Week 2 Story: Ainsley and Deryn

There was once a young nerd named Ainsley. Like many young nerds, she loved nothing more than playing Dungeons and Dragons, and like most Dungeons and Dragons players, she became very attached to the characters she created. One character in particular was her favorite, a wizard named Deryn. Ainsley spent more time creating Deryn than she had spent on any other character- she would write stories about her life, draw pictures of her, and she even made a Deryn costume to wear to Dungeons and Dragons sessions. Her friends all thought she was too obsessed with Deryn, but Ainsley just wanted her to be a real person.

As the months went on, Ainsley felt more and more like Deryn was the missing piece in her life. She started writing letters to Deryn, which she left in a basket over her fireplace, and she’d talk to Deryn as if she was in the room- when her friends expressed concern about her habit of talking to someone who not only wasn’t there, but wasn’t even real, Ainsley merely said that she knows Deryn isn’t real, and refused to discuss it further.

On Valentine’s Day, Ainsley’s Dungeons and Dragons group met for a party. They ate dinner and roasted marshmallows in the fireplace, and eventually their discussion got around to talking about their significant others. Everyone lamented how hard it was to convince their partners that they should go to a Dungeons and Dragons session on Valentine’s instead of going on a date- but when it was Ainsley’s turn to talk, she merely said that she was disappointed that Deryn couldn’t be there. That was the end of the line for one of her friends, and he got up, grabbed the letters off the mantle, and, despite Ainsley’s vehement protests, threw them into the fire. Ainsley, devastated, ordered everyone to leave, and she laid down next to the fireplace and cried over losing everything she had of Deryn. She cried and cried and cried, until she fell asleep.

Ainsley awoke to sunlight streaming through the windows. It was the next morning; the fire had died down, the letters turned completely to ash. And then she heard a voice behind her, a voice she had only imagined before.

“It’s about time you woke up. I’ve been waiting for hours.”

Ainsley turned slowly, hardly daring to hope that it could be true. Sitting on the couch was another young woman, black-clad and blue-haired, with a dagger strapped to her waist and a glowing staff lying on the coffee table.

“D-Deryn? Is it really you?”

Deryn laughed. “Of course it’s me, silly. You didn’t think I’d stay in those letters forever, did you? God, what a boring life. Come over here, have a seat. You’ve spent so long talking to me, I want to talk to you now.” Ainsley walked over to the couch and sat down next to Deryn.

And they lived happily ever after.

Burning letter. Source

Author’s note:

This week, I adapted the ancient story of Pygmalion to a more modern setting. Very few people sculpt these days, but a lot of people play Dungeons and Dragons, and, as a D&D player myself, I can attest to the fact that many people become far too attached to their characters. I also changed the main character from a man to a woman; we have so many stories about man-woman couples in mythology, and comparatively few stories about couples where both members are the same gender, and I felt like there should be more. I also gave the created woman a name, as the woman in Pygmalion didn’t have a name, and she seemed depersonalized because of it (the name Deryn comes from Welsh, and means bird). I kept the symbolism of a burnt offering and a festival of love from the original story.

Bibliography: Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Tony Kline (2000). Source