Logs:Fortune Favors

Fortune Favors
Dramatis Personae Destiny, Amo
In Absentia Mystique	2024-11-26 “Starting to think you got a way with luck.”
Location <NYC> - A Bar with Weird Vibes
The outside patio to this particular bar is lit with a string of lights, heaters dotted about that don’t help warm the dark Wrought iron tables and chairs but at least keep the chill of the night out. There’s a band performing on a slightly elevated platform, some older songs that you’ve either heard a million times before or have never heard in your life, but somehow everyone else seems to clearly recognize it. Amo is sat at one of the tables, one that’s angled towards the back so the sound of the music isn’t so loud. She wears a thick black and grey striped collared sweater that’s unbuttoned down the middle, sleeves rolled up to about mid-forearm so the sleeves poof out slightly, over a dark shirt and light colored straight leg pants that match the base color of the sweater. She spins an iced drink in her glass with her straw, and has an idle sway in her seat. The sway is easily attributable to the music, but continues even as one of the songs finishes, and Amo cheers loudly with a hand cupped to her face. Destiny emerges from the mysterious bowels of the building to which this patio is attached, guided by one of the steady stream of servers circulating in and out. She's wearing a black duster over an azure blue velvet dress, and flashes a grateful smile to the server when he deposits her at the bar. She actually does use her cane to locate the stool, but then she cants her head toward Amy's cheer, eyes not tracking to the other woman though she is at least facing the right direction. The band is starting up their next song, this one quieter, allowing a buzz of chatter to intermingle with it easily. Amo swipes her hand across the table to take a sip of her drink, then she catches the sight of Destiny over the rim of her glass. She’s standing, wiping her napkin on the wet ring from her glass and sliding onto the stool next to Destiny, “Better or worse than the mojo bar?” She’s asking good humored, placing her glass down on the bar top but keeping her fingers resting on it, “Could do with some cats if you ask me.” Then she adds, perhaps unnecessarily, “It’s Amo by the way.” Destiny says "could do with some cats" in such perfect unison with Amo it sounds uncanny. "There's just the one, for now." She tilts her head a little quizzically at Amo. "I know. I am Destiny." There's a sort of theatrical gravitas that makes this sound more like a declaration than an (re)introduction. "Do you know this band?" Amo’s eyebrows tick upwards at the words in unison, and she mutters a quick “Jinx.” before knocking twice against the wooden legs of her bar stool. She huffs out a short laugh at Destiny’s declaration, “There a cat somewhere?” She twists around eagerly to search for it. She takes another sip of her drink, and gestures towards the band with it, ice cubes clinking against the sides of the glass with the motion, “Friend of mine’s the drummer, she invited me to come watch’em.” She’s still glancing around for this mystery cat, “How ‘bout you?” Destiny smiles, incongruously delighted by Amo's reflexive apotropaic rituals. "Oh yes. The cat is very near at hand." Who drops that kind of bomb and then goes on without further explanation? Destiny, apparently. "I caught wind of an interesting event here tonight, and so I have come. Your friend and her company are spirited and skilled. My compliments." She turns slightly toward Amo, though this means now she is facing neither the woman nor the band, but out toward the shadowy alley just beyond the patio rail. "Do you believe in luck?" “Yeah they are pretty good aye? I’ll tell’er.” Amo spins on her bar stool so she can face outwards towards the rest of the bar—maybe to search for this cat better—with her elbows resting backwards against the bar top. She idly scans the people, the floor, the doors. She blows out a breath, head tilting to the side to glance towards Destiny curiously, “I do. I better believe in it, after all we been through.” "On open terrain, first occupy the high ground and secure your lines of supply," Destiny intones, her eyes fixed on the middle distance, "thus you can fight to advantage. The wise general knows this, and so does the cat." The tilt of her head here is probably to help her localize sound, but with the faint hint of a smile on her lips it looks inordinately coquettish. "And you believe that you can influence luck?" She braces her cane on the floor and slightly rotates her stool toward a young man buying drinks for his table. Is she listening to the exchange between him and the bartender? The clink of the three glasses as he gathers them between his hands? Even with the softer music it can't be easy to pick out these sounds. "Watch." “That why my childhood cat’s favorite spot to ambush me was from top of the fridge? Turns out he was a fuzzy strategic genius whole time, should’a known.” Amo’s nails tap idly against her glass, and now tracks her gaze along the higher vantage points of the establishment. “Luck’s a force of its own. Lotta ways to bring it about though, good and bad.” She is again, shooting Destiny a curious look, then follows the direction she’s facing to the young man. There’s a hyper vigilance that doesn’t necessarily snap into place, but more so just slowly heightens slightly from her usual baseline, and it manages to leak into her otherwise easy tone, “Someone chucking robots again?” "The movement of many a cat is unfathomable as night," Destiny sounds like she is reciting something again, or maybe just being inscrutably oriental, "and abrupt as a clap of thunder." Just then the lead singer accidentally singing too close to the microphone causes the aging speaker system to emit a loud unpleasant pop, startling the black cat that had been lying atop one of them. The cat leaps off of the speaker stack -- it rocks perilously but does not fall -- and lands on the table Amo had been sitting at, which rocks up on two legs into the path of the young man with too many drinks, which splash spectacularly over the empty seat. The poor cat shoots across the patio to take shelter under the bar between Amo and Destiny. "No robots, this time." Amo startles at the sound of the pop, armor dancing across her cheeks and down the visible skin of her forearms and hands. She’s halfway to standing when the scene finishes unfolding, and is frozen for a moment longer, watching the table in which she’d just been seated at with wide eyes. She lets the hand she’d instinctively begun to reach towards Destiny with drop, and she turns to look at her, then down at the cat. “…No robots this time.” She echoes in bewilderment. She blows out a breath, and bends down to offer the cat a few sniffs of her finger and calming pets. The cat must take to it well, because it lets Amo scoop it up into a cradle so she can sit heavy back in the stool and continue to scritch under its neck, “Ever heard of a kāreke?” She asks Destiny, maybe rhetorically. Her voice then turns appreciative, “Starting to think you got a way with luck.” "Kāreke." Destiny repeats the word meditatively. "I don't think so, but I would like to." With another gentle push on her cane, she turns her stool around to grace the bartender with a demure smile when he sets an unidentifibale fizzy cocktail in front of her. "A way. Perhaps. You might say I have a...unique relationship with Luck." “It’sa bird. When you hear it, means there’s good or bad luck ahead.” Amo explains, turning in her stool as well, still scratching the cat, “Oh- they also know the future, almost forgot that part.” She adds quickly with a brief wave of her hand, almost as an afterthought. “You believe in luck too then? You two chat often?” Destiny nods, her expression intent. "An fascinating bird. If they know the future, I wonder how they decide whether the nexus to come should be considered good or bad luck. For me, it's less a matter of belief for me and more of perspective. Still, luck and I do chat constantly." She tips her head back to study the sky. "What does it sound like?" The kāreke." Amo hums in consideration, “Don’t remember, real rare. My dad was the one to point them out. Think they make a kinda trill?” She brings her hand up by her head and twitters two of her fingers so the skin makes a quiet swishing sound at the motion. The cat paws at her arm and she brings her hand back down to resume the petting. “Been a long time too.” She hooks her heel up onto one of the creaky rungs of the bar stool, “What d’you two chat about all day? Your wife get jealous?” She asks, inserting some humor into her voice for the second question. Destiny considers this seriously, her sightless eyes still fixed on the sky as though expecting to not-see a portentous bird on the spot. "I can identify many birds by call, but many birds trill. The next time I hear an unfamiliar one, perhaps I will listen a little more closely." At Amo's last question she laughs, bright amused but not derisive. "Oh, my wife isn't threatened by dalliances. She knows I will always return to her at the end of the day." “Now that’s real sweet.” The cat squirms in Amo’s arms, and she gently deposits it back to the floor, “Aye next time you an luck have a lil chat,” She swipes the black cat fur off her sweater, then scoops up her drink, “Put in a good word for me will ya?” Destiny's smile has eased into something thoughtful. She slides the glass the bartender brought for her over to Amo. "Another rum and coke for you." When she withdraws her hand there is a crisp and precisely folded hundred dollar bill tucked under the coaster. "And a round for the band." She turns full to Amo and seems to hold her gaze for a moment. It's somewhat unnerving, given her eyes don't normally track things visually, and given they still do not actually focus correctly. It feels more like she's looking through Amo. "I don't think your destiny will be left up to luck." She slips off the bench, past Amo, and is gone as if she had never been there at all.