“Aww, Grandma, you didn’t have to come in,” Liam said, embarrassment written all over his face. “You’ll get bored pretty quick, there’s nothing for you to do here. Just come back to pick me up at the end of the day, okay?”

“If you had your driver’s license, you could drive yourself to these things,” Donna said, shaking her head as she set the quart-sized Ziploc bag full of almond cookies down on the table next to a battered rulebook with a picture of a dark-skinned fire giant on it. “You sure you don’t want me to play with you?” The teasing note in her voice didn’t match the wistful look in her eyes.

“It’s, like, a complicated game, Grandma, I spent three hours making my character before I got here,” Liam said, shaking his head. He was holding up another rulebook, slightly less battered, showing a giant floating eyeball staring through a goldfish bowl.

“I’m going to be a deepling curseblade named Angel. He’s pretty awesome.” Liam glanced quickly over at Ava. The girl with bright blue hair was watching the exchange between grandmother and grandson. “Like, this game isn’t just for boys, it’s for everyone, so tell you what, if you’re really interested in trying it out, I could maybe show you how making a character works tomorrow after you get home from church.”

“Have fun, dear,” Donna said, tousling Liam’s hair affectionately. Her grandson was growing up so fast. She turned, taking in the sights. The store was positively enormous, nothing like the cramped little corner game store where she’d bought her first set of dice. The space must have been converted from a warehouse or big-box store. She’d wondered about that when she had looked up the store’s website and seen what kind of selection they had available for online purchase.

The back half of the store had a dozen other game tables laid out, each one with between five and seven people sitting around it. A small elevated stage in the corner was lined with shelves full of terrain pieces, some looking similar to the ones sitting disused in her own basement, but most looking like they were professionally mass-produced or 3D-printed from a template.

The store had everything – the comics aisles and a section of miscellaneous nerdy brand-related merchandise were next to the gaming tables. Remembering how the store had looked when she walked in, she knew that collectible card games were clustered around the main register, then there was a board games section on the other side of the comics aisles. Miniatures games, painting supplies, and role-playing games were sandwiched between collectible card game accessories and what she’d already labeled as the “junk” section. After all, if she came back with her husband, she would need to steer him clear of that section; the den was cluttered enough as it was.

Looking more closely, she noticed a row of taps next to what she’d thought was just another register, located on the edge of the gaming room to assist with convenient impulse purchases from the gamers in the back half of the store. A gaming store that had beer on tap would have been unthinkable when she’d grown up. A smile broke out on her face as she walked over, lining up behind a gray-haired woman in a velour track suit that had last been fashionable in the early oughts and a mom-grade day purse.

“A pint of the coffee stout, please,” the woman said.

“Wait, Angela, is that you?” Donna said.

The woman jumped, startled, then turned to face Donna. Her face, lined but familiar, broke into a giant smile. It was Angela. “Oh my God, Donna, it’s been such a long time! What are you doing here?”

“My little Liam needed a ride,” Donna said. “Got to be a good grandmom.”

“Oh. Yeah, samesies. Jessica’s twins wanted to come to this thing, she’s working a double today, and they can’t actually drive themselves. Provisional licenses, what?” Angela rolled her eyes. “They’re seventeen, for Christ’s sake!”

The woman behind the counter cleared her throat. “Your coffee stout, ma’am? That’ll be eight dollars.”

Angela turned. After spending a moment rifling through her purse, she pulled out a wallet and extracted a twenty dollar bill. She paused. “Donna, you want one too?”

“Absolutely,” Donna said. “But I can pay for myself.”

“You can get the next round,” Angela said, nodding to the game store employee, who set the glass on the counter and bustled over to pour a second draft.

“Aww, thanks,” Donna said. Two beers was more than her usual daily allowance for impulse purchases. Mentally, she added another two hundred calories and regretfully deducted three almond cookies from her intended lunch to balance accounts with the second beer she hadn’t yet had.

“I was hoping to squeeze into a table, but I guess you can’t just walk in and roll up a character and play. I even brought my old rulebook.” Angela’s hand emerged from her massive purse holding a black book. The cover showed a massively muscled man holding an axe standing in the middle of a doorway. “But the rules are all totally different now.”

Donna shook her head. “Liam doesn’t even know I used to play,” she said. “I still keep my dice bag in my purse for good luck, though. Frank teases me about it sometimes.”

Pints in hand, Donna and Angela caught up as they browsed through the “junk” section, starting with Donna’s Liam, Jessica’s twins, and working their way over to Angela’s ex-husband George.

“And then when Karen’s daughter Becca got pregnant, he stopped helping Jessica with the twins’ 529s. My therapist suggested that I should cut down on the baggage in my life, so then I just took my whole box of old college souvenir papers and burned them in the firepit in a whole little ceremony thing. Love letters, George’s poetry, our old character sheets, all of it.” Angela sighed. “I kind of regret burning our old character sheets now. Giorgioso the Ranger was all the better parts of George.”

“Giorgoso was pretty awesome,” Donna said. “Julie’s character in our next game was a practically a carbon copy of him.”

“Oh, my God, Julie kept playing with you? I thought she moved to Texas.” Angela took a large gulp from her stout.

Donna sighed. “She moved back six months later, but she didn’t want to tell you, and Frank and I just didn’t feel like stirring the drama back up. You and George were engaged, you know? So, she moved in with Linda, and Linda’s brother John started up a new game, and a few fudged die rolls later, Furioso the Ranger was born.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“John was always such a softie,” Angela said. “Not that being a softie ever worked to his advantage with the ladies. Wait. Did she sleep with him to get over George? Spill!”

Donna sidestepped the question deftly as she took a quick sip from her beer. “She still lives with Linda. I was supposed to meet them here, actually, her grandkid Jacob runs a regular game with Liam in it and they both signed up for this event.”

“Oh,” Angela said. “Maybe I should go.”

“No, no, stay,” Donna said. “With four of us here, maybe we could find a spot in the corner and play something together while we catch up and wait for the grandkids to do their thing. It’s been decades. I’m pretty sure Julie’s over the whole thing with you and George. The two of you used to be such good friends.”

Angela drained the rest of the beer. “Okay, but I think I need that second round pretty soon if I’m going to see Julie again.”

The bell on the game store’s front door sounded, and then the rapid footsteps of a man at a full run. Donna turned just in time to see a rapidly moving figure wearing an orange hoodie as it passed by the aisle, nearly knocking over a display of toy lightsabers. “That would be Jacob,” Donna noted, sipping her coffee stout and fishing around in her pocket. “Julie and Linda will probably be here in just a minute. Here, have a cookie. You want another coffee stout?”

“It’s pretty good, but I was thinking maybe the blood orange IPA,” Angela said.

“If you’re going to get a bottle, you are not getting the IPA,” Donna said, crossing her arms. “Not if you want to make a good impression. Linda has a thing about IPAs, and I don’t want to listen to her give it to you. I’m getting a bottle of Dragon’s Milk Reserve, I haven’t had the oatmeal cookie stout before. So, you want another of the local coffee stout, the Dragon’s Milk, or something else?”

“Okay, okay. The Dragon’s Milk,” Angela said, holding up her hands. “Stouts are my favorite, but my therapist says I should stretch my comfort zone at least once per day.”

“You haven’t talked to Julie in how long?” Donna didn’t wait for an answer. “There’s your comfort zone stretch for the day.”

“Fair point,” Angela said as the two of them sauntered up to the bar.

“Four Dragon’s Milks,” Donna said to the game store employee.

“I’m, uh, not supposed to sell more than one drink per customer at a time,” the woman said, looking at Donna’s half-full coffee stout.

“It’s okay, I have a couple of friends coming,” Donna said, taking another sip of her coffee stout. “That was their grandson that just ran by, so they should be here as soon as they’re done parking.”

The game store employee looked back at the still-not-quite-drained pint in Donna’s hand, then shrugged with an air of resignation. “Okay,” she said, walking over to the glass fronted fridge. As the woman bent over low to retrieve an armload of bottles one at a time, the distant bell on the store’s front door sounded.

Donna was signing the receipt when Linda and Julie walked in. The former was wearing a flannel shirt over jeans, gray hair buzzed short; the latter was wearing a long flowing dress and at least three different patterned shawls over her shoulders, with long hair that was, if slightly thinner than it had originally been, nevertheless still auburn. Donna still wasn’t sure if Julie had hit the genetic jackpot or was just that diligent about touching up roots. Unconsciously, she ran a hand quickly through her own hair, calling attention to the contrast just becoming visible at the base of her own dark hair.

“I got Dragon’s Milk for everyone,” Donna said, grabbing one off the counter and holding it out.

“Awesome! Next round is on me, then,” Linda said, reaching out to grab the bottle from Donna. Looking around, she gave a quick friendly smile to the game store employee. Then her eyes shifted over a few feet, catching on a velour tracksuit. “Holy shit, is that Angela? I haven’t seen you in forever! You are looking good, girl!”

Engulfed in a sudden and surprisingly strong hug, Angela let out a small surprised squeak before patting Linda’s back. “Great to see you, too.” Angela said. “Uh, hi, Julie.”

“Hello, Angela,” Julie said, the corners of her mouth sagging. “Nice to see you again.” Julie’s eyes sank into Angela’s like drill bits.

Donna, having finished balancing her mental account against Linda’s promised third round of beer by deleting half a bagel with cream cheese from tomorrow’s brunch plans, cleared her throat, handing out bottles to Julie and Angela before grabbing the last one for herself and raising it high. “To old friends!”

“To old friends!”

As the four drank, a crack of thunder echoed after their proclamation. The lights flickered, and then there was the sound of rain hammering down on the steel roof of the game store. This lasted for several seconds before it was interrupted by the whine of microphone feedback. The feedback cut out. Almost a minute later, there was a pop from the store’s speakers, and Donna could suddenly clearly hear the man speaking on the little elevated stage near the tables.

“-niversary of the game. You can buy additional tickets for the raffle at the snack bar. We have a wonderful prize pool today with some recent additions not listed on the event website. We even have an original signed tract of Demonic Duress & Deadly Devil Danger, the widely-circulated anti-RPG pamphlet that helped the greatest game get off the ground inadvertently by claiming that the game included real genuine spells.” The bald man held up a small cheap-looking booklet, flipping it open. “To everybody, happy gaming and …” He paused, squinting at the print. “Ngathf Xygag, ngathf Nosenra, ph’nglui mgwl’nfah Roomkcalb Nosenra-Xygag wgah’nagl ngathf!”

Thunder sounded loudly again, and the lights went out. Donna reached into her purse, clutching her lucky dice bag.

***

A dim orange glow filled the room. Where the man had stood, there was a giant carved stone bowl full of flames. The bowl was cupped in two giant hands. Those hands led up to red arms illuminated dimly by firelight, and those arms to the seated form of an enormous demonic statue with great purple gemstones for eyes. A wickedly sharp horn protruded from each side of its head. Its mouth was wide enough to fit a fully-grown man, and filled with white marble teeth.

Donna looked over her shoulder, gripping her bottle of Dragon’s Milk in one hand and her lucky dice bag in the other. She could see Linda, holding up Angela’s rulebook as if it was a protective shield. Angela and Julie both crouched behind their broader-shouldered friend, staring at the statue. Donna turned her gaze over to the tables, illuminated by cell phones, trying to remember which table Liam was at.

Booming laughter filled the room. It came from the direction of the statue. The fire flared brightly. Across the room, smaller fires sprang up. The books. The books are burning. Donna turned, smacking her lucky dice bag into Angela’s well-loved rulebook, grasped in the hand of her oldest friend, Linda. The book flared with light.