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

The design of the little pawns and other items was amazing, Alice was almost afraid to play with it as it seemed so fragile, what if she would break it. But as many more people had been able to use it, the red head was sure she would be as well. So she started, with her first pawn. She eyed Bart, as he introduced himself right in front of the game as she did as well. Being flanked on her left by Hecate and on her right by Jupiter, they had a short conversation about the eevees. Surely turning to Bart as she asked him why he played so many chess games, which was really a guess. She could have easily missed him when they were first here. Bart immediately stalked off about his home situation and the competition that he felt that were needed with his other brothers, that seemed to have the same intelligence level as he had and that brought a lot of pressure. All Alice could do was listen and show her sympathy. She had not much memory of her home situation but there had been a pressure of being twins and in her case the evil one, of course she didn’t say any about that, just that she knew that competition could be healthy until it became too much and she explained that she was part of a twin that now fought more or less to figure out who was the strongest of the two and it interested Bart. Connecting to that she asked if he had seen the two men that she had met in September and he seemed to think about it for a while, keeping the conversation during the match silent. She lost obviously because she had not played Chess in a long time and again she knew she had played it but not in her memories of after the amnesia, perhaps in the orphanage, perhaps as a child with her father. Which was another quest to go after when she felt ready enough to do that and had the security on her children, Midas must understand that.

When the game was over, Bart handed her the pouch of money and she thanked him, as well for the conversation, which he thanked her for as well. He came back to the conversation on the two men and she heard that he had seen them, if her description was accurate because that always made it difficult but she nodded, that she understood and he said that as far as he had seen them gone, he pointed to a direction, the opposite of the one from the barracks and that made it more interesting. Perhaps the Council had some secret house or perhaps they didn’t belong and bluffed or had been paid to do something like that. She turned her golden eyes on the ones from Jupiter and they nodded shortly, she thanked Bart and left the game and the park to go find more.



Wordcount: 1003/1000