seem almost ready to come popping out of her head. The hairs on the back of your neck begin standing up.
“Churl! You act as if anything you seek to do could be more important than venerating my holy presence! You, a mere mote before the towering grandeur of the eternal, and yet you intend to question me?” The car shakes ever so slightly, a bit of turbulence so sudden that the conductor had no chance to announce it.
“Lady, I intend to play some fucking poker. I’m just brushing you aside so that people will stop gawking, and I can get on with the main event,” You realize that through the entirety of the exchange, you have yet to stop smiling.
“If you want to start shit with me, you’re welcome to,” You meet her gaze with your eyes half shut from grinning so hard, “Provided that you do so by sitting your flighty ass down, and joining me for a game.”
“So be it!” Narcissa pronounces, stalking over to the table. She pulls out a seat. Somehow, she manages to settle into it with her train perfectly settling to either side of its back, an event as miraculous as Moses parting the Red Sea.
“Dealer, I wish to engage this impudent wretch in a game of chance, so that I may smite her with the thunderous wrath of the divine!”
“Table rules here state that we’ve got a minimum of five players to start a game. And where I come from, the rules of the game are more sacred than anything else,” You declare, and suddenly Reba Winset realized that she had approached this narrative from the wrong point of view. It was embarrassing how frequently she got confused about that. However well she’d accounted for herself in school, to the present day she still kept having troubles distinguishing between second-person and third-person, and present and past tense. It was most fortunate that she’d managed to deduce the error before the end of this first post, lest authors and readers launch into their story unawares of her identity.
Reba drummed her calloused fingertips lightly on the tabletop, while fondly regarding consternation clouding Ms. Zaghetti’s face. If it hadn’t been for the occasional twitching of an eyebrow, the woman could have all but passed for an idol caught without its coating of gold leaf.
Reba’s many opponents through the years had made a vast variety of unlikely claims. She’d spanked so-called professional poker players, grim ‘mercenaries’, and even a few men who had declared themselves to be high ranking Mafioso. And yet, this’d be her first time beating the pants off of a god.