52 Pickup: Prologue
#1 of 52 Pickup
_A gift with the cards, come unto thee
And into the cards, your spirit be free'd
For by these cards alone you live
Come to learn yourself to give_
The young Cajun hare sprang awake with a start, the honeyed fur of his muzzle matted in sweat. He took in his surroundings, the warm humid air of the midsummer's eve relieved only by the occasional cool breeze blowing against his bare torso. On the horizon, the sun had just begun to lift itself over the treetops. From somewhere to the west, the crowing of a rooster could be heard, soon answered in kind by a loud growl from his stomach. With a groan, he slid back and rested a moment leaning against a convenient tree. Clearly, whatever he had done the night before, it hadn't fed him, which was his primary concern.
As he sat beneath the tree feeling the slow and steady heat of the morning sun drying the dew from his footpaws, he took a cursory inventory. His smooth linen pants, still damp from sleeping in the grass, wrapped around his legs, stiff and sore from days of walking. Right nearby the mossy knoll on which he was sleeping lay his crimson vest, which he begrudgingly rose and went to pick up. In his right pocket he felt the deck of cards he had brought, hoping to earn his way along the road with the amateur tricks he had learned back home. In his left, he felt... nothing. With a sudden dread rush, the previous night began washing back...
"Two aces wins th'pot? Who taught you to play?" A fat gator sat opposite the younger fur, with equally imposing coyotes on either side.
"Err... I though'... I though' I might draw something lucky." The hare's sharp accent had been noticeably tinted with fear; after all, two false draws had completely failed on him, and rather than make the money he needed to eat he had lost what little he had.
"Take it from me, Venter. Y'don't want to keep at this game... it'll ruin you." The rightmost coyote winked mercilessly at him in spite of his despair. "In th'meantime, why don't we buy you another drink?"
The memories came to a screeching halt, as Venter slipped his vest over his awkward developing forearms. He was 14, had been on the road from home for barely a month, and rather than the glory of winning a living with sleight of hand he had hoped for, he had lost the last of what little he had brought with him. All because he didn't have the decent sense to keep his muzzle dry. At least, he thought, the gator hadn't eaten him for trying and failing so hard to cheat.
After locating his rucksack and checking to be sure his blanket and sleeping sack were both in order (He had quite forgotten them by the time the previous night had ended), Venter slipped it over his right shoulder and started down the road, rubbing his forehead with his right paw to keep the footsteps from echoing in his brain. Down the road, he sighted a young woman in odd clothing; a purple robe which stretched down to her feet, nearly tripping her with every other step. Her hair was white, and her eyes seemed to be regularly making up their mind. First, they were a deep blue; however, moments later they shifted into green, followed shortly by pink, fuschia and salmon in rapid succession. They then became lime, black, orange, yellow red, silver, gold, cobalt, copper, teal, taupe, mahogany, and the sort of gray that only shows up in London's sky on the second Tuesday of April, all within a second. Her awkward nature aside, he was hungry enough to try the oldest trick in the book; crying robbery. He stumbled to the side of the road, clutching his sack and letting every pang of hunger come together until his eyes watered. As she came before him, he opened his mouth to speak but was cut off.
"You weren't robbed, silly hare, they drank you under the table and won your money fair and square". Her voice had the tones of one who hadn't been speaking a language very long, fumbling over the occasional word and treating each new sound as though it were the hardest thing in the world to pronounce. When she turned her head, she was looking at him with quite normal brown eyes, save for the fact that the pupils were square.
"I... I.... who're you? An' were you at the game too?" He had already abandoned his feigned humility, his stomach making him downright cranky.
"I? I am Nemllallafnwodelbativenieht. But you can call me Nem, Venter... I know you very well. I even know what you -were- about to ask me; you wanted to know if I had any food about. But now that I've called your mistake, you're too proud, aren't you? What a shame..." She snapped her fingers, a massive blackened salmon on a silver platter materializing on the ground before her. Venter dove for the platter, leaning in and attempting to take a bite of the fish but recoiling in pain as his teeth crack hard against the solid scales of the fish. As he pulled away, howling and cursing, the scales of the fish began to fragment, floating in the air one by one as a sort of golden string materialized and affixed itself to each in turn.
"Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day, monsieur bunny. Give a man a deck of cards, and he... well, he loses his lunch money and doesn't eat at all. But make a man a deck of cards..." She looked at him curiously. "What if I told you there was a way you could never be beaten? A way to know every card that'll come up, on any deck? A way to make them come up as you please? What would you do?" The final scales broke away, leaving nothing but a large skeleton behind. She plucked one of the bones off the platter and snatched a piece of paper out of thin air, scribbling on it idly with the tip.
"Anything. Anything y'want." His eyes were wide with a mixture of fear and passion, hoping that the wonderful things she said could possibly be true.
"Anything?" She eyed him curiously, sucking on the tip of the bone for a moment before returning to scratching at the paper.
"Anything"
"Well then... sign here" She handed him both paper and fishbone; in contrast to her previous magics, this seemed underwhelming at best. The paper was completely blank, and the fishbone had no signs of being changed in any way... still, he felt it best to play along. He took the bone, and scratched his initials roughly around the area where she had indicated, before handing it back to her.
"That will do quite nicely" She said, rolling up the paper. "You have very nice handwriting, Mr. Deitan. Now..." She kicked the platter into the air, where it flipped a few times and transformed into a hard wooden box. Taking it in her paw, she opened the lid and gestured for what had once been the fishes scales to fall into place. They now consisted of 52 weighty cards, each apparently crafted of a thin sheet of ebony and adorned in golden ink. The back of each showed a detailed diagram of each phrase of the moon. "Here is your task, as agreed"
A bit dazed, he took the box from her, not fully comprehending what was going on. She had said something about a task, certainly, and tasks generally meant work, which was one of the things he had taken up wandering to escape. However, they were quite beautiful... he found himself already quite attached to them, taking them out of the box one by one and looking fondly at the elegant details, the sheen of the materials. Each one seemed to already be precious to him.
"Now, you have 10 years... 10 years to give yourself away" she said. Her voice was that of a businessman wrapping up fine print, smoothly speaking very quickly; however, even with her spin the hare felt compelled to stop her.
"I have to... what?"
"Well... the price was set pretty clearly in the contract." She turns the paper back over, it now seemingly consisting of paragraph after paragraph of the finest print imaginable. "A gift with the cards requires a gift of the cards... and to use the cards, you must be the cards. Those cares, in that box, are you... an' you have to give them all away." She began idly tracing the suits in the air with smoke from her fingertips; first a diamond, followed by a club, followed by a spade, and finally a heart trimmed in bright pink smoke. "Wealth... body... spirit... and heart. You have 10 years..."
"Hold on" he said. The hare was trembling; he felt cold, in spite of the Louisiana heat, and he couldn't help but feel that the box was somehow to blame. "Nemle.... Nemela... Nemlo... Nem. Who are you, really?"
"I told you... my name is Nemllallafnwodelbativenieht. But you can call me Nem. Or, if you prefer, I do have one other name... "
"And that is?"
"God."