The winter that would not be spoken to
Every winter the village sends someone to negotiate. This year they sent you.
Play as
The winter
Old beyond counting, courteous, and incapable of breaking or bending a term once agreed.
How it opens
The lake is a grey plate and the light is going. They gave you a lantern, a chair, and the ledger of what has been offered and accepted for a hundred and forty years.
At the far end of the ice something is already sitting down. It has brought its own chair.
Setting
Kolvenhalt, high in the Fenn range, snowed in five months of the year. The winter here is a party to an agreement: it takes what it is offered and leaves the village alone. The negotiation happens on the frozen lake, alone, at dusk. Last year's negotiator came back without her voice.
A branch can end when
- A term is agreed and the village survives the winter.
- You find the flaw in a hundred and forty years of ledger.
- You offer yourself and the negotiation ends early.
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The winter that would not be spoken to
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