Alice had her arms crossed in front of her chest and moved her hands up and down on her upper arms, she had used her arm muscles a lot yesterday and now again with those heavy lifting, she sure should take it slow but she didn’t and it was quite a bit of a dumb thing to do. Of course she didn’t say it out loud and when Jupiter looked at her with a questioned look, she simply said it was cold, which was nonsense about her, it wasn’t that warm that was true but she never showed any problems with that as she wore a good set of clothing. The red head shook her head as they entered the town square, looking left and right to find people to talk to. Her companions staying in their animal form, because one person was easier to talk to than three, and especially if you had pets to talk about. It had happened often before, only now it was Alice wanting to ask the questions. She looked around and when she finally noticed a guy alone, it might be good to walk to him, it seemed as if he was reading something and only when she was getting closer, she noticed that he wasn’t looking down at a book but at a chessboard and she stared at it. She had been in Hargeon before but had never seen it. The boy was playing chess against someone else and soon enough she heard checkmate. The other person complaining about how difficult it was to play against a genius and that it was not fair, stalked off in a foul mood while the boy seemed to be looking a bit gloomy after that. He held out a pouch of jewels as if to pay the person but sunk back into his chair.
There were two things why Alice considered now to play against this person. She wanted to see a happier smile, it wouldn’t always be fun to be called a genius, especially not if people stalked off being angry. Apart from that Alice believed that if this little man was a genius, he might be able to recall a memory of the people that she could describe, to ask if he had seen them. That’s why she dropped herself in the chair opposite him, ”Or did you plan to go home and stop?” Now she would never win, but that didn’t mean she didn’t plan to try. She wasn’t the smartest, Kon would have done much better but he wasn’t here and she would have to find answers anyway. So she leaned on her right elbow and smiled at the boy, ”I wouldn’t mind to give it a try.” Which seemed to make the boy overjoyed with help and he set up the game immediately, giving her the white pieces to begin with and himself the black pawns and so on. She looked at the figures that were on the second row, closest to herself.
Wordcount: 502/1000