The story continues. This is the next episode following my early experiences playing Holmes Basic D&D, recounted in Blue Flame, Tiny Stars.

Memory fades like a ship on a foggy horizon when there is nothing to anchor it. So, the remainder of the summer passed into obscurity. I started high school in the fall, made new friends, and got a paper route. Of these, the last would stir the fog and give me another glimpse of D&D on the horizon.

After school, I would walk to the downtown law office where my mother worked as a legal secretary. The half-hour commute took me along the town’s main street and by the county library.

I dropped my books at the office and went to the corner convenient store, where the newspaperman left the papers, bailed in a plastic strip. I tore the strip, folded the papers, and loaded a shoulder bag made of heavy cloth, bleached white, “Citizen Tribune” printed on a side.

This wasn’t a bike-riding, paper-throwing, “’Afternoon, Mr. Wilson!” route, like we used to see on the television. It was a walking, newspaper-box route, and I never talked to or even met any of the folks who presumably read the papers I delivered.

I walked the route every day, except Mondays and Saturdays when there was no edition. My older brother drove me to the neighborhood on Sunday mornings. Every other Tuesday, I wrote the amount each subscriber owed for the period on an envelope and put it in the box with the paper. The following Friday, I collected the envelopes filled with coins and dollar bills. The route took just less than an hour. Biweekly earnings came to ten dollars and change.

One day on the after-school commute, as I turned the corner onto Main Street, something in a shop window caught my eye. A sign that stuck out over the sidewalk identified the shop as Witty’s Craft Store. The afternoon sun reflected off the glass. Shielding my eyes with a hand, I squinted through the glare.

The window was divided into two shelves. Balsa wood boxes and knitting books were arranged on the bottom shelf. On the top, above eye level, I made out a box cover and, on it, a bright green dragon. Large capital letters declared the title “DUNGEONS & DRAGONS.”

I whispered aloud, “Isn’t that the game I played with Garth…?”

The box was red violet, not the blue of the book I remembered. But it had a dragon. Facing it from the other side of the shelf, a matching box, this one blue, had a wizard. All that didn’t jive with memory, but tiny stars were flashing in my mind.

A bell dinged overhead as I pushed through the door. The store smelled like cedar and Elmer’s glue. A woman at the counter talked into a telephone.

I turned toward the window. The two boxes, each on a triangular stand, showed me their backs. I would have to reach to get them down.

The counter woman penciled notes into a ledger with one hand, while holding the receiver to her ear with the other. Glancing from the corner of an eye, she smiled and raised the pencil and an index finger at me.

I waited. A glance around the shop told me there were no other boxes with dragons or wizards on them. The shelves were filled with wooden dowels, kraft paper, and paint-by-number kits.

A moment later, the woman hung up the phone and laid the pencil on the ledger. “Hi, can I help you?”

I pointed to the blue box. “Can I look at this?”

My voice was sheepish. Shopping for me was a rare activity. Shopping on my own more so. The etiquette was unfamiliar. Here I was, asking to examine an item from the display case, as if I had money to buy it.

“Sure,” she said and went back to the ledger.

Reaching up, I took the box from its triangular stand. I was careful not to upset the stand or the other box. The contents shifted as I drew it down. Shrink-wrap crackled under my fingers.

The box in both hands, my eyes searched for a dragon atop a mound of treasure, adventurers, a magic wand. They found a wizard wearing a green robe. He gripped a staff at the end of an outstretched arm. The staff’s ornament shed a blue light. The other arm upraised, the hand empty, fingers spread, tensed, as if exerting some unseen force.

The wizard’s angular features gave him an exotic and menacing aspect. He had bony joints and a triangle nose. The robe bent at angles rather than flowing in smooth curves. I found a wand hanging from his belt, secured by two loops. The loops were rigid and angular, as if made from metal. The wooden staff crooked at right angles.

From beneath a pointed cap flowed stark white hair. Also white, a beard framed a small mouth, open in a gasp, and bushy brows raised over wide eyes. The pupils focused on a scene in a cloud of smoke that billowed from a flaming brazier. The scene contained two adventurers confronting a dragon. Still no treasure.

“That’s the second one,” said the woman. “You have to start with the other one.”

A black number “2” in a white circle was printed in the upper left corner above a yellow banner that read “EXPERT SET for use with D&D Basic Set.” In the left corner, a sticker put the price at $10.00.

“Okay.” I nodded, looking up from the box. “Do you know anything about this game?”

Her thick, blond hair was tied back. It had a gray tinge that matched her complexion. “No, I’m sorry. Not really.”

I ran my fingers along the box edge, feeling the shrink-wrap’s seams. “Can I see what’s inside?”

“There’s a picture on the back.”

I turned the box over. A black-and-white photograph showed the box in miniature beside two books. One book shared the image from the box top. Neither looked like the pale blue book Garth had. Also in the photo, I made out a crayon and multi-sided dice.

Garth’s voice sounded in my head: “They’re polyhedrons.”

Above the photo, a block of text in a red rectangle warned that I could not play this game by itself. I needed the basic rulebook.

I replaced the blue box in its stand and took the violet. Other than the crackling shrink-wrap and shifting box contents, the store was quiet. Every sound I made was amplified in my ears. I felt the woman’s gaze.

I looked first at the back. No warning on this one. Below a similar photograph showing the contents, I scanned small text that described a scene: a sword, a fight with a dragon, treasure. I stopped on a line:

“‘What do you want to do now?’ asks the Dungeon Master.”

Garth was always asking Jarrod and I what we wanted to do. And didn’t he call himself the dungeon master?

I turned to the front. The dragon’s green skin stood out against violet cavern walls. Two figures, with the same angled features as the wizard, attacked it. One, an armored man with a spear, the other, a woman with a green flaming ball. The man defended himself with a wooden shield and wore armor and a winged helm. The woman held a torch. She wore a sleeveless robe, one leg exposed from thigh to calf boot. A dagger hung from a waist belt. At her feet, an open chest spilled coins and sparkling gems— treasure!

The number in the upper left was a “1.” The banner text read, “BASIC SET with Introductory Module.” Like the other set, the price was $10.00. In the lower right corner, I read: “The Original Fantasy Role Playing Game For 3 or More Adults, Ages 10 and Up.”

This must be the game. It was Tuesday. Envelopes would go in paper boxes today. I returned the box to its stand and thanked the woman for her time. The bell dinged as I went through the door. I could not bare to look again at the boxes in the shop window as I strode by, head bent, full of anticipation.