A Small Miracle
Sunday morning. A familiar church. One very unfamiliar gift.
- Setting
- neighborhood-church · morning
- You play
- Max, a well-off neighbor and familiar community volunteer
- Setting
- neighborhood-church · morning
- You play
- Max, a well-off neighbor and familiar community volunteer
Synopsis
A good man. An ordinary Sunday. A small, inexplicable power to influence the people around him. What Max does with it is yours to decide.
How it opens
Sunday is nearly over as far as the church is concerned. The organist has put on his cycling helmet. Someone is washing cups with the furious efficiency of a person who has washed them every week for years. Mara catches you beside the noticeboard. "Max. Before they ask you to talk me round." She takes a ring of keys from her coat pocket. The blue label says HALL. You have seen those keys in her hand so often that, for a moment, they seem like something she ought not to be able to take off. "I've told them I'm stopping. They think I mean a holiday." She holds them out, then draws them back. "Actually, no. You'll end up doing it. That's how they got me." Something changes. No light. No voice. Just a new certainty, as immediate and inexplicable as knowing where your own hand is in the dark. [Influence]. You could try to give a suggestion a little more weight. Ease an irritation. Draw attention to something overlooked. A nudge, with no promise it would take. Mara is still there. Still holding her keys. Whatever has just happened to you has made no visible difference to her. "Sorry," she says. "You were miles away." From the hall, someone calls her name. She closes her hand around the blue label and looks at you. "Can I finish one conversation first?"
