As soon as I stepped into her room, I knew I was way the hell out of my comfort zone. I didn't want to touch anything, because there was so much stuff everywhere. A giant TV, tons of game systems and rows of what I assumed were all games. Picture frames, decorations, an expensive looking computer, and even some figures of what I could only guess were game characters.

 

This is such a jump from our own room.

 

+++

Yeah. There's actually a real bed and doesn't look like a crazy person's room.

+++

 

I was so busy focusing on not freaking out that I didn't pay any attention to Tarmon. "Wow, you weren't kidding when you said you had a lot of games."

"Yeah," she said as her face turned red as she knelt down next to her collection and poked through it. "So uhh. You like to build stuff sooo…"

"Yup I like to build wood- I mean I like to build with wood and- Yeah. I like to build."

"I know one you might like. Maybe. I hope. Just tell me if it's not your thing and we can try something else."

 

+++

Esmer, Are you seeing this amazing display of awkwardness?

+++ 

 

I am.

 

+++

They might actually be perfect for each other. 

+++

 

She pulled out a case, put the disk in the system, and threw down a couple of pillows in front of the TV. "You can sit here," she said as she sat on one of them.

I sat next to her on the ground and she handed me a controller. Looking down at it-

 

How the fuck are you supposed to use this?

 

"If you need help with the controls. I can help."

"Thanks," I said as I looked up at the screen. She went through different menus, none of which I understood, and it eventually loaded into this weird blocky world.

"This is an open world game where you get to build stuff." She moved around on the screen. "I put us in a mode where you can make whatever you want without having to worry about monsters or stuff like that."

"Alright…" I said, looking at the controller, "How do I move?"

Holly held up the controller. "You use this to move," she said as she rotated the left stick around, "And you press this to place blocks, this one to break blocks, Triangle opens your inventory, Circle and Square cycle through your items, X to jump and fly and this right stick moves the camera." She showed me each button, and I tried to follow along, but I was left staring at the controller. Still as clueless as before.

"Uhh sorry if that was too fast. Maybe press random buttons to find out what they do? That's how I learn."

If that was the best way to learn, then great. I pressed every button in order and worked to get a better understanding of what the hell was going on. Eventually, a menu opened up with a ton of different pictures.

"That's the inventory. You can press X to pick what block you want and put it on your hotbar."

Half of what she said went right over my head, but I hit X and it put 'Wooden Planks' onto what I guess was the 'hotbar.'

"Now you can press right bumper." She held out her controller and showed me where that was. "And you can put the block down."

I looked at the controller and pressed the one she showed me, and like she said, a pile of wood appeared on the ground.

"You can also hold down the button if you want to place them faster."

I held it down and it quickly put down a lot more piles of wood until it built up right in my face.

"And again you can move with this stick," she said as she moved the left stick.

I tilted the left stick towards me and it kept putting more blocks down. Looking at the controller, I let go of that bumper button and looked back up at the screen to see me backing up.

 

She said the other stick was to look around.

 

I moved around with the other stick and walked around to look at my mess of blocks. "Wait, so is this Lego's?"

"Kinda, but you can do a lot more with it."

"I heard about it, but never got to play it. That's actually pretty cool."

"I can show you what kind of stuff you can do with it if you want."

"That might help me get a better feel for this."

She went right to work and holy shit, her fingers moved all over the place.

 

She did say she played these things a lot, so she should be good at them.

 

My eyes flicked between watching the screen and watching how she was doing all this with her fingers.

 

She's kind of amazing.

 

"I guess I'll build a house real quick," she said, which got me smiling. I was sure it'd get a kick out of Emma as well. 'Just gonna build this house real quick. Ten minutes tops.'

She made a foundation, walls, windows and a roof, and wow. She wasn't kidding when she said real quick. I was joking about the ten minutes, but it might have actually been ten minutes. It looked pretty good, too! A red roof, white walls and windows and doors. She even made a little path to the front door.

 

This is rather neat.

Maybe we can remake our own house?

 

That sounds cool, but I barely know how to put stuff down.

 

Play around with it more.

 

I did as she suggested and messed around with the hotbar and putting down different blocks. And honestly? I started to get a pretty good grip on it. Even if I did have to look down a lot to see what button I was pressing.

"How you doing on the controls?" She asked.

"Getting better. It's not that hard once you get used to it."

"Then maybe you'd want to build something together?"

"That sounds fun. I never worked on a smaller project with someone."

 

For obvious reasons.

Even if you were not terrified of working with others.

You're a perfectionist when working.

 

Because you need to be perfect when working with wood if you want to be good at it.

 

"Do you have any paper and something to draw with?" I asked as I looked around the room.

"Uhh yeah. Hold on." She got up to grab a pencil and ripped out a page from a notebook. Once she handed me it, I scooted my pillow over to her table, and she sat down right next to me.

"What did you have in mind?" I asked as I bent over the paper with pencil in hand.

"Maybe a cozy little castle?"

"Hmm…Alright then maybe this-"

I started to draw what I pictured a small castle would be. Walls surrounding it with two floors. The second floor smaller than the first with a walkway on top of the first floor. And some of those guard tower things at the corners. It was probably generic, but I had no experience coming up with ideas for buildings anyway.

"Add in a moat." Holly suggested.

I drew a messy line around the walls.

"...Maybe a garden?" I asked.

"There's a lot of flowers and plants you can grow, so yeah. That'd be good."

With me not being sure how to draw a garden, I just wrote 'Garden' in the back.

"What about the inside?" I asked as I drew a line to separate the inside and out.

She leaned over to look at the plans. "I think we should worry about that later when we actually build it. And we have to find a cool place in the world to make it first."

"Alright," I took the plan and went back in front of the TV with Holly. "I don't know what'll be a good spot for this."

"That's fine. We can just fly around and look for a place that looks cool. You can pick it out if you want as well."

So that's what we did, we flew around and came across some possible spots, but there was one that really stood out. It was a big island close enough to the rest of the land, and we could build a neat little bridge if we wanted. At least I assumed we could.

"You like this place?" Holly asked as she circled around it.

"Yeah. I think we can make something cool with this." 

I put the plan between us so we could both check it as we needed, and we got to work. We stopped talking at this point and just worked on parts of it at a time. Holly started the actual castle while I worked on the walls. The entire thing took up maybe a quarter of the island, which left plenty of room to expand if we wanted.

By the time I was halfway done with some basic walls, "What do you think of this?" Holly asked.

I looked at Holly's screen, "You're done already? You're really good at this."

"Oh, thanks. But no. Just the first floor."

 

She's blushing.

 

I circled around the castle, and it was maybe twice the size of the house she made earlier.

"It's really nice. Yeah, I like it."

"Thanks. Are you getting hungry though?" Holly asked. 

"Huh?" Snapping me away from the game and Holly. "Oh, yeah. I guess. I didn't have anything before I came here."

"Alright. We've been playing for a couple hours anyway."

"Wait, seriously?" I took out my phone and holy fuck. It was a little past eight.

 

That's impressive.

Maybe we have another way to distract us?

 

If so then that'd be amazing!

 

I put down the controller, and followed Holly out of her room.