Lapwing Lulu & Starve-Guard Nne & Store-Keeper Kito

"Lulu," Nana said. "Play me a game your way. All loops, all joy."

And Lulu did — and it was beautiful, her seeds sweeping around the whole board in great singing arcs, the fullest, flowingest board anyone had seen. And she lost, twenty-one seeds to twenty-seven, because in all that magnificent flowing she had banked almost nothing into her store. She sat back, deflated. "I keep the seeds moving," she said, "better than anyone. And it wins me nothing."

"Because moving is not the same as keeping," said Kito quietly, and there was no unkindness in it, only recognition. "Your flow is wonderful, Lulu. It just needs somewhere to go." And Lulu looked at his patient, well-tended store and understood, for the first time, that her beautiful loops had never had a destination.

"Kito," said Nana. "Now you. Your way. Guard that store."

And Kito played — cautious, careful, banking every small safe seed, refusing every risk. And his seeds piled up in his own pits with nowhere to flow, growing stale and clogged, until whole stretches of his side sat dead, and his store, so carefully guarded, simply stopped filling because nothing was reaching it anymore. He lost, nineteen to twenty-nine, strangled by his own caution. "I keep the seeds," he said, bewildered. "I keep them better than anyone. And they... stopped coming."

"Because you never let them flow," said Lulu gently, and she said it the way he'd said it to her — kindly, seeing herself in him reversed. "You need the loops, Kito. The seeds have to move to reach your store. All your keeping is guarding a door nobody's walking through." And Kito looked at Lulu's flowing board and saw, for the first time, that a store only fills if the seeds are kept moving toward it.

"And Nne," said Nana, more gently still, for this one was the hardest. "Your way."

And Nne played the fairest game imaginable — never starving, always feeding, scrupulously just — and lost, because she thought about nothing but fairness, feeding seeds across to her opponent even when she didn't have to, forgetting entirely to steer any toward her own store or to keep her own flow alive. She had confused keeping the game fair with playing it well, and they are not the same thing. "I follow the rule that matters most," she said, a little stung. "And I still lose."

"The feeding rule matters most," Nana agreed. "It is the soul of the game — never let it go. But it is not the whole game, child. You may be perfectly fair and still keep your flow, and still bank your store. Fairness is the ground you stand on. It is not, by itself, the walking." And here it happened for all three at once — the click — because they suddenly saw the shape of the thing: Lulu had the flow and lacked the store; Kito had the store and lacked the flow; Nne had the fairness and had forgotten both. Each of them held one piece of a single whole, and each had been trying to win with one piece alone. So they played the next game together, one hand guided by three minds: Lulu sent the seeds looping and flowing so they never clogged; Nne watched, always, that the far side never starved, keeping every move lawful and just; and Kito steered the flowing, fair seeds steadily toward his store until it passed twenty-four — and they won, at last, not by any one of their strengths, but by all three held at once.