I don't play poker. It's weird that I don't. Being stuck in a military encampment for months at a time, humans become bored. God, do we humans become bored as fuck. We'll sit around and wait, wondering what the hell we're supposed to do with our time. Thankfully, when we're stuck in an with a large enough group of fellow tired companions, we find ways as a group to alleviate our group anxiety.

So many people snap under the lightest pressure from every day life. Some take daggers to their necks, wrists, chests, or any combination of those three pieces of human anatomy. Others go out and take their anger out on others. They beat and silence those others, those innocents who just simply got the shit luck of crossing the aggressor's path. Last but not least, the final group simply remain quiet and slowly descend into madness. We almost always discover these individuals for what they are too late due to their self-induced silence on their breakage that last months and years. It's how we get all the guys and gals in those fucked-up mental institutions, where they're watched by others who have snapped and are using their insanity as a resume to get a job. All those folks, the self-harmers, the murderers, the silent sheep, the job-hunters, they're the normal guys who react in ways that society has created. Soldiers, on the other hand, are a whole other deck of wild cards and jokers.

The groups here tended to overlap with each other more than the civilian ones. A lot of the troops, the regulars, the ones who don't mean shit as individuals to the politician back home but are precious gold as a group, the ones that I try to know as much about as possible and protect like they were my children, would resort to drinking their sorrow away and not face their insanity. Others who could afford something more expensive than liquor would find a local whorehouse and find pleasure in the tender comfort of whichever gender struck their fancy. God, I saw so many like that, including some of the top brass that my brother and I commanded. I felt the most sorry for Cordelia, the poor girl. She didn't deserve the cards she was dealt, she didn't deserve to be unknowingly rejected by the liege she had devoted her military service to, her whole fucking life to. Now at least once a month, she met her lover and cried into the lover's bosom. I sometimes wanted her to be a wisher, because at least then I wouldn't have to receive reports about it from intelligence about it. Damn it, Kellam, please, for the love of fucking god, take Donnel off that case or I will blacklist both you, you little unnoticeable thief, and that stupid country hick.

Oh yeah, I need to move on. I guess I'll move onto the wishers. They're the ones that leaders who are unaware of the condition love to have at their disposal in battle. They don't care about what happens to themselves in a fight. They don't into battle not to serve their country, not to protect their loved ones, hell, they don't even love to kill others. No, they go into a fight wanting to die because secretly, they're already as dead as the Risen. In a way, these individuals are simply the military's counterpart to the silent sheep, always quiet and ready to jump at the chance to fold.

Now we come to the final group in our little case study, the poker players. They're the strangest ones at the table because they're both aware and unaware of their lack of sanity.

Have you ever played poker? No, of course you haven't because I always told you not to touch the cards. However, I know you've heard of the poker face. To explain, a poker face is a fabricated facial expression that displays no form of emotion. A new player has never won a game of poker unless it was with other new players because of the poker face. An experienced player has spent an incalculable amount of time honing their face so as to not betray their thoughts and therefore their hands to others.

I think you understand now why I can never play poker. It's because I'm perfectly aware of where my poker face came from. It came from watching men be sent to the slaughter by kings and strategists who knew nothing of the horrors of war. It was created by the need to stand resolute in the face of mounting casualties, not only from saber cuts and cannon strikes, but also from the foulest of diseases and ravages of starvation and hydration.

I do not play poker out of worrying for my paycheck, no, I refuse out of belief that I would be too good. I would be using a terrible tool built of miserable war to make a profit and that doesn't strike me as right to do to the men I lost. While it is strange of me to do so, I am certain that I will not break. Your mother has made sure of that for two and a half years now and she has vowed to continue to do so for the rest of our natural born lives.