"They look like they’re playing cards." Amy looks again, and wrinkles her nose. "Weird cards." Amy barges curiously into the middle of a four-nerd game. Almost anywhere else, the appearance of a female with discernible waist among these guys would cause some kind of a stir. Their eyes would at least travel rudely up and down her body. But these guys only think about one thing: the cards in their hands, each contained in a clear plastic sleeve to keep it mint condition, each decorated with a picture of a troll or wizard or some other leaf on the post-Tolkienian evolutionary tree, and printed on the back with elaborate rules. Mentally, these guys are not in a mall on the East Side of greater Seattle. They are on a mountain pass trying to kill each other with edged weapons and numinous fire.