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Royal Margarine sits at a forgotten table in the back of a forgotten tavern, scrambling through a deck of worn cards. He’s already sc- played games with several Cookies today, but something’s been bugging him. Sure, he’s got a good haul of coins and gotten rid of a lot of his junk in the process. And sometimes he plays with drunks who start spouting about crazy things in the corner of their vision. But after the fifth Cookie talks about some jester and sheep while pounding their fists on the table, well, it gets a bit suspicious. Either there’s something in the liquor here or- nah, it’s probably the liquor.
That’s what he’s repeating as he shuffles his cards, anyway. He doesn’t remember replacing his deck - they were just some old playing cards he’s had for whoever-knows-how-long - yet all of the designs were different. Most of the numbered sets have weird looking.. Apples? Instead of their usual art. One has a bunch of toy balls. The face cards and Ace have notably changed too; some smiling Cookie girl and some artistic figures that send a chill down his spine. Out of the entire deck, though, what made him the most confused was the addition of another Joker.
Both of the Jokers had the same design - some weird jester-looking Cookie who looks kind of similar to the artistic designs of the face cards - one being a bright, deep blue and the other a monochrome version of the blue one. Before he decided to set up shop here for a couple of days, he counted his cards just to make sure he had them all. He’s sure he had exactly one Joker (that was the whole point of the game!) and they didn’t feature weird Cookies on them.
He hadn’t been to this tavern before and he thought their beer tasted a bit off so he hadn’t drank any more. He surely never got drunk in this part of the city. In fact, if he was really going to think about all the weird stuff that’s happened recently, he could’ve sworn this part of the city just didn’t exist up until a couple of weeks ago. He’s never met this tavern keeper before and all of the Cookies coming in and out look unfamiliar. There’s some that look the same, but he recognized them as Cookies who didn’t live in Dragon City. He has yet to see an actual resident…
Royal Margarine’s brought out of his head by soft steps bothering the old plywood - turning the corner, a woman Cookie meets his eyes. He sizes her up; blue skin, a simple dress and basket, long white frosting hair and two pretty blue eyes - one a darker blue than the other. Pretty, simple, probably has some gold to give him for a quick game. He puts his cards back into a pile, leaning on the table and giving the woman his signature look . Ladies (and some men!) would all swoon over him once he pulled that out. Perfect for reeling in a su- a Cookie looking for a quick game.
“Hello there,” Royal Margarine leans forward just slightly, one hand holding up his chin, the other gesturing to the rickety stool in front of him, “Care for a quick card game, miss? I’ve got tons of rewards if you can beat me!”
She didn’t take her eyes off of him - heh, he’s still got it - as she approached. His set up was behind a couple of casks near the stairs towards the bedrooms, sound dulling out as one approached. Great for focusing on his guest as she sat down with practiced precision, basket sitting to the side on the table and hands laid softly in her lap.
“I’ve got time,” Even her voice, silky smooth, matches her ethereal beauty. And he’s not even trying to butter her up! She’s captivating in a way he’s only seen once before - oh, but it’s rude to be thinking of other women when there’s one such beauty in front of him.
“What game do you want to play?”
Royal Margarine picks up seven cards (There might be another Joker in the deck, but he’s not going to keep the usual 6. He’s got standards!) and turns them away from her, holding them up in his hands.
“Well, this game’s simple, that's all! There’s two Jokers in my hand. You just have to not pick them.”
“What do I get if I win?”
“Hmm~” He looks to his sides. Making sure he can still keep his grip on the card spread, he picks up one bag and places it on the table. Soft sand is disturbed; “How about some skill powder? Perfect for you or a friend to get stronger!”
“I was just thinking I needed to get stronger!” The woman cheerfully replies, raising her hands to lay them on the table, “Times have gotten so dangerous lately, you know?”
“They have, haven’t they?” He gives her a smile, gently waving the cards in his hand, “Soo? I’ll even give you a prize if you lose!”
“My my, you really want me to play this game, huh? No tricks? No scams?”
There’s an odd glint in her eye when she finishes her sentence. Ooh, she’s the guarded type! A good challenge for Royal Margarine Cookie! He lets go of the skill powder and gently gestures between him and her.
“Just 100 coins! Or, if you got a ticket from the barkeep, I’ll take that too.”
The woman moves to pull something from her sleeve - it’s a bag, and guessing by the jingling from inside, it’s full of Coins. Royal Margarine’s not left guessing as she unties the pouch, opening it to show exactly what he assumed. Not only that.. Based on some quick counting, it looks like there’s more than 100 in there. How’d she fit that in her sleeve- Doesn’t matter! Probably magic or something, honestly, but what he does know and care about is that this woman has a lot of gold to spend if she’s just dropping a bag like it’s nothing. She seems almost proud of herself as Royal Margarine leans back, holding out the cards for her to pick.
“Well? Go on, pick a card!”
Before Royal Margarine can say anything or look a certain way, the woman is leaning forward and plucking a card from his spread. She tuts her mouth as she does, accentuating the grab as she settles back down, looking at it for all too long. He knows she grabbed the 3, yet she turns it around with a bright smile on her face.
“Look, a 3! I didn’t pick a Joker!”
“That you didn’t!” He pulls another card out of the spread and sets it to the side, gathering the remaining cards and shuffling them quickly, still faced away from the woman. He watches her as he does this, an alluring and ditzy smile focusing just on him as she places the 3 to the side and out of the way. Man, she really was charming.. You’d think he’d remember a woman like her. It’s like he could just get lost in her eyes-
He holds the spread back up, “Alright, round 2.”
“There’s more rounds?”
“Oh, right-” He was so distracted, he forgot to mention the rest of it. He leans down and grabs another sack of skill powder, setting it on the table before readjusting himself, “There’s three rounds. If you want to keep playing, that is! I’ll give you more rewards if you continue playing, but if you end up grabbing the Joker, then you’ll get nothing.”
Royal Margarine watches the woman eye her coin pouch, “Oh, it won’t cost anything extra. But~ , you only have 5 cards to pick from now.”
“I see.. Truly a gamble indeed.” The woman’s gone back to sitting poised and perfect with her hands on her lap, “But skill powder is hard to come by.”
“It wouldn’t be alluring if I gave out basic prizes! Unfortunately, I can’t just offer myself, though many wouldn’t mind.”
“ Oh? ” There’s that odd glint again, “My my, Cookies would just take such an offer?”
“Why, of course!” Royal Margarine leans into the back of his chair, expertly pulling out his personal knife and running it along the front of his frosting. He shoots her a smile and a wink as he does, the smile only growing wider as the woman before him seems impressed. She even clasps her hands together! “I never properly introduced myself, did I?”
He twirls the knife around before putting it back into his shirt, tucked into a little pocket he had sewn on the inside so it’d always be there.
“I’m Royal Margarine Cookie. Dragon City’s expert in dragons and wyverns as well as local dragon tamer. I just so happen to also enjoy playing card games.”
“In the back of taverns.”
“You can hear me back here!” He gives her another wink, momentarily forgetting about their game, “It gets kind of loud and crowded here! Sometimes you just need a bit of privacy, you know?”
“I bet you love your privacy, hm?” The sentence itself was completely innocent - but punctuated by the way the woman leans onto the table, hands holding up her chin as she squints just ever so slightly at him. It doesn’t help that the single candle burning behind him illuminates the woman in such a.. Way.
“Nobody really bothers you, you’ve got all the time in the world to yourself.” She leans further across the table. Royal Margarine tries to scoot his chair back, but with all of his goods piled at his sides, there’s very little room to move. He keeps the cards close to his chest though his attention’s on the woman - who stops just shy of an inch. The entire time that she spent slowly crossing the table, she was speaking; “Playing games with any Cookie that stumbles into your gaze. It’s fun, right? Watching random women fall for you.”
“H-hey, miss, you’re getting kind of close.”
“Am I? You say that like it’s a bad thing!” She giggles, but none of it is innocent or kind, “Is this not what you want, Royal Margarine Cookie?”
It’s getting really hot all of a sudden. She was right - there was a lot of privacy back here, unusually so. He usually sees a couple of Cookies passing by every few minutes, but recently there’s not been anyone. It’s just been him and this woman. This very, very attractive woman whose raising her hand as if she’s going to caress him.
Instead, she plucks a card from his clenched fist. He watches it - the Ace - as she turns it around to face her. She doesn’t sit back down as she looks at it, happy for only a moment before tossing it somewhere to the side.
“The Ace! The Cookie on it doesn’t look too fun though.” She huffs, pushing herself back into the stool. She readjusts herself before sitting with her hands in her lap again as if none of that had happened. Royal Margarine takes much longer than her to readjust himself, straightening his shirt as if it had been bothered and resting the cards on the table face down. He coughs a bit just to ease the tension in the room. He’s usually okay with things like that, but in the moment.. It was like he was stunned. He couldn’t move or speak and- well, it wasn’t bad . Just unexpected .
Thank stars there’s a table between them now (though, the Cookie before him has shown him how fast she can move across it-) the cards, Royal Margarine. The cards.
“For- for this round, I’ll only have three cards.” He shuffles the deck, picking it back up once more before removing two cards. Two Jokers and a King. He’s sitting forward slightly now, picking up another sack of skill powder without even looking at the pile beside him. Just focusing on the woman, who crosses her arms as if to think. Royal Margarine shakes the cards slightly, just for emphasis.
“Think carefully, miss! It’s all or nothing. Of course, you can always just leave with what you earned-”
Quickly, almost instantly, the Cookie’s hands are on his shirt. There’s barely room to breathe between them as the cards fall onto the table. Unbeknownst to Royal Margarine, she’s scooped up the only non-Joker card. Why would he be paying attention though? The woman’s breathing on him with half-lidded eyes, smiling like a devil in disguise.
“Oh, lookie here. Looks like I pulled the King!”
He’s done for. Of course women have flirted back with him and he’s reciprocated. But it was always just one-time flings! They never even made it to a bedroom. He’d never admit it to anyone, but he got.. Kind of shy at that point. The fun in flirting was sitting at the bar, passing pick up lines back and forth, being admired but never touched! He’s always ended it before it got too far. Call him a coward! Getting to that point was something he wanted to savor! He wanted to wait until he had a nice wife, a woman he’d praise and take care of. And there’d be no more flirting with strangers afterwards, of course, that’d break his queen’s heart.
“ You’re a sick romantic, ” The woman whispers into his side, causing a shiver to go down his spine. She plants a kiss on his cheek before letting him go. He can finally breathe again as he loops down at the table - all other cards discarded or overturned with just the Jokers remaining face up. At some point, the woman had tossed away the King. Royal Margarine stares at her with a hand on the kiss, warmth flowing through him as he huffs. That same chained feeling from before…
The woman rests her head on her hands, tilting her head slowly back and forth, as if she was suddenly bored with the exchange, “A guy who pretends to want to flirt with a bunch of strangers but can’t dish it back out? And I thought we had something in common.”
“You really shouldn’t steal from Cookies though.”
As if unlocked, Royal Margarine found himself able to speak again; “C-Come again?”
“You grabbed a random deck and didn’t think to look at the name on it?”
The woman lets out a long sigh, collecting the cards neatly and placing them back in the blue-and-gold themed box they came in. He had just set that to the side, not really needing to use it for anything. She holds it up, staying a good enough distance away this time, running her hand underneath a gold-plated name at the bottom. Royal Margarine squints.
“...Property of Shadow Milk Cookie?”
The woman smiles - it’s one of the innocent ones from before as she sets the card deck down before clapping her hands together once, “Yes! That doesn’t say Royal Margarine Cookie, now does it?”
“I guess the cards were a bit weird?”
“And not yours!” She moves to put her hands behind her back, moving away from the table. She stands near the stool but doesn’t move to sit down or leave. Has the tavern always been this quiet? It’s as if there’s only them in the world. The candle behind him flickers, a once-lit up wall becoming nothing but shadows. The Cookie is only partially illuminated and in the dark, dress hems bleed into a tailcoat and white frosting blends into a void. He swears he can see an extra eye glare at him.
“You should pay attention to what’s yours and what’s mine . Though, watching you flounder over any easy look that comes your way was entertaining. If only for a little while.”
The previously welcomed tension turned cold. He feels frozen in more ways than one, only able to focus on the woman. His mind, tauntingly so, does note chittering and whispering replacing the dead silence and the many different creatures that seem to lurk around the Cookie. They’re haunting him, as if waiting for their master to give the command before launching.
Just as quick as it set in, it stops. The area is properly lit once again (or, as lit as it was before), and the creepy whispering was replaced by the bountiful laughter of a tavern. The table is empty, save for the card deck resting in the dead center and the bag of gold directly to the side. The two Jokers laid criss-crossed on each other on top of the box.
The woman holds up the three bags of skill powder with a smile.
“I’ll let you keep it for now! Just remember I’ll come back for you eventually.”
Without another word, especially not one from Royal Margarine, she walks off. Past the stacked casks and into the front of the tavern. Distantly, at least he assumes, he can hear the notable swing of the tavern’s door open and close. Only then does Royal Margarine sink into his chair, taking long and deep breaths. She had to be a magician of some sort. None of that was normal.
Royal Margarine, still feeling groggy from the entire encounter, leans onto the table with one arm resting in front of him and the other one holding onto his forehead. He stares at the two Jokers, the black Joker having been left on top of the two. He swears he can see the Joker winking at him and blowing a kiss. He rubs his eyes and blinks - but the card’s gone back to normal. His cheek still feels hot from the kiss from earlier - and he wasn’t going to lie and say that his entire face wasn’t beet red either.
Maybe he should pack up for the day…