Ash: Chess and Prayer

"Will do! All my love, don't forget to sleep."
As Adelaide ’s voice faded with the currents of magic that delivered it, Ash's evening plans were simplified. Grand schemes for lemon-spiced cod filet evaporated, a new vision of buttered bread and tea taking their place. Not to plan, but one did their best to enjoy time away from a spouse for the little gift it was.
After dinner she sat in a cozy quiet, curled up on an armchair before the hearth. Her cheek rested against the fuzz of her favorite wolfhide cloak with the glow of the last log for the night fading orange on her face. Adelaide would get her wish, Ash could fall asleep right here and-
Her eyes strayed to the cabinet beside the fire, its door hanging open. Within she could see the elongated black-white diamond pattern of her armor, bright even in the wan light of the late winter evening.
No, not tonight. Snorting out a huff, Ash averted her gaze. It fell instead on the little canvas bag she’d bought the other day, crumpled up on her endtable. What’s that they said - once is coincidence, twice is conspiracy?
“Alright, I’ll bite,” She tugged at sack’s cord.
Polished wood pieces, stained either pale or near black, rolled about, overflowing a sheet of vellum marked with sixty-four alternating colored squares.
A pawn rolled off the tableside. She snatched it from the air with a hiss of breath past clenched teeth.
“Oh of course the one time no one is around to see it- Classic Ash. Don’t you go running off, friend, I need you here,” she plonked the piece down on its row.
Ash blinked twice at the piece. Well, she’d started, might as well finish. One token at a time she filled the battlefield, from conscripted villagers quaking in their boots to the king and queen them-bloody-selves.
“Shit does the white queen start on white or black?” Ash squinted at the arrangement, consulted a crude sketch on the edge of the vellum, and flipped the spot of the kings and queens around.
Diversion complete, she stared at it. She unfolded from a comfortable cocoon to loom over the board. Her knee started jittering.
Minister Farrow called this worship. Ash shook her head, nails scouring her neck as she rubbed at it. Stupid, stupid, when was the last time Ash had actually prayed to, let alone worshipped, anything? Was she going to start now, of all times?
Ash gnawed on her lip, peeked around the empty room half expecting a mocking crowd to erupt, and sent her king’s pawn charging ahead.
A grand momentous nothing followed.
Ash slapped her hands on her knees, rubbed the fabric of her skirt across her palms, and said towards the empty space across the chess board, “Well, Minister Farrow says she always has a single question for you. Here’s mine. Is this all part of some grand fuckin’ design, Ao? Have you been fiddling with my life where I can’t see you?”
In the quiet to follow she only heard the ringing of her own ears and the occasional rattle of the breeze stirring the windows.
“Oh what am I doing- what use would I even have of an answer? It wouldn’t change anything.”
She swept up, cinching her cloak tighter around her, hissing, “And why would I expect one? You’re quiet amongst a quiet stock. Forget I asked.”
Ash left the board where it lay and went to bed.