A board game enthusiast

Avery Chen stared across the board at her opponent. He was taking a long time to take his turn, but she was patient. Besides, it didn't matter what he did. She'd already won.

Finally he played. A bad move. Avery made her final move and, "That's game. Thank you for playing with me."

He smiled at her, "Wow...you're really good, I thought you said you've never played before."

"I haven't but I play a lot of games. Do you want to play again?" Avery asked.

He shook his head, "Naw, I gotta study at some point. Thanks though."

She nodded and started packing up the game. When she was done she placed it back on the shelf and looked around. The cafe was pretty empty right now. There was a few other games going on, but nothing she could join and nobody she could ask to play with her. Oh well. She grabbed her bag and headed out.

"Bye Avery!" The barista called to her as she left, "See you tomorrow."

"Bye Chuck!" She waved back. Yes, she was on a first name basis with the barista. With everyone who worked at Meeple & Mug in fact. Avery was a regular. She loved playing games, it was pretty much the only thing she did in her spare time. When she'd first moved to Toronto from Shenzhen she'd struggled quite a bit. She'd thought her English was flawless, it wasn't. She thought she wouldn't be homesick, she was. She thought her Masters program would be easy compared school back in China, is isn't.

Her only refuge at that time was board games. For the most part they didn't require a lot of talking, and her reading comprehension was far better than her oral skills, so she could keep up and word on her English. She was good at them, so it helped deal with the inferiority she felt at struggling in her program. And it was a way to interact with strangers, make friends, at her pace.

In fact she'd made what she believed were life long friends at the cafe. People that she would have never interacted with if not for board games. She'd been in Canada for 5 years now and she finally felt like she belonged.

Avery left the cafe and started walking down Dundas street. Eventually she saw an unfamiliar store and felt a tug in her mind, telling her to go inside.

The door jingled as she entered, "Hello! Welcome to Celestial Delights. Can I help you find anything?"

"I..." Avery didn't even really know why she'd gone inside. She didn't know how to answer that question.

"I know!" The woman said, "You look like someone who would appreciate this." She walked to a shelf and pulled out a box, then came and presented it to Avery, "Here. It's yours."

Avery looked down. It was an old wooden box. Unmarked, save for a faint symbol carved into the lid: a closed eye surrounded by twisting vines. It didn’t look like anything modern. No branding, no instructions. Curious she opened the line. Inside was a beautiful board game. It appeared to be solid, polished wood, showing no signs of the age or dust that had been on the lid. The board had a somewhat linear path looping across it's surface. There were a few branching points, but they always merged back together. The path was full of squares of different colours, but there was no writing anywhere on the board.

"It's beautiful..." She found herself whispering.

"I thought you'd say that. Have fun dear." The shopkeeper said.

"Um...how much is it?" Truthfully Avery could probably afford it no matter what it cost. Sure it was expensive living in downtown Toronto, but she had a high paying job and spent very little on anything except board games.

"It's free. A gift. Take it." The woman insisted.

"But...Miss..."

"Vivi, call me Vivi. If you insist on paying...$10."

Avery looked down at the board again, then nodded, "Ok...$10." She took out a bill and gave it to Vivi.

"Enjoy!" Vivi practically pushed her out of the store.

Avery was confused, but took the game home. When she got home she did a quick search online, but the strangest thing happened. When she put Celestial Delights into google she got zero results. Not zero relevant results. Zero. That never happened.

She decided to put the game aside. It was time for dinner after all. Then maybe she'd text her friends, her curiosity was peaked. She HAD to try that game.