Trellis

Trellis used to hate waiting. In early games Trellis wanted every move to do something right now — a hop, a gain, a visible step — and any move that didn't pay off immediately felt like a failure. So Trellis never set anything up, always grabbed the small sure thing, and never once made a truly long chain, because long chains have to be built and Trellis had no patience to build them. Underneath was a restless worry: if I don't get something out of this turn, I've wasted it.

Cairn, the pathfinding coach, watched Trellis snatch another tiny immediate hop and asked, "What if this move paid off in three turns instead of now?" Trellis frowned — "then it's a wasted move." "Or," Cairn said, placing a marble in an empty gap, "it's a rung. Right now it does nothing. But it's exactly the peg your big chain will need to hop over later." Two turns on, Cairn rode a long ladder straight through that rung. Trellis went quiet. A move could be worth a lot later even if it was worth nothing now. The restlessness eased into something like foresight.

A girl named Yara came to Trellis stuck. "I only ever make little hops," she said. "I see other people do those giant chains and I don't get how." Trellis smiled, recognising the old impatience. "The giant chains aren't found — they're built," Trellis said. "A chain needs pegs to hop over, spaced just right. So a few turns early, you plant those pegs on purpose. Watch." They looked at the board together and Trellis pointed at an empty gap. "If a peg sat there doing nothing this turn — what could happen in two turns?"

Yara traced it and her eyes widened: a peg placed in that quiet gap would become the middle rung of a chain reaching almost home. "So I... put it there now and wait?" "You put it there now and wait," Trellis said. Yara did it — a move that gained nothing, that itched to feel like a waste — and made herself trust it. Two turns later she brought a peg through, hopped it over the rung she'd planted, and it chained across the board in one glorious leap she had built. She actually gasped. They set up two more; each time she planted a rung early and rode it later, and her "I can't make big chains" gloom turned into a patient, plotting delight: do the quiet thing now, ride the big thing soon.