all_inclusive | chess on ice

Ichabod has always been plagued with an insatiable curiosity and in his quest to return to Sleepy Hollow as quickly as possible, he has often stumbled through doorways that lead to fantastic places. He tends to stick to the hotel as much as possible in the vain hopes that somehow Lieutenant Mills will find a way to contact him on his new mobile telephone (no such luck) but today he has taken a chance on a door that seems to have an excessive amount of cheering followed by periods of intense silence.

Beyond the door lies something he has not seen since his last trip to Scotland some years ago. There are two teams of men in brightly-colored garb calling plays and sweeping furiously as a granite stone whirls down the ice. It's a game of Scottish extraction called curling, one that he had been graciously allowed to play once among a group in Kilsyth long ago. It's always been an elegant game to him, full of strategy and tedium, and it seems he's wandered out near the players bench instead of into the stands with the adoring public.

There's another team there, one set to play after this current match is done and judging from their uniforms and accents, they seem to be American, possibly. It seems so strange that the Americans would be playing a Scottish game but who is he to judge? He, too, has chosen America as his country of residence so perhaps it isn't so strange as it might seem on the surface.

"You're the third," the captain tells him and Ichabod racks his brain for the rules of this particular game. He thinks he has a handle on it from that game so long ago but hopefully modern conventions haven't changed this one overly much; he isn't sure what could be complicated about something so simple and elegant as curling but the modern world has a tendency to confuse even the simplest of things.

"Right, yes. The vice-skip, then?" he asks, looking for clarification. Somehow, some way, he's become a member of the American curling team. May God have mercy.

[Either play with Ichabod or join him after the game while he's still decked out in Team USA gear.]

Threaded | Flat

Chase was still trying to get used to the fact that he couldn't trust his doors, anymore. Maybe it was a good thing. He'd been recuperating and off-work for the last two weeks and he was well enough to be walking around without crutches, but he wasn't well enough to do much. So wandering through a door and finding the hotel before trying to get home and finding himself in a curling rink is pretty awkward.

Then again, so is someone asking about being 'vice-skip'. "I think they have another name for it," he says, wondering why no one cares that he's near the bench. Then again, it's not like he knew there were rule books for strange parallel door dimensions. "Not sure what it is. Curling's not exactly my sport."

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