Monstre; part II

[Part I]

“You’re something like the reverse of a problem child. It’s unnerving.”

Her head craning to one side, a short ‘pop’ sounded before she allowed relaxation.

“…”

“Would you like to tell me what you did?”

He did not. Despite that fact, he glanced up from his cards.

flat flat. flat. He shuffled slowly through his small deck, before lifting one from the rest. flat, flat. Then another. These two were held in one palm, the rest of his cards meeting the table. He turned on the deck that remained neatly stacked between them. Again, searching. He found what he wanted only after going through the entire deck twice. It was placed face-down, also against the inside of his hand.

She was patient. Even when he then turned his attention to her own deck. They were tucked together by her slow moving fingers before slipping the small deck between his own. He began to look through them without a word. The card he wanted was gathered quickly, but he took his sweet time rearranging her deck and sliding it back across the table toward her.

flat.
The four pieces of stiff paper were placed in front of him, turned so that she could see. They were ‘two’. Ace, spade, diamond, and heart- depicted by horned horses, conjoined by their necks at the center. All lined up, he stared down at them.

All the pretty little horses.

She gazed over them as well.

Unicorns.

Did he like them?

No. There was a point to this.

Sluggish, he leaned back, away from the lineup, and lifted his deck into his palm. This time, he knew just what he wanted. Slipping the card out, he placed it in front of him, closer than the rest. A jack of spades. This, illustrated with a very strange, grotesque shape.

One he stared at for a long while.

During that time, she hardly dared to breathe. Having the eye necessary, she simply stared down at the card, trying to decipher it. Trying to ‘read’ it.

His fingers, still touching the card, drew together and back.

In one abrupt motion, he flicked it, sending it into the others, five cards fluttering across the table top.

He looked at her.

She looked at him.

Brows were raised.

Eyes were narrowed.

“Graphic,” she muttered, unblinking as he stared his hole through her head.

“Visual aid,” he replied softly, fingers creeping back to his cards. They were shuffled aimlessly.

Her rearranged squares of paper were straightened a little. “Some would prefer to speak it.”

“I have no words.”

“You do.” Her eyes never left him, not for a second. “You use them now.”

He frowned, muscles falling lax. A strange moment to do so.

“I have no words to describe what I have done.”

Now her lips followed suit, turning downward.

Their game was sort of ruined. Her deck was laid down carefully, neatly, on the table. He watched warily.

Her hand laid on the wood, palm up. A beckon without motion.

He looked to it.

She looked too.

“Just because you have no words,” her voice was soft, “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to know.”

His eyes went glassy, staring through that hand. Through the table.

Thinking. Planning. Strategizing.

flat.

Cards were placed down, stiffly and firmly in front of him. The whole lot.

Too slowly, his hand drifted.

Long fingers. Swollen veins. Expressive tendons. Short, meaningless scars.

It touched down with a sort of delicacy in her palm.

“You will not want to know…-”

His calloused fingertips drew a circle within the confines of her comparatively small hand.

“-…the moment you begin to.”

Her eyes ceased their staring, and partook in a relieving blink. Only human; she needed to.

He just stared on, eyes cutting like sharp glass through soft sheets.

“Life is unpleasant.”

She muttered her response while leaning in, if only barely.

“And I always want to know just how so.”

A conversation between Belenus and Eve.