By: Tara Kannan
They had been playing the same game for eight months.
Not continuously. Just… paused.
The board sat on Elle’s desk, still between textbooks and an expiring fern fading into obscurity. Shades of gray dust gently covered the black squares. A white knight had a chip in its mane. A pawn was missing entirely, though neither of them remembered capturing it.
“Your move,” Cora stated.
“You said that already.”
“Because it is.”
Elle leaned closer to the board. The pieces looked more abandoned than arranged. Both queens were still standing. Most of the pawns were scattered in awkward diagonals. As if they tried to be something else, but failed.
“I don’t know what you want me to do,” Elle replied.
“That’s kind of the problem.”
They used to finish games in one sitting. Quick, aggressive, dramatic. Cora derived pleasure from sacrificing pieces just to see where it would get her. Elle preferred slow, agonizing, traps. Back then, losing meant demanding a rematch.
Now neither of them wanted to win.
A week later, the board changed. No one admitted touching it, of course.
A black bishop had moved three squares forward. A white rook had rotated slightly, facing the wrong direction. The empty space where the pawn had been felt intentional now.
“Did you-”
“No.”
Later that night Elle dreamed the pieces were moving on their own. Not towards checkmate though. The pieces were shifting, adjusting, and simply refusing symmetry.
The next afternoon a pawn moved to the opposite end of the board. It shouldn’t have been able to. There was no clear path.
Cora plucked the piece gently with her delicate fingers.
“Well?” she asked. “Promote it.”
“To what?”
“It’s the rule, it needs to become something.”
Elle turned the pawn in her fingers. It was worn smooth, softer than the others.
“What if it doesn’t want to?” she questioned.
Cora laughed heartily, eliciting a confused expression from Elle.
“That’s not how the game works.”
“Perhaps that’s why we’re stuck.”
They left the pawn without promoting it.
The next morning the board had expanded.
“It’s broken,” snapped Cora.
“Or it’s just changing,” countered Elle.
Neither of them moved a piece.
After a while Cora leaned back in her chair and gazed at the stucco ceiling.
“Do you even want to keep playing?”
Cora hunched over the board, anticipating what the next move would be. She dragged her intrepid pawn into harm’s way. Elle smirked at Cora. She had a plan.
Elle’s queen swallowed Cora’s queen—a distraction. Smart.
No one rushed the end of the match. Cora reached for a knight, hesitated, and withdrew her hand.
“You always wait for me to move first,”
“ You always want me to.”
Silence.
One of the rooks tipped and rolled. No one reached for it.
Love, in the end, wasn’t about winning.
It wasn’t even about finishing the game.
It was choosing not to flip the board when you’re losing.
It was understanding that sometimes the queen is gone—and the game is still worth playing.
The Roar 