"What?" Bobby asked. "Who are you talking to." He entered the room and was looking at Shawn with a puzzled look. "Ha! Are you just playing around? Like, with the Joes?"

The creature gave Bobby a sly look from the ceiling, but Bobby didn't seem to notice.

Shawn laughed guilelessly, as if he were embarrassed to be caught playing pretend by himself. "Yeah, I just found this old deck of cards, and I was doing voices for them."

"Oh, cool, let's play." Bobby said.

Above Bobby, the dwarf-man opened his mouth while hanging upside down. A rather large 'loogy' began to hang, filled with spittle and phlegm until it extended two inches from his mouth, directly above Bobby's head.

Shawn grabbed Bobby lightly by the arm and pulled him towards the bedroom door. "Let's do it outside!"

"Uhhh-OK" Bobby agreed, letting himself get dragged away.

Shawn could hear the 'plop' of the Dwarf landing on the floor and beginning to follow them.

Once outside, Shawn saw the Dwarf sitting on top of a tree branch not to far away.

"Tee hee hee" it said with merriment. Bobby didn't seem to hear or notice.

"So, are we gonna play?" Bobby asked, confused as to the rush to get outside.

"Heck yes! Or should I say...you'll get no fun out of me, Joes!" Shawn tried to keep him away from under the tree branch as they played, but otherwise just tried to keep Bobby invested. He'd have to figure out the dwarf once Bobby got bored.

Shawn and Bobby played while the Dwarf looked on. It was past the morning, but not quite noon on a fine summer day. A gentle breeze brushed through the yard, cooling the occupants of the neighborhood and offering relief from the hot son, which was pretty much all you could ask for during these summer months.

As Bobby pretended to fight off waves of Cobra Commander's soldiers, the Dwarf sat in the tree. Shawn could see that he was wearing a big, thick, black belt and shoes that were polished black. Stockings, up to his knees with stripes, colors of black, brown and green banded across his legs. He almost looked like a leprechaun.

"I gotta go pee!" Bobby yelled, abandoning the game and running inside, as kids often do without a moments notice.

Shawn nonchalantly wandered behind the tree, such that he was out of eye and earshot of the house. He looked up at the dwarf. "Good morning, sir. Do you want your cards back?"

The small dwarf placed the little, corn-cob pipe upside down, letting the ashes fall from it, the wind taking them away.

"Names-is Griffix. Griffix is the name. I be one of you. I'm from the Order, I am. I'm from the Order of Sybil I am. The very Order that you joined. Turns out the Fortune Teller sent me to ya. Melinda ain't the best of communicators she is. Far from it. So she sent me, she did, so I can be a sort of tutor for ya."

"As far as the Cards are concerned. They're yours to keep. And yours to practice with. Ya can't be a good magician if you don't know your way around a deck of cards, can ya? It ain't that cards is the only things magicians do, but its a place to start, isn't it?"

Shawn pulled out the deck, fanning the cards experimentally. "What should I be practicing?"

Griffix hopped off the branch and slowly floated to the ground, not even making a sound as those strange shoes touched the earth.

"The Acme of Control of course. Or the Charlier Cut, or Bottom Dealing. Of course, there are other, don't you know?  Double Lift or the Gambler's Palm, or Out of This World, or The Four Burglars. You could do the Mechanic's Grip if you work really hard, ya can. Don'tcha know, the Magician's Palm?  The Three Aces?" Griffix suggest, the idea of card tricks making him very excited to talk all of the sudden.

"How do you do those?" Shawn tried to carefully shuffle the cards.

"Well, you have to pick one, ya do. Ya can't do all of them at the same time. That won't do at all. A fun time can be had if you just pick one of the tricks. That's the way you start. They say a magician always starts somewhere, they do. But I 'suppose ya could say that about anything, ya can."

"Maybe we should start by sayin' hello to each other, we should? Startin' out fresh is a good way to get the blood movin. A good way to start out together, since we'll probably be spendin' a lot of time together we will. More time than you and your friend. More time that you and your parents. More time to get started. My name's Griffix. I've been with the Circus since 1922 and I've only died twice since then."

"How about ya tell me something about yourself now?"

Shawn looked up at Griffix, a little worried at the idea of spending a lot of time with him. But he supposed that was the nature of things now. "Umm, I guess? My name is Shawn and I don't think I've ever died? I'm an actor. Well, probably. I don't know if people really liked my acting."

Griffix frowned. "Ya haven't died yet? You're new to the whole thing, ya say ya are? Well, that means we're gonna have to start from the beginning, we will. The whole beginning, we will."

Then Griffix smiled a broad smile that shown a band of yellow teeth, blocky and crooked

"It'll be a whale of a time!"

"I had fortune told as a young lad in Ireland. That was pretty much all she wrote. Every night I dreamed and dreamed and dreamed myself until I was full of dreams and visions, I was. Then I stopped knowing what was a dream and what wasn't. Then soon, when I realized I weren't dreaming no more I found out that I was part of something I wasn't so sure I wanted to be part of. But then after that I got used to it, I did. You'd be surprised the things you can get used to after some time, ya can."

"Now, what's this about your acting, say say?"

Shawn returned Griffix's smile, trying to hide his fear and awkwardness, and instead feigning endearment and charm. "I was acting in a big important movie, but I don't think people liked me in it. I don't even know if I like acting, but it still hurts when they didn't like me." Shawn found himself being weirdly honest; maybe this was stuff he wanted to talk about but couldn't with any of his family and friends. After all, it wasn't like Griffix could tell his mom about this, right?

Griffix nodded in some kind of awkward, jilting head movement. His shaggy head bobbed up and down. "You know? Some times you've got to trick yourself, ya do. That's the key to bein' a great magician. You pull trick on yourself ya do, and then ya don't even realize it ain't a trick. That's how Merrick of the Order of Sybil taught himself to forget pain. If he hadn't-ah- forgotten what pain felt like, he would have never been able to go down into the low places and bring back the Fortune Teller's ball when Mr. Pibbles threw it into the proprietor's well. Those were dark times. Yes they were."

"So what I'm sayin' lad, is that if ya want to do it that can be done. But it starts by acting like you want to feel. You'd be surprised how the world reacts when you act like you want to feel. So I'm sayin' if you take a moment to feel sad and then act like you aren't, then see if you feel sad at all. Go ahead try it."

Shawn was a little surprised at the advice - it was something he'd been trying himself for a while, to somewhat limited effect. Still, he let the smile drop for a second, blew out a little breath, and then brightened up, as though a great weight had lifted from him. "Is this better?"

Griffix looked up with a big smile on his face. "Don't know lad, you tell me. Well, do ya feel better now?"

OOC: Shawn Rolls Composure + Empathy with the following results

0 Successes: No. Shawn does not really feel better. There's too much to worry about to have a simple breathing technique and 'mind over matter' self talk to help him out right now.

1 Successes: Shawn feels relieved. At least in this space and time (scene) he feels a great weight has been lifted off of his shoulder. Maybe there was something to pretending and acting like you were happy. Maybe people's minds did really work that way

2 Successes: A great relief! Shawn feels a tremendous achievement has been made. He feels truly at peace and relaxed. Shawn gets +1 added to his dice pool in an upcoming scene where he must act to get a part in a movie.

Shawn gave Griffix a much more cheerful smile; he would've done it regardless of how he was feeling, but he was surprised at how much genuinely better he felt. "Much!"

OOC: 19:02, Today: Shawn Cramer rolled 1 success using 3d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s with rolls of 8,1,7.  Composure + Empathy.

Griffix began to teach Shawn various card tricks. Time passed by slowly, with both of them looking over to see if Bobby had returned or not. The cards were pushed, shuffled, dealt, spread out over the ground near the dandelions and grass. Griffix even made a few disappear and then return with a sleight of hand.  Then they heard a sound coming from the house.

When Shawn looked over he saw Bobby. And when he turned back around, Griffix was gone. The deck of cards neatly folded into its pack laying on the ground.

"Oh Brother." Bobby said, not seeming to notice anything. "It's hot out here."

Shawn fanned himself as he sat in the shade of the big tree. "You're telling me!" He leaned over to pick up the pack of cards and put them away, considering as he did the kind of tricks he'd learned in the short bathroom break.

OOC: End of Thread

Shawn notes thread: Shawn's List of Tricks

Shawn Joins Thread: Shawn: A Conversation Overheard