Soft Confessions, Part 1

VP and BP Standings
Erin - 63 VP - 2300 BP - 1 Achiev
Claire - 52 VP - 6200 BP - 2 Achievs
Marissa - 52 VP - 2300 BP - 1 Achiev
Emi - 36 VP - 4750 BP - 1 Achiev
Sam - 18 VP - 3050 BP - 1 Achiev
Norah - 17 VP - 2550 BP - 1 Achiev
Dawn - 11 VP - 3000 BP
Liesa - 10 VP - 3500 BP
Chloe - 4 VP - 3475 BP

When Erin and Claire left, the Suite took a long time to quiet. It was the best kind of after-party mess—two coffee mugs half-drunk, a discarded hoodie stretched on the arm of the couch like a lazy cat itself. Andy moved through the aftermath with a kind of reverence, rinsing mugs, straightening pillows, collecting the stray hair ties that Erin seemed to drop like breadcrumbs behind her wherever she went.

He told himself he was just cleaning, but really he was looking for a reason to avoid the painting on the far wall.

Katherine watched him from the same spot over the mantel: a poppy-dotted field rendered in sun-bright oil, her figure standing impossibly alive within it, skin so luminous he had to remind himself she was pigment and resin, not flesh and breath. She never blinked. When he finally looked up and caught her gaze, she grinned and shimmied her shoulders, just enough to make her breasts quiver, a pantomime of “caught you slacking” so perfectly human it made him smile in spite of himself.

He padded over, towel still in hand, and stood a foot from the frame. Katherine’s body language was easy to read, even in the tight constraints of her painted pose. She couldn’t sit, but she could shift her hips, cock one knee, toss her hair with a calculated whip of her head. Her mouth was always slightly open, a suggestion of laughter, and her green eyes missed nothing. He always felt, facing her, that he was the one inside glass.

“Morning,” he said, because what else did you say to a painting? “Sorry for making you watch my morning routine. Unless you’re into that, in which case—” He gestured to the now-pristine kitchen, “—you’re welcome.”

She rolled her eyes, then mimed a swooning sigh, hands to her cheeks, elbows up, as if she were watching the world’s most dramatic telenovela. He liked her sense of humor. It made the weirdness of the situation feel less like a horror show and more like a long-running inside joke.

He set the towel aside and drew the barstool in front of her. “Okay,” he said, “you ready for today’s experiment?”

Katherine nodded, the movement subtle but clear. She reminded him of a friend from high school who could get any boy to do her calculus homework by just raising an eyebrow.

Andy reached behind the painting, then produced a clipboard with a hand-drawn chart: the entire ASL alphabet, crudely rendered but functional, each letter circled and labeled. He held it up, then mimed “A,” hand curled into a fist. He glanced at Katherine. She looked down at the chart, then up at him, then back at the chart. After a second, she tried to shape her hand in the painting—he saw her flex her fingers, the smallest movement, but she couldn’t quite form the shape.

He tried “B.” Same result: her arm tensed, her fingers strained, but she couldn’t form the shape. Her frustration appeared in the tension of her jaw, the way her eyes narrowed.

“Okay, let’s try something else,” Andy said, thinking aloud. “How about a pointer system?”

He took out a second chart, written on the transparent plastic lid of a large Tupperware container using permanent marker: this one had the alphabet in a big circle, each letter spaced around the rim like a Ouija board. He propped it against the glass of the painting. “Can you point at the letter you want to spell out?” he asked, then waited.

Katherine’s eyes flicked to the chart, hovered on the “H.” Andy grinned, and said, “H?”

She nodded, slow and exasperated. He followed her gaze as she moved to “E.” Then “L,” twice. Finally “O.” He said it aloud: “Hello.” She gave him a sardonic little curtsy.

They tried for a while. The process was agonizingly slow, but it worked—sort of. He would say the letter, she’d confirm with a nod, and together they’d build a word, then a sentence. Sometimes he got ahead of himself, guessing what she was about to say, and she’d stop, shake her head, wait for him to get back in sync.

He lost track of time, caught in the rhythm of their awkward, makeshift communication. After fifteen minutes, his back ached, but the chart was filling up with checkmarks and circles, little notes in the margins.

At one point, after she spelled out “SLOW,” then “SO” and “TIRED,” he laughed. “Sorry, I’m not the best at this,” he said. “But you have to admit, it’s a step up from charades.”

Katherine stuck out her tongue, then laboriously spelled “YOU,” “ARE,” “CUTE.” She grinned when he felt his cheeks on fire.

They kept at it, building toward longer sentences. But then, as if the magic that constrained her suddenly caught up with her, her hand just hovered over the “T” and wouldn’t budge. No matter what he tried—spelling, sign language, asking yes-or-no—she couldn’t get past the first letter. After a minute, her whole body seemed to sag, shoulders slumping, her face gone blank and distant.

Andy watched her for a moment, not knowing what to do. “Are you okay?” he asked, softly.

She didn’t move. The field behind her was so bright, so alive with painted motion, but Katherine herself looked dead inside it, a marionette with her strings cut.

He set the clipboard down, pressed his forehead to the cold edge of the frame. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought maybe we could… I don’t know. Beat the system, somehow. It worked, for a little while.”

After a while, she looked at him—really looked. Her eyes were huge and wet with whatever emotion a painting could muster. She didn’t move, but her face said it all.

Andy swallowed hard. “Is there anything I can do to make this better?” he asked. “Anything at all?”

She hesitated, then, slowly, looked past his shoulder, toward the far side of the Suite.

He turned to see what she meant, then realized: the observatory. The open air, the ocean beyond, the endless blue sky. Maybe it was a better view than this.

“Do you want to go there?” he asked.

She nodded, tiny but unmistakable.

He nodded back. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s do it.”

He unlocked the painting from the wall. He braced himself, then lifted the frame from its mount. The painting itself was dense, old wood and thick oil and maybe a little of the sadness it had absorbed over the years. But he had moved her before.

He carried her through the Suite, careful not to jostle or bump. He talked as he went, narrating each step like he was afraid of silence.

“Almost there. Sorry, the stairs are tricky. The last guy who did upgrades here was definitely not a union guy. You’d think they’d give the Master Suite a little more funding, but…” He glanced at her face. She looked amused.

On the observatory deck, the morning sun was already slanting over the wooden floor. The sky beyond was so blue it hurt to look at. Andy propped the painting on a chaise lounge, right in the center, and angled it so that Katherine could see the ocean and the sky together.

“There,” he said. “Is that better?”

She looked around, eyes bright, then looked back at him and nodded.

He stepped back to admire his handiwork. In the new light, the colors of her canvas changed—her hair glowed with subtle warmth, the shadows on her skin softened, and the field behind her was so vivid it almost moved. He thought she looked less trapped, more a part of something bigger.

He didn’t know what made him do it, but he reached out and put his hand on the canvas, right over her shoulder. The surface was rough, textured, and cold. He knew she couldn’t feel it, but he hoped the gesture meant something anyway.

Katherine looked at his hand, then at his face. Her expression softened, the edges of her mouth curling up. She lifted her hand as if to touch his, but the painted fingers stopped beyond the glass.

She held the pose for a long time, then—finally—blew him a kiss.

He smiled, blinking back tears he didn’t expect. “You’re welcome,” he whispered.

Outside, a seabird coasted on the air, wheeling in and out of the sun. Katherine’s eyes followed it, unblinking.

Andy sat beside her, silent, and watched the sky until the clouds moved on.

The Banquet Hall was a cathedral of noise, even when mostly empty. Maybe it was the design—vaulted ceilings, endless echoes, and all those reflective surfaces, polished and primed for maximum reverberation. Or maybe it was just that everything seemed more alive here, even the breakfast crowd. Sam sat at a round table near the windows with Emi and Dawn, and the air was already electric with the promise of a new Pathfinder campaign.

“Okay, but what if she has, like, six swords?” Emi asked, her arms all in motion: one pair sketching a wildly anatomically incorrect elf on the margin of her sheet, another rolling a fistful of purple dice, a third snatching a blueberry muffin and dissecting it with surgical precision. “She’d be the ultimate battle-mage! Nobody could keep up!”

Dawn, whose own character sheet was already meticulously filled, watched Emi with awe and a hint of envy. “I thought you wanted to be the party’s rogue,” she said, reaching for a pencil, then pausing—maybe out of courtesy, or maybe just not to interrupt the choreography of Emi’s hands.

“She’s a multiclass!” Emi said. Two of her hands made finger quotes while a third flourished the pencil like a conductor’s baton. “She fights crime at night, but by day she’s a renowned therapist for wayward dragons.”

Sam tried to imagine the therapy sessions. “Does she take insurance, or is it sliding scale?”

“She’s a cat burglar,” Emi replied, grinning. “Sliding scale.”

Dawn groaned, but she was smiling. “You’re a menace,” she said.

Emi, undeterred, started drawing a tiny dragon with a therapist’s clipboard. Her extra hands drummed the table, spun her d20s, and popped the muffin’s crown into her mouth. “I already have a theme song,” she mumbled around the food. “Want to hear it?”

Sam cut in before the concert could start. “Only if it’s less than four verses,” she said. “House rule: no musical numbers before brunch.”

It was a lie. Sam loved Emi’s weirdness, the way her thoughts exploded in every direction. It reminded her of Andy, in a way—back in college, before life started trying to turn his imagination into just another kind of anxiety. She was glad he’d found his people again, even if they were an actual harem.

Emi looked at Sam with two hands planted on her hips and another drawing a heart above the cat burglar’s head. “You are a great GM,” she said. “You don’t let anybody get away with shit.”

Sam shrugged. “Tell that to the girls in the dorm. Nobody wanted to play with a lesbian GM.”

Emi snorted. “Their loss.”

Dawn was already deep in her own character sheet, filling in “Skills” with looping, cursive letters. “You know, you’ve been a lot less… fidgety, lately,” Sam said to her. “What’s up with that?”

Dawn looked up, startled, then smiled, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Oh. I, uh, bought an upgrade in the Commissary. For the Gentle Servant transformation.”

Emi’s eyebrows shot up. “You did?”

“Yeah, you inspired me.” Dawn looked almost embarrassed, but in a good way. “I checked it this morning. Now it’s not a compulsion all the time. Just, like, pings when Andy needs extra support. It’s more like…” She squinted, thinking, “…a notification? Not an override?”

Sam grinned. “So instead of being a helpbot, you’re just an overzealous personal assistant?”

Dawn laughed, rolling her eyes. “Exactly. But it’s better, believe me.” She glanced at Emi, who gave her a double thumbs-up. “I can finally focus on stuff for more than five minutes. It’s kind of amazing.”

Sam raised her glass of orange juice. “Here’s to autonomy.”

Dawn clinked her glass, and Emi joined in, two of her hands holding up invisible mugs and the other four posing dramatically.

Dawn 4000 BP - 1000 BP = 3000 BP

The noise of the Hall rose and fell in tides. Far off, Marissa and Norah were deep in what looked like an actual strategy session, papers and sticky notes fanned out between them. Chloe sat alone for a minute, head down, reading what looked like a letter. Sam made a mental note to check in on her later. She’d noticed the way Chloe hovered on the edge of every group, never quite inside the circle.

But for now, their table was its own little world.

Emi was on a tear. “Okay, so, in session zero, can we fight a basilisk? It could be, like, my character’s old college rival. He tried to turn everyone to stone at graduation.” Two hands shuffled dice, one scribbled notes, and the others built a tiny fortress out of napkin rings.

Sam made her GM face—the one Andy said always preceded a plot twist. “If you can convince me how a therapy cat burglar would survive a basilisk showdown, you can have whatever encounter you want.”

Emi grinned. “Yes! Yes! Maybe she wears mirrored sunglasses, or—wait—maybe she’s secretly part basilisk herself?”

Dawn snorted. “You can’t just make up a new race, Emi.”

Emi held up her hands. “I absolutely can. It’s canon now.”

Sam let them bicker, enjoying the noise. She’d always liked groups like this—people who knew they were misfits, but didn’t care. She watched Dawn scribble notes, watched Emi build increasingly elaborate dioramas from found objects, and felt a kind of pride she hadn’t felt in years. They’d all changed so much since coming to the HH, but not in the way she’d expected. If anything, they’d become more themselves, not less.

As the table filled with character notes and muffin crumbs, Sam noticed Dawn’s knee bouncing under the table. Not nervous this time—just energy to spare.

She nudged her. “You’re sure you’re good? The upgrade didn’t, like, make you weirdly obsessed with Andy?”

Dawn blushed, then shrugged. “He’s a good guy. I’m obsessed with him either way. But honestly, it’s like… a background hum, not a siren. I can ignore it if I want.”

Emi grinned. “But you don’t want to, right?”

Dawn thought about it, then shook her head. “Not really. I like helping people.”

Sam smiled, but didn’t say anything. She understood that feeling.

A few tables over, the kitchen staff of Mildreds wheeled out a massive platter of fresh fruit and pastries. Emi’s eyes lit up. “BRB,” she said, and three of her arms grabbed plates, while the other three were shoveling food on each respective plate.

When Emi was gone, Dawn leaned in, voice lower. “Are you going to see him today?” she asked Sam.

Sam shrugged. “For the usual hug, yeah. Beyond that, if he wants me to, he’ll look for me. He’s got a lot on his plate—no pun intended.” She looked at the empty chair where Andy sometimes joined them. “I think he’s trying to figure out what it means to be in charge. He never wanted this. But he’s getting better at it.”

Dawn nodded, picking at her muffin. “You think he’ll keep us all together? At the end?”

Sam snorted. “That’s the real campaign, isn’t it?” Then, more softly, “I hope so. I know he can’t promise it. I know some of us may not make it. But he gamed the system once, for us. I’ll put my trust in Andy Cooper any day.”

Emi returned with a heap of fruit, barely balanced on three plates. She deposited one in front of each of them, then sat down, her hands already peeling clementines, stacking grapes, and drawing new maps all at once.

Sam raised her juice again. “To the party,” she said.

“To the party!” Emi shouted, three of her hands shooting into the air.

Dawn just smiled, biting her lip, but her eyes were bright as the morning outside.

They spent the next hour building out backstories, debating character alignments, and laughing so hard Sam thought she might break a rib. At one point, Emi rolled three natural twenties in a row and declared herself “dice president for life.” Dawn plotted a spreadsheet of possible loot tables, and Sam caught herself thinking that this, right here, was the best kind of magic.

When they finally wrapped, the table was covered in scribbles, napkins, and half-eaten pastries. Emi’s hands moved in a happy blur, collecting, sorting, organizing. Dawn’s pencil had worn down to a nub. Sam felt a little sorry for the staff that would have to clean up after them, but also a little proud. They’d made a mark, and it would take a lot of bleach to erase it.

As they left the table, Emi gave Sam a hug—two-armed, but extra tight. “Thanks for this,” she said, voice softer now. “It’s good to have friends.”

Sam squeezed back. “Always.”

Dawn lagged behind, stuffing their papers into a binder. When she caught up, she said, “I never thought I’d feel… normal, here. Like a real person.”

Sam slung an arm over her shoulder. “You’re not normal,” she said. “But you’re the best there is.”

They walked out into the sun together, ready for whatever the next adventure brought.

Norah liked the early morning best, before the humidity turned the air syrupy and every square inch of skin sticky. The beach belonged to them at this hour—four women, barefoot and in various degrees of athletic wear, leaving a trail of comma-shaped prints in the still-damp sand.

She and Liesa led the way, their strides in sync, while Marissa and Erin walked behind, deep in a conversation that sounded like equal parts gossip and a therapy session.

The water was glassy, the sky a soft burn of blue, and in the distance, a couple of seabirds fought over something unspeakable they’d found near the tide line. Norah pretended she was walking through one of those old vacation commercials, where the sand was always sugar-white and every woman wore linen and nothing else.

She wriggled her toes in the cool sand, then glanced sideways at Liesa. “You ever think about how much we’ve changed since we got here?”

Liesa’s green eyes flicked to her, then away. She shrugged, but the movement was oddly elegant. “I am maybe more myself, than before,” she said. “It’s easier here. Nobody at home ever lets me be this loud, or this—” she wiggled her fingers, as if the air might give her the word, “—happy.”

Norah chewed on that. “I guess I’m… less angry. Or at least, I save it for when it matters.” She hesitated, then added, “I don’t even hate Andy anymore. Not really.”

Behind them, Erin let out a bark of laughter. “That’s because you haven’t had a date night with him yet, this week. Give it time.”

Marissa shushed her, but Norah could hear the smile in her voice. She twisted to walk backwards for a bit, watching the other two.

“You guys are acting weird,” she said, but not unkindly.

Erin grinned. “That’s because you’re nervous about tonight.”

Norah’s cheeks went warm, but she kept her voice steady. “So what if I am? It’s not like I’m the only one who ever had performance anxiety.”

Erin glanced at Marissa, who blushed—an actual, visible flush across her cheekbones—and Norah felt a surge of perverse satisfaction. Maybe everyone was a little off-balance these days.

She stopped walking and planted her feet, digging her toes into the sand. “I want you to tell me, honestly,” she said. “Should I just… go for it? Like, full-on sex? Or should I keep it to the ‘nice girl’ act?”

Erin grinned. “You have a ‘nice girl’ act?”

Liesa shushed her and didn’t hesitate. “Do what feels right,” she said. “If you want to try, you try. If not, just talk. He likes the talking.”

Marissa’s tone was softer. “It’s okay to be unsure. You don’t have to perform.”

Norah picked up a shell, turned it over in her palm, suddenly embarrassed. “I mean, what if it’s just awkward? What if I mess it up?”

Erin came up beside her, one hand on Norah’s shoulder. “That’s literally half the fun. The first time is always weird.” She hesitated, then, “I can tell you what happened on my date, if it helps?”

Norah arched an eyebrow. “Will it make me more or less nervous?”

Erin’s lips twitched. “Depends. There was a lot of… multitasking.”

Liesa burst out laughing, covering her mouth with both hands. Marissa’s eyes went wide, and she looked away, suddenly very interested in the horizon.

Norah put it together, slowly, then all at once. “Wait. You two—?” She pointed at Marissa, then Erin, then made a vague looping gesture.

Erin nodded, her grin huge. “Threesome. Twice, actually. With Claire, too.”

Liesa doubled over, unable to stop laughing. Marissa’s blush was now a full-body event, but she managed to hold her composure. “It was unexpected,” she said, voice low. “But… not unpleasant.”

Norah gaped for a second, then started to laugh, too. “I can’t believe you did it,” she said to Erin, shaking her head. “All that talk about hating his guts, and you’re the first one to double-team Cooper.”

Erin held up two fingers, bashful. “And the second time was even better.”

Norah stared at her, then snorted. “Fucking Harem Hotel.”

She was still laughing when the group set off again, walking toward the point where the sand curved and the cliffs rose, the world open and wild ahead of them.

As they walked, Liesa slipped her arm through Norah’s, a gesture so easy and casual it made Norah’s heart clench, just a little.

“I think you’ll have a good time,” Liesa said quietly. “He likes you.”

Norah rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t quite suppress her smile. “He likes all of us. That’s the job description.”

“Still,” Liesa said, “Andy is honest.”

Norah scoffed, but the words stuck with her. She kicked at the tide, splashing water up her calves, and tried to imagine what tonight might bring. Maybe it would be awkward, or strange, or too much. But maybe it would be something else—something worth remembering, long after the game was over.

She looked at the three women beside her, the way their shadows stretched across the sand, and decided she didn’t have to know everything in advance.

She just had to keep walking, one step after the next, and see where the tide pulled her.