Between the Table & the News
A short story written by Matt Gardner with PlotWeaver: Cards of Creation, a storytelling game made by Mod Hob Cooperative.
This story uses an Inverted Plot Pattern, written in 15-minute timed acts with all story cards drawn at random. For more information, visit www.plotweavergame.com
Act 1: Immediate Conflict or Crisis
(Story Element Cards: The Escapist, Dining Room, War, and Romance)
Nothing felt right anymore. Every night, the news worsened as conflict erupted in countries that were not foreign, but in places we had been to. It was impacting our loved ones.
As we sit in the morning light at the dining room table, coffee warming our hands and cats sharing the space, what should feel safe no longer does. The horrors, chaos, and absolute madness fill our conversations. We are stunned and shocked, and the longer the wars rage, the more food tastes of ashes, and our hope for a better world shrinks.
And yet, after coffee, when we step away from the table and focus on our breathing through our yoga routine, a different reality enters. One, not of the tragic loss of young life, or the absolute devastation those who survive must feel learning the fate of their dearly departed, but instead the realization that we are not in danger.
Not now, anyway.
There is a warm realization that in our little corner of the world, we have learned to live in peace with our neighbours, and that we have a quiet, simple existence that holds no real value to those driven to go fast and break things.
We finish our stretches and feel the ground beneath our feet, then return to the dining room table. For a second, we find each other’s eyes, and in that moment, we are simply in one another’s presence. We are safe in our inner circle.
The cats fall into our orbit. One sleeps on the table, another on our laps, and one at our feet, playing with toys and toes.
How can this be the same world? Nowhere around us lives a threat, and yet we live in a world falling into the next world war.
The peace lasts some days longer than others, but the bad news is never far away.
“12,000 suspected dead as regime forces open fire on protesters.”
“How is that even possible?” we ask ourselves. “How can anyone look at themselves in the mirror after killing their own people?”
“Who does this benefit? How many have to die before there is change? Why is peace so fragile?”
