2. Morgan
Chapter 2
Morgan
“Y essssss, Morgan!” Chloe whooped.
“Thank you, thank you,” I said, miming a bow from my seat at the end of the table as the rest of the group golf clapped. I needed to leave soon, but these post-game moments, reliving the glory of whatever we’d just achieved (or, just as likely, the hilarity of whatever hijinks we’d got up to), were some of my favourites.
“I genuinely thought that was going to be a TPK,” Fatima said, sighing in relief. I’d never experienced a “total party kill,” but apparently it wasn’t out of the question.
“Only terrible DMs kill their whole party,” Phil said, and Fatima stuck out her tongue at him. He responded by shoving a brownie at her; she spluttered at first, then accepted it.
“From death saves to killing blow is a pretty badass combat moment.” Grey tipped an imaginary hat to me. “Well done.”
“Indeed,” Jack said, and I gave him a half-smile in return. Only half, though; too much eye contact with Jack was almost always guaranteed to knock me off course.
“Sounds like we should do stars and wishes?” Fatima interrupted, bringing the table to order. She was our gamemaster – or Dungeon Master, but that always felt a bit kinky when not abbreviated – so the table in front of her was littered with papers, dice, and open books. The rest of us had our character sheets – some paper, some on phones – and our own dice. For me and most of the others, that meant just a couple of sets. For our resident dice goblins Grey and Chloe, that meant literally dozens of sets of dice: some sparkly, some made of metal, some oversized. Of course, they seemed to always reach for the same ones, but pointing that out had only resulted in death stares. I also had my tablet with me like every week so I could doodle as we played. I put it on the table in front of me, switching it off so no one would see my poor renditions of their characters.
“Ooh yes, me first,” Phil said, raising his hand like a student in class. Fatima nodded at him. “Star is for Morgan’s kill, of course. Wish is that we get a cute pet faerie in the fae realm, please.”
Everyone nodded their assent. Cute non-player characters, or NPCs, were always high on everyone’s wishlist. Animals and small creatures preferred, of course.
“Friendly reminder that faeries are people in D at the moment, it was a neon blue. Their best friend Fatima was the far opposite: restrained femininity. Her long brown hair was tied into a low ponytail with a mink-coloured velvet ribbon, and her round, gold-rimmed glasses perched daintily on her nose as she took notes with a maroon gel pen, her posture offensively good.
“And since Phil took the obvious one, I’ll say my star is the excellent religion checks Jack rolled tonight.”
More assent from the group, me included.
“Ah yes,” he said, “the impressive skill of dropping resin dice onto the table.” Jack was simultaneously the most physically imposing and least socially imposing person at the table. Even sat down, he was a full head taller than me, a far cry from his dwarf character. He was two for three on the tall, dark and handsome, in fact, with one of those faces that would be universally acknowledged as good-looking. But there was no dark and brooding aura; every part of him was golden. Golden tanned skin, golden blonde hair, and a bright, wide smile lighting up a chiselled yet friendly face. He looked like he’d just stepped off the front cover of some 90s surf magazine.
“Star for me is how quickly we solved that puzzle to get in the door,” Chloe said, and everyone laughed.
Fatima grinned. “Given that I usually just Google ‘logic puzzles for ten-year-olds’, it’s about time you found one of them doable. So yes, well done on being smarter than my students.” She turned her attention to Jack, who was next in line.
“I think my star was getting to use that new healing spell for the first time, especially when Morgan went into death saves.”
I couldn’t help but feel a flush of pink creep up my neck at hearing my name come out of Jack’s mouth, even though some part of my brain acknowledged it wasn’t a compliment. If anything, it was highlighting my ineptitude.
“My wish is that we get some time to explore Thelanoris,” he added.
“Depends on how quickly you piss off the locals,” Fatima said, not looking up from her notes. “Which, if the last city is anything to go by, will be about ten minutes. And Morgan?”
“I know it’s technically been said, but given that it was my kill, I’m saying that held action was my star.”
“Fair enough. And your wish?”
I wracked my brain for what I might want from the next session. But I was still so new to the game that I struggled to imagine what could come next. I liked it that way, actually; every week was a new adventure. But that was definitely way too cringe to say out loud, so instead I opted for a joke I knew would get a reaction.
“I mean, for what the game is called, there have been far fewer dungeons than expected…” I said. “…And nary a dragon.”
The table erupted in cries of outrage, wondering why I would wish a dragon on our level five party, but I assumed Fatima understood how unserious I was being, given the lack of note-taking happening at her end of the table. Jack just tipped his head back in laughter.
My tablet lit up in front of me, at the same time that I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. It was a text from Cara. A series of texts, actually, and I read them one by one as they came through on my tablet.
so sorry moggy, but I’ve got bad news
my mentor told me at lunch I should avoid taking big blocks of holiday during my rotation in sales if I can help it
apparently it’s really easy to fall behind
so annoyingly it’s a no-go on America this autumn :(
didn’t you say there are other ren faires though? lemme know what other dates we should look at
not now though, i’m at the pub xxx
It was my best friend Cara’s first day at her new job at some mega agency in London, where she’d moved yesterday. We’d been making plans to go to a Renaissance Faire in America sometime in the autumn, but apparently that wasn’t happening anymore.
“Well, good job tonight everyone,” Fatima said, bringing me back into the room again. She scooped the scattered papers in front of her into her hands. “Sorry for going on so long. I know it’s already a bit later than usual, but I wanted to get through that combat.”
I was actually grateful for the extended session; it was my second night alone in the house, and if the sad, empty feeling of the first was anything to go by, I didn’t exactly have the time of my life waiting for me at home.
But I was sure the others were less thrilled. I knew they always went to the pub after our Monday games. I was always invited, and Chloe tried her best to get me to go each week, but I’d always had Cara waiting at home for me, something delicious simmering on the hob and whatever reality show we were bingeing queued up on the TV. And plus, the rest of them had been friends for years, and I would have felt like a clinger to force myself into their social traditions. Chloe had invited me to play when Fatima’s boyfriend had had to drop out, and I knew what I was: a stand-in for him.
I packed my tablet, character sheet, pencils and dice into my backpack and stood up from the table to go.
“Oh here,” Grey said, pulling a book out of their bag. I’d loaned them a romantasy novel I’d read last month.
“That was speedy!” I said, putting the book into my own bag.
“Yeah, well, you were right – I couldn’t put it down once I’d started. I’ll have to bring you one I’ve got that’s similar.”
“Ooh, yes please,” I said, smiling, then waved as I moved to leave.
“You sure you don’t wanna come to the pub?” Chloe asked, batting her eyelashes at me and pulling her rosy lips into a puppy dog pout. “Just for one?”
Honestly, it was tempting. If I were ever going to take her up on her invite, now would be the time. I glanced around at the others; Fatima and Grey were in a side conversation, and Phil was in the kitchen cleaning up the cake tin he’d brought the brownies in. Only Jack was paying attention, and I caught his gaze for a brief moment – was there a bit of hope in it? – before he looked away.
I took in a deep breath to respond, but Jack interrupted me.
“Don’t pester her,” he said to Chloe. “You do this every week.” The breath whooshed out of me as my chest fell.
“She can answer for herself,” Chloe said, chucking a cork coaster across the table at Jack, who lifted his hands defensively. She looked back at me pleadingly again, but I’d got Jack’s message. I didn’t really want to go that much, anyway.
“I can indeed,” I said pointedly to Jack, then turned to Chloe. “But no thanks, I’d better get home.”
Chloe pressed her mouth into a disappointed line, but she nodded. “See you at work,” she said.
“Yeah, see you,” I said, slipping out the door, waving as I went; but they’d already moved on, and their laughter trailed out after me into the warm evening air.
* * *
Just as the last of the light was leaving the sky, I pushed through the front gate of the tiny terraced house I had shared with Cara until yesterday. I checked the letterbox on the way in; there was a water bill I’d need to take a picture of and send to Cara’s mum, and a postcard from my mum. It was a vintage-looking blue and yellow Big Sur print, with a message scrawled on the back:
My darling Mo, today I woke up next to this view. Van life has its perks. Love mum xxx
I kicked off my shoes and felt myself exhale in relief; Mum might be living it up on the West Coast, but this house was my happy place.
But it was also the first workday I’d had since Cara left, and I immediately felt the gut punch of what was missing: her noisy greeting, asking about my evening and if I finally let Jack flirt with me; the smell of whatever she’d made for dinner wafting through the small space; the dulcet tones of Carole King singing the Gilmore Girls theme song in the background.
Cara’s parents had bought the house when she started uni nearby, and I’d found her post for a housemate on our university intranet, not wanting to brave the halls. Over the three years of uni and the four years since we’d graduated, we had made the place our own. There were not one, or even two, but three different rugs layered on the already-carpeted floor. The green velvet sofa we’d rescued from the side of the road was piled high with cross-stitched cushions and heirloom quilts. Fairy lights wound along the rod above the bay window, which was framed by thick, velvet brocade curtains and huge stacks of books, overflow from the bookshelves that flanked the wood-burning fireplace. It was my heaven.
Tonight, there was no noisy greeting, no homemade dinner, and no Lorelai and Rory, because Cara was gone. There was just me, and an empty bedroom upstairs I couldn’t even look at these last few days. Without her, the place felt empty. Which was saying something because of how aggressively full it was.
After a sad microwave risotto – Cara had always been the cook, so I’d have to learn how to feed myself properly – I settled down in my usual spot: the bench seat built into the bay window. I leaned back against some of the dozen or so cushions lining the seat and opened my tablet to resume the drawing I’d started during the game. But I’d lost interest, so I started scrolling on my phone instead. I scrolled past an ad for handbags (as if I had anywhere to take a handbag, or the inclination to use one even if I did), a reminder to take a deep breath to which I nodded along, but then got bored halfway through my inhale and kept scrolling, and a morning routine video that I bookmarked as if 5am was even remotely within my capability.
But my finger stopped swiping as I landed on a video of two best friends in the US entering their local Renaissance Faire hand-in-hand, dressed in cosplay from head to toe. The shorter of the two wore a green cloak fastened with a leaf-shaped brooch, whilst the tall one was clad in what looked like a chain mail tunic and plate armour. I’d seen enough of these videos to know it was probably all plastic, maybe even 3D-printed, but it looked pretty legit to me. The caption underneath said “Less than 4 months until Ren Faire is back!” with a faerie emoji and a litany of hashtags underneath.
Over the last few months, I’d been getting more and more videos about cosplay, and specifically about Renaissance Faires. I was sure it probably started from my many Google searches at the beginning of the year when I was first learning D “what does 5e mean dungeons “do fighters have spells 5e” (no); “which is better battle master or champion fighter 5e” – but by now it was taking up at least half of my social media real estate. It was pretty dreamy, to be fair, and my starry-eyed watching of every video served to me by the sacred algorithm probably had something to do with the volume I saw. I had dubbed this particular genre of content “nerd shit”. It was a broad genre with many sub-categories: people prancing around in fluffy dresses, inventing custom scenarios for their D the high of completing part of a mission. Of doing something epic. So I walked over to the bookshelf and picked up my worn copy of my favourite fantasy novel; one I’d read half a dozen times but never failed to make me feel that high. And for now, whilst my own adventures were limited to three-hour sessions on Monday evenings, that would have to do.