Chess is the struggle against the error

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Playing chess in the park with Nina had become a strange, regular ritual. The Bull liked rituals, though, and having somewhere to be once or twice a week help him set other parts of his life in order. He liked chess, too: it kept his mind active. Playing against Nina did that two-fold, as she tended to try to cheat in one way or another. He didn't blame her, but it kept him on his toes.

"Check," she said triumphantly, her green eyes bright.

Bull surveyed the board and moved his king to protect it. She moved a knight; he took it with his rook. Nina pouted.

"All out of horsemen," she sighed as she propped her head on her hand, elbow on the table. She made what seemed to be a reckless move with a bishop and Bull reacted with staid calm to defend his king.

"Checkmate!" Nina declared. Bull blinked and had to look at the board, wondering what he had missed. In her quick move withe bishop, she'd drawn his attention away from her queen. He surveyed the board, but she was right: there was nowhere to move his king that would be safe.

"You're getting better," he said as he sat back. Nina looked very pleased with herself. "Another game?"

"Sadly I have a few clients lined up for this afternoon," she said as she rose, smoothing out her coat. "Same time next week?"

"Of course." Bull rose with a quiet grunt. He wore a metal brace on his left leg, and the old pain bothered him more in the cold. He accepted a hug from Nina and kissed the top of her head. She was a kind girl.

As she left, Bull carefully sat back down, using the stone table for support. He stretched his bad leg out and started setting the board up again. He was wearing more clothes than he ever had in Thedas, mostly at Dorian's and Krem's insistence. Krem tailored everything for him. Today it was a long-sleeved v-neck sweater. He'd brought his coat with him, but for now it sat under him to protect him from the chilly stone bench.

Comments

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"Mm, all people, ideally. But there are some disagreements regarding how that should look in the wider world," he mused.

"Yes, and no," he said regarding the idea of religion. "The Qun is a philosophy. It governs our entire way of life. The Qunari are followers of the Qun, but also a race of people. You are not, and could never be, Qunari. Just like I, no matter how hard I try, could never be human."

[flightfromennui]

“Then who are these converts?” Anthony asks. Perhaps it is really the fierceness of the Bull’s appearance, but he wonders if what the Bull calls converts are actually those his people have conquered. Anthony is an Englishman: he knows very well how empires expect their colonists to conform to a way of life while still treating them as something other.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"Many of them are former slaves of the Tevinter empire. Others are humans or elves that decide the Qun offers a better way of life. I saw one old woman convert because of how we treat our elders. Gatt, who worked under me, converted because we liberated him from his Tevinter master and offered him equality. Life under the Qun isn't always easy for Viddathari, it's often a lot of adjustment."

Bull shrugged. "It's not a good way of life for everyone."

[flightfromennui]

“But it is a better way of life for some,” Anthony says, thinking that he begins to understand. Radically different ways of life can offer much to some people, particularly those who are given very little by the rest of society. And the Qun, as strange as they sound, have a way of life whose rationality appeals to him.

He moves his knight. “Check."