A Gamer's Guide 379

By the time they had arrived at the castle, Ester—by her friends called Hum—felt entirely certain that fish-guy was almost probably definitely the one mentioned in the message she’d received from the Hyrru-Ettric Archjudge’s proxy, SirFloorBed. At least, she thought so. If that wasn’t really the case then she’d maybe absolutely feel even worse than she already did about reading the message before she’d had time to tell it to Mr Judge. 

Just in case, since she wasn’t totally sure, she pulled up the message again and compared the description of the so-called Anathema of Hope to the fish-guy walking next to them. 

He was short for a human guy… Check.

Dressed in ragged dirty clothes… Yeah. 

Long hair either black or white… Black.

Accompanied by a white four-winged dragon… 

She had seen it. She hadn’t told her friends because they were complaining about Mr Judge at the time and the conversation never really went there but she did see it. It was really big, way bigger than a house or something like that, and it had four wings but was also white. At the time she’d been a bit surprised because she didn’t think dragons were real, and they had always made her a bit uncomfortable (aren’t six-limbed things supposed to be insects?) so it felt even more bad to see one with four wings (spider??) though now it was gone so maybe she wouldn’t need to worry about that so much? 

But then there was also a chance that the dragon wasn’t really gone at all, it had only transformed into something else again, which would be even worse. Maybe a big insect?

Ester shuddered at the mere thought. 

Though Lion had never asked fish-guy (hope-guy?) how he came to be in the middle of the road out in nowheresville, Ester felt almost kind of certain that he had flown there on the dragon. That would make sense. Or maybe he had used magic powers to teleport there. The message said something about him being super dangerous and to be killed on sight, but Ester wasn’t sure about that. He seemed pretty nice. A little intense but he held the little goblin very gentle like a big brother almost. 

To make sure, once they were inside the castle, Ester decided to be very brave (which she usually wasn’t) and lowered her tempo to go walk right beside fish-guy. When she did, she was very surprised to find that he wasn’t stinky at all like she had thought. Since her friends all called him fish-guy because of that one time he caught a fish (she hadn’t been there so the joke always made her feel a little left out) she had expected him to smell fishy, but he really didn’t. It was more of a gentle floral smell, kind of like the ladies shampoo section at the grocery store. Or maybe like that milk and honey soap her mamma never let her buy because she thought it was too weird. 

But he didn’t look like he showered a lot because his hair was all greasy. She thought that was a shame because some people when they shampooed could have really nice and glossy hair, not like hers which became so curly it was hard to brush and hurt. 

Also she could tell that he was a lot like her, because even when she started walking right next to him he didn’t say anything. A lot of (most?) would at least say hi and he hadn’t introduced himself so if he was normal he would have said what his real name was (not fish-guy or hope-guy) and announced that it was a pleasure to make acquaintance (that was the proper word because that was how Lion had introduced him at the gate—not friend or buddy) because it maybe was. 

But then she realized that she had started walking next to him and that might have meant that actually she was supposed to do all those things to him what with the introducing and all? This made her sweat a bit because now they had been walking besides one another in silence for several minutes. 

“I’m Hum and hello,” Ester said, only biting her tongue twice.

“Oh, uh,” he said, and she could tell he didn’t know where to look but in the end he chose to look at her hand, where she had a couple spellrings. “Hi? I’m Kitty.”

Kitty. Ester decided it was a funny name because of the irony of kitty eating fish. But when she was eight one of her classmates had told her that her laugh was weird (like a chipmunk choking) so she didn’t laugh anymore even if it would have been at a funny name. 

The memory hurt a bit though so she made it go away by remembering that a boy once said she was okay to look at.

With the obligatory greetings done, she decided to make actual conversation. “Are you evil?” 

She noted the time it took before he answered: eight seconds. “No, I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

“Sometimes I worry that I might be evil,” Ester said, because she had read in a book on communication and interview techniques that explaining oneself could make others open up. “Because I do things that are mean and hurt others, and then I don’t feel very bad afterwards.”

“I don’t think that makes you evil.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No, that’s just… I mean, shoot, this might sound really bad, but if I felt bad about everything I’d done, how could I keep going on?”

“Have you done a lot of bad stuff?”

Pause. Four seconds this time. “I guess.”

“Why did you do it?”

“That’s a complicated question.”

“Not really,” Ester said, as flatly as she said everything, which she knew wasn’t good for conversations but she didn’t know how to change it. “When I was nine this girl in my class wouldn’t stop stealing my stuff so I beat her up and got sent to the school counselor, but they couldn’t fix me so I did it again the next week. But that was because she also did it again.”

“Wow, what a little shit,” he said, which made Ester very certain that he really wasn’t bad. “Good on you, man.”

“I’m not a man, I’m a woman.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay, I know you didn’t mean it badly.” She decided further, looking at his oddly pathetic yet endearing face, that she would try to make Mr Judge be nice to him. “You’re nice.”

Though Ester had never thought herself to be a very good judge of character or reader of expressions, she could tell in an instant that Kitty was not used to hearing those words, and also that he deeply disagreed but was too nice to vocalize it. She thought it was a pretty funny internal conflict for him to have, but she had decided not to laugh anymore, so she didn’t. In the end, after a pause that lasted a full eleven seconds, he turned away and mumbled, “Thanks,” which she thought was pretty sweet.

But now they had arrived at Mr Judge’s study (where he spent most of his time) so things were about to get a bit strange, and she felt extra bad because she hadn’t fully thought out how this was going to go. The uncertainty made her nervous, but not too nervous to rush to the front of the little group of humans to stop Lion from knocking on the door. “Wait,” she said, pressing herself flat against the door to bar entry. “I need to talk to him for a bit before anyone else goes in.”

Lion looked at her, but he knew her well, so instead of questioning her and being all mean about it, he simply smiled and said, “Sure! We’ll be waiting out here, no hurry.”

“Okay,” Ester said, knocked on the door, and slipped inside once Mr Usher opened it for her. 

Mr Judge was lounging in one of those big nice armchairs that weren’t as comfortable as they looked, warming his feet by the fireplace while two of his confidants and assistants (one of which was Mr Lemmentau, his secret gay lover) talked to him in hushed but worried tones, waving papers around. Mr Judge himself seemed relaxed but she knew he was only pretending because really he was very stressed about everything.

Though she had done the same song and dance dozens of times for almost three months now she still could not remember if she was supposed to speak first or him. To figure this out, she stood very still and stared at him for what she counted to be twenty-five seconds, which was a good amount of seconds since it was a multiple of five, her favorite number. “Mr Judge?”

“Oh, Iester!” he said, very warmly because he’d always wanted a daughter and she had become something of a surrogate daughter to him. She was also kind of pretty sure that he said it like that because he wanted to not talk to the two others in the room because they were bummerville ‘o clock. “How nice to see you again, would you like some margine, or perhaps a few cookies?”

She’s never really had one of those grandpas that were in the movies who were so nice (all of hers were dead), so she liked him quite a lot and would have loved to join them for afternoonsies. But if she did then things might turn out bad, so instead of agreeing, she said, “Mr Judge do you trust me?”

“Of course.”

“Okay,” she said, reformatting her plans only a little. “In that case could I have your permission to very briefly only for a minute speak in your stead? It is very important I think.”

Behind his jolly round glasses, she saw his eyes wrinkle up with delight, very uncle-like. “By all means. Though, when you’ve finished, I would love to hear what hijinks this will bring about.”

“Sure, okay. Bye,” she said, spinning around and exiting the room into the hallway. Outside, her friends hadn’t really had time to do anything else, so they were still standing around, discussing what to do in her absence. “Okay, so,” she began, but then found herself interrupted by Lion.

“How did things go?”

In her mind, an internal counter set for sixty began counting down. Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven…

“Good, anyways, you have permission to get food for the little goblin and also you are welcome to stay in the lounge downstairs—my friends will show you the way—where there is a fireplace to warm him by. The couch there isn’t as comfortable as it looks but the armchair in the corner by the bookcase is, so I recommend that you take that one and move it over to the fireplace. If it isn’t lit you can have a servant do it, you have permission, and also you can stay for the day and maybe more I don’t know yet but—” Her internal counter hit zero which meant she was no longer permitted to speak in Mr Judge’s place. “Yeah. That’s all. Now I’m going to go talk to him more, so…”

She felt a bad feeling beginning in her chest and moving upwards. In all honestly she didn’t even know where it was coming from, but everything felt like a bit too much now. Gravy had told her what to do when she felt like this, though, so she began taking deep breaths and troubleshooting herself. Did I eat today? Did I drink today? Did I sleep last night? All of those were okay, so it wasn’t her body. In that case, it must have been what happened just now.

It hit her like a slap in the face. She’d lied. She didn’t tell them that this was what she allowed (though with permission from Mr Judge), and she hadn’t told Mr Judge what she was going to do with the permission he granted her. So now her friends didn’t know enough to be able to trust her fully and Mr Judge had confided in her without the full knowledge of what that would entail.

Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar.