The game/2

He stood still, staring at the night. merging his eyes with the horizon, the darkness as a plain wall of nothing just in front of him. A flat lawn all around, empty, just as dark as the sky.

He couldn’t tell the color, neither if the lawn could have one. As far as he knew, it could be simply as dark as it was now, also in the daylight.
He wasn’t alone, he was pretty sure about that. Nevertheless, there was no one around, there weren’t people or animals, nothing. So, it was a sensation, an intuition, sort of.
And he knew pretty well how much an intuition may be just reality in a while.
A sort of anticipation of something, a jump into the time and then back again, a crack in the time itself,
a window momentarily open that gives you a chance to glance outside.
As a slap in his face, he suddenly felt such an atmosphere, the mood of the place and the situation
The harsh pain of a slap almost scratching his cheek.

A pain so strong to warp his soul, smashing thougths as they were mirrors smashed by a stone.
Hundreds and thousands of pieces of glass flying in the air.
In that chilly night feelings still covered by the warm armour of the illusion and ignorance kept sensing the sharp restless of the life, her unbereable troubles and nightmares. And yet the city was so close, just beyond the hill, just at the border of the horizon, beating her own rithm as a giant animal, as a living creature.
Darkness, night, silence.
Memories of times where other were the colors, brought flashes of days now gone, pieces of joy embedded in a time frame like a ship lost in the empty space.
Uncorrelated, solitary hints of story and passions, merged together into a sort of galaxy, continously changing and boiling and exploding.
Vulcan blasting its rage again the sky
Moments of peaceful life in the green countryside
Images of the futue as they were thought years and years ago are now just the past to be compared to this cold present.
And the shape doesn’t fit at all.
“Do you play chess?”
The voice told to the man
“Have I any chance not to do?”
She smiled ambigously
The air was cold that night, and the night silent.
No stars spotting the black sky.
No moon playing to be the queen of the horizon.
Only the wind and its hoarse voice echoing through the valley
“What’s the prize?”, the man asked to the shadow with no real interest.
“It’d better say what you loose if you do not win” the shadow answered calmly
Again a disturbing smile appeared on her face.
The man could see it despite the dark around.
That disturbing smile and that fire into her eyes.
The eyes, yes. Just now he realized that those eyes had no color at all.
Pitch black eyes, he could say.
Nevertheless he could swear they were burning from inside.
He shivered, and it was not because of the cold outside.
“What am I playing for?” he asked to himself
He knew pretty well how meaningless the question was.
The game itslef was the only and main reason of all.
The game itself was the answer, and he coundn’t avoid playing.

“Please, open the game”, she whispered in a subtle voice.
“Take your move and remember: the first move opens a path, and closes so many others”.
She stared at him, calmly and coldly. Again that ambigous amile, that fire deep in the eyes.
She sit down on the stone close to rock aiming as a table. The wind came to a stop, and it seemed to him that all the universe has stopped. he silence overwhelmed the night.
She gave a glance to the pawns, standing as they were alive, just in the middle of the darkness.
Then she opened an hand and with a wide and slow gesture, invited him to move.
Take a move. The first one.
Choose one between many, between so many. And then another one following the first, and then again a new one. A path of possibilities each time changing the scenario and the perspective of the game.
But this was not a game at all. That was pretty odd, indeed.
No one had ever told him that a game was on the realm of possibilities, neither anyone had ever had such an experience as far as he knew. And the final prize, what about that? What about that obscure sentence “you’d better ask what you may lose”. His eyes were moisty by the cold wind. His cheeks red, his fingers frozen. He could sense the the cold nose almost frozen itself, his throat suffering from the unfair and harsh conditions he was facing.
He sat down as well, slowly found a proper position on the other cold stone. Shrugged a couple of times then stretched the neck, bending it up and down.
Looking and staring to the pawns, the white ones as the blacks were the enemies, he first tightened his hands searching from some relief from that cruel cold, then folded his harms. The silence was still the king of the night. He could hear the blood sliding into his own veins, he could hear the breathe of his unwanted companion. Calm and regular, accompained by a cloud of steam as the air from her mouth condensated in the air.

“You are the master” the voice said. “You are the ruler. You can play as you like, and I will have to follow your opening. You can play with your brain, you can play with your heart, the passion or just with intuition. Possibly you can mix up all of them, letting your brain be driven by your soul or maybe you can do the opposite. But remember: sometimes the up is down and left is right and the shortes way is by far the longest you can catch.”