Play of Shadows

2.10: What am I?

They lost a life, easy as that.

The player who had cost the group the first round sat where he had collapsed in the sand. The man was drenched in sweat. He stared into nothing as the others chattered around him, his eyes vacant.

Frances divided his attention between the unresponsive player and the sphinx dozing on a sundrenched hill above their heads. They stood in the beast's winged shadow, shoulders hunched as if bowed under its weight. The desert surrounded them on all sides, inescapable.

"It was a good riddle," Svetlan said. His approach had been silent, and he smiled when he noticed the startled tension in Frances' body. "Oedipus was crowned king for finding the answer. A tragic victory what with the patricide and eye-gouging that ensued as a direct result, but a feat nonetheless."

Frances consciously relaxed his grip on the bat. He lowered his surly glare from the sphinx to the man with the cane.

"It was a damn sphinx that asked it!" he growled, reminded anew of his irritation. Of all the stories to choose!

"It is a well-known riddle, quick to come to mind. You cannot fault a man his nerves, I'm sure," Svetlan said absently, as perfunctory as a man could sound.

Frances could and did. "Shouldn't you be over there?" he asked, waving at where the rest of the players were huddled. The frantic mutters were dying down and no one looked happy. Not a good sign.

"I have nothing to contribute, I am afraid," Svetlan said.

Frances looked at him with some doubt. Svetlan's eyes crinkled in amusement.

"Do I look like a man of riddles, Mr. Covey?" he asked.

Frances didn't know about riddles, but Svetlan did look an awful lot like the sphinx. Especially when he smiled. "Frances," he corrected absently.

He didn't much like hearing his surname. As a child, he had learned that it made people act oddly – stiff and sickly sweet and much too attentive. Some would transform on the spot upon learning his name, changing their faces so quickly and entirely the strangeness of it all had brought young Frances to frightened tears more than once.

He had outgrown his terror of empty smiles and greedy eyes. Still, the memories lingered, the disquiet ground in his bones – dug too deep for logic to reach and soothe.

Frances frowned, startled at the turn of his own thoughts. He was not one for maudlin introspection.

"I don't know your name," he said. At Svetlan's raised brow, he added, "Last name, I mean."

The man with the cane studied him for a moment. "Svetlan is fine enough. Frances."

Michael joined them then, expression somber. Danny and his friends – the girl with the bleached hair and another boy, tall and gangly and dazed-looking – dogged his heels, Danny still chattering merrily.

"-ask about something high-tech, like a light brain or something. No way is an old-timey sphinx gonna know the answer. Oh! VR! Let's make a riddle about VR – really screw with its head. Existential crisis sort of situation. Do you think we could get it to glitch?"

"Danny," the girl with the bleached hair sighed. She seemed to be doing that a lot.

"Yeah, bro. Shut up," gangly boy said.

Michael smiled at the teens his most benevolent, fed-up smile, and turned to Frances. "We're out of ideas."

"No shit," Frances said.

"Hey!" Danny protested. "I've got plenty of ideas! What sits tallest than the largest man but stands shorter than a dog?"

"A hat," Frances said.