Title: Mago
Author: keelhaul lizzie
Pairings: none; Jack Sparrow, Luxord.
Rating: PG
Genres: General
Summary: Paper and bones.
Wordcount: 311
Warnings: Nothing really, no debauchery or depravity of any sort.
Date: January 5, 2007; finished June 3, 2007.
notes: A bailaora is one who dances flamenco.
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as idle as a painted ship
upon a painted ocean.
The taverns of Isla Tortuga had their fair share of gambling men, to be certain, but this man, este hombre, he was different. Not only were his vestments smooth and supple and somehow alien for an Englishman, he was... he was almost like a magician; a man who wrought miracles with the ether in the street.
The man was surrounded by rough-hewn bone dice and rough-hewn bone men and it seemed that with every jaunty flick of his wrist he won a game, won a coin or two to spend on whatever caught his fancy.
New tricks and magic, Jack Sparrow supposed.
When Jack sauntered closer, tankard in one hand and gold in the other, he noted that he smoked a red lacquer pipe and had silver all shot through his ears like saucily twinkling bullets; truthfully, he looked like many men of Tortuga, many men of the New World; they revelled in the debauchery of the tropics, the debauchery they had wrought with their own hands.
This man, however, simply fanned his pack of cards across the table, whirling red and black like a paper bailaora. He said, "Care to play a game?" and Jack Sparrow found it to be an offer he couldn't resist.
The man's name was Luxord, as he learned.
The rules of Put were quite simple, as he learned.
As he learned, it was quite simple to lose at Put.
"So sorry, old boy," this Luxord said; as he swept Jack's meagre pile of shillings across the table, Jack could swear—and perhaps it was him being particularly addle-pated, but he could swear—there was a shimmer of magic about the man.
However, Jack Sparrow was not a man to be cheated out of his gold, and Luxord was not a man to cheat: he won his games, and that was the end of the story.