odious
#wordoftheday #prompt #drabble #eberron #threadsbetween #polly #dnd
A halfling woman with clever hands—their dealer for the evening—exchanges a loaded glance with a petite tiefling, her dewy skin the color of blush. Obscured as it is through a haze of smoky, stale air and colorful, pulsing magical signage, the meaning is clear: You’re only getting one shot at this. Make it count.
The mark sprawls in the seat beside the teifling, arms and legs arranged so as to inconvenience the majority of passers-by. He doesn’t smile so much as smirk: an open challenge to anyone who fancies themselves his equal. His companions speak in undertones, but only until he projects his voice to interject his incontrovertible opinion on the subject.
He’s tall and lanky, pale as a ghost save for streaked lines and darkened palms from a botched experiment with fake tan, and peacocked in gaudy glamerweave. A single, sad tendril of limp, sweaty hair sweeps across a thinning pate in a poor attempt at concealment.
A sore spot apparently, as his toadies' eyes never fail to bounce away from his shining dome, instinctively repulsed like magnets of the same pole.
He leans in far too close, lowering dark shades to level watery blue eyes at her décolletage, “I can teach you the game, if you like. I’m the best and I always win.”
His pupils are wide as platters from the drugs. Polly giggles, displaying shapely thighs through the slit in her red spangled dress. One leg is fashioned of gleaming, golden artifice.
This pompous fool is still laboring under the impression he’d been ogling her in secret all evening. In truth, it was anything but—the brazen stares at her figure made her skin crawl and her stomach heavy as a ton of bricks.
Lashes full and dark as raven’s wings flutter against soft rose cheeks, rouged in such a way as to foster the illusion that she didn’t bother with rouge at all, “That’s kind of you. I could do far worse than learning from the best.”
Of course, she already knows how to play.
She intends to cheat with the dealer’s aid, however she aims to lose.
Once he wins, and he will, he’ll be in such a good mood he’d eat right out of her hand if she asked him to.
She’ll only need one shot to get the information.