A Gamer's Guide 348

Once I’ve left the room, once we’ve exchanged goodnights and she’s promised to tell Holly not to be so mean to me, once she’s gone down the hall and out of sight and brought the candle with her, I feel the coldness of the hallway in full. She’s gone. Something hollow and white aches within my chest, giving a grumble once I pay attention to it. What a strange girl, it says. Doesn’t like us, but loves us. Is with us, but won’t stay with us. Is this her revenge?

I put my hand to my chest. It’s alright, I tell it. People come and go. It’s just the way it is.

In a small, childish voice, it replies, It still hurts.

And it does.

Across the hall, the door to my bedroom looms, dark and heavy. I can smell Rice in there, sitting up, fully awake and alert.

<Top—Status—Community>

<02:01:56

Day 1 395>

<The forty-seventh attempt will begin in

15:21:58:04>

It’s two in the morning, and she’s still awake. Waiting for me. Rationally, I know that I should feel guilty about this. My brain is well-aware of this fact. Keeping people up is bad and liable to result in a stern talking-to. Not good. 

However, my heart is dumb and doesn’t get this. It thinks that it’s very nice that Rice stayed up for us, even though we told her we’d be late. Downright lovely. 

And, since I’m the dumbest of us all, I decide that maybe, just this once, my heart might have a point.

I enter our shared room, smiling and glad to have such a good friend at my side. Heck, I don’t even feel the need to apologize! Instead, all giddy from letting my heart speak, I say, before even laying eyes on her, “Hey, Rice! Thanks for waiting up for me. I had a really interesting talk with Glyph…”

She turns to me. Her eyes blink one at a time like a toad. “Huh? Oh, uh,” she looks back at her own state. She’s lying in bed, a lit candle on her night table, some type of jerky clutched in her hand as she glances haphazardly between the empty air in front of her—a status window?—and me. “I was just, um…” For some reason, I can smell sweat on her. What the heck has she been doing? Noticing my gaze, she sits up a little straighter, encouraging her bed to creak. “So I was waiting up for you, very maturely and all, but then I remembered that today was a Saturday, which meant that, um…” She gestures wildly at the air. “You know the forums?”

“Yeah?” Not paying too much attention to her, I slip out of my clothes, put on my pink pajamas, and hop into bed. “What about them?”

Her eyes linger on me. The tenseness in her form begins to loosen, maybe because I’m not commenting on how she looks like a hacked-up hairball. “Heh, uh, that is…” She turns away from me, over towards the window we’re facing. “There’s this guy on the forums, ZigZagScatter, and every week, he posts this story on there. Like a web fiction, but on the forums.”

“Really?”

“Yeah!” she says with such excitement that I can tell she hasn’t talked about this with anyone before. “Of course, you wouldn’t know him since he only posts in the America server. Ah, on the other hand, he did post the other day that a friend of his in purgatory was going to start posting it to the Asia server, so maybe it could come to the Europe server? Then you could start reading? If you wanted to?” Her eyes blink at me, wild and large. “Oh, um, not that you have to or anything! It’s pretty niche, so…”

“What’s it about?” I ask, rolling over so that I’m facing her. 

“Well, that’s… Wait, one second,” she says, grabbing her candle and putting it on the night stand between our beds. “Right. So, uh…” She chuckles, self-deprecating. “It’s kind of a long story, and…” Something hovering before her eyes draws her attention. “Holy mother of—is that the time!? Oh, gosh. We should really…”

“We should,” I acquiesce. Some gleaming little thing in her eye wavers. “But… Now I’m really curious about this story.”

Across the space between us, lit only by moonlight and candle, I watch with joy as her lips widen into an enthusiastic grin, her eyes gleaming at the prospect. “Yeah! It’s… Okay, well, first things first, it’s less a story and more of an experience…”

I listen, nod, and follow along as Rice tells me all about her current reading obsession—a story about a horse that can talk, and the many reasons why this is horrifying. 

“Personally,” I say wisely, “if I met a talking horse, I’d send it to the glue factory.”

“That’s the point!” Rice exclaims, throwing her hands in the air. “A talking horse is a defective horse, because even if it is clearly superior to normal horses, the fact that it’s abnormal still makes it an incorrect horse.” As she speaks, I take a bite of the jerky she shared with me. Mmm… Barrelbug jerky… “And that’s why it couldn’t stay at the stable. And that’s why it—”

“That’s what I don’t get,” I say. “How does a horse become a priest?”

“It makes sense in the story. Honestly, it’s almost scary how much sense it makes. Listen… In a confessional, no one has to see that you’re actually a horse.”

“ZigZag. Terrifying man. But I still don’t understand why a priest, or why it has to be catholic. Is that even, like… Theologically accurate?”

“I think so. The horse is a male. He can talk. He knows the catechesis like the back of his hoof. But that actually brings up a really interesting point which ZigZag discusses…” She holds up her hands for emphasis. “Is the horse made in the image of God?”

I arch my neck to look at her. She looks shitfaced, even though no alcohol has been consumed. A worrying amount of various jerkeys, yes, but no alcohol. “I don’t…”

She giggles. “No, no, listen, listen, it’s actually really… Okay, right, humans are in the image of God. That’s why we’re special. Horses are not in the image of God. That’s why horses can’t go to heaven.”

“They all go to hell?”

Interrupted, Rice freezes. The cogs in her head turn slowly, one by one, click-clack, click-clack. “Do they?” she whispers, maybe only to herself. “I don’t know. The point is, horses don’t have souls. But if a horse could talk…”

“Then…” I say, my mental cogs aligning with hers, “it must have a soul?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. What is a soul, anyways? And when we ruminate on being in the image of God, does that mean physically or mentally?” She grins to herself, at the cleverness of the author, and not even a little bit at how ridiculous the concept of a consecrated horse priest is. “It’s a big debate in the fanbase. A lot of people are up in arms about it, but ZigZag is playing the long game. Me? I think the horse might be the second coming.”

“Blasphemy,” I say. “A horse could never be pope.”

“You never know. The upcoming arc might see the reveal of the horse’s identity to their whole parish, with the gates of the glue factory calling…”

“I must know what happens. What of his first rider? Will she return to see what became of him, after all this time?”

Rice grins knowingly. “I shan’t say.”

“Heresy!” I cry. “Enlighten me, witch!”

“Neigh.”

I raise my body off the mattress. She… she must die. A vision has been bestowed upon me. For her sins against all of mankind, she must be ended. “How dare you?” I whisper. 

A teasing smile flickers onto her face, accompanied by a half-melodic hum. “Well, if you want to know so badly… I could always read it to you?”

Yoinked from my murderous thoughts, it takes some time before I can properly understand what she’s saying to me. “Would you really do that? You said it had dozens of chapters; I can’t imagine how much time it’ll take to read it all. And out loud, too?”

“One chapter at a time,” she explains. “Any more than that and I’ll probably start seeing horses in my nightmares.”

Sitting up like this, our eyes are level. I can see her, and she can see me. If we had grown up as neighbours, I think we would have been friends. I would have gone over to her ranch and she would have come over to my apartment. It would have been a simple friendship, built on the core tenant of play. 

As I sit here looking at her in the pale moonlight and the warm candle glow, I can’t help but feel that what she’s really asking me is, ‘Do you want to play?’

“Sure,” I say. “I’d love to do that.” I look to find her smiling as wide as I am, but I make the mistake of glancing at the time. “We should probably go to sleep now, or else we won’t be able to wake up in time for breakfast tomorrow.”

“Oh, shoot, you’re right!” The bed beneath her draws her attention and she pats it ruefully. “These are dangerous things. Too comfortable.”

“Perhaps. Still…”

We smile at each other. 

“Goodnight, Prince.”

“Goodnight, Rice,” I say, but really I mean, I love you.