A Mountain and Dungeons & Dragons

“Welp,” the mountain guide said, “here we are. This is the path. This one here, the one we’re standin’ on, that’s the main path. You can get up to that peak o’er there in ‘bout three-and-a-half hours er so. There’s another trail, but it takes a while longer and is MUCH harder. You fools probably ain’t ready to go on it yet.”

I looked around, looking for any intrigued faces, but saw none. Luckily, I don’t really mind standing out in the crowd. “Hey! I’d like to go on that second path!”

”Oh,” the guide said drearily. “I was hoping no one would.. well, if you want to go on the other trail, three others from our group have to go as well. Any volunteers?”

To my horror, I didn’t see any hands shoot up at first. I started to feel a little annoyed, as if no one else even thought it would be reasonable to try a challenge. However, after looking around sharply, I saw one man sheepishly raise his hand.

“Only one more?” He paused for a moment, but it felt like an hour. “Well, I suppose you two can go. Here, take this lil’ med pack. It won’t help for too much, but unless y’all end up being total idiots, you shan’t have to use it anyways. We’ll only try to find ya if you’re not back by morning” We both walked up and, after staring at the pack for a moment, I nodded towards it, and the other man took it before moving it to his non-dominant hand and shaking mine.

”The name’s Ben. Hopefully we won’t be idiots.” A childish grin swept across his face.

”You don’t need to tell me twice!”

——————————————30 minutes later——————————————

The trip had started off well, with us just engaging in the typical small talk, kinda like those icebreakers they make you do in school. I always hated those, but now I kind of like them. They help me get to know a person.

Anyways, after a little while, the ground started to get more uneven. What once was a casual walk-and-talk turned into a serious game of balancing talking and not falling over. If anyone could’ve seen us from afar, they might’ve thought we were regretting our choices, since our heads seemed so low as we were watching our every step. The trail also started to become more uncertain, with our path only being shown by poles that were separated by about a hundred meters each; there were no boundaries.

However, nothing of consequence happened during the walk up. All we did was walk, talk, and try not to fall. Ben actually did trip a few times near the beginning, but each time led him to pay attention more, and he never truly fell. After a few hours, the sun told us it was close to 15:00, and we decided to take a little breather. Turns out, we both had thought to take some granola bars. They were the same brand and everything. Interesting. After laughing about this way too hard, we each sat down and ate a couple before heading off again.

As the time passed, I slowly became more and more fond of Ben. Not in any romantic way; that goes against my religion. But there was this strange quirkiness about him that I couldn’t help but relate to myself. We both had similar interests, and both believed in the same things, or at least similar things. The thing that intrigued me the most?

He also played DnD.

I always had a problem finding people to play with in my little small town, so I rarely got how to play. However, I learned that he had connections to tons of people who liked to play DnD online, and many of them were within a short drive of my house. Jackpot! I thought. This is gonna be awesome when I get home.

We kept hiking up the trail for a few more hours, now slower due to the now steeper slant of the slope. I started to sweat hard, with my eyebrows turning into little sponges of salty liquid. However, this part didn’t last too long, and by 20:00ish, we had made it to the top. “Wow!” I exclaimed. “That guide Gato really underestimated us, huh?” I turned to look at Ben, only to see he had clearly done worse than I have. His face was red with exhaustion, and I swear his socks looked darker than before.

”I’m not sure about that,” he panted. “I think I might need a sec.”

After a “sec” (which turned out to be 15 minutes of admiring the view and resting), we started back down the trail, in this case on the one everyone else had taken. This was much faster than the road up, and we easily got to base camp by 01:00.

After a night’s sleep (not a good one), our time at the camp was done, and we were ready to pack up and go our own separate ways. I had planned to exchange phone numbers with him, but by the time all the debrief stuff had been done, he had already left without saying goodbye. I wonder why he was in such a rush.

Now, this story was from a long time ago, back when I was 19, young and dumb. However, just in these past few years, something insane happened. I had been trying to find a good DnD group for a while, but eventually I found this new one being hosted at a local library.

It was close enough so my wife wouldn’t complain, and that was the only requirement. I got into contact with all the people I knew were in the group, and we scheduled a time to meet up.

It was this random Thursday in July, when all the kiddos were off-school, and a few of them ended up in our game. It was kinda funny having a bunch of adults playing DnD with a couple 14-year-olds, but I didn’t mind. However, it was in this library that I saw him.

I saw Ben.

It came as a bit of a shock. I thought he lived in a different state not even close to here, but apparently not. I had no idea how a roller-coaster of events could’ve led to him being here. He was just sitting in a sofa chair in the corner of the room, reading some Tolstoy. I walked up to him.”Hey, man! How’s it going?!”

He looked at me for a second, trying to figure out who I was. To be fair, I had grown out a pretty good beard in the past few years. Then, as if the craziest thing in his life just happened to him, his eyes lit up.

“Jesse? It’s been so long!” We hugged and laughed, and eventually I convinced him to play DnD with us.

It was one of the greatest things I’ve ever done. That campaign went on for 18 months, and the group still plays games to this very day. Ben and I still hang out from time to time, and we each know each other’s families very well. My daughter and his son also go to the same school, and I think she might have a crush on him. I guess we’ll find out in due time, huh?

I guess this world ain’t so big after all.