Had to clip this really only for Matt’s expression
[Video description: A clip from the 5th episode of The Ravening War.
Matt, as the gravy biscuit priest and with his hands clasped in front of him, looks upward with an expression of reverence and says, in a high-pitched, distorted drawl, “And may his light bless us all.”
Aabria groans, “Oh my god.”
Brennan says, in a serious tone, “For the first time in his life, Raphaniel understands physical arousal.”
The background music cuts. The camera cuts to the other side of the table, where Aabria, Zack, and Anjali all break out into disturbed laughter. Matt looks at Brennan with a wide-eyed, alarmed grin as Anjali scream-laughs, “What?”
Aabria says, “I go to hell. I go to the Hungry One in this moment right now.”
Anjali touches her hands to her chest and says, “I feel it in my heart, and I have a heart attack and die.”
Zack leans back in his seat, opens his arms as he looks to the ceiling, and says, “I just free fall into the—” before being cut off by claps and laughter.
Lou says, “Yeah, Deli just lays down in the Stinking Cloud. All right. Sure.” Brennan almost goes to touch his shoulder but leans forward in laughter to hit the table instead.
Aabria says, “You made us all give up.”
Brennan reaches forward a hand and says, “I don’t care how attractive that Bulbian priest might be,” to which Aabria makes a retching noise. Anjali laughs and Zack stares with a bewildered expression. “Listen,” continues Brennan, “That’s the spellcaster.” End video description.]
“That’s dumb,” says Karna. “I think that’s dumb. Why can the knight just jump over shit? What’s so special about him, huh?”
“Just, uh. Just good at moving, I guess,” says Colin, taking the black rook and placing it on his side of the table. It sits there, solid, beside the haphazard array of pawns and a single bishop.
Karna pouts a little. In front of her, on the table, there sit three white pawns, all stood perfectly in line. “‘Good at moving.’ Urgh. So am I. He’s not special.” She frowns, and moves a pawn two spaces forward. Colin winces involuntary, and she glares at him. “What? What did I do?”
“So… I may have forgotten to mention this one. I, uh. I didn’t really think it would come up for, uh. Longer than this. To be honest.” He gives her a slightly wary look. “You… you ever heard of 'en passant’?”
“'In passing’ in Fructeran,” she says brusquely. “Now explain.”
“Now- ok, I promise I’m not making this one up-” He moves a white pawn to just behind hers, which he smoothly plucks from the board and sets down amongst the cluster of other pieces in front of him.
There is a short silence.
“Are you kidding me,” says Karna, voice flatter than the void of space, empty and silent and oh, so deep, and-
“To be fair, that- that’s probably one of the stupidest rules I know. If that helps?” says Colin.
“Fine. Fine!” she says. “Sure.”
“You know,” says Colin delicately, “I could still-”
“No,” snaps Karna. “You will not play without a queen.” She glares at him with even more ferocity than usual, and lowers her voice to a dangerous drawl. “When I win. If I suspect even for a second that you went easy on me?” Her lip curls into a smirk. “Oh, that would be that last thing you ever did.”
“Sure,” says Colin. “I mean, sure. I just think it would make the game a bit more fun for you while you’re learning. You know?”
Karna rolls her eye. “I want to lose.”
“…What?” There is suddenly a deep, unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“I want to lose,” she says. “Because it doesn’t matter.” She grasps his forearms and stares into his eyes, as though willing him to understand. “I want so badly to know what it feels like for losing not to matter. I want to know the loss that is an annoyance, not an ache, not a scar, not a slit throat or a knife in the gut and bleeding out on the pavement.”
The hands holding him start to weaken. Rot starts to creep up her neck.
Her pupils are dark voids filled with spinning blades.
“It was too much,” she says. “I was so tired. You saw.” Her gaze is level, and he remembers running away, and running away, and running away, and looking back. “I was holding on to the edge for so long.”
Colin wants to say something. He doesn’t know what to say.
“But you can’t hold on forever.”
And she lets go.
—
He wakes up, and it is still dark, and he is alone.
He never knew her that well, but- she would have been good at chess, he thinks, if she had ever had a chance to learn. Not straight away, of course, but- in time.
No point in dwelling on it. He doesn’t want to risk turning into Raphaniel, and- ok, that’s another whole thing he’s really not interested in delving into right now.
But- she held on for so long.
It seems like the least he can do, to make sure no one else ever has to stare into the void and cling to life so desperately that the muscle of their fingers rots down to bone.
If you are thinking about it on paper, the bus running every half hour doesn’t sound so bad, until you’re waiting at the stop and you miss a bus or it’s delayed. Then you’re waiting a very, very long time. To people who never take transit, that’s probably fine. Why do you care. To people who only take transit, they’re expecting it, it’s baked in their lives. But the important part, what really impacts our cities, is what happens to people for whom transit is an option.
The spiral goes like this. You go to take the bus instead of driving, thinking “I’m going to o have a couple drinks” or “I don’t want to worry about parking where I’m going.” So you take bus. First bus is right on time. But then you transfer from your neighborhood line to the line that takes you where you actually want to go. And your bus is delayed. And it only comes every 30 minutes. And then you’re waiting, 40 minutes later, wondering where your bus is, knowing you could have driven there in 20 minutes.
Why would you ever chose to take a bus again? The bus made you waste precious time on your day off just sitting there. So next time you drive. Ridership goes down. When the transit authority asks for more money for more buses and more drivers, people point to the ridership numbers and say “why should we pay for this instead of paying for our schools/police/baseball stadium/parks/police again (let’s be real that’s who’s taking all the money)?” If we want to increase ridership we need to actually design and fund functional transit networks. If we want people to actually ride the bus we need to make it a better option than driving, which means reliable service, which you don’t get with a bus every 30 minutes.
