#ginny di on dimension 20 is a dream of mine in general

[deconstructthesoup]

Visual aids for the Hellraisers (intro post to them here) for your enjoyment:

Faroe Lomenelda Faeth (she/her, high/wood elf, College of Spirits bard/Swashbuckler rogue)

Parker O'Shaughnessy (he/they, half-elf/werewolf, Path of the Beast barbarian)

Luna O'Shaughnessy (she/they, half-elf/werewolf, Arcana Domain cleric/Conjurer wizard)

Marsh Runecarver (he/him, Goliath Hexblood, Circle of the City druid---his Hexblood crown's supposed to be made of thorns, but ah well)

Arko Spitz (they/them, goblin, Battlesmith artificer)

Roshini Gupta (she/her, fire genasi, Way of the Sun Soul monk/Genie warlock)

Aaaaaand just for fun, here's my fancast for the Hellraisers in the hypothetical universe that this is an actual D20 campaign:

Ginny Di as Faroe, Jacob Wysocki as Parker, Danielle Radford as Luna, Ify Nwadiwe as Marsh, Alex Song-Xia as Arko, and Jasmine Bhullar as Roshini

[linssikeittomies]

VR Chapter 5 - 35 hours

Masterpost <-Chapter 4

--

For the second morning in a row I was fitted for a dress. For the second morning in a row I had to command two men out of my room so I could put it on. But at least this one was a lot less over the top. No spider-butt silk, no intricate songbird embroidery, just petticoats up the wazoo. Made the whole thing a really wide bell-shape, it probably wouldn’t fit through most doors. And of course they had to stick some embroidery in there, the collar and cuffs were completely covered in geometric patterns. The red embroidery looked pretty good against the cream base, even though usually the white in these cases was pure white.

Asahana brought some more clothes to fill my drawer, including my own shirt and jeans. They seemed more appropriate for my plan, so I put them on.

“I’m not Rititia”, I reminded Asahana. I’m not Rititia I’m not Rititia I’m not Rititia I’m not Rititia I’m not Rititia I’m not Rititia.

Maybe he wasn’t a telepath after all, he looked just the same as always. Or maybe he was just so obsessed with me it didn’t matter to him either way. Cripes, what a creep!

Yeah, he couldn’t be a telepath, no reaction of any sort to that. It must have been Ritidia, maybe she could send thoughts to other people’s heads like that dickhead and his pet. But clearly she couldn’t read minds like they could, otherwise she would have known on the spot I wasn’t her sister.

Speaking of her, she was very excited about something today. In addition to her usual happy babble she clapped her hands a lot and did little jumps on the way to breakfast. Her little brother was also cheery ��� and had his hair on milkmaid braids. Well, I had already seen male servants and the master of the house in dresses, clearly their idea of masculine and feminine wasn’t the same as mine.

Alele and Suni were early birds, or maybe just always hungry, since they always seemed to be at the table before anyone else. This morning they looked like they had pulled an all-nighter. Alele had even done her own hair, apparently, that single sloppy braid would’ve gotten her hairdresser fired. It was the first time I saw her hair down, and was surprised to see it was a bit shorter than Ritidia’s. With her proud displaying of it I thought it would have been victorian.

Ugh, don’t get lost in thought! You were here to tell her you weren’t her dead daughter!

“Pa Rititia”, I said to her and shaking my head vigorously. “Ko Mimi”, and enthusiastic nodding. It wasn’t very eloquent, all I knew how to say was “no” and “yes”. But at least she understood something was wrong, even if she didn’t fully get what it was. I patted my chest and repeated “Pa Rititia”, shaking my head. I tried hard to ignore Suni who again looked ready to burst into tears, and keep my attention solely on Alele.

“Ko Rititia”, she insisted, and that was final. She wouldn’t hear any more of my objections, and gestured me to sit down. I protested a few more times, but she was relentless and started looking worryingly much like her husband. I wanted spare her the embarrassment of having others see her cry, since it was so important to her she look poised at all times. Ritidia whispered comforting things to me, even Kinati looked worried for me. Everything was all right. There was no need to worry about anything.

That could only have been Ritidia. I sure didn’t feel like everything would be fine, despite what my brain said. This family had fake-gained a family member, but mine had real-lost one. My friends would never see me again. No one on my planet would ever know where I had gone. They wouldn’t know why I had gone. They’d interrogate Claire about my secret boyfriends and ask Heidi about the time I said I wanted to run away from home because Marie had been a little shit and broken my phone. Maybe after a while even they would believe I had run off with some guy I met on the internet. The one thing no one would ever have the imagination to suspect was that I had been spirited away to another dimension and was impersonating a dead girl. What an unbelievable predicament, this just couldn’t be real. I had to be in some kind of lucid coma dream. Maybe I had slipped and banged my head on a rock. The brain damage was too severe, I would never wake up. They’d pull the plug any minute now.

In the afternoon I felt calm enough to do some studying. I was never good at school, but I liked it alright. If nothing else the brain work let me concentrate on something other than my own misery. I went over my little dictionary, practised the alphabet some more, doodled a few more pictures. Stared brainlessly out the window. Noticed a buggy coming to the courtyard, and an elderly couple climbing out. The whole family was there to receive them. Suni parents. There was lots of hugging.

More family coming home.

The word for family was “itoa”. Ritidia had told me while introducing Suni’s parents. She had brought out an extensive and artistic family tree, and traced her lineage up to them. Her grandmother’s name was Sareleila Rini, the grandfather’s name was Tatela Siuen. I remember thinking that it was a little difficult to tell which parent was which, but mostly I was so overcome with loneliness and  envy I just thought about my own family. Only two of my own grandparents still lived, mum’s mum died of post-partum infection five days after my mother’s birth, and dad’s mum died of a heart attack five years ago. I had three cousins, all under 20 years of age. All from dad’s side, of course – I was my mother’s only child. Far as we knew, anyway. We didn’t want to think about it, who’d want to think about it, but who’s to say she didn’t have more babies in her acid-fueled state of mind and just throw them out in to the forest? Who’s to say the reason the bear hung out at the cottage wasn’t that it had learned the hut was a good source of easy meat?

Suni’s parents were more posh than he was, but they weren’t on Alele’s level. They could see I wasn’t having the time of my life and retreated to their room. For a while I hoped Ritidia would also piss off, but after a while I found her presence just a bit comforting. She taught me more family words, and listened when I told her about my own family – not that she understood, but it felt like she did, on some level. I told her about my own una, Marie, that she was a horrible brat but also bloody funny. She drew these dadaist stick-figure comics that mum and dad never understood, because understanding wasn’t the point. Mum, me, had a bad una who got into drugs at fifteen, was kicked out at eighteen, and lived in shanty towns and homeless shelters for six years, then “built” a “hut”, that is to say “gathered some garbage and stacked them to a crude approximation of shelter”, in a forest. That’s where I was born. They said I must have only been a few months old when that bear killed my mother, and if it had been winter I would have died from exposure. A hiker had heard me crying and called the cops. And as so often happens when someone dies, everyone suddenly hoped they had treated her better and had always wanted to support her – so mum adopted me and named me after her sister’s childhood nickname. Madeline and Patricia – Mimi and Pats.

I fully expected to cry again, but Ritidia helped me through it. She shared some stories of her own family – she had the most to tell about her paternal cousins, sesetunas. Heliko and Alima’s eldest, Ailasou, lived in the third wing. Ailasou’s younger sibling, Hoibon, had the first occupied room from Ritidia’s. Uli was also apparently an interesting case, as Ritidia talked about them for a solid ten minutes.

As the names went on, I noticed that none of the spouses shared their last name. Some had no surname at all. Suni was a Rini, as most of the people in the manor, and married to a Niasa. However, his sibling Heliko Rini had married Alima - just Alima. And Kee Rini had married Sato. It wasn’t laziness, this family tree was a work of art, and it wasn’t lack of space, if there was enough space to write Umalartuna Lustaro there was space for Sato Whatever.

Alele and her kids were the only Niasas in the manor. It started to look like Suni really was the heir. Made you question just how much more rich and powerful the Niasas were since his kids had inherited the mother’s name. I tried to ask about this by saying “Niasa” and gesturing vaguely at the painted family tree. Ritidia was smart, I had to give her that – she immediately took me to the library, where she dug out a living room wall-sized painting. Being paper, it rolled up nicely to save some space, but it was still taller than us. This one went back to Ritidia’s great-great-great grandparents, and had so many branches that following them got confusing. First off, the name Niasa had only been introduced to the the family three generations ago – and then there was someone who’s first name was Niasa, when their other parent’s surname was Niasa.

I told Ritidia my surname was Willow, but their alphabet didn’t have W. So I used the Latin alphabet. She was very interested, asked me to write her name, and then revealed she had a middle name – Jaslak. Her siblings’ full names were Rititia Nupuri Niasa and Kinati Geauda Niasa. Alele Umlie Niasa had a nice rhythm to it, as did Suni Tsejanna Rini. Much better than Mimi Agatha Willow. And I didn’t even have a relative named Agatha! There was no reason to make me sound that old! Marie hadn’t gotten off much better, her full name was Virginia Marie. Who gives their kid a religious pun for a name? My parents are crap at naming. Marie had tried to go by Ginny for all of elemantary school, but for some reason Marie stuck.

I tried to convey nickname to Ritidia through some gestures and examples, so it was no wonder she didn’t understand. Then I wrote some examples on the paper. She still might not have been exactly on the map, but she did shorten Ritidia to Dia. Not many names in her family could be shortened, but when they could, they didn’t differ from the root – Asatair just became Asa or Tair, and Tolekirara became Toleki. No Richard-to-Dicks in this language. The weird thing was that many of the longer names, such as Beruhon, could not be shortened at all.

I was trying to ask about her maternal aunts and uncles, fonas, when she informed that her sesetuna, cousin, and their parent had come home – by suddenly piping up “Sesetuna u me sias!”. I let myself be dragged outside to receive them alongside the rest of the family, Suni’s parents included. Their knees were in great shape, two sets of stairs and they weren’t even out of breath. They smiled at me quietly.

It wasn’t just one cousin and one parent coming home, it was both Kee and Sato and all three of their kids- – Hamaoben, Uli and Lieha. So far Suni’s brother Kee was the only unmistakeably masculine man – he had a goatee and a jawline like Superman. His wife, Sato, turned out to be his husband. Glad to see this country was pretty progressive, not only were they married and recognized as a couple in the family tree, they also had adopted three kids, who were registered into the family tree as their own.

I wasn’t quite as glad about the sudden interest in me. Once Ritidia had introduced me, Uli squeed and tried to hug me with the same enthusiasm as Ritidia had when she first saw me. Rititia must have been incredibly loved to get this greeting after disappearing for God knows how many years. Uli’s enormous earrings clinked softly with each look he threw my way. He went beyond effeminate – valley girl mannerisms aside, he openly wore girly jewellery, flowers in his bun and frilly dresses, and probably lipstick, no one has that kind of pink naturally. He didn’t necessarily look bad – just weird since he was so clearly a young boy, 14 at the most. His sisters weren’t even half as feminine. And that’s saying something, considering their neatly braided hairdos and flowy dresses. Of the whole family, Sato was the only one to wear trousers. Note that it didn’t mean he wasn’t also wearing flowers.

Unlike Suni’s parents, this family had some luggage with them and went to unpack. Ritidia urged me to change into the cream dress. I had been done for only a minute when the next batch of family returned home – this time it was Temaha with his wife Matuke, and their daughter Asa. All three of them were remarkably “common people”, like Suni. No jewellery, simple cotton clothes, one braid or ponytail. None of the trio tried to hug me, also very reasonable behaviour – or Ritidia had sent them a message beforehand. They weren’t sure what to make of me, and in the end just slightly bowed to me.

Even with the three families at the table, the hilariously huge dining table had space to spare. Even if you counted in the four missing family members, there were still seats for about fifteen guests. Table conversation was still loud enough, and seemed to mostly be about me. There were lots of Mimis and Rititias thrown around. Some were said with pity, some with rage, and Uli’s feelings about the matter seemed to change every twenty seconds. He had changed out of his cream cake layer dress to something approximating casual wear. The earrings had stayed on, though.

I didn’t feel like any of the displeasure was aimed at me, however. I guess they were just angry at the circumstances. The long-lost daughter had finally been found, but she didn’t speak the language and thought she was someone else.

By the end of the dinner only the grandparents, Temaha, and Asa still called me Rititia. The rest had accepted that the Rititia they saw in front of them was a different person from the one they used to know, and so could be called by a different name. Whether it was more for their comfort or mine, I couldn’t tell. I didn’t have much time to wonder about it anyway – the language teacher appeared again, and I was ushered back into the study room. I was presented with an illustrated dictionary meant for small children. The teacher fixed my pronunciation, made me write some more, taught some expressions – like “thank you” and “bye bye” - and wished me good night.

Rushing my brain with something else to think besides my family had worked amazingly. I completely forgot about them at dinner, and didn’t have time to feel sorry for myself in language class. I had been under the covers for half an hour before I suddenly thought of mum again, and by then I was so exhausted I fell asleep soon after regardless.