Ensemble of Shards

{16} Boardgames

To Claudia, for being part of the awesome days of the APEC conference three years ago (which I sometimes relive) when we were still kids and absolutely loved games XD Lol, and happy 16th birthday!

powered by: playing the boardgame Sequence with my churchmates after the service and random potluck dinner nights

(Day 16 has been reborn due to technical problems with the original one a.k.a. I thought it was awful :p)

~

So we are playing boardgames in my friend's house. Most of the other friends I know are here, and a few people I've never met before. The last morsels of our dinner had been scraped off the plates and soda drained from the glasses. 

My host now sets a board game box on her knee-high centre table that all of us sit around on floor pillows. We are all in silent concentration, because of a crucial intention hanging over our heads: The losing team of this one game will have to wash the dishes. Me and my team are determined not to get our hands tarnished with soap suds. 

Later on, it seems as if the odds are against us: Red has 2 points won from 2 rounds; Green also has 2 points, but Blue has only 1 point - the first team to 3 rounds won wins the boardgame. We are Blue. 

The final round is now in thick intensity, one break from it may cost your team dire casualties. Absolutely no communication is allowed in this game; you can only watch from your teammates or your opponents to assess a next move to advance success. Or you can let the silence take you in bondage and let it distract you into becoming the bane of your team. 

I am trying not to be our bane, so I make myself stable by looking at my friends' faces and strategising. My attention is diverted to that of the new persons the host invited. One of them is about as young as me, of the opposite gender, a face filled with so much youth that he looked as if he would never grow up, and with tidy, charcoal hair. He looks like a Hemlock, so I call him Hemlock. 

This Hemlock… He is in my team, and I have observed him place his moves in a humble manner, not wanting to attract attention. Most of the players, like me, give sharp exclamations when one makes or breaks a good move. But he has never uttered a word.

He catches my scrutinising, then smiles at me smugly and lays his fine pianist fingers on the board. 

Hemlock had just paved us a road towards a tied match. All of us are dumbfounded: it is a magnificent move. We only hope fervently that one more of us has the last piece for victory, and that no one else has that piece to plunge us into defeat.

Then, my ruthlessly competitive friend, Magnolia, on the Green Team, blows Hemlock's whole thing out of the water. Finally, the Red player subsequently seals their win using her move as an advantage. 

The Blue are lost. Everyone bubbles up, complaining or boasting about the Red's total victory of the game, and ecstatic jabbers about the relief from silence. Except Hemlock. He just grins as he helps put the board's pieces back into the plastic molds into the box. 

Serving our sentence, Team Blue shuffles into the kitchen with twelve plates, twelve pairs of spoon and forks, and thirteen glasses, as someone forgot which glass they had drank from. There are three of us, so our other teammate scrubs the dishes with the sponge assimilated with soap, I rinse it with warm water, and Hemlock arranges it on the drying rack. Our scrubber quickly swipes the sponge over the plates, and I doubtfully feel them with my fingers to confirm if he cleaned it hard enough. Amazingly, he did.

The tap is cold as ice, and as it is winter it chills anyone who washes in it to the bone. I try the hot knob by its left to balance, but alas, I presume my host's solar panel hadn't collected enough sunbeams to heat water. So I rinse the dishes with the speed of a duck hawk swooping in for prey. Hemlock watches me while rolling up the sleeves of his navy blue sweater.

"It's freezing, isn't it?"

I whip my head to look at him, distracting me from the faucet for a while. He has a quiet voice, like dandelion seeds blown in the spring breeze. 

"It is." I smile curtly, and hand him a cup. I observe him flinch because of the contact with the glass dripping with water. Then the glass suddenly slips from his unstable fingers. I see his eyelids close, afraid to see the outcome, and the glass falls… 

But my reflexes, thank God, move my hands to catch it before it hit the kitchen floor.

"The glass was the one supposed to be freezing. You froze, instead," I burst out in relief. Hemlock laughs uncertainly, shining emerald eyes thanking me with a child's sincerity. That makes me grin too.

"And you have beautiful eyes."

Did I just say that?

"Ah, yours are more sublime. And your voice is like a songbird in its prime." His remark makes me brush a lock of soot-coloured hair shyly.

"You must be a poet."

"No, sadly, I am not. Oh… I've forgotten my manners. My name's Hemlock." Surprise, surprise! I guessed it right. 

"And you are-?"

"Eris."

"Like the dwarf planet?"

I nod.

"Well, what brings you to my dear cousin Mara's flat?" His syrupy eyes focus on me and he waits for my answer.

"Mara is my dear classmate from our tenth grade homeschool co-op. But I've never seen you before, Hemlock. Do you live somewhere far-off? Amman, Jordan, perhaps? You, er, have a similarity to the Crown Prince Hussein."

"I do… really? How handsome must I look to be compared to the Crown Prince!" He burst out in laughter. "But yeah, you, for some crazy reason, guessed it right. It's a long story of how I ended up living there, y'know, and why I'm here in Kathmandu. I shall tell you-"

"Excuse me!" Our teammate points to us scoldingly with a soapy sponge and brings us back into reality. He holds up a glass plate with his other hand and smiles obstinately.

"Agh… we're really sorry!" I'm embarrassed. "Oh, here, Hemlock, put this blessed glass on the rack, please."

"Losing the game plays on your minds, don't it, Eris and Hemlock?" He teases in a friendly tone. "Now, the water's bitter, let's get this over with."

Magnolia, who had listened in on us by the dinner table all along, laughs.