The Clover Floats as Gravity Falls

The Players are Ready and Their Pieces are Set

Waking up to complete, total darkness was never a pleasent experience.

Living a life where the only colour you can see is that very same abyssal blackness, is even worse.

Some may think the constant lack of colour to be soothing, comforting even.

For Riley Emiel, however, that was not the case.

Riley was not born blind, in actual fact she had near perfect sight when she was younger. When she was old enough to go to school she took to arts and crafts like a fish would to water, enjoying experimenting with the different colours and textures - moving to digital art as she grew and technology advanced.

As a child, Riley had a bubbly and carefree personality.

Throughout her childhood, Riley was awarded with prize after prize for her art and creativity - from her many sketches to collages she made from scrap newspaper and magazine cutouts. Riley had viewed everything in the world as bright and colourful, marvelling in the beauty of things. While she wasn't exactly the smartest student in class, she wasn't dumb either and quickly set up a plan to both do the work alongside doing the things she loved.

Riley found she had also took a liking to the engineering classes when they came along in her second year of high school, the freedom and creativity of building wooden constructs at first seemed fun to her.

Riley had big plans for her future, plans that involved taking classes in computer graphic design and graphic arts alongside getting a degree in the finer arts. Her lifelong dream had been to create her own animated TV shows, to do what she loved the most and have others enjoy it with her.

Its a shame these kinds of things never run so smoothly, isn't it?

Sadly, shortly after Riley turned fourteen she was diagnosed with severe Glaucoma. Despite the treatment, Riley's condition never got better. It was never cured, and it only worsened. As time drew on, Riley's condition grew worse and worse day by day. Until in the end, the optical nerves became so damaged that she completely lost her sight.

When this happened, Riley became...lost. Detached. She had no idea what to do with herself. Her lifelong dream required the ability to see, and she didn't even have that. Her passion, her past-time, her hobby...she couldn't do any of them. Not like this.

Riley grew desperate, always searching for the answers and never finding any. Running on a tank full of caffiene and the desire to get her sight back, Riley had searched and searched for some kind of answer. Some kind of sign. And when no signs revealed themselves, when no answer came about.

She simply...gave up.

She let go of her hope, her goals and dreams, and simply gave up. There was no miracle treatment to revive her eyesight, no impossible cure for her blindness, no outlandish deity that could magically bring it back either. Just the cold, hard reality. The truth.

Riley Emiel was blind, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Of course, her family and friends had supported her through the whole ordeal. Sticking with her even when she was at her lowest, most desperate state. It had hurt them to see Riley so...unlike herself, so desperate for answers - for a cure - that she'd risk sleep deprivation, starvation even just to find even a scrap of hope.

When Riley gave up her search for answers, her family and friends felt relief laced deep with worry. Riley still wasn't herself, she was far more quiet and withdrawn than when she could...still see. Riley would sit on the sofa and stare blankly ahead no matter where she sat.

That was...until her little brother decided to try and help her.

One day while sitting on the couch, Riley felt the seat next to her dip. She remembered  a small, rectangular metal object was placed into her hands, and hearing her brother's somewhat high pitched voice telling her to "give it a listen." as a pair of headphones were slipped over her ears.

As soon as she had clumsily hit the play button an off key accoustic guitar began to play, a familiar tune playing through the headphones. The moment her brother's voice hit the first few notes, Riley broke out into a smile. Her blank eyes had crinkled up in happiness, tears pricking the corners. That was how their parents found them, leaning against each other on the sofa. The headphones on Riley's head had slipped slightly and the cassette tape recorder was resting in her lap, and for the first time in seemingly forever there was a smile on her face.

Every week or so, Ryan would come back from the highschool's music room with a new cassette tape in hand. Each one with an accoustic cover of one of Riley's favourite songs on them. The cassette tape recorder would always be either in one of Riley's pockets or in her hand, and the headphones would always be hanging around her neck.

Some days, Riley would go with Ryan. Together they would make music and mess around with the instruments, I guess this is where Riley discovered her new hobby. The music room had an old, grand piano. The music teachers would often use it for choire practice, but other than that no-one ever really used it.

Brushing her fingers across the worn, dust covered keys, Riley had begun to play. Soon enough, once every few days became every day as Riley found her new obsession: playing piano. She didn't learn to read the notes, didn't learn to play by the book, no. Riley learned through sound. Whenever she wanted to learn a new song she'd get one of the music teachers to play it for her, then she'd have a go herself - pressing keys that mimiced what the teacher had previously been playing.

Riley picked up playing piano quickly, and soon enough one talent show every so often became two or more every two months or so and she was labelled a piano prodigy.

And that leads us to now, I guess. With 18 year old Riley curled up on the living room sofa, a first place award sitting innocently on the coffee table. A small smile etched across Riley's face, as the exhaustion set in and she slowly drifted into unconsciousness.

Nobody saw the tendrils of green smoke coil around her, and Riley Emiel faded from existence.

3rd Person P.O.V.

There was a chess board floating in the empty black space, and on it were a number of pieces. Half were black with eerie yellow accents, the other half were a wispy green. All but two of the green pieces were vaguely human looking, while the black half looked like vicious monsters.

The last piece of the board appeared, the green queen. Blank white eyes stared foreward, crossbow in one hand and a cane in the other.

Beside her was the shapeless king piece wielding a long staff, his equally white eyes were staring ahead as well.

The bishops on either side of them looked oddly the same, whereas one wielded an odd looking gun and the other a bat.

The Knights were alike the bishops in the sense that they both looked alike, one wore a cap and held a book tucked closely to their chest while the other held a grappling hook pointed skyward.

The two rooks were the unusual ones as they both looked different, one had a larger body and wielded a flag while the other wielded an axe.

The pawns all looked different too, from left to right: one wore a cape with a glowing pentagram on the back, one wore a pair of glowing glasses, another had a glowing rose symbol on the back of their hand, one had a stitched up broken heart symbol on their chest, one had a dagger symbol on their left forearm, one had a snake symbol on their shoulder, one had a lama symbol on their stomach, and one (one of the green non-human pieces) had a collar with a howling wolf symbol on the ID hanging from it.

Sitting behind the side of the chess board that housed the green pieces, a shapeless being sat confidently, sipping a cup of tea. Blank mint green eyes watched the black king from across the board, a floating triangle with a single slit pupiled yellow eye and yellow lines across its body.

And oddest of all, floating behind the black pieces side was a large...pink axolotl. It was at this moment that an unspoken phrase echoed throughout the empty space.

Let the game begin.