Soft Border

Lake Peipus freezes every January and the border becomes a white field. Kaarel watches one shore. Somebody whose name he will never learn watches the other.

One morning there is a stone on the ice, set down like a pawn. Kaarel thinks about it for most of a shift, then answers with a stone of his own. The game takes the whole winter and not one word, and both men know exactly what will happen to it in spring.