The queen gestured at the chessboard. “The entire situation is before us.”
I puzzled and waited for clarification.
The court looked around the room awkwardly presumably sensing my feral mind.
Eventually one of the bishops, he who was speckled in grey, spoke.
“I volunteer for first exposure, I have my method of receiving myself into the lines of our enemy, if only we are to move one of these two pawns. I shall be able to put pressure upon the enemy immediately.”
Like In chess? I thought to myself. He appeared to need diagonal exits. I was willing to oblige.
“If we are already committed I guess we may as well! What is the time frame estimate for this war? Weeks, Months? Years?”
“This war shall be over by Christmas my liege!” A rook announced.
I was in the eighties, some twisted fantastic eighties movie. I didn’t actually know any eighties bombshells to compare my queen to. These guys were Christians? Why was Christmas in this strange world? Did they have a Jesus? Or was it some kind of pagan Saturnalia and some twisted translation.
I didn’t know much about chess, I knew there were openings, there were good openings and bad openings. I knew that a bishop out on turn two meant that a player might be aggressively seeking the newbie ending Queen plus Bishop kill.
I knew it had a name but I didn’t know the name for that thing.
And I wasn’t sure I wanted to bet a war on the universe following the rules of chess.
But I knew that all these details while tactically important might be overshadowed easily by the more strategic truths taught to me as a child by my grandfather.
His games against me when I was but six years old had been jokingly described as “worse than child abuse.” For the old man was serious and dour, patient and brutal, playful yet edged with that flavor of old school quiet man who knows more than he speaks.
If I died in the old world I had outlived him. He was ninety by now and practicing mediation for back pain.
That old man had with little effort and unknown intention, informed every aspect of my life. Perhaps in another world the simple games of chess would have really been child abuse. Perhaps the man was unwittingly responsible for my ‘loser’ and misanthropic status in a past life. Perhaps I should be bitter. But for some insanely risk averse reason I was thankful for the lessons. I was thankful the old man had taught me as a child how critically I could destroy myself on a chessboard. How slowly I could torment myself in a hopeless situation. How I could make myself a string in someone else’s puppet show. How I, and not my opponent, was the true enemy.
It seemed nobody else had ever decided to show me such a universal truth, maybe it’s why I always felt alone even when someone else’s tender hand was pressing into my chest.
The queen was leaning into me.
I faked a confident smirk imagining the English alphanumeric that I could no longer read or recognize imposed across the board as if it was the cursed digital spreadsheet of a less noble time.
“This pawn?” I looked at the bishop. “You like this pawn? Shall you have them such?!”
I moved the pawn to what would have been D four, I wondered how my queen would brutalize theirs if it came to such a thing. Who was E two? Was De-Phoebe D two?
“Is that what the Lion wants?” The queen was quiet and sultry, her surprisingly heavy staff pressing into my shoulder blade. I hadn’t taken my finger off the piece and looked around the room. I briefly wondered about the Enemy queen at D eight. Fear gripped my heart. My hand lingered on the board. My council watched me. My mind briefly considered the Enemy queen, perhaps I would prefer her to my own overbearing one.
Gosh I was a monster, naturally it felt good.
“Does anyone have any problems? I will want to know everything regarding your concerns in these early phases.”
“A wise move.” A rook confirmed. He had no idea, I made a mental note he was a lackey. I stopped myself from removing my hand from the piece, this rook was not my master.
“No questions?” I asked.
“None” a knight confirmed.
“None?” I repeated looking at the bishops.
“No questions your majesty!” They managed.
“Well I enjoy a question or two.” I announced loudly enough for those in the back. I took my hand off the piece. “I suppose the onus is now upon this panther of ours.”
“Right you are sir, I predict a steady and driving war. Nice and clean.” The lacky, I really shouldn’t be so rude, perhaps he was just polite, exclaimed.
“Indeed. I suspect little trouble.” Seconded the bishop of light, I supposed the one i helped was the bishop of something still white but dark white. Perhaps the bishop of the cloudy sky. Or steel.
How would the bishop of steel enter into the camps of my enemies? I wondered silently to myself. I pulled my queen close and offered her a bite of bacon. Smiling she took a tiny bite. Yet my deranged and unsettled mind wondered if she was only being polite.
She took her seat by my side and asked me to pass her the timeless egg most scrambled.
My hand on her back, I did, kissing her.
It occurred to me that we were not paying attention to my advisers.
The bishops and the room had began to discuss what made a man healthy.
I guess I wasn’t missing anything important. It seemed the stressful discussion had already happened.
Could these jokers really go to war so casually?
My wife and I maybe hadn’t properly woken up, something was telling us to crawl into each others lap.
Why was it so easy to publicly and casually display affection before these old men, the servants, the cooking girls?
In my past life it would have felt like pulling teeth. I assumed it must be a bizarre brain chemistry thing.
It wouldn’t be so bad to grow old and fat with this wife of mine I supposed.
I wondered how many calories a magical girl burns.
I passed her the peach pudding as if her response would tell me.
She gave me a playful giggle, “Nonsense I have had plenty!” She assured me.
I was rather wondering how I burned calories as a king. Hopefully I burned them primarily by hitting things.
I wasn’t going to try to inform them of my modern yet still poor understanding of what made a diet good. For now I was just happy my wife and I were fit and healthy. If we ate our veggies, avoided mono-diets and stayed active hopefully we would grow old, fat and happy, then again, perhaps best to avoid the sin of gluttony. Even if I was wishing my wife had more of an appetite right now.
The elders kept talking, perhaps I should have paid attention, but my wife and I could not have been older than thirty and were attractive to each other.
Naturally we had more important business to attend to, each other.
Perhaps that was for the best, our move had already been made, the court existed to make those moves reality.
I kissed my pretty wife one last time and considered that fun could be had more seriously if the war was properly over by Christmas. She informed me that she had to go read some mail and that I should join her if I had the time.
I wondered what responsibilities this world assumed of the king. So far it seemed like accepting liability. Which provided nothing went wrong was a good deal.
I set my eyes upon the old men ignoring the lovebirds at the head of the table wishing I was a peasant with the milkmaid. Sadly I was the king, and maybe not the true owner of the realm, hopefully I was more than a fleeting companion for the queen.