Wonderlife Milkshake
Author: Nathalia
Rating: PG
Challenge: Honeydew #14 - sleight of hand
Extras / Toppings: malt (snowflake milkshake for Nichole), milkshake
Word Count: 326
Story: Wonderlife
Summary: Eddie is a card shark.
Notes: this isn’t the last snowflake milkshake. I hope this makes sense and isn’t too out of character.
The circles Eddie frequented, it was normal for people to know the rules to all sorts of card games and to be a bit more than novices at them. When Eddie gambled, he was often surrounded by others who could easily be considered experts at what they did, no matter what card game it is.
The best player, a master of the cards, is a Taiwanese man known as Eddie. He knows the rules to every type of poker and is never hesitant to play a hand. When it’s his turn to riffle the cards, everyone gathers around the table to watch him do it.
His hands move at a superhuman speed that not even the oldest players have ever seen anywhere else. It’s all so fast and he does it with so much grace and ease that it’s a treat to watch every single time and see Eddie almost make the cards move by themselves as if they were performing a choreographed dance just for him.
During breaks, when nobody was playing, Eddie would take the deck of cards and absentmindedly play with them, let them run through his fingers without even looking down to see what he was doing and when he spotted a child watching curiously, he always called it over and showed it a card trick or two. They weren’t special card tricks but the way Eddie performed them with his nimble fingers made them seem a tiny bit magical.
His talent had been met with suspicion first, he had often been accused of manipulating things in his favor but after many games, they had started to realize that Eddie didn’t seem to win with a higher frequency when it was his time to split the deck. Yes, he won a lot one way or another but not enough for anyone to accuse him of cheating, not in the long run. He was just a lucky guy and the cards loved him.