Morgan Garrett
December 28, 2020 7:34 PM
It's all the dice's fault. by Morgan Garrett
Somehow, Morgan realized that the sheets of paper her father was turning over at the kitchen table were papers of hers before it even occurred to her to remember that she had brought them into the kitchen ever in her life. Something seemed unfair about that, she thought: she had felt first a thrill of alarm at the thought that the papers were her stories, and only then had thought: no, it couldn't be, why would any of that be here? And then, then she had remembered the night before, late, coming to the kitchen....She considered flight, but before she could get further than that, David looked up with an expression of mild interest. "You write this, kid?" he asked.
Morgan bit her lip. "Will you believe me if I tell you I didn't and that it's all a big prank from someone at school who stole my handwriting?" she asked.
He laughed. "No, but good try," he said amiably, and Morgan's lips twitched a little in amusement, too. "This ain't bad," he continued, lifting her literary efforts to indicate them. "A little concerningly violent sometimes...."
"That's not my fault," said Morgan quickly. "It's the dice."
David frowned then. "You lost me," he confessed.
"You know that game I've told you about? The one where we all get together in the library?"
"Yeah," said David, still frowning, not seeing the link. "That one that people back home used to think was associated with Satanism, right?" He snapped his fingers a few times, trying to think of something. "The one there used to be that tract about...."
"Yeah," said Morgan, half-grinning and half-grimacing - there were some...fun....things about Kentucky. "That one. Well, I don't know - I guess - last year, this one girl in my class, Val, she started running a few games, and one of them had kind of a complicated story, you know, and I was getting really into my character, you know - " she was talking really fast, trying to get all her words out at once until she abruptly ran out of breath, to her father's clear amusement.
"You know you can breathe," he observed. "Don't think the house will burn down if you do."
"Depends on if I've got my wand in my hand or not," Morgan rejoined, and was pleased with herself when he laughed. "Anyway - in the game, you know, whenever your person has to do something, you have to roll the dice, right, to see if it works, and sometimes what the dice says makes no sense...so I started, like, writing out what I could remember from the sessions, and trying to work out what would make it make sense to the people, as if it had a reason, and not dice...."
She trailed off, fidgeting with her fingers and shrugging her shoulders. Her father's expression was difficult to make much out of - as usual, she thought.
"Huh," he said finally. "That's neat enough. And it ain't bad," he repeated. "You should keep it up."
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Morgan Garrett
It's all the dice's fault.
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