I spent years of my life in a fantasy world.
waters inhabited with murlocs
Forests with centuars and unicorns
I had badass armor
Spellbooks, Abilities, Charisma modifiers!
When you live in Dungeons and dragons you finish quests, unlock gods,
Slay Monsters
When my DnD group broke up
I didn't lose a group of friends.
I lost a party of adventurers
Their eulogies pronounced at the end of that final nat one
Will never be forgotten.
Portaits carved like improv comedy routines.
Characatures of our ideal selves
Bound, sealed, stuck on a book shelf
We deserved another sequel.
When the party healer crumpled her car against a Concrete wall at 70 miles an hour
It made sense nobody else knew how to cast raise dead.
In a world that is supposed to play out our ideal realities
it was no question her charecter lived eternal. the way she would have wanted.
The way we wanted so badly to be true.
Nobody felt right taking over her charecter.
And nobody wanted to kill her off.
So we wrote her story.
Every die she had tossed this whole adventure. Each murloc she ran from, each unicorn she rode, etched into a leather bound tome.
Placed Right on the same shelve we kept our pathfinder books.
Her headstone.
We never played after that.
But she did.
When we placed the novel next to the flowers her mother left.
We felt her cast healing song
one last time
And that night
We got a full rest