He paused, to preserve the stillness, before flattering mockery spilled its guts.

[color=39b54a]“Cat caught your tongue?”[/color]

The gabby gambler endured as an entranced Abelard, infatuated with the hopeful response by the possible Héloïse, afore him. Behind the camouflage, the stench of a forty year old’s perspiration beaded its permeated sweat and tears. The exudative sorrow of a physique unable to match a younger and exuberant woman, unaldulterated, behind the veneer, always evolved its instruction, stressing the importance of an exacting poker face. 

Poised under pressure.

The guise exhumed itself as a shared allegorical tombstone at Pere LaChaise, the famous Parisian cemetery that not only sheltered the corpora of his favorite famed tutor and niece of Fulbert, but his radioactive Polish mother. Perhaps, Spices had summoned him as an exorcist, but after one gander at the watchmaker's dark eyes and cascading copper hair, awaiting the rationale to banish his own demons, it was clear. Lady Luck delivered the pregnant answer to a piercing inquiry in silence.

Soon, the hookah toting Master offered the welcome subpoena’s motivation.

[i]Certain individual[/i]? [i]Correct the mistake[/i]? A marriage of protest and propaganda, a tactic to stir the people, toiling through selective and manipulative use of facts and falsehoods. Simultaneously. Was it in regards to a mere betrayal? Or a subtle ploy to eliminate the invited competition? A task nothing less than to cleanse the Augean stables of sin and corruption and restore national innocence?

Alfred obeyed rules. 

That’s how winners were declared in games, after all. However, he could no more endorse this agitprop than one could fold after checking whilst on the big blind.

He slowly slinked away from Bellerose, marching to the aroma filled host. [color=39b54a]“Excusé moi, Ray, but I believe we must each call or raise, before the dealer’s flop.”[/color]

At least, Zorko was all in.

[@Lady Selune][@Hekazu]