Iriméze’s arena was on the second level, a detail that surprised Saia.

“Wind spirits never liked herlamis,” Serit explained as they stepped forward with the rest of the line. “So they only allowed the arena to be built on the second level, far enough from their houses at the bottom that they didn't hear the cheers.”

Saia nodded and looked up at the curving walls of the arena. They were built with sturdy wood, dark and levigated, with a coat of transparent paint making it shine in the light of the numerous sphere-lamps scattered at the base of the building.

“Our arena is one of the most beautiful ones in the world,” Serit said, smiling wide.

“And I guess the fact that you live here doesn't have anything to with this opinion.”

“Not at all,” they answered, seemingly blind to her sarcasm. “Visitors come here often to see it. You'll immediately understand why once we're in.”

They finally reached the end of the line and entered a small room with a desk in front of the opposite wall from the entrance. Four functionaries sitting at the desk exchanged the spectators’ coins for pieces of rough wine-colored cloth that had a number sewn onto it. Two guards observed the exchanges, while four more kept watch on the two doorways that opened at the sides of the desk.

Serit bought two tickets with eight coins. They were slightly different from vissins: first of all, they didn't have the mountain depicted on one side, but one of the ten symbols she’d seen on the doorways in the temple that led to the deities’ rooms. They were also larger and less thick.

The functionary didn't seem to give that much weight to the fact Saia was a human as she handed her a piece of cloth. Then the tips of her fingers accidentally grazed his hand and his eyes widened. She quickly followed Serit toward one of the doors, mentally cursing for forgetting that her hands were as cold as stone.

On the other side there was a small elevator and a wooden staircase coiling around it. They got to the top and found themselves outside, on the stands of the arena.

It was evening and the city was already immersed in the dark despite the orange hues of the sky beyond its walls, to the point a group of staff members holding portable lanterns escorted the spectators toward their seats. Serit didn’t wait for someone to approach them, instead taking out a small sphere-lamp from a pocket, so small it could be held in their palm. They checked the number on their cloth and started walking with confidence along the seats, which were nothing more than stairs of wood curving at regular intervals to accommodate the spectators. There were numbers engraved next to each seat and painted in gold.

They finally reached their adjacent seats and sat down. Saia saw Serit's smirk and examined the rest of the arena, looking for what they were expecting her to see. The square area at the bottom was perfectly illuminated, and at first glance Saia hadn't asked herself why. Now that she was focusing on it, she realized it was a field of fog: it was similar to the one she'd seen near the ceiling of the central room of the temple, but ten times denser. The players walking on it seemed to be standing on a void, the fog moving under their feet in slithering tendrils. The light was enough to illuminate their whole bodies, but not so intense that it was painful to watch. Not that it would have been painful for her anyways.

The players seemingly suspended on air and the swirls of the fog gave the scene a dreamy quality.

“I think I get it now,” she said.

Serit's smirk became bigger.

“The floor is made of glass. They have special shoes that allow them to run without slipping.”

“And the fog?”

“It's just regular sprites, but in extremely large quantities.”

“Sprites?”

Serit's eyes widened, as if realizing only at that moment she didn't know what they were talking about.

“Wind sprites, to be specific.”

“What are they?”

Serit looked like they were about to launch on an explanation, but a movement from the stands caught their attention.

“I’ll explain at home.” They pointed at one spot on the other side of the arena. “Look, the narrators.”

Saia noticed a large platform jutting out of the stands and hovering on that side of the field like a balcony. It was well illuminated, with four large spheres at the corners of the engraved wooden handrail.

The narrators were two men dressed in the colors of their respective teams. They stepped onto the balcony side by side, greeting the spectators by raising their cupped hands multiple times. They turned toward each other and repeated the gesture, then stood in position in front of the handrail, several armlengths of space between them. The crowd cheered.

“The team in purple and pink is Héshe’s, the Twilight Doves. The ones in blue and black are the Midnight Cormorants.”

“Why birds?”

Serit shrugged.

“Tradition. It’s not unusual for the teams of a city to have a common theme for their names.”

The field was divided in two by a white line made brighter by the fog that shifted beneath it. Two long benches had been placed next to each side, and the people who occupied them all wore clothes with the same colors, staff and players both. They roamed their side of the field, exercising or talking to each other, until another person dressed in green and gold entered the arena from a wide doorway just under the narrators’ balcony. Apparently it was the signal for everyone to take position, the colors of the two teams mixing as some players crossed the line at the center of the field to join the opposite side.

Each half had a circle at the center: the one on the left, where most of the Twilight Doves were, was delimitated by a bright purple line, while the right one had a dark blue one.

“They're bringing in the hérve. Balls, without the double meaning it has in your language,” Serit said.

Two members of the staff stepped onto the balcony, each with a full bag on their shoulders. They put them down next to each narrator and left.

“Now there's the setup. Usually the narrators of the two teams decide together in advance what they're going to say, and the match doesn't get played until they both agree.”

They were about to add something, but the narrator of the Doves took out an object from his long robe. The whole arena went silent while he put it in front of his mouth. The shape vaguely reminded Saia of an ocarina.

“Welcome, my dear spectators.”

The voice sounded near and not strained, as if he was talking from the bottom row of the stands in front of Saia and not from the other side of a three-towerlengths wide arena.

“Today I’ll be narrating the story of Hané, a young huntress from the city of Nerméze, with rainbow waterfalls falling from the sky.”

“The first narrator introduces the main character of their team and the setting," Serit quickly whispered.

The second narrator took out another ocarina-like object.

“And I'm here to narrate the story of Sanon, an old guard who needs to find the only egg of the legendary bird of crystal.”

“The second one introduces their team's protagonist and the common goal of both characters.”

Two players, one from each team, had left their position to approach the stands. Each narrator took a piece of cloth from their respective bag and let it fall toward their player. When they wore it Saia saw it was a short cape that only covered the shoulders, pink for the Twilight Doves, black for the Midnight Cormorants. They both had a big golden dot sewn at the center.

“Good choice,” Serit said. “They are the players who represent the protagonists. Usually the best attackers.”

The players returned to their places. Some staff members in green lined up at regular distances along the borders, while the one dressed in green and gold jogged toward the center of the field.

“The referée,” Serit explained. “Now the first narrator, the Doves’, will choose which ball to play first. Oh, it's a gray one,” they added, as the man let it fall from the border of the balcony onto the field.

The referée screamed: “Gray,” then positioned the ball in the center of the field and whistled with another small device.

The players started running. The Dove that reached the ball first kicked it, but the teammate it was headed toward was anticipated by an opponent. She hit the ball with the head, then took it with both hands. She started to run away, but another Dove touched her shoulder and she stopped in her tracks.

“One,” the referée shouted while the woman looked around at her moving teammates.

“Two.”

The player threw the ball toward another Cormorant, who tried to run away with it. The refereé started counting from one even if no opponent had touched him.

“Two important rules,” Serit explained, eyes peeled on the action. “First, if an adversary touches you, you have three seconds to pass the ball or it goes to the other team. Second, the opponents can’t touch the player who receives the ball for three seconds, no matter which team they belong to.”

A Dove intercepted the ball and ran between two opponents, headed toward the purple circle to the left.

“And he has to put the ball there?” Saia asked, pointing at it.

“Yes and no. Each team can score in both circles and they get a point anyway, but it determines which narrator will speak next and how the story…Yes!” They screamed, jumping up.

The player had made a swift passage to another teammate, who had then slammed the ball down inside the circle before anyone could interfere. While the purple team cheered, together with at least half of the spectators, the ball was kicked back to the narrator.

Serit sat down.

“As I was saying, each ball has a color that determines an event in the story. Gray ones are neutral, the narrator can expand on the story but not add events that are connected to other colors. The ball was launched by the purple narrator and the team scored on the purple circle, so he gets to continue his story. If it had scored on the other circle, they still would have gotten the point but it would have been the other narrator's turn.”

“What if the Cormorants had scored on the purple circle?”

“Their narrator would still speak next, but the point would go to the Cormorants. Same thing if the Doves had scored in the blue circle: they'd get the point, but the ball would be discarded and the blue narrator would choose the next one.”

“Without narrating?”

Serit shook their head.

“Only when the ball they throw scores on their circle.”

The narrator put the ball aside and raised the voice amplifier again.

“Hané wanted to sell the egg to the best offerer and become rich enough to stop working for the rest of her life. Once she finally had enough money to buy the equipment, she set out to climb the city's walls.”

“Bold,” Serit commented. “Usually narrators try hard to make their characters’ motivations as sympathetic as possible. When they don't, they're usually planning a change of heart during the narration, but they might not have enough chances to make it happen in a way that’s believable.”

The purple narrator took out a green ball and let it fall onto the referée’s hands.

“Green means new character,” Serit said as the referée shouted the color.

They tensed as the Cormorants were about to score, but when a player threw the ball toward the green circle, a Dove jumped to push it instead. Serit cheered.

“It's the last person to touch the ball before it goes into the circle that counts,” they said.

The ball was discarded and the Cormorant’s narrator took another one, green again this time.

“He'll try that too. Makes sense.”

This time, it was the blue team to score in their own circle. The ball was kicked back to the narrator.

“He started his voyage toward the top of the city, where the rainbow waterfall begins. There was an inn there, and a man who had fought with him in the War of the Thousand Fogs…”

A cheer gradually emerged among those in the public who were siding with the Cormorants, blue cloth wrapped around their necks. It became louder as the narrator described the character.

“They already know him?” Saia asked.

“We all do,” Serit said somberly. “Usually when narrators add a secondary character, they choose it from the ones that were already used in previous matches of the team.”

“… and he decided to help his comrade,” the narrator continued. “After a night of celebration, they left together in the morning.”

He stopped until the cheering subsided, then said a word that Saia didn't understand. She was about to ask Serit, when one of the Cormorants left his position to approach the border of the field. A staff member gave him a short cape similar to the ones worn by the protagonists of both teams, but without the golden circle or line in the center.

“What does it mean?”

Serit sighed.

“That their chances of scoring just redoubled. You'll understand why in a bit.”

The player went back to his position near the purple circle. The narrator took out another gray ball and threw it to the referée.

“Why not a green one?”

“They have to play a gray ball after the ones of other colors, or pass the turn to the other narrator. Plus, they have infinite gray hérve but only three for each of the other types.”

This time, the Doves immediately took possession of the ball. It went back and forth between the circles for a bit before the Doves scored on the purple one. After a brief description of how his protagonist was camping near the fountain and dreaming about her family in another city, the Dove narrator played another green ball. His team was noticeably more aggressive in their attacks, to the point the referée stopped the match to give them a penalty. The Cormorants received the ball and started playing again from the halfway line of the field.

Still, it was a purple score on the purple circle.

“Amidst dreams of her family,” the narrator started even before receiving the ball again. “She sensed a presence watching her in the night. She opened her eyes and saw a person come out from behind the pink waterfall, a woman with two big gray wings and ears similar to the ones of a donkey.”

Serit held their breath for an instant. Saia tried hard to pretend she wasn't interested, but the truth was that she couldn’t help but wonder what would happen once the characters of the two teams met, and how she could copy both story and game in her diary without it seeming a fever dream.

When the game resumed with a gray ball from the purple narrator, she asked Serit information about that character.

“It's a new one, but he did something interesting with it,” Serit explained, without tearing their eyes away from the game. “Those creatures with wings and long ears were introduced by the third narrator in the entire history of the team, but no one ever expanded on them despite fans' requests. No narrator of the Twilight Doves has ever dared to touch the only character we got of that type, the expectations are too high.”

Saia nodded and returned her attention to the match. For the first time since the start of the game, she was hoping for someone to score on the purple circle, no matter which team it was, to hear more from the Doves' narrator.

The players behaved as if they had heard her thoughts. Both teams hovered around the purple circle, making an attempt to score after another. Until a Cormorant caught the ball and sprinted to the other side of the field, where the small number of defenders wasn't enough to prevent her from scoring in the blue circle.

The blue portion of the crowd cheered, but it was more subdued than usual. Saia guessed the Doves weren’t the only ones wishing for their narrator to speak again.

The Cormorants’ narrator made a quick interjection on how his protagonist and the other main character reached the top of the city, then took out a purple ball.

“So soon?” Serit said. “Purple introduces the end of the story, by the way. If they score, the protagonist will make an attempt at reaching the goal. If they succeed they have to score again with the copper ball, then the match ends. But they can only score in their own circle.”

Meanwhile, the ball was being thrown in a corner of the field, the Doves trying to push it away from both circles. Their efforts were disrupted when a Cormorant threw it over their heads to a teammate, who then slipped between two defenders and scored in the blue circle. Serit swore, their words drowned by the crowds’ disappointment.

“I hope they make it interesting, at least.”

“They arrived at the top of the city,” the narrator said, “And found a cave where the pink water came out of the wall of rock. They walked along the stream, up to the end of the cave. Once there, they found the origin of the waterfall: it was the egg of crystal, abandoned by its mother centuries ago.”

They took a copper ball and threw it. Serit held their breath and bent forward, elbows on legs. The match was moving again toward the right side of the field, with both teams pressed against the circle. A purple player stepped back by mistake, foot on the other side of the line.

“Penalty,” Serit said through their teeth in the exact moment the referée announced it.

They restarted some arms lengths from the circle, with the ball in the blue team's hands. Serit crossed both hands over their mouth and squeezed tight. The ball flew over the circle multiple times, and in the end a Cormorant smashed it down. Saia expected them to stop as it had happened all the other times someone had scored, but they kept playing as if nothing had happened.

She looked at Serit, then turned her head toward them so that they would know she was looking at them.

“Only the characters can score when there’s a purple ball on the line,” they said.

As if on cue, the purple player with the mantel of the protagonist took the ball and sprinted toward the purple circle. A Cormorant touched him, forcing him to pass the ball to a teammate. They threw it back and forth with enough ability that the blue defenders struggled to anticipate them. In the end, the Doves’ protagonist scored in the purple circle.

The purple ball went to the Doves’ narrator. Serit sat straighter with a sigh.

“With a purple or copper ball, in case of failure the other narrator gets to say why the attempt failed.”

“Before they could take the egg, a cry arrived from the entrance of the cave. The crystal bird flew down to take away their prize.”

He took out a blue ball and threw it without hesitation.

“Killing,” Serit said. “It works exactly like a purple ball. If the Doves score, they can kill a secondary character. If they want to kill the protagonist, a golden ball is played, and if they succeed again the game ends.”

They didn't get that far. The Cormorants scored on the purple circle, forcing the Doves’ narrator to play a gray ball. As the match went on, the purple team's protagonist captured the bird with her huntress skills, wondering about the morality of killing a parent to get their offspring. The other protagonist had time to remember the war with his veteran before the bird killed him. Then he met the other two characters, and a fight ensued over the egg.

The last ball was a purple one played by the Cormorants. The Doves scored on blue, closing the match in disadvantage.

“They agreed on letting the egg stay with the soldier,” the Cormorants narrator said, looking at the Doves’ narrator to catch any sign of disapproval. He was nodding. “The egg would be housed in the center of the city, for everyone to drink at its waters, bringing him and his dead companion glory for eternity.”

He raised his cupped hands and lowered his head to acknowledge the applause that followed.

“The huntress left the city,” the other narrator said. “Because being with her family was all she actually wanted, and they would have loved her even if she had failed to bring them riches.”

The cheer was even stronger, and then continued while the two teams paraded along the field before leaving the arena.

“As you can see the score is a little less important than the story, especially for Héshe.” Serit stood in the dark of the tribune and took out their portable lamp. “The players have to know what to prioritize. Knowing in which circle to score is important: making the character fail before they succeed increases empathy, and they can score in the opponent's circle to increase the suspense or give time to their narrator to think.”

They started walking toward the illuminated exit of the stands, holding the lantern as if they actually thought Saia needed its light to see.

“So, what do you think?” They asked once they were outside, out of the crowd. “Have you changed your mind?”

Saia couldn't admit she felt less certain than before to their smug face.

“I’ll talk to her,” she said. “There must be something I can offer.”