The Songs of Skyrunner Taroteye: Tells

"I fold." Pyroclast's words hit like a rock dropped in my stomach. With that, all the fun had finally drained from this game.
"No! You're not allowed to fold! I finally got lucky this hand!" I shoved my five cards in her face forcing Py to lean back sharply into her masses of frizzy, brown curls.
With a smirk she took them from me and shuffled. "And that's exactly why I fold."
"Ugh! I don't understand! Even when counting cards you're still beating me!" I wailed.
Py looked back then forth at the three decks between her two hands. "You're still counting cards?"
"Admittedly the math gets harder the more decks you add--"
"No shit!"
"--but statistically I should have won at least one hand by now! How can I be so bad at this?" I clutched at my head, my knees tucked under my chin. It actually hurt how much I failed.
"Yeah," Pyroclast teased me, "how is a psychic so bad at poker?"
That word always put a bad taste in my mouth. I smacked and glared up at the tipsy dealer. That shit-eating grin.
"I'm no more a psychic than you are a magician," I retorted.
"Hey now." In a buzz of bending cards, she bridged the decks impressively. "Don't go insulting magicians. They know how to slight-of-hand spiders into your pudding."
Without moving my knees, I nabbed my hard cider and glugged at the bottle in a way that made the sour, pear fizz accidentally go up my nose. I wiggled my sinuses.
She dealt me a new hand. I glowered. "I'm bad at this."
"You're empathic!" Py exclaimed. "Stop counting cards and start reading me! Just empath if I'm lying or not!"
That's not a verb. That's not a word! "That's not how empathy works."
Py leaned back on her hand with plenty of room to stretch out since we were playing on the floor. She guzzled her cider and wiggled her toes, maybe to see if she could still feel them. "So how does it work, then?"
I put my head to my knees, my hair sliding over my shoulders in waves and curls. "I can't read your mind, or 'just tell if you're lying or not,'" I moaned. I looked up at her, pleading for her to understand. "I read people's intent."
Rather than adding her empty bottle to the other three in a diamond shape, she actually balanced it on top of them. Py looked back at me with interest. The tilt of her head said, Go on...?
"When people talk, I don't just hear what they say, but why they're saying it. If someone lies, I can hear them hiding. From there it's just logic to find the probable lie and guess the probable reality. But with cards!" I spread my hands emphatically over the untouched deal, "I can't tell a damn thing! The intent is always, 'I'm trying to win!' 'I'm trying to win!' 'I'm trying to win!!' Everything anyone ever does in a game is to win! It's not a lie if bluffing is legal in the rules! It's not deception if throwing off your opponent is the point of the game!"
I scrunched my eyes and play-pounded my fists against the air. "All I'm reading off you is, 'I want to win!'"
Py snorted a laugh. "Well I can read you like a book! You wear your emotions"
"'On my sleeve,' I know," I said along with her.
"I always have," I admitted. "It just doesn't seem fair to hide them when other people can't hide them from me. All I ever do is read people's emotions before they even realize they're feeling them."
Pyroclast sighed with a smile. She flipped my curls back behind my shoulders to reveal my face. Popping the cap off the last cider, my friend offered it to me. Pouting not at Py, but at the inner depth of my own ineptitude, I gratefully took it and sipped.
"Cmon." Py picked up her cards. "One more hand, then you can grind me into a pulp at Tetris."
A bit of love returned to my heart and a bit of smile to my face. "Yay."
We anteed. "One card," I asked.
Py dealt for me, then said, "Two."
The miniscule hesitation before her draw screamed like a neon sign to me. "Stop trying to lose!"
Py shot a bug-eyed frown at me. "How the fuck do you do that?!?"