reflection: the last 3 years
wrapped in wind, wrapped in the car, wrapped up in thoughts. No moon tonight.
I try to relax into the seat and reflect on the DnD campaign. Instead, disparate images dribble in, like moonlight splintered on the skin of tumultuous water.
| 1D8 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | saved Quiet by swapping her into a Scorched Man's body | learned what an OSR is | started dating, and moved in with, my partner | started my new job |
| 2 | completed the Trials of Gilean | went to my first convention | crashed my car | ROSC on a hypothermic cardiac arrest |
| 3 | dispelled the regenerating shell of rock around the Refuges | wrote an adventure for an indie publisher | my grandma died of cancer | fatal domestic violence |
| 4 | led refugees from the siege deep into Sialk's undercity | started co-DMing an open table campaign | my cousin hanged herself, I carried her casket | went to 2 hangings |
| 5 | lost a duel with Talba the Shorn | started to read and write blogs | got 2 tattoos | a couple of heart attacks with good outcomes |
| 6 | defeated Azakht and the Purple Worm | met Daniel Sell, Luke Gearing, and Andrew Walter | became vegetarian | was assaulted |
| 7 | bested the Cedar Leaves in the Spore Farm | ran games at public events | visited home after 6 years | moved to a new station |
| 8 | plumbed the depths of the Automactory | ran a 24 hour charity RPG marathon | went to therapy | delivered a baby |
The vast steps of Sialk, once-proud, now resemble a slagged heap. Red with blood, with ember, with the setting of summer's last sun. A few hundred feet below, drums, cheering, and the quiver of the distant cooking fires. Faraway in darkness, the routed hobgoblins' multitudinous trudge, low in the background like the munching of termites.
From her perch on the Ossuary, Ulokke dangles her legs in the night air. It is cold and quiet, shade-draped stones the same temperature as her mottled skin. Yorick stares into the air from his hollow sockets. A moth flies past; teeth snap idly. She murmurs a prayer to her god, the skull-scourer, lord of death: may the dead pass peacefully into her arms.
Overhead, the skull-stars flare. It is the first night of a long winter.
I step out into the frost of witching-hour. Stars swallowed by the deep red glow of the hospital's sign. Night sky yawns open, a direct portal into empty space. I breathe an ephemeral tower of mist.
I look down. I am leaving bloody footprints, and there is a globule of human fat on my boot.
"This is going to put an unavoidable damper on your holiday."
Just in the door, and the AC turns sweat cool on our skin. I turn it down, still on the phone.
"Your cousin is dead."
Which cousin?
I don't recognise the name. I hadn't known she'd changed it.
I am realising it is impossible to reflect on this campaign in isolation. It has been three years of my life. Every priority, every challenge, every competing phenomenon, has had to contend with the dispersed rhythm of our sessions.
I strive towards the floor of my mind. I want to know how I feel. Memories continually summon themselves in my way.
What I come to, slowly, is this. Rumination, circular, ripples headed outward to a distant darkened shore. The question: What was it? What is the substance of this endeavour that lasted three years?
Was it the scheduling conflicts? Was it thousands of words that only I will ever read? Whole days defined by pre-session anxiety? was it the hours spent lying awake or stood in the shower? Maybe it was all for this moment, right now, sat alone in my car, overcome by emotions that feel unnameable, like they came from somewhere foreign to me, outside of myself.
The wind dies.
Realization has brought my descent to a halt: The question is not so much about the campaign, but rather, my life.
what has my life been, these last three years?
I am back. The high window of my home glows orange, misted, defiant in the cold.
The answer is simple, but satisfying -- to me at the very least. This campaign; these people; this life and the way I have chosen to live it; they are how I spend the time I've been given.
It is all I need. As I open the door and hold my partner tightly in my arms, I feel affirmed that it is the only important thing.