[IN PROGRESS]
Martha and James are soulmates trapped together in a never-ending reincarnation loop. Not a bad way to spend eternity, but they wanted more. They wanted a child. Serafina is born and Martha and James are elated to love and raise her a...
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July 1, 2002 |31|
Martha lowered her perspective level with the board. She was down to her last three pawns (or 'coins' as the Super Mario themed pieces correlated), a knight ('Yoshi'), and her king ('Mario' himself). Serafina, who had learned the basics of chess less than a month ago, was closing in on mate, their Bowser led army plentifully spread across the board. Well, it has been quite a month...
Serafina had started the match with their father's Quinn Conundrum. Martha countered with her specially designed Beckett Bamboozle for which Serafina was apparently waiting, countering with a novel combination of the Budapest and Blackmar-Diemer Gambits, and it was all downhill from there. I'm still not sure what the hell she did. We'll have to come up with a name for it if it doesn't already have one – the Serafina Subjugation has my vote.
Across from Martha, their adorable face was conflicted – a mixture of amusement, pity, and guilt. "It's really not fair. You've never played me whereas I have played you..."
"Yeah, yeah, I know the drill," she said, going over her futile options in her head for a fifth time. "It's just been a while since I've been on this side of it."
She settled on trading a pawn for one of Serafina's rooks, but before she could move, the front door opened behind her. Serafina's face lit up. "PeePaw!" they shrieked, then jumped up and ran to the door, flipping the chessboard off the table and scattering the pieces across the living room floor in the process.
"Knock, knock," Steven said then grunted as his granddaughter crashed into him. "What a welcome!"
"I missed you!" Serafina said as they squeezed his waist.
"Gee-whiz, Serafina Ballerina, it's only been a week and a half."
"Feels like longer," they said with their eyes pinched closed and their head pressed against his stomach. After a moment, they released him and pointed at Martha. "Mommy's teaching me a game. It's got a lot of rules. What's it called, Mommy? What's the game called?"
But Martha couldn't speak, caught off guard by the scene playing out before her. She'd had similar reunions with her paternal grandmother who would pass, each life, somewhere around Martha's nineteenth birthday. Of greater alarm, however, was her daughter's complete reversion to their age-appropriate persona.
"Chess!" Serafina said finally. "That's what it's called. The game that Mommy's teaching me is called chess. There are a lot of rules."
The way her voice bounces...
"Chess? I love chess!" Steven enthused.
"Me too! But there are a lot of rules. And funny names. The Yoshis are dinosaurs but Mommy says they're called knightsand the Princess Peach and the Princess Daisy are called biscuits,no... bishops. The Princesses are called bishops."
