A Hidden Sleight Moves the Ship

She lit a long, thin cigarette. Smoke curled like memory. Her smile, all ridges and shadows, betrayed nothing. “I only leave home for funds or fun,” she said, sipping from a maroon glass dulled to bronze.

He sat across from her, unsure. A black deck of cards lay on the table. Charcoal suits. Onyx numbers. Royals dressed in raven blue.

“They’re Sudanese,” she said, eyes unreadable. Was she speaking of the cards, or the people within them? “Both.”

He tried to ask something, but she spoke first.

“Love. Fear. Money. Destiny. Always one—or tangled together. The soul’s not complicated.” She crushed her cigarette into a crystal ashtray, which flared like fire met dye.

She shuffled the cards in mesmerizing silence, then dealt five in the shape of a V. Smoke thickened. Time stilled. Her lips curled as she drew another cigarette to life.

“Fear is invisible. Loathing, eternal. Love—a string plucked by fate. Destiny hides in death. And money? It moves the pirate’s ship. Not wind. Sales.”

She paused, the ember glowing like truth.

“But none of it exists without one force.”

He leaned forward.

She exhaled slowly.

“Magic is born in the unseen hours,” she said. “The crowd sees the trick. Not the silence it took. Not the repetition. Not the failures. Not the abyss. That’s the sleight—the true supernatural.”

The ashtray burned gently beside her.