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“But I don’t know how to play DnD, Mike.”
“I’ll show you, it’s easy!”
“But don’t you just roll a dice and make stuff up in your head?” She questions.
From what she’s picked up by witnessing Mike and his friends playing Dungeons and Dragons it doesn’t look all that fun. She prefers games where you see what’s going on. Where you have to use your brain, like Scrabble. She’s really good at Scrabble, she beats dad at it.
“Yeah!” Mike confirms, but making it sound like it’s the best thing in the world.
Her little brother is trying to talk her into playing his nerdy game. She’s on the fence about it currently. She’d prefer to do more fun things with Barb all weekend but she’s away visiting her aunt in Muncie.
“Why do you need me for this?”
“Because, the campaign I’ve written, it needs more characters than the Party. See, it’s called Elder Tree, which is a mysterious magical tree which makes- wait I can’t say all that yet. Anyway it’s my best campaign ever I think but we need more character for it to be perfect!”
“But how do I win? I like games where I win.”
“There’s lots of ways you can win! That’s what’s so great about DnD!”
“But didn’t you get all the guys killed in some cavern last week?”
“That was their own fault, they made the wrong decisions.”
“Do I get to decide what we do?”
“I mean, you get to decide what you do and can try to convince the others that-”
“I’ll decide what we do.”
“So you’re in?”
“Do I get to make up my own character?”
“Yes.”
“Can I dress up?”
“Uh, sure!”
“Then I’m in.”
She’s quite happy with her outfit. The sky blue dress surely looks like something a princess could wear and the elf ears adds character. The doorbell rings, drawing her away from the hallway mirror.
“Hi Will, hey Jonathan,” she greets the Byers boys.
“Hey,” Jonathan quietly greets, briefly meeting her gaze before looking down at his own shoes.
Jonathan is in her class, she doesn’t really know him that well though because he’s always so quiet. But since their little brothers have been best friends for several years they see a fair bit of each other as Jonathan is always dropping Will off at her house. She usually tries to talk to him then. She knows the other kids at school make fun of him and think he’s weird just because he’s quiet and his clothes are a bit scruffy. She’s never understood that, she’s always thought he’s nice, all the other boys are so loud and stupid and obnoxious she much prefers a quiet one.
“Hi Nancy, cool ears! Are you playing with us?” Will asks, looking excited.
“Thanks! Yes, I’m going to be an elf princess. Mike’s in the basement setting up, Lucas and Dustin are there too.”
“Awesome! Jonathan is playing too,” Will explains and drags his older brother with him over the threshold.
“Fun!” She exclaims, looking at Jonathan who blushes.
Will hurries down to the basement as soon as he’s got his jacket off, leaving her and Jonathan alone in the hall.
“So they roped you into this too?” She smirks.
“Y-yeah,” he answers with a little crooked smile.
“I had nothing better to do. But it’ll be fun! We should team up, no matter what the boys think we’re definitely smarter than them so we should make all the important decisions.”
“Have you played before?”
“No, have you?”
“No.”
“It can’t be that hard. I bet we’ll win and slay the dragon or whatever.”
They go down into the basement where the four boys are gathered around the table. Mike’s already put out two extra seats next to each other. She sits down and Jonathan sits down next to her. His foot accidentally catches the trail of her long flowing dress.
“Sorry, so sorry,” Jonathan hurries to say and quickly moves his foot as if it was burning.
“Hey, no worries,” she smiles at him. It’s just an old dress from her big box of dress up things.
Mike’s in the middle of debating something with Dustin but from her experience that can go on for a while so she elects to just cut right in.
“Alright you dweebs, so I’m an elf princess with magical powers and I’m super wise so you better listen to me and also I have a big white stallion that is my trusted companion. But I’m also a warrior and super fast and I have really good aim and I make magical potions that-”
“Okay you can’t just decide all that you have to roll for your abilities you can’t just be good at everything,” Mike interrupts her.
“I am good at everything.”
“Look, you guys need to fill these out,” Mike continues and pushes some papers to them looking like questionnaires.
She actually loves filling out questionnaires so she doesn’t mind. And she at least gets to fill in her character’s backstory. Even if she finds Mike’s allotted too little space for it, her princess has had a whole life up to this point after all.
“What are you?” She asks Jonathan.
“A knight, I was thinking,” he answers.
“Cool, you have a horse too then right? We should totally go riding together.”
“S-sure.”
She’s not completely satisfied with how the dice rolls for her abilities turns out but at least she gets high wisdom and can do some magic stuff. Jonathan gets high strength and intelligence. Dustin explains that they can improve abilities later on too.
It actually turns out to be pretty fun. Princess Thasinia Jophyra meets Remfrey the Vigilant in the enchanted forest after being cast out of the village, mistaken for a witch. They fought some trolls together then crossed paths with the Party. Dustin and Lucas squabbling over which path to take almost derailed them but thanks to hers and Will the Wise’s infinite wisdom they chose the best path. They discovered some secret gem stones by a mysterious tree with unknown powers and then had to fight a bunch of monsters over them.
Remfrey the Vigilant saved Princess Thasinia but then she saved him too, they turned out to be a good team. The campaign ended with them and the party defeating the biggest monster who had enslaved a whole village in a valley. They divided up the gem stones between them then. The Party decided they have to continue on their adventures but Princess Thasinia elected to stay in the village in the valley because they asked her to be their leader, and she got Remfrey to stay too, swearing that together they’ll protect the pretty valley from evil.
“That was awesome you guys have to play more,” Dustin exclaims once it’s all finished.
“Yeah, we have to cross paths again, we’d be unstoppable together as warriors,” Lucas tacks on, gesturing at Jonathan. They killed a lot of monsters.
“It was fun,” she admits. “You guys would’ve been dead meat if it weren’t for us,” she adds, pointing between herself and Jonathan.
The boys start excitedly talking all over each other. She glances at Jonathan who looks back at her, knowingly rolling his eyes at the boys. She smiles and nods her head towards the stairs. He follows her up.
“That was fun actually,” she reaffirms in the hallway, taking off her elf ears.
“Yeah. It was fun to play, with you,” he says.
“It was fun because of you too,” she tells him.
He blushes and looks down at his shoes again. He does that a lot, she wonders if it’s a nervous thing or because he’s embarrassed about them. Since Steve Harrington who’s in the year above them and the coolest kid in school pointed out one day on the schoolyard that they’re from the cheap outlet store. As she recalls Jonathan has been extra quiet since then. It was really mean, she thought. She wishes she’d said something then but she didn’t because Steve is friends with Tommy and Carol, and Carol always teases her and Barb about being nerds because they like reading and studying. She doesn’t want to draw unnecessary attention to herself.
“I like your sweater, by the way,” she decides to tell him, deciding against mentioning the shoes because it might embarrass him. Plus it’s a nice sweater, she likes the forest green color.
“Th-thanks. Your dress is really pretty I’m sorry I stepped on it,” he answers, still blushing but looking her in the eye now.
“Thank you. Don’t worry, I’d forgotten about it.”
Jonathan calls down to Will in the basement that they have to get going to be home for dinner. She keeps him company by the door as they wait.
“By the way, promise you won’t mention this at school. It was fun but if Carol found out I wore elf ears and played with my nerdy little brother and his friends all day I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“I promise. I think it’s cool that you had elf ears and did all that…”
“Thanks. I’ll see you at school,” she tells him as Will puts on his jacket and looks ready to go.
During recess on Monday she spots him. He’s by himself near the swings on the far end of the yard. He’s got his everpresent camera around his neck, taking pictures of something in a nearby tree. With Barb in tow she makes her way over.
“Hey, Remfrey,” she greets him with a smirk.
Jonathan lowers the camera and turns around, looking at her shyly.
“Hey… Thasinia,” he answers, blushing.
They share a smile before Barb drags her away with questions about what that was all about.