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In a Coffee Shop
(live: 2s)
[You sit at a window, watching the world go by.]
(stop:)
(live: 4s)[There's a dull hum of activity in the room behind you. Some tinny, acoustic music is playing. (You've made it past the season of endless cheery Christmas music, thankfully.) You got a drink, and a muffin to nibble on. You're paying for the space mostly, of course, but it's still a good muffin.
It's snowing pretty heavily out there this afternoon, and you don't have any particular reason to be out, but you were feeling restless and needed to get away, if only for an hour or two.
You brought a book with you but it sits on the table unread. Instead, you put on a podcast. The content isn't that important; it's about hearing familiar voices. It's isolating, though. It takes you into your own private world.
Mostly you gaze out the window. It’s a busy day out there, despite the mess of new snow and old slush in the streets. People trudging through, bundled up, in blue and black coats against the grey of the sky. Going places. You’re not. You’re just going to sit here for a bit. But the bustle is comforting in its own way. A reminder that there’s a world outside your own head. That motion is possible. And so it lets you remember yourself somewhere else.
Where?
[[A cabin looking by a frozen lake->Lake]]
or perhaps
[[Running along a trail->Jogging]]
]
(stop:)
Winter
A game by Ben Moull
(February 2019, work in progress)
Click [[here->Intro - Coffee Shop]] to startIn a cabin by a lake
It's peaceful here. Quiet and still. The morning is bright and the air is crisp, tinged with the scent of woodsmoke coming from the cottage next door. The infinite blue sky above the the brilliant white expanse snow covering the lake. The only break in the whiteness are the tracks that some small, brave mammal left in the snow overnight.
You could go out there too. Leave your own trail in the snow, create evidence of your own existence. But for now, you're content to stay inside, where it's warm and safe. No need to break out of stasis this second. You do take a moment to consider how priveleged you are to be able to take this time for yourself in this place, to not have to rush.
You eat a light breakfast and sip a warm beverage and you think over your possibilities for motion. How do you go?
[[Careening down a hill on a sled->Tobogganing]]
or perhaps
[[Running along a trail->Jogging]]In a park
You've gathered to complete the solstice rite. Flaming torches circle a giant hand, against a backdrop of lights from the city’s towers. The cold starting to get to you and the sight lines through the crowd are poor. A full moon peaks through cloud layer.
Someone has placed a large, intrusive placard facing the crowd. You fear it'll be the usual doomsday sort of thing. "Repent your sins before it is too late! Especially the queer ones!" or somesuch. And so you're pleased when you see that it's instead an Italo Calvino quotation about cities as betrayers. That may be true, but sometimes cities also surprise and delight.
The ceremony drags out. Drummers and dancers beat out their rhythms around the hand statue, which remains unburnt. Your neighbour in the crowd suggests that the statue is a piece of installation art, that it won't be burned at all. But that's absurd. What else are we here for?
The release comes in time. We are raccous, joyous as the hand finally ignites. It's even brighter than you expected. The papier maché skin of the hand burns a brilliant orange, and the straw flesh inside throws off flares of orange sparks as it's consumed. Even at a distance you can feel its warmth.
Afterwards, you feel sated but frail. Drained by the surge of emotions, your eyes stinging a bit from the smoke. The crowd melts away and you find yourself alone again with your thoughts. Feeling vulnerable, you seek safety.
Which way do you imagine you go?
[[Through dark streets towards home->Streets at night]]
or perhaps
[[Through a dark forest towards a cabin->Skiing]]
The city streets
At some point while you were out it got brutally cold. The streets are slick and treacherous. Dark patches of ice are hard to make out by the dim of the streetlights. The almost-full moon haunts the sky overhead but does little to illuminate your path.
Your way through the empty streets is slow. You step and shuffle, feet struggling to find purchase where they can. You only have a few blocks to go now, along a familiar route, but it feels so far away. At least you have your warm home you're heading to. Not everyone is that lucky.
Your legs aches with the cold. The exposed skin on your forhead starts to feel numb. Your breath condenses and freezes in your scarf and the inside of your nostrils start to freeze. You wonder why you went out at all. It was good to be among people for a time, but was it really worth this? You didn't make any new connections, barely even spoke to anyone. What are you even doing here?
Sinister thoughts creep into your mind. What if you slipped, fell into the street, hit your head, were left alone here in the dark? Just how badly could things get? But what other option is there now but to keep going?
You try to escape this line of thought. You start humming a favourite song to break through the hushed isolation of the deserted streets. You feel overcome, overwhelmed. You pause at a street corner. Take a deep, gasping breath. Feel the frigid air in your lungs, the clamminess of your skin under your layers of clothes. You move on again.
It's lonely here in the dark. Part of you thinks how much less dire this will all seem by day. Part of you just wants to escape. Where do you go?
[[These same streets in brighter times->After Ice Storm]]
or perhaps
[[As far away as you can imagine->Space]]After the ice storm
It's a strange morning after a strange night. The storm overnight has frozen the city solid. It's not just that sidewalks are solid ice. Tree-branches, yard plants, power lines, every surface is coated with a clear, thick layer of it. Weighed down. The whole city glistens in the day's pale, grey light.
But while the rest of the world seems frozen in stasis, you feel alive. Light and unburdened. You've got plans to spend the afternoon with friends and you'll be damned if you let little things like mass power outages and centimetre-thick ice covering every outdoor surface keep you from spending your precious time with them. Transit is even running, its own small miracle under the circumstances. You hope that the people working hard to make that happen, and to restore power with so many lines down are being well-paid for their labour.
And so you and a few other brave travelers glide along the sidewalks, smiling to each other in quiet comraderie, helping each other keep our balance on particularly treachourous spots. Around every corner it seems like there's some new marvel to uncover. The familiar streets have been made wondrous. And at the journey's end there will be warmth and friends.
[[You go on your way->Conclusion]]
Outer space
Alone in a small ship, you stare out from the small window into the void. Every direction is inky black, punctuated by pale pinpricks of starlight. The only sounds are your breathing and a low hum of machinery. The air is stale and recycled.
There's beauty out there in the universe, if only you could get a better look at it, find a different perspective. But every interesting object that you catch even a glance of seems remote and inaccessible. There could even be other ships out there, struggling, but you wouldn't know how to find them. At least the thin walls of this fragile capsule protect you from the void though they provide little comfort otherwise.
You don't really understand how you ended up here, adrift and trapped in a ship that you barely know how to operate. It's awkward and ill-suited, but here you are. Even if you could get somewhere, you don't know where you would go. You fear you will be here forever.
[[And so you wait->Conclusion]] In an ice tunnel
It's an excursion, an adventure. They hollowed out this passage of ice though the deep snow and have children crawl through it. You quietly, apprehensively line up and wait and take your turn.
You have gloves and snowpants on, so you're not actually cold. And the day's bright sun filters through the layers of snow and ice so it's not actually dark. There's an even, blueish glow, and the icy walls glitter. It's beautiful.
But you can't appreciate it because partway through the tunnel you start to panic. The thing that gets to, is the cramped space. Your head glances against the ceiling. Then your shoulder scrapes against a wall. You can't stand up. You can't turn around. You can't go back. You're not even sure how much farther you have to go because your view is blocked by the kid who went in before you. What if you got stuck here forever?
You don't, of course, get stuck. The kid in front finishes, and the bright white of the tunnel's exit flares into your vision. Being able to see the way out gives you the impulse to move towards it, and the wild thought enters into your mind that this tunnel could lead you to anywhere you could imagine.
Where do you emerge?
[[Alone in a forest->Skiing]]
or perhaps
[[In a crowded procession->Solstice 1]] In a forest
Another adventure gone wrong. A group of children out cross-country skiing through some woods on a school trip outside the city. Get some from fresh air and exercise before dinner after a day largely spent indoors. Be among nature.
You haven't skied much before. The motion is unfamilier and takes getting used to, but using your body to propel you in this new way is liberating. Gliding and poling your way along an easy, loping trail circuit out through fields and then circling back through some woods.
But somehow on the back stretch you find that you're alone, separated from the group. Did you take a wrong turn? Were you just too slow? However it happened, now you're alone in these unfamiliar woods and it's getting dark and cold.
From afar the trees and inviting, blanketed in snow. Now underneath them, their black branches seem menacing. They smother outside noise, and as the light fades it's hard not to imagine you're the only one left in the whole world.
Your skis start sticking in the snow, rather than gliding smoothly. You pant with the effort. Your clothes, sodden with sweat, cling damply to your body. Your hands ache from gripping your poles hard. The trail is becoming hard to make out in the spreading gloom. You sit down in the snow and think about giving up.
It will turn out later that you were at most a few hundred metres from the lodge you were staying at, and your absense so brief that no one thought to notice it. But right now it feels impossibly far away, that even if you found the impulse to move you would never make it out of the forest.
You try to imagine where you would escape to, if you could. Where?
[[As far away as you can imagine->Space]]
or perhaps
[[In a glittering urban wonderland->After Ice Storm]] In a coffee shop
You rouse yourself from your thoughts. It's getting dark now as you've been sitting here. The last sips of your drink have gotten cold. Only crumbs are left from your snack. (You barely remember eating it.) It's time you moved on.
At least the snow has stopped, though it's accumulated and piled along your way. In some places, other people have made trails that you can follow. In others, you leave your own mark on the fresh, white snow.
[[The End->End Card]] At a procession
You've made your way this evening to a solstice festival in a market downtown. It’s cold, but not as cold as it’ll be in the coming months. It’s dark but, of course, that’s why everyone’s here - to celebrate the longest night and with it the promise that light and warmth will return in time.
You don't fit in well with the crowd. It's mostly groups of undergrads or parents with their children. You're here by yourself. Coming out alone to these things sometimes just reinforces your feelings of isolation. And there's the familiar, persistent sense that time is not infinite and that you are not using yours well.
But you wanted to come out to this nonetheless. Being in touch with the movements of this rock we're on while it hurtles through space just makes sense. So does uniting as a community to proclaim that we'll make it through the dark times together. Perhaps you're being foolishly romantic, thinking these ephemeral connections are real. But it sustains you nonetheless.
It's a spirited march. Drummers clad in shimmering, silver cloaks lead the way, their rhythms echoing out through the streets. The procession is lit up not by fiery torches you had imagined (an obvious safety hazard in retrospect) but by crisp, white LEDs. The technology allows for an array of illuminated forms. Spectral horses, ghost ships, phantasmal swans march with us, lighting our way as we meander slowly through the streets.
The procession reaches its end and dissolves into a festival. There's a playful, surreal quality to it. A coven of witches serenade the crowd with enthusiastically discordant renditions of operatic arias competing for space and attention with more conventional groups of carollers and children putting on plays with shadow puppets.
After a time, you feel restless. You need to move on. Where do you go?
[[A nearby park, to watch a bonfire->Solstice 2]]
or perhaps
[[Home through the darkened streets->Streets at night]] Down and up a hill
It took time to get set up but you hope that it will be worth the effort. You got bundled up in your snowsuit and trudged and crunched your way to the top of the hill with your sled. You're all set to slide.
There's a thin crust of ice on top of the snow, meaning that if all goes well you'll speed down the hill far out onto the frozen lake at the hill's base. You're determined to glide as far out onto the lake as you can. It seems so important. But you know that if an edge of your sled digs into the icy crust, you and your sled will tumble out of control. But you are young and have little fear for your body, and so it doesn't occur to you to dwell on the risk.
Your sled of choice is a red plastc disc. It's so thin that you can feel the small bumps and imperfections of the hill through it. You sit cross-legged on it and hold up its sides so it can glide smoothly. And glide it does, quickly accelerating as you being your descent.
Midway down the hill you cross over a small bump and struggle to keep control. You stay upright, but in shifting your weight the disc starts to spin. You find yourself turned the wrong way, but gravity and momentum keep carrying you onwards, and you're left only seeing where you've been, not where you're going.
When you come to a stop you find you didn't make it very far out onto the lake at all. After the exuberance of the descent, you begin your trek back up the mountain, and wonder what excitement might be in your future.
Where do you go?
[[Crawling though a tunnel of ice->Tunnel]]
or perhaps
[[Cross-country skiing through a forest->Skiing]]On a trail
It's pleasantly quiet here, and you can almost forget that you're in the middle of the city. There's a dank, sour smell to the air. You're out for a jog in a ravine near your home. There's finally been a break in the frigid weather of the past few days, and while it's still chilly and grey, it's good to get out. You're restless after being cooped up indoors for too long.
It's mostly dogs and their humans stretching their legs on the trail this afternoon. You start out slowly, stiff after your days of idleness. The ground is alternately muddy and hard, with puddles and patches of ice, and you need to be careful with your footing. You want to be careful with your body and you have an old knee injury you don't want to aggravate.
It's just nice to be in motion. You've learned over the years that this is one of the few ways for you to feel unified with your body, a part of it rather than apart from it.
You get a surprise when a rabbit darts across the path in front of you. Small and quick, with a thick, grey coat to match the grey mud and gravel of the path. You both startle briefly and you swerve and step into a puddle that you missed. Your foot squelches in the muck. You both carry on with your day.
You reach the base of the hill that leads out of the ravine and consider pushing yourself up it. You stop for moment, panting. Your knee is throbbing, your legs are heavy, and your foot is damp. It's good that you made it out at all. Not a day to push yourself. You turn back.
And it turns out that on your way back you're able to find your rhythm. An upbeat song shuffles into your headphones and you revel in it. You up and around, smile and nod at another jogger going in the other direction.
The grey sky overhead melts into the grey mud of the trail, framed by the black of the trees. For an instant you forget your body is even here, and let your mind drift.
But to where?
[[The branches overhead remind you of a tunnel->Tunnel]]
or perhaps
[[Moving along the path reminds you of a procession->Solstice 1]]
Thanks for your time, and for playing.
-BHM
[[Return to title screen->Title Card]]