Celestial Orc Name Generator

The story

Ruzha brought the painted hawk in a box, although Dessa had already seen it every week of their childhood. The bird’s left wing had been repaired with a darker piece of wood. Its beak wore a permanent expression of disapproval. “Still looks like you,” Dessa said. Ruzha put it beside the board. Whoever won their last eclipse game would take it home. This had been Ruzha’s idea. By evening, Dessa would be on the southbound coach, beginning a life in which her older foster sister would no longer know the name of every neighbor. Ruzha wanted her to leave carrying something better than a useful pair of socks.

Their family played Nine Bridges: little roads made from stones, a point for each bridge closed before the other player could block it. Finished points sat in numbered tally wells along the edge. Once counted, those stones stayed there until the match ended. Dessa had grown very good. Ruzha continued to say this in the surprised voice of a person watching a clever child, despite Dessa now having a household, an occupation, and strong opinions about the coach company. Today she intended to stop being surprised long enough to lose. She had not asked whether a gift pretending to be a victory was the gift Dessa wanted.

The eclipse gave the meeting a shape they both loved. As children they had played through each predicted darkness, pausing with their hands flat until light returned. The old courtyard board had been broken and repaired many years before. A fictional luminous pigment in its mended tally wells held a pale afterglow where a stone had rested for a while. In sunlight the marks were nearly invisible; during the eclipse they made the board look as if little moons had been set inside it. Both sisters knew this. Ruzha remembered the beauty and forgot the inconvenience.

Five relatives and two old neighbors came to watch. They brought jars of candied seeds for everybody to share afterwards. Ruzha supplied the serving bowls and promised to distribute the reserve before choosing her own portion, as her household’s Food sharing duty required. Dessa asked the onlookers not to suggest moves. “Especially the terrible ones,” she added, looking at her sister. Ruzha laughed too loudly. She had been considering an especially terrible move and now had to find one less obvious.

For the first rounds, the game was real. Dessa closed a bridge Ruzha had not seen forming. Ruzha blocked the next one out of pure habit, then regretted how pleased she felt. When Dessa looked toward a passing coach, Ruzha removed one of her own counted stones from its tally well and returned it to the spare bank. Later, under cover of reaching for water, she did the same to another. She told herself that the hawk would mean more if Dessa could say she had finally taken it fairly. The word fairly passed through her thoughts without being required to do any work.

The daylight thinned. Conversation quieted as it always did, however many eclipses people had seen. The sisters put their hands flat. Across the board, the repaired pigment began to shine. Two empty tally wells held bright rings where Ruzha’s stones had rested. Dessa looked at them, then at the lower count now displayed beside her sister. “You scored there,” she said. Ruzha answered that she must be remembering another round. She knew this was the exact instant at which a foolish kindness could still become an honest admission, and she watched herself spend the instant badly.

Dessa pointed to the two ringed wells. The pigment showed that stones had occupied them; it did not say who moved them or why. Ruzha could have claimed a counting correction. Instead she saw Dessa’s face and understood that asking her to believe another convenient mistake would be worse than losing the hawk forever. “I took them out,” she said. “Only those two.” She described the two rounds. Then she described the victory she had planned to give away, and the way she wanted Dessa to think of this afternoon on the coach. Nobody spoke while the light returned.

“I wanted to play you,” Dessa said. She did not raise her voice. That made Ruzha wish, selfishly, for an argument loud enough to hide inside. She offered a new match at once. They could start clean; they still had time. She offered the hawk outright. She offered the candied seeds, all of them, to take on the journey. A neighbor’s hand paused on the nearest jar. The reserve belonged to the gathering. It was waiting to be divided, not sitting there as Ruzha’s private instrument for improving somebody’s feelings about her.

Ruzha took the serving bowls. She portioned the seeds for the guests before choosing her own, giving up the bright citrus-coated pieces she preferred as those bowls filled. The last helping was mostly plain honey. Dessa accepted a portion of that shared food and refused a rematch. Both choices were permitted. Ruzha put the hawk back beside the board. They marked the afternoon’s match unscored, without calculating a hypothetical honest winner from positions that had been played under false assumptions. She could not save the occasion by declaring that Dessa would probably have won anyway.

While the others folded chairs, Ruzha asked whether there was any kind of future game Dessa might actually want. Not a farewell performance. Not a disguised parcel. Dessa said she did not know yet. Ruzha had never realized how much space yet could occupy between two people who knew each other well. She cleaned the bowls. The eclipse was over; the tally rings faded in ordinary sunlight. They would not share another before the departure. All the preparation in the world could not put them back at the morning’s first move.

At the coach gate, Dessa gave her a folded scrap. It showed an empty board and one opening stone. Across the bottom she had written: letters, no prize, no hints from the neighbors, and both of us trying. Ruzha asked how often she should write. “When you’ve thought of a move. I’m moving house, not entering a race.” Ruzha agreed. Dessa called her Later-Par, for the terms they had finally reached without hiding the request inside something else. The name made Ruzha wince and then smile. She went home carrying the hawk. That night she studied the opening stone much longer than necessary. Her first reply contained a move she genuinely hoped would win.