Of Gambles and Gambits

This afternoon I was at Gambler's Town. This two-building edifice in the old administrative centre of Atlantis once boasted the tallest hotel in the region, and is a stone's throw away from the infamous Gambler Inn, Silver Saint Art Museum, New Library, and other such structures of human and social capital.

We were having lunch there, on my side a curious package of tenderly done minced meat, egg and caramelised onions; on the other side a wrapped up but tasty mess of butter prawns in aromatic leaves. Then we saw the couple, and knew them at once. They were old friends.

The slightly corpulent man had been my senior in my younger days as a wyvern. He was now the Old Man's Oldness Man; some people have Wellness Men, some people have Richness Men, the Old Man has an Oldness Man. His wife was (and still is) Nobility personified, with a cheeky smile which goes back almost to the beginning of my life.

We chatted, with their two children B & K hanging off their parents' various limbs. The boy has that smile, and the dimples too.

I noticed the white hair, which somehow bears little relation to the idea of oldness. I think they're a great couple and those children are charming. Sometimes things look like gambles, sometimes they look like gambits. The difference in them is this: with the former you often think you'll win, which is why you lose; with the latter, you deliberately lose in order to win.

Life is full of that sort of choice. That's why when I see happy people, I feel happy for them too.