Below is one of the finest moments I have ever experienced in table-top, pen and paper roleplaying. It is going to be narrative for your reading pleasure, and the 'memory' is an earlier time in that session. The game was Exalted: Second Edition, which, if you are still playing D&D, and are getting a little bored of dungeon crawls, I suggest you try. The character narrating is my character Benjamin, a Solar Exalted, Dawn Caste, with a very large 'firewand' or in lamens terms, a rifle. The girl, Argena, is a Lunar Exalted NPC played by the GM, Tod (who is always good with character development), who has pretty much been forward with Benjamin with very very strong flirtations, to which he always shuffles away embarassed. DiamondBack is a Solar, Zenith caste, who recently joined the group. Kezlo is Argena's pack leader, but they are the only two left of that pack. In the last session, Argena technically died, but Vermillion Blaze used his contacts to alter the weave in the 'loom of fate' to bring her back. Vermillion Blaze is a Siderial (creepy mystics).
I sat aganst a tree to the side of the Lunars' meeting, sketchpad in hand and DiamondBack, the newly joined Solar nearby, but the fire of the meeting was distant and the air chilly, and in all honesty, the world was distant. My hand flashed over the page over and over, making lines, curves, drawing the sturdy bow our hidden skyship, the Cloud Maiden. I drew the figurehead, the image of the Unconquered Sun himself, my god, before a rememberance came to me.
The memory caused a frown:
The Living Library, hour home the few days before we set out, was quiet as I busied myself drawing a schematic of the Cloud Maiden then. Argena nearby landed loudly after such a quiet prowl behind me, and ended by my side, leaning heavily against me as she eyed the page.
"That's good," she said to me, as I stopped drawing. Tilting her head to see better.
"A craftsman needs to know what he's looking at..." I tried to deflect the compliment. True, I was fair at schematics, but Argena embarassed me with every compliment she gave.
"It's more than that," she retaliated, pausing, pressing into my shoulder a little more, and running one of her thin fingers down the page, "you love her."
Well, the Cloud Maiden was, allegedly, my creation during the first age, so naturally, I connected with her, and she was fine craftsmanship at that. Even though in this life, my only knowledge had been woodwork, by now my fascination with workings had returned, and at least concentrating on the Maiden helped me keep my mind off of the ever pervading image of Argena.
"Ay, she is a work of beauty," I smiled, but Argena's response was quick, harsh and shocking to me.
"She would have to be, to blind a man so fully he doesn't notice the beauty that stands beside him." Argena was away quicker than my mind could comprehend what she said, and when finally it did, I turned my head to look at her retreating from the room. My hand, still clutching the pencil, slid an awful line down the page, and I cursed under my breath as I tore the page from the book.
As I returned my mind to the meeting before me, I looked to where Argena, Kezlo and the other Lunars of the meeting sat. Even as a sillhouette she was distracting, her curves dazzling, her smile, cocky, wise, shocked me when her head turned sidelong against the firelight. Of course I noticed her. How could I not? I noticed her even when she wasn't there, it got to the point of scaring me. And she had almost died, I saw Kezlo's rage as he held the limp form of his last packmate back then. What Vermillion did to bring her back, we both owed him a debt for, because I would have missed her as terribly as Kezlo would.
My mind clicked into place. There was no way I would muster the courage to tell her to her face that she was wrong, that I noticed her, but there are other ways to make a message.
My pencil hit the paper again and I drew more. A figure beside the figurehead, a feminine shape, as accurate as I could design it, hair flowing, her arm holding the bough, her face in a smile like the first I had seen on her... I drew, and I forgot the meeting as I immersed myself in her as art. The two girls together, the Cloud Maiden and Argena. The end result made me want to keep it, but I knew my task. Pencil scratching rapidly, I jotted a note, then folded the paper and tabbed in the corners to stop it flapping open. On the top, I jotted "If you doubt me still, open this."
And then Vermillion Blaze, the Siderial, wandered into the Meeting as though he had been there all along.
I closed my ears to him. Anything 'Mister Creepy' was going to say at a meeting of Lunars after he had been away from us so long was bound to be something that would earn him his nickname again in my mind. I opened my makeshift note and peered at my rendition of Argena again, smiling in spite of myself, feeling my cheeks warm. I read the words I had written and, satisfied, closed it and folded it again. When I looked up, Vermillion Blaze was wandering away, talking about finding him if we sought council. The meeting was adjourned and the Lunars were milling around. Even DiamondBack was over in the crowds. Argena amongst them was speaking to him as I approached. I heard none of the words, though, there was a beating in my ears.
I touched the note to her arm, and she turned and, frowning with confusion, took it and read the outside message. I turned as she did, and started to walk to where I could hear Vermillion singing in the distance, likely so we could find him. I heard Argena whisper the words I had written inside.
"I am shy, not blind."
I could almost feel her turn to look as I walked into the tree line.
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ABET
Aidan's Brain Emptying Time
A fictional gameshow and outlet for my random sh*t.
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Wow.