Gasket is a mutt we got from a shelter about three years ago, named half as a joke because Dev thought a dog with a shop-term name for someone who spends her days doing tolerance checks was funny, and it stuck before either of us could think of anything better. He’s got a whole ritual for Friday nights now. Somewhere around six thirty he plants himself by the front door, because he knows the specific sound of Pri’s car before anyone else does, and by the time the folding table’s out he’s usually camped directly underneath it, which is fine right up until someone’s foot finds him mid-turn.
Two weekends ago he wasn’t there. We noticed maybe forty minutes into a game, which sounds like bad pet ownership and honestly might be, but Rising Sun eats your attention completely once the mandate drafting starts, and by the time I actually clocked that he wasn’t underfoot my stomach dropped in a way I still remember clearly. Twenty minutes of everyone fanning out through the yard calling his name while the game sat abandoned on the table, cards still fanned out mid-draft, nobody caring even a little about who was winning anymore.
He’d gotten into the side yard through a gate Dev thought was latched and was just sitting there, completely fine, mildly confused about why five adults were suddenly sprinting toward him with flashlights. Twenty minutes. That’s nothing, really, in the scope of things that could’ve gone wrong, and I know that logically. It didn’t feel like nothing at the time.
We finished the game that night, technically, but nobody’s heart was in the second half of it and I don’t even remember who won, which almost never happens to me, I usually remember scores from sessions two years back. What I do remember is Gasket back under the table by nine, pressed against my foot like he could tell something had been off, and how much smaller the whole hobby felt for those twenty minutes, cardboard and dice and mandate cards, set next to an actual thing that mattered. I don’t think I need a big lesson out of this one. Just that the gate gets double checked now, every Friday, before anyone sits down, and that I noticed exactly how fast a game stops mattering the second something real is at stake instead.