Caine frowned, reading a piece of paper tacked to the bulletin board. It was littered with other papers - shopping lists, coupons - but this small, round notice was new. Discontented, she returned to the table, slipping into her seat between Kiba and Hige. "Yea, that memo it weird... Did she explain anything when you asked?" she said, picking up her cards and accepting the two Tsume handed her.
Hige rubbed his nose without realizing it and before picking a card from his hand; he slid it face-down on the table to Tsume. "One," he mumbled, before answering the she-wolf. "Huh? Oh, she's just rewriting it."
"You mean the whole thing?" she asked.
Tsume slid a new card back to Hige and discarded two of his own. "Dealer takes two," he said. "I talked to her too, and she said she didn't like where it was going, or some shit..." He took two cards and smirked, looking up at Hige like a hungry predator; Hige was too absorbed in his cards to notice.
"Christ," Caine scowled, pointing to Toboe. "Watch your language, maybe?"
"You're not much of a role model either," Tsume smirked; amused when, instead of retorting, she stuck her tongue out at him. "What'll it be, Kiba?" he asked the quiet wolf.
Kiba gave his cards a last scrutinizing look before tossing them onto the table. "This game is pointless," he concluded.
Curious, Caine turned them over. "Kiba!" she nearly screamed, her hand recoiling as if bitten. "That's a flush! What are you doing?" Kiba, however, didn't appear phased by this revelation.
"The game's pointless. There's no skill needed to win, just luck," he said matter-of-factly, reaching under his chair for the book he had hidden.
Hige slapped his hand to his face in exhaustion. "That's the point, Kiba! It's a game, it's just for fun!"
Kiba didn't respond, instead he opened up a small, battered copy of Analects of Confucius and began reading.
Tsume rolled his eyes and took Kiba's cards, adding them to the discard pile. Toboe looked up from the popcorn bowl with a confused look; apparently he hadn't been paying much attention. "Tsume, I wanna play!"the pupwhined, putting the now-empty bowl of popcorn on the table and making big eyes at the gray wolf.
"You're too young," the elder wolf said dismissively, seemingly absorbed in his cards. Toboe pouted.
Caine laid out her cards. "Three queens," she smiled smugly. Hige cursed.
With everyone's attention elsewhere, and Kiba absorbed in his book, Toboe reached out a furtive hand to take the pile of cards next to Tsume's elbow. He smiled deviously, pulling the cards back and looking through his catch under the table.
"Two tens," Hige sighed, lying his cards down in defeat. Caine and Tsume smiled down upon the weak pairof cards.
"Well, since Kiba folded, it looks like I win," Tsume said pompously, laying his cards down as well, each with a nice little flick. He reached out to pull the pile of chips towards him. Caine watched the white and red tokens recede across the table with a look of unexpected defeat across her face; Hige gave Tsume a murderous look. "That's the third time!"he cried out, covering his eyes with his hands.
"Hey..." Toboe said, drawing all the poker-players attention to him. "If there are two aces here, then how come Tsume has three?" he asked, showing the aces of hearts and spades to the other wolves.
"You cheat!" Hige yelled angrily- and somewhat triumphantly -jumping up from the table.
Caine growled, moving around to the other side of the table, the steely look in her eyes making Tsume slightly nervous.
"Hey, don't you think you're overreacting?" Tsume said, in an unconvincing attempt to appease them. "It's just a game, right?"
Wth a warcry, Hige lunged at Tsume, who dived from the chair, sliding behind the couch. Caine tackled the gray wolf as he tried to escape, and pinned him down swiftly by twisting his arm. Kiba looked up from his book, highly amused by the other's reactions, yet even more convinced that poker was pointless. Toboe cheered her on while Hige tried to detangle himself from the chair. Caine fought to get the other cards Tsume had hidden in his jacket, and ended up getting flipped and pinned. Someone knocked on the door, but because of the yells no one heard it. The door opened, squeaking slightly, and the wolves turned to see Kai, followed by Xeroeda and Raven. "Hey guys, we brought-" Kai stopped mid-sentence, a sly grin forming on her lips. "What are Tsume and Caine doing on the floor?"
There was silence before Caine blushed, realizing that they looked like a couple fooling around. She made an annoyed growl, shaking her head as if trying to shake the red off her face. Tsume however, found the whole situation highly amusing.
"You know you wanna," he said, in an overly-seductive voice, which earned him a smart punch on the shoulder. He was still smirking after Caine got up and snatched the boxes of Papa John's pizza from a grinning Kai, who skipped after her into the kitchen. Xeroeda and Raven sat at the table and laughed as Kai's mentioning of "very jealous fangirls" had Caine chasing her around the apartment with a plastic knife.
Tsume and Hige, who was keeping the gray wolf under a watchful eye, collected the disrupted cards and replenished everyone's poker-account by handing out chips. Raven made sure Toboe was included this round, and later on in the night ended up teaching Hige card tricks when they both lost all their chips. Xeroeda played poker admirably well, but found the conversation she and Kiba were holding throughout the game -which started after she noticed the book he was reading - to be more interesting. Kai and Caine, after they finished running around the apartment, and giving out pizza and soda, combined their pool and dominated the game; that was until Toboe started his seemingly never-ending winning streak.
"Did you guys get DreamSummoner's notice?" Raven asked, looking up from the cards she had fanned out in front of her, having told Hige to pick one.
"Yea," Hige said. "We were talking about it before you came."
"And before you attacked Tsume," Kiba stated matter-of-factly, which brought another round of angrily looks and laughter to the table.
The wolves began talking about what they thought would happen to the story: whether new characters would appear, if old friends would disappear, if events would play out the same, or if there would be a change in appearances or personalities. They continued on, eventually drifting off into different topics. Toboe fell asleep on the couch, followed by Raven, who had had a hard day at work. Xeroeda and Kiba's conversation stemmed from Confucius and on into politics and current events. After Caine and Kai's coalition ended, the red wolf and Hige started talking about pranks to play on the others. Tsume and Caine were left to clean up, and ended up spending the rest of the night talking in the kitchen.
The open window brought in a refreshing breeze, shifting the notes on the bulletin board. A small, round piece of paper slipped off and descended slowly to the ground. The moonlight streaming in from the window shone on the glittering ink. The quick, slanted writing read:
Dear Cast and Readers of A Thin Line,
As I am no longer allowed to address the readers in person, I will act through my characters, which, I suppose, I always do.
The previous chapters of A Thin Line have been removed. While typing the old story, I realized I was losing focus on what I wanted to portray and after months of school, assignments, contemplation and frustration, I've finally made a new structure for the new story to follow.
Questions? Contact me. All ways of this are available via my profile. Miss the old version? Very touching. Contact me.
I apologize a thousand more times for my lack of communication and updating. Bad sideaffect from that thing called...oh what was it...oh, responsibilites.
Undoubtedly Yours,
DreamSummoner
