The Little Horns

I have always loved gaming, whether it be board games, or video games, I have always loved it. When the chance arose to start playing DnD with the board game club, I jumped at the chance to create a character, a druid, with my vision of little horns sitting atop her head. In order to get the nice horns, I had two characters, the druid which had been 3D printed in a better quality than the other one, but the other which had better quality horns. I had a perfect solution, cut the horns off the one that was printed better, and replace them with the better looking horns.

Armed with a crafting knife, sand paper, and quality paints to create my miniature, I turned on my WoW streamer and sat fiddling with my character, feeling confident and hopeful, as what I had imagined was sitting nearly at my fingertips. I first sanded my character carefully, removing imperfections and blemishes with the combination of the knife and the sand paper, smoothing rough edges, and excising the harder to remove pieces. After the sanding was complete, I carefully cut off the horns on the miniature that was going to be the final product, and removed the horns on the miniature that held the horns I desired. I then sanded the horns I wanted, smoothing them out, and sanded the bottoms that I had cut to give something for the glue to stick to. I held one horn up to the tiny head, looking for the perfect positioning for them to look as if they were worn. After finding the position I attempted to glue the horns to the head.

I looked down at my hands. The horns had completely slide off, and now my fingers were glued together. I sighed, and attempted again. I held it this time, carefully keeping my fingers away, and attempted to pull away when I thought the glue was dry. The horn went with my finger and the miniature remained hornless. I let out a more annoyed sigh, this was NOT how I imagined this would go. I confided in a friend who recommended using tweezers, and tried that tactic. It refused to hold the tiny horns in place without moving it around, dissipating the glue. What I thought would be an hour project quickly turned into hours, going from around 3pm to dragging into 6 O’clock PM. I looked down, furious at myself for not having enough patience to stay still and let the glue dry. I stewed over myself mentally, before deciding to try ONE last time. Just one, if it didn’t work this time, I was giving up. I would resort to just having an antler-less druid. I put a drop of glue on and held the horns, holding my breath, and waiting. And waited. And waited. Another hour went by before I finally pulled away from the horns. One horn stuck. It remained upright on the head. I felt so tremendously thankful I wanted to kiss it. But this druid had two horns, not just one. Armed with my experience on this one horn, I started to glue the second, much shorter horn on. This proved a challenge as I had less length to work with for holding on to. I held the horn carefully, allowed it to dry enough to prop it on something else to continue drying, and came back in an hour. It also stayed. I stared at my miniature, now complete with horns, and then looked at the clock. My clock blinked 3 minutes after 8pm. I sent a triumphant text to the friend who helped me, and was replied with “IT TOOK YOU THAT LONG???” Yes. Yes it did because rather than laugh at my mistakes, I took it as annoyance, which morphed into being even more impatient.

Photo by author