Aces and Eights (open)

[Rylok]

The ghoul waved a hand at the hay pile that Silas was eyeing.

"By all means, please. I'll guard you until the morning comes. Do you want to be woken before the rooster or no?"

He sat on his own makeshift bed and started rummaging through his saddle bag. Out came a well worn deck of cards. Without much attention to the deck, Si began shuffling and cutting the deck. He practiced the more complex looking shuffling techniques he knew, then practiced his card counting skills. Prestidigitation wasn't an innate magic, but a skill for sleight of hand tricks. The only way to keep the skill was to practice, practice, practice.

[Nyami]

 art credit: [x]

Simon didn't seem to mind his intrusion at all. How fortunate. "T-thank you..." Silas told him as he stepped over to the hay pile to organize it into a more comfortable shape. "It may be best if you let me sleep in, if that isn't a problem..." At times like this, being a stable hand accustomed to doing such a thing really came in handy. In no time, the once formless pile was fashioned into less untidy bedding fit more for horses than for humans. But it would do for now. Sleeping in hay beat the streets, no doubt.

Silas sat down on the bedding and shifted into a resting position. His weary eyes were still on Simon, who looked to be shuffling a deck of cards. "Do you enjoy card games...?" He asked the undead man casually. After two instances of seeing him with playing cards, he could only figure the answer was obvious.

[Rylok]

Si dealt out four hands, as if for poker, then mentally tabbed which hands where which, checked them, then discarded the cards. He repeated the practice while Silas made his bed for the night.

"Hm...yeah. I've conned people out of their money on card games most of my life. You know the dockyard game hustlers? I was doing that at six. Also, don't ever dice or card with the game hustlers. They'll rob you blind in the end, either by rigging the game or actually robbing you later. Now though...its more the practice to keep my hands nimble, keep boredom away, and practice my card counting, magic tricks, and sleight of hand."

He gathered the discard pile up and shuffled it several more times. This pack was getting worn; if he were to ever do a con, it'd be too easy for the mark to say that he was marking the cards. For a practice pack though, it was just fine.

[Nyami]

 art credit: [x]

Silas blinked slowly as he listened to Simon give another snippet into his past and offer a warning about swindling game hustlers on the side. Perhaps if he wasn't so sleepy, he might have suggested that they play a second round of cards without stakes. But the journey here had exhausted him and having eaten his fill and probably just a tiny bit beyond that, while rejuvenating, also did serve to make him feel drowsy.

If only there was an enjoyable activity to do before dozing off to dreamland! One that required less brainpower and more observation...

Fortunately, Simon had made mention of precisely that sort of thing in the list he'd given of what he liked to practice. Silas rolled onto his side, his pale eyes now brighter and attentively on his friend. "Oh...you do magic tricks..?" he asked the zombie curiously. "Of what sort might I expect to see from you..?" With those words he was beckoning for a demonstration.

It wasn't every day one met a magician, and an undead one at that.

[Rylok]

The ghoul smirked and shrugged self-consciously. He stood and slid within arms reach of Silas and sat on the stable floor.

"Most of my stuff is for pickpocketing, but," he reached over and pulled an Ace of Hearts from behind Silas's ear, showed it to him, slipped it into the deck and shuffled. Simon spread the deck out and made a show of looking for the card, getting frustrated when he couldn't find it.

"I could do this a lot easier if you weren't sitting on the card I was looking for," he admonished in a playfully scolding tone. The ghoul held his hand out expectantly.

[Nyami]

 art credit: [x]

Silas might have felt a little too full and also quite sleepy but he was intrigued by what sort of magic tricks that Simon had to offer. He was, however, slightly taken aback by the undead man's approach in both a literal and figurative sense. His new friend had moved in closer and before he knew it, he had reached out towards his face. Or rather, his ear. The sudden, unexpected gesture did make Silas flinch.

He stared widely until he realized the purpose of it, which was that it was apparently a very part of the magic trick he'd requested to see. Anxiety quickly turned to awe. "Oh, but..." Silas started speaking, only to stop at the other's reprimanding. Was he really resting on top of a card? He hadn't seen one laying there before, although he'd not paid attention when he'd flopped down onto the hay.

To confirm whether he really was sitting on it or not, Silas scooted to the side. And there it was. "...this isn't the same Ace of Hearts, is it?" Silas pondered out loud as he picked up the card and offered it back. If it wasn't the same, then it could have easily fooled him.

[Rylok]

For a brief, bright moment, he had forgotten what he was. In the dim light of the stable, he could ignore how pale his hands were, or that he didn't need to breathe, or that he was technically dead. He could ignore that, but he couldn't ignore the flinch.

Simon's breath hitched and he held it rather than apologize. He did NOT choose this for himself in some odd bid for immortality...but he knew the flinch was an instinct; life protected itself from the unnatural, and what was more unnatural than the walking, talking dead?

So, instead of giving a verbal yes or no, Simon merely gave Silas a wry grin, plucked the Ace from his hand, shuffled the deck with a flourish, and fanned a deck made of nothing but the same Ace. He shuffled again with another flourish, fanned a normal seeming deck, then quickly gathered the fan back into a deck.

He slid back to his own hay nest, contemplative, still unbreathing, trying to figure out the appropriate thing to say.

[Nyami]

 art credit: [x]

The nonverbal response came to Silas as completely unexpected. Surely, his undead friend would have offered up a witty remark such as watch and learn or something along the lines of that! At least under circumstances like these where fun was being had. But instead he'd been flashed a forced smile and a display of the deck twice over before the show wrapped up in a rather anticlimactic end.

Fun was being had, wasn't it?

Silas pursed his lips in a pout as he watched Simon slink away into the safety of his hay bed. The man was moody, no doubt, but just about two seconds ago he'd been pretty cheery. What had changed that? Silas thought back on his actions. Had he underappreciated the trick? Had he bent or torn the card by sitting on top of it? Neither option seemed to fit the bill. He simply didn't understand.

Flopping down onto the bedding back first, he rested a hand on his stomach and stared up at the ceiling for a good few minutes. As much as he'd hoped for an answer, one did not come on its own. So, he went ahead and asked. "I-is something the matter..?"

[Rylok]

The reply was another few seconds in coming. For Simon, they felt like torturous, stretched out, painful minutes rather than the brief seconds that it took for him to draw in enough breath to send out a barely-there whisper:

"I'm sorry for startling you. I'm-...I forget what its like, sometimes."

And he did, didn't he? He forgot what it was like to interact with other people. They were going to fear him from now on, and he'd no longer be able to get cozy and interact up close with people. Survival was going to be predicated on staying away from humanity, away from the prejudices of the living, and away from any meaningful relationships.

It was going to hurt, ripping off that bandage...Si had been gregarious and affable as a youngster. He'd grown close to his gang, but they were all gone. The dock they'd haunted as kids was destroyed for some pier expansion project. The neighborhood had been gentrified. The old ways were gone, and he would need to adapt. Well. He could do that.

[Nyami]

 art credit: [x]

That softly spoken response had Silas rolling back onto his side to face the area where Simon was resting. He frowned, not out of annoyance or anger or anything of the like, but rather concern. It seemed that in instinctively twitching, he'd hurt the undead man's feelings. Silas hadn't meant to draw out his insecurities, though. He couldn't help his own reflexes. After being hurt so many times in his youth by bullies, it was a natural reaction to shirk back at any hand reaching out, whether is belonged to somebody fully alive or otherwise.

He supposed he owed the zombie an explanation, painful as it would be to do.

"Oh, it isn't your fault..." Silas told him calmly, almost glumly. There was a short pause as he tried to find the right words. "Not yours particularly. I suppose I've never gotten used to being at close quarters with anyone. Normally, an outstretched hand would spell ill news for me." He let out a sigh, not wanting to speak on the subject any further than that. However, if demanded to be more explicit, then he would do so.