love + emptiness [clue plot] [open]

She felt like she wasn’t going to make it.

Months had passed and it was clear to the others here that she had not done enough to make her presence known.

She did follow through on what she did well though, a journal that was almost filled to the brim with notes about everything someone could think of as important.

Notes about the people living inside of it, the rooms that they sat in, the ticks that made the others move through the motions.

Amrin was always observant, no matter what the situation was. She would rather think first and then act in order to make sure that things were kept interesting. However, she had now come to realize that was not doing enough for some of the inhabitants.

That just meant that she was going to have to step her game up.

---

Chess was never something easy to play, at least, that was what she was told.

It’s a man’s strategy type of sport her father told her as he explained what each piece did. Amrin was young, but youthful was not a word that she would use to describe herself. She wasn’t like her brothers and sisters. She was silent, resilient, cold; she knew that she would take ages to warm up to people.

Her father was the only person that could bring out the child in her, and even then, it was a bit of a task. He knew that she was smarter than most kids her age, which meant that he was going to have to cater to her needs in a different way, which is why they sat across the river playing a board that they both knew they couldn’t actually afford.

Luckily this was passed down.

Hand me downs were the only thing Amrin ever knew until she started to use her brain for more than just impressing people.

It became a way for her to sustain her life.

---

She sat in the game room, a colorful and verdant green color smeared across the walls that Amrin couldn’t help but find calming.

Her cardigan was pulled closely around her shoulders, as she eyed the various games that were strewn about the room.

She found the chess board, set back up in perfect order, except for the queen and the king were switched on both sides of the board.

”Kings on their own color.” she said to herself, switching the pieces and placing them gently on the wooden board.

She had heard noises coming from other places in the mansion, and all Amrin could do was wait. She pulled out another book that she had borrowed from the collection of one Malcom Nox and opened it to where she left off.

Before getting lost in the words though, she moved her pawn, to e4. A classic opening that would separate the people that knew how to play from the people who didn’t.

Amrin just wasn’t sure if the people she lived with knew.

And so she would find out.