This branches into two storylines, with the alternate one marked with an A
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The Tall and Short Problems of a Cute Gamer Girl

[7]
For the Alt Branch [7A]

Giselle woke up first in the morning to Herschel pawing at her shoulder. She groaned and rubbed his furry head. He graciously accepted this offering but still reminded her with an intense stare that he decided his first meal of the morning was late.

In actuality, it was about 30 minutes early from the time they usually woke up to feed him but there was no point in trying to explain that to a cat. The process of waking up along with checking things and preparing to get out of bed along with everything else required was sure to be enough to waste the right amount of time and give his little furry brain the mollification that she was taking care of it

Not that he would be at all understanding about the hour and everything but it at least saved Rachel the pain of being woken up by even more insistent meows. Giselle gently shifted and eased her way to the edge of the bed. Rising quietly, she checked to make sure Rachel was still asleep and then diligently laid the covers back in place with a little bit of a bump to diminish her absence.

After stepping lightly across the room, she fussed with her mess of hair and glanced into the master bathroom’s mirror as she did her best to get it under control. Tuck, twist, slip, clamp, and slide. That took care of it for the time being.

She shut the door halfway, especially to keep the light out of Rachel‘s eyes as she lowered her bottoms and rested on the seat. Sitting there quietly with a sigh, she took care of her business and scrunched up her forehead in an effort to clear away mental cobwebs. Something was bothering her, but she couldn’t tell exactly what. Their morning show stream was coming up in about two hours.

They would have to get ready for that but not vigorously so. The coffee pot might need cleaning in the next day or two, but it didn’t seem to have any problems yet. She hadn’t finished all the work yesterday, but what else is new? The next edition of the monthly podcast would need to be out in two weeks, but Dale was taking care of that and hadn’t come back to her with any corrections.

After a second, it finally hit her. The leftovers from breakfast yesterday! No way that thing was going to last more than today tasting any kind of good. She could probably throw a few things in and on it, especially cheese to make it nice, but it might be a little too filling for this hour. That was it. No forgetting and wasting food. Most perishable out first and what’s been in the longest.

She would have to check the bread and then see when Rachel was awake if she wanted her usual breakfast or maybe some fruit cut up. Fanning her top, Giselle gave a quiet yawn and glanced through the headlines on her phone for anything relevant in gaming or the wider world. Fortunately, it appeared to be a quiet day with some little deals for controllers and indie titles on her feed. She had a few notifications with messages but just the usual requests for her to play some game she really wanted to get around to but time was always the issue.

Returning to the bedroom afterward, she thought about what else she could take care of when the sound of Rachel groaning and shifting reached her.

“… you’re up?” Rachel’s voice quietly cut through the silence. Bending over, Giselle eagerly kissed her on the cheek and responded, “Yeah, stinker was hungry. How about you? What would you like this morning?”

Rachel used a hand to rub at her tired eyes before she stopped and puzzled at her attentive significant other. “What? Are you okay?”

Giselle rested a hand on her side and diligently responded, “I’m fine. Just wanted to get an early start on breakfast before I have to set up everything for the stream this morning. No rush… just wanna get things rolling.”

Slowly, Rachel sat up and peered at Giselle before quietly asking, “… Giselle?”

Sitting tenderly on the edge of the bed beside her, Giselle wanted to reach for her wife’s hands to comfort her. Not yet. She would wait and listen to make sure she hadn’t had a nightmare or some fretful worry. With Rachel‘s anxiety problems, she knew to be attentive and patient.

“Yes? What is it, Chel?”

Planting her arms firmly for support right in front of the pillow, Rachel took a deep breath and then asked, “…Jeremy?”

Giselle‘s mouth dipped slightly, and she resisted the urge to chew on a lip as a contemplative frown pushed its way into her eyebrows. With an even, kindly tone, she inquired, “Who’s Jeremy?”

Rachel‘s hands shot up as she gave a firm head shake and declared, “Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck!”

Her eyes wide and white, Giselle gasped at more profanity from her wife than she could ever remember. Everyone joked that she could curse on occasion if the need arose, but Rachel was legally incapable of it.

“What’s wrong…what what what…Jeremy? What has you so scared?”

“You!”

Giselle‘s mind couldn’t grasp what she was saying. Why on earth was Chel scared of her? For an instant, she fretted about videos online where a cerebral blood flow mistake causes someone to forget what they’re doing for several minutes and terrify their loved ones. She hoped to everything that is holy that something like that wasn’t happening to her right then. Nervously, she traced all her steps back to waking up and cautiously considered how she might track her own memory to make sure that something wasn’t wrong with it.

Simultaneously, a different possibility crossed her mind that she wasn’t at fault but rather Rachel. She hated the notion and acutely understood from extended family that dementia, early onset especially, was utterly terrifying. No matter what the problem was, her heart clung to the absolute certainty that she didn’t want Rachel ever to be afraid.

But, as she listened, Rachel spun a bewildering story of a cursed toilet seat because this Jeremy would be forgetful and leave it up. It turned Jeremy into Giselle and that was who she was supposed to be. Giselle held her tongue and all judgments as she listened. To settle this point, Rachel jumped out of bed and went over to the master bath to check the seat. With shock on her face, she saw that it didn’t have any of the features she was expecting and looked exactly like a normal seat. This is what Giselle had figured, since she remembered helping Rachel purchase a replacement for their old worn seat and they had installed it the day before last before bed.

Fervently, Rachel asked her to run through the events of the last few days. With a lingering concern but abiding love, Giselle worked through what she remembered. They had a surprise stream because of free keys provided by a partner in the industry. She was still working on editing that and felt rather tired. So, to have some fun they went out to take care of some shipping supplies and stopped by that cute intimates place that sold bras and a bunch of other things for some regular shopping and picked up a few items. On sale, fortunately.

Then her parents Gerald and Lily texted Rachel about soup and cheesecake for dinner. She also couldn’t forget the abandoned breakfast leftovers so present on her mind but avoided that for the moment because she just wanted to work through the linear version of events to calm her wife down. She filled out the rest of the night with a broad overview before they went to bed but also amended, “If there’s anything I’m forgetting, please remind me.”

With a morbid, sullen tone, Rachel remarked, “Yeah, you forgot some big things…like the fact you didn’t have boobs two days ago.” Giselle resisted a reaction and desperately hoped that her wife wasn’t trying to take an emotional swipe at her. Furiously, she focused on the fact that these were just some messed-up memories, and she didn’t mean anything about Giselle and what insecurities she had growing up.

Instead of fighting about this and the details, Giselle repeated and emphasized notes that Rachel asserted. OK, there was this Jeremy, and he was a very tall man who Rachel met through a certain website and this game they both were fans of. They dated at a distance from the Midwest and the South. All that fit reality. Then got married about 11 years ago. Everything else along the way sounded right. Rachel recognized all their friends.

The problem was she absolutely wasn’t a man named Jeremy and she had no clue how Rachel arrived at that mixed-up memory so firmly and confidently. Rachel just kept returning to the cursed toilet seat but looking at the box was just some basic installation instructions and everything that they had put on the other day.

Giselle puzzled over this and touched on a few points. It seemed weird to her that a toilet seat would have a section with LED projection and a security module as Rachel called it. She questioned how the normal plastic or wood frame would work considering there would need to be electronic or magical components put into the seat to know if someone put it down. Rachel seemed frustrated with her questions, so Giselle tried to keep her tone not belligerent or accusatory. She just wanted to understand.

Even Rachel acknowledged that the thing seemed crazy along with the website and especially the absurd prices. It felt like something out of a dream. But she knew confidently as she knew anything in her life that this was what happened, and that blasted device had now affected Giselle‘s ability to remember it.

They went over to Rachel‘s office and looked over the information and the copy of the invoice from the order. The website was still there with its rather dated, almost eBay-like graphics from several decades ago. But everything checked out with the pages she had searched, and the matching item number looked to be just a standard toilet seat with a long name and a very tantalizing price.

Giselle left her there for a little bit as she started typing up a consumer complaint email into the system. She encouraged her to do that in the hopes that it might be something therapeutic or allow her to work through the memories and come to what was actually bothering her…hopefully. At least that’s what she was praying to herself.

She managed to find out that Rachel would take some French toast along with the remaining cantaloupe for breakfast. Humming softly, Giselle assembled her leftovers into a cheesy and vaguely peppery sandwich with the base of the leftover eggs and put together a very nice spread for her wife. Meanwhile, she checked all the settings upstairs in the office and gingerly adjusted the lights where she thought they might need them, as well as switching the overlay presets from gaming to one that fit this more casual arrangement.

It wasn’t too long before the stream started, and they started nibbling a few things before the proper beginning. The opportunity to actually begin from a point of relaxation on the couch together instead of the usual frantic hurrying from one place to another as stuff was barely finished and other things left undone was a nice salve for the morning, despite the stressful confusion. Giselle did her best to focus on this as everyone in chat joined them.

So far as content, Giselle recited memes, poetry, gaming quotes, and silly non-sequiturs in the framework of donations. She referenced Ethan’s discovery of a totally awesome DDR pad as being like her white whale hunt for since the utter collapse of all the arcades everywhere and trying to find ones still in good condition. But so many were sold off and buckling from the wear and tear of decades of shoes smacking them. She smiled and encouraged her usual high airy tone which was ever so slightly inflated from her normal speaking voice, and which slipped out of the hold of her southern drawl.

The audience didn’t see anything amiss, which concerned Rachel. They also caught onto the energy disparity between them as Rachel glumly chewed through her breakfast while Giselle warmly greeted the early-goers. Most resisted saying much, except for a few, terse morons who basically implied that Rachel had some sort of biological imposition this morning. The mods booted them hard. Giselle even slipped on a brief scowl before returning to her sunny disposition. How dare they say that after all of Rachel‘s surgeries, especially her hysterectomy! But she told herself that that tiny number didn’t need to be dwelled on. Move on and let it go.

For weekend stream entertainment, Giselle alluded to Pokémon from the most recent open-world release. They had been alternating streams with that and she was excited to announce that they would be returning soon. Hopefully. This day had put a few wrinkles into those notes of excitement, but Rachel still showed encouraging signs about all that. After Giselle closed out the stream with one of her goofy remarks, she looked over to Rachel as she swept the breeze up behind her, swiftly jumped from the chair, and went downstairs. Quietly, Giselle wrapped her arms around herself and resisted tearing up with worry.

Downstairs, she found Rachel back in her office furiously typing. She explained, “They still haven’t answered. I’m gonna bury them in messages till they can’t ignore me!”

Tugging on her clothes gently, Giselle fumbled for what to say. Darkly in her soul, she gave voice to words that she would’ve rather buried, “… Do you wish I was this man… This Jeremy?”

“YES!”

Shaken by that, Giselle wobbled on her legs. She clung to her emotions like a massive helium balloon buffeted by a gale. If she didn’t grip them so tightly then everything would unleash in sobs and fear. Rachel noticed and firmly told her, “You’re not supposed to be like this. You’re not supposed to be so small and not supposed to have all this. That thing messed you up.”

Giselle swallowed hard and gripped the door frame. She knew she shouldn’t take it personally… she knew. But it just hurt so much in ways of attacking her most delicate memories. Rachel didn’t hurt her like this. She may play the occasional joke, but it was over and done in the span of a few winking giggles. Something was wrong.

What were the memories that bothered her so much? She developed late and didn’t grow for a long time. Had light blonde hair in junior high into high school and then sprung up like a… wait. She got tall really fast. She remembered that.

But that couldn’t be possible as she was 3 inches under 5 feet. For Rachel’s sake, she searched and plumbed those memories. Something just wasn’t adding up.

Sniffling, Rachel told her a story. She told her about Jeremy and how they were caught in the snow during their first date in the Midwest, him visiting her. He desperately told her after they’d been talking for a while that he loved her. In actuality, that was just him being a doofus because he had a friend on the site who was trying to get to know someone else and talk to her a lot more and Rachel was ending the online chat and he had to somehow make her stick around. So he confessed in blurted-out, frantic text.

Only it wasn’t a lie, it was just what he had been holding back all this time, feeling with fear and disenchantment that high school had been such a wasteland of not finding anyone he could really care about and he resolved that college and filmmaking class was just going to be all business, no girls none of that nonsense, no love, no silliness like that… (Rachel broke down with her lips trembling as she recounted).

Then they found each other. Slowly, and with enjoyably-silly conversations, they got closer and fate pushed them closer yet. They resolved to meet. Despite it not being the middle of the winter, it still snowed when he arrived. Walking to her car, he stayed close and provided a buffer between her and the windblown flakes. They joked he was like a mighty oak keeping the storm at bay. It became the start of so many tree metaphors.

And it was the moment she knew in her heart that he was a good man who would always think of her. And, in return, she warmed him up with absolute furious energy when they got to her house, with homemade hot chocolate. And that’s when he knew that no matter what silly things he did and she called him out on, she would take care of him and be there to catch him and make sure he was all right. Blubbering through the memory of when he flew out to meet her for the first time and he was scared unsure and an old lady with an indomitable spirit and a twinkling smile listening to his story encouraged him to not be scared because everything would work out. She sobbed.

Giselle took a breath as she stepped forward and wiped away Rachel‘s tears. Calmly softly, Giselle told her, “…Her name was Eleanor, and she couldn’t get over how tall I was.”

Wailing, Rachel squeezed Giselle so tightly that the poor girl had to hoarsely beg for air.

“You remember? Do you remember… you remember Jeremy?”

“How could I forget over a decade of the most amazing years of my life…as they truly were, instead of some crap that a hunk of plastic thinks that it oughta be!”

As a light addendum, Giselle noted, “We’re totally gonna have to update you on the tier list from physically incapable of swearing to swearing only in emergencies.”

Rachel clung to her while still shaking. Giselle couldn’t really tell when the messed-up memories from the morning had faded away and when the real ones reasserted, but she was ecstatic that the brainwashing had broken. It also gave her a measure of hope that what happened to her parents wasn’t inescapable as well.

As they mulled this together, A series of chimes came through Rachel‘s computer and phone at the same time. Checking them, they were from Flush With Pride with the title “[email protected]”.

All that was included in the body of the message was, “I can do something about what happened to you. This can be fixed. I want to help. Meet up with me at [included image with a six-digit north latitude and six-digit west longitude]. Black sedan then walk to the waterfront part. 4 PM today.”

And that was it.

[Since this is meant to be interactive, feel free to suggest ideas and prompts for future/alternate branch storylines. Some branches are already written but this will allow me to best pick new/alternate ones. I'm currently just rolling dice.]

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