Waiting For Answers

A light foggy mist rolled in as clouds began to gather in the sky before starting to spiral, swirl and storm, twisting themselves to form an hourglass, whose gushing tide of draining sand seems to slow to an excruciating crawl, where the falling grains seem to sit suspended in the air, never to reach the eternal comfort of the ground below them; indeed the hourglass of clouds and fog spun itself into oblivion before the final falling droplet had the opportunity to nestle with its brethren at the base of the glass.

At the Dukes boards, Carlos Manganese’s claims of Scott playing an illegal move were, after the Arbiter was summoned to the board, which had had its pieces hastily reset to the state they were in prior to Carlos flipping the board, to investigate, ultimately waved away, forcing Carlos to continue to play out the match from a position he had not anticipated being in and was not happy with as a result of having to watch himself slowly cede ground and get squeezed out of the tactical defensive fortress he had established for himself - hoping against hope he could hold on long enough for Scott to make a mistake he could capitalise on to launch a counterattack or at least stabilise the position to force a draw and defend his honour as a serious Dukes competitor, all while having to keep a watchful eye over his concurrent match against Elena which, thanks to the wild nature of the way the match was playing out, required more attention and brainpower than Carlos had originally bargained for when he agreed to play multiple games at once, despite being in a commanding enough position that he was relatively confident that he was on course to win the match, particularly after a sequence in which Carlos was able to interpose Haven to 7H before playing Knave to 4N in response to Elena playing a small inaccuracy of Vizier to KY0, which then allowed for a very elegant sequence of Knave to U3, Haven to 1E and Cardinal to N4.

One no-longer-lone wolf and one half-wolf-half-hound pup walk together into the forest, away from the twanging sounds of human chatter and shovels in dirt. Black Claw trails just behind the wise-looking grey wolf, attempting to forge a path amongst the trees and remember ‘this scent means I have a pack’. The forest grows denser, and leaves darker as the wolves head further in. The landscape holds them in gentle embrace as the wolf teaches his pack how to survive in a harsh world, how to stalk, how to hunt, how to sleep, and how to say goodbye to the sun in winter. Through every passing glaive the young pup grows in bounds and leaps until he can stand toe to toe with Roscoe, until he can truly understand the meaning of having a pack that can understand you. But Black Claw was not so quick to trade all of his old life for the new, as free as the forest made him feel, there were still things he could teach Roscoe, and so, as the two grew the dog teaches his pack how to beg, how to sit, how to sneak next to the fire, how to be close with the humans without fear or pain. The forest spins amongst the earth, which spins amongst the fog, which spins amongst the void; and in all this spinning time is watching, watching the two wolves as they fight and play and live, and though they are not truly free when trapped in the forrest, they are happy. Two aged wolves sit side by side on a snow-covered outcrop, checkered bandanas covering their necks as they look up at the waning moon.

Rosie and Scott, who had become so focussed on each other to cede any of their attention to the happenings going on with the wolf-dogs around them, continued to talk and chatter with each other about everything they could possibly think of to keep the conversation going, irrespective of the relevance of what they were talking about to anything at all, in the hopes that eventually the other would cave under the emotional weight of pining and make the first move (or at least the move more substantial than the fluttering of eyelashes and half-forced giggles that had taken place thus far) so that something more would happen between them, though both refused to take the leap themself, albeit for different reasons: Rosie, having grown up in remote farmland, lacked the experience with men like Scott to tell how he felt about her or to know that to Scott all that really mattered was that she was yearning for him; and Scott insistent on proving to himself that he still had the sway to make women swoon over him which he had during his competition days, and confirm the belief, which he couldn’t possibly be wrong about, that he - and not his riches - is what all the women from the past had seen in him, so surely he didn’t need to embarrass himself by making the first move on this lovely lady who was definitely falling under his spell and would make a move herself if he waited just a bit longer.

The espresso which Alusia Foundation café barista Al served to Elena was adorned with one of their signature foam animals, in this instance it was a bird which flew up and around the café before settling back on the coffee, completing its lap before Al was done with cooking the chicken and fish, which sat sizzling away on the grill as Al and Elena passed the time with idle chatter which seemed to make everything go by much more slowly than it normally would, as the wait for anything meaningful to happen dragged on longer.