two chess games

Once upon a time, there were two chess games.

One was the traditional game. One human played the black pieces. Another human played the white. They played on a checkered board.

The other game had no humans. The pieces did what they wanted to do.

The first game began. The human player moved a white pawn, and the opponent moved a black pawn. The two players continued to take turns.

The second game had begun long ago. One pawn was sweeping the space in front of his food store. Three pawns were working together on a farm. A bishop was up in a tower, copying old transcripts. The queen was giving trinkets to little pawns.

The first game was starting to battle. A white bishop and a black rook were taken out early. A pawn was sacrificed in the process.

The second game was rather still. Night had fallen. The king took a long walk through the town and around a small pond.

The humans in the first game were becoming rather tense. One player ran his fingers through his hair so often, it stood straight up on his head. It looked as though his queen was in danger.

The farming pawns were rising with the dawn, talking to the pigs and currying the horse. They were laughing about their trip the day before into town to get seed and bags of manure. They'd taken a brief side trip to the pub.

There were only two black pawns left in the other game, two white pawns, a rook, a bishop and two kings. The humans, though, were excited. By the time checkmate occurred - the player with the frazzled hair won - three pieces remained on the board.

Outside of the chessboard of the first game, all of the pieces of the second game still existed. From the local hilltop, a bishop and a rook from the second game looked down and saw the first game come to an end. They took the news to their fellow pieces in their game, and all mourned the losses on the other side of the hill.