[TW: Depression, transphobia, dysphoria]

“I'm not complaining about all the subs watching me right now, but I'm a little confused, I guess.

I love you guys for your support, subs and v-bux and everything, but is this how you want to spend your sleeping hours? Watching me play instead of playing games yourselves? I know you can't watch REMbox streams while you're awake... REMbox data still can't be visually encoded outside our own brains, which sucks But of all the things you can dream about, you wanna see me play this game over and over? It really freaks me out sometimes, I guess. Like I don't deserve it.

I dunno. I love the REMnet, but I sometimes wonder what dreams we're missing out on while we're streaming this stuff on our gray matter.

Shit! How did I miss that jump!? Fuck, I gotta reset.”

-REMtuber StarshineNova, during xer Elderhaven 2 Any% speedrun, VTW.ch Stream, May 2033

___________

There was some silence that unraveled between us as we navigated the spiraling streets. Marianne seemed distracted and given the relationship problems that I was in no way suited to navigate, I didn’t push the subject.

I did notice that I wasn’t drawing stares anymore. The white dress which had marked me as a human was gone. I was blending in. I was just a normal girl out shopping. Unremarkable.

“The Acorn Pub is a few blocks clockwise,” said Marianne awkwardly, “um... I take it you’ve never had elven food before?”

I shook my head. “What kind of things do elves eat?”

She shrugged. “I’ve lived with both elf and dwarf cooking. Elf food is... sweet… light, I suppose. Leaves accented by berries and fruits. There’s elfbread of course, a flatbread you use to wrap it all up. We’re not particularly big on meat, but we do a good roast beetle or tree-rodent stew.”

I gawked at her in shock. “Beetles?!” I said, feeling sick, “You eat bugs?!”

She gave me a long-suffering sigh. “Zoey... wood elves lived almost exclusively in trees in the old days. What kind of other things live in trees?”

I considered this. I shrank a little in embarrassment. “S-sorry...”

She shook her head. “It’s not for everyone. Dwarf food is big on roasting and boiling. Soups, stews and cooked cavemeats in massive cauldrons. With garnishes of mushrooms and lichen. It tends to have a very salty and fatty kind of taste to it.”

I considered it. “Well that sounds tasty.”

She chuckled. “Well some of it is bugs too... cavegrubs. Or moleworms...”

I winced again. Marianne laughed. “So what kind of things do humans enjoy?”

“Oh...” I tried to condense human cuisine the way she did. “Uh... lots of bread, noodles... potatoes... pizza is a big favorite.”

She patiently waited for me to explain what pizza was.

“Oh... uh... it’s like this bread you spread tomato sauce and spices and cheese on. Usually you add some kinds of meats or veggies on it,” I said, trying to describe it. “You bake it in an oven and it comes out all gooey and melty.”

“Oof,” Marianne grunted, as she seemed to consider it. “I’m surprised you aren’t as round as the moon eating like that. It sounds a little… much, yes?”

I thought about it and nodded. “Yeah... human food does tends to be... much.”

She laughed at that. “It’s a good fit, I suppose. Humans tend to be very... ‘much’ as well.”

I chuckled a little, but something twisted in my gut. “Am... am I too much?” I asked seriously.

Marianne looked at me in shock. “No, of course not. If anything, I was worrying you weren’t enough. When we first met, you were quiet, scared and shy...” a smile broke on her face. “But just from talking with you like this, I can see that glimmer of someone brave beneath it all... someone strong.”

I felt like I was glowing as I blushed. She called me brave!

We arrived at the Acorn Pub, which was filled to the brim. The translucent windows showed a circular bar and a surrounding tangle of tables and stools, all packed with customers of all kinds. Marianne looked at me. “Just stay close, yes?” she said. “You should be fine, but drink can sometimes make people do stupid things. And we both know how some people here react around humans…”

I nodded, the memory of Mrs. MacDougal’s reaction flashing through my mind in a terrified jolt.

We stepped inside and were met by a roar of conversation and laughing. Over the noise I could dimly make out some kind of music with harps and drums coming from some musicians in the corner. An orc and a dwarf were carefully plucking at a pair of harps while an elf and a tiny green person (a goblin, maybe?) were eagerly thudding away on a pair of drums, one handheld and the other a massive tube.

The patrons were mostly a mix of dwarf and elf. I spotted an orc in the far corner drinking alone, a woman who looked to have the body of a snake below her waist singing along to the music and a man with translucent wings jutting from his back talking to one of the bartenders.

Marianne took my hand and let me through the crowd. We found a pair of barstools at the table and we sat down. She rapped her knuckle on the bar and a tall elf wearing a stained white shirt and a kerchief tied around his neck stepped up in front of us.

“What can I get you ladies?” He asked. 

“Two honeyrose meads,” she said, “and two moleroast pottages.”

He nodded. “Right away.”

He reached under the bar and pulled out a pair of glass mugs. From a built-in tap, he poured out some amber liquid and set them in front of us. “It’ll be a bit for the pottage,” he said, “I’ll bring it to you hot.”

He stepped away to take another order, leaving us alone in the sea of people. Marianne took a sip of the drink and smiled, “Ah... good stuff.”

I took a tentative sip myself. I felt like an explosion took place in my mouth. It had sort of a cool burn like high-octane mint with an overpowering sweet flavor. It tasted like a liquid honey with a million mint leaves crushed up inside. I made a face.

“Not to your liking?” she said.

“It’s... different,” I said, politely.

“Okay,” she said, taking up her glass. “Here’s the secret: You don’t just gulp it down like water. You let it rest on your tongue a little bit, let the taste settle. Then you let it go down.” She took the sip and seemed to savor it.

I tried to do as she told me and found that the drink was a little more bearable. “Uh... so what are we eating?”

“Oh, potatoes, carrots, onions and roast mole in a stew,” she said, taking another sip of her drink.

“Roast... mole...” I said, eying her carefully. 

“Stone mole,” she said, nodding, “wouldn’t be much eating on the garden variety.” She caught my look. “Seriously, it’s fine. It tastes like chickenpheasent.” 

I nodded, trying to look relieved. As I fell silent, I saw that Marianne was watching me carefully. “You alright?”

I took another sip of the drink, breathing out some of the taste. “It’s just... this wasn’t what I was expecting.”

“Hmm...” she said, tapping her chin pensively. “I hear that humans are drawn to our world with tales of heroism. Tales of slaying dragons, tales of overthrowing evil wizards, tales of conquest and fire and steel.”

I nodded guiltily.

“It’s understandable,” she sighed, “we’re not so different, really. Plenty of children grow up with the same kind of stories. But here’s the trick of these stories... they tend to leave out the important bits. It’s like blacksmithing really...”

I looked at her. “How so?”

“Swords don’t just fall out of the sky, fully formed. Heroes neither. You have to dig metal out of the earth, you must cook it in the hottest flames, you hammer it into shape. Heroes and swords take time... and you have to remember the most important rule about swords.”

She looked at me, her eyes blazing. “You have to know when to keep them sheathed. From the legends, I know some humans would keep tallies of their kills. Tally up their bloodshed as if they were counting out copper pieces. With enough blood... with enough death... they could attain more power. And they would just egg each other on, each one trying to outdo the last.”

She fell silent. I gripped my glass, guilt by proxy churning in my guts. Maybe I hadn’t done anything like that here, but in other games? I’d lost track of my kills in RoR… and while obviously the NPCs were nowhere near as complex and real in this game, it was more than a little upsetting that I’d never even thought about what I was doing back then. 

“It’s not your fault,” she sighed, “but maybe... maybe you should give peace a chance? Make plowshares instead of swords? I think this world has had enough of war.”

My grip tightened on my glass to the point where I was worried it would shatter. But we were thankfully saved from the awkwardness by the arrival of the steaming bowls deposited by the barman.

I gratefully took a spoonful of the bowl and, after blowing it cool, gave it a taste. It actually was fantastic. Warm. Hearty. And I was even willing to accept that it was mole meat without much difficulty.

“This is great!” I said, smiling.

Marianne nodded. “Yes, my mom used to make this when I was a kid,” she said, scooping some up for herself. “It’s good comfort food.”

I gratefully emptied the bowl. As I did so, I thought of the sheer scale of this game. Food was another thing which they didn’t usually code in like this. The games were about fighting and action, after all. Why would you waste time coding in soup? Or coding in NPCs to share that soup with?

I had been here for approximately five hours. I hadn’t killed anyone. I hadn’t delved into any dungeons. I hadn’t gotten any real loot outside of a new dress.

But, this moment of sharing a meal with a new friend, this sharing of personal experience... this was fun. It was cozy. It felt... well… 

Realistic. 

Every gamer always complained about realism. They wanted the most high fidelity graphics and sounds and sensations and AI... but what the hell was realistic about everyone being godly beings of destruction and chaos? What was “real” about slaughtering everything in sight with no consequences? What was realistic about an arbitrary XP bar going up which meant that you slowly and surely gained superpowers?

As I finished my soup, I realized this much: 

This was the best game I’d ever played and I would definitely keep playing. It was something that I never realized that I had been missing. Like I had simply grown up in the cold and never had the chance to be properly warm until this moment. It was a comfort I had never known, but now couldn’t imagine being without.

As she paid and we waved farewell to the barkeep, I felt slightly more invigorated from the meal and followed her as she led me outside.

She led me a little ways along the spiral of the tree to the tannery district which smelled a little too “realistic” for my taste as I learned that leather was hides that were essentially soaked in pee and poop in addition to other chemicals. The storefronts displayed the hides in their windows, with showings of gloves, leather clothes and belts and the like. We turned into a store and the scent of leather working hit my nose even more strongly.

The store itself had leathers of different shapes and sizes and qualities hanging all over the shop. The dwarf running the shop was a woman, her dark hair twined into two braids on either side of her head. She was standing next to a human, no longer clad in the starter white shirt but now in leather pants and gray shirt, with a tool belt hanging around his waist. I recognized him as the college-age boy who had complained about working in a warehouse. He was thin and wiry, with a mess of mouse brown hair and a thin goatee. He looked up from his leatherworking to me, recognizing me from this morning.

“Hey,” he said, waving, “Zoey? Right?”

I nodded. “Yeah... and you are...”

“Call me Skid,” he said, shrugging, “everyone I know does.”

I blinked in confusion, but I was in no place to judge self-chosen names. “Okay,” I nodded.

“You need anything?” He asked.

“Forging apron,” said Marianne, peering over my shoulder, “Gloves. Work boots.”

I looked down. I was still barefoot, and while it hadn’t been terrible, I could already see that I was accumulating dirt and dust and foot pain.

“I’ll take measurements,” said the dwarf owner, striding around the counter, “I think we have some pieces we can trim up a bit to fit.”

Skid nodded, “I’ll get them.” He stepped away from the counter into a room in the back. The owner took some quick measures of my body, hands and feet.

“You’re a tall girl,” said the leatherworker, smiling pleasantly.

I winced. It was another reminder that while I could wear a stuffed bra, makeup and grow out my hair, I was still stuck at my manly height.

The dwarf noticed my reaction. “Oh don’t make a face, dear,” she said sweetly, “it really suits you.” She indicated Skid, who was grabbing a bulky pair of boots. “I can’t tell you how useful it is to have someone able to reach the top shelves around here.”

I nodded, feeling a little better. She stowed away her length of rope and nodded. “Yes, we can work with this.”

She came back around the counter as Skid returned from the back room with an armload of leather in various states of construction. The dwarf picked a heavy slab of leather out and handed it to Skid. “An apron with two matching pockets in front...” she said, taking out another selection, “I can handle the gloves. You’re lucky we have a pair of boots from the cobbler or you’d be having to travel down a few levels directly to them.”

I shivered, terrified of another ride on those basket-elevators.

He nodded and got to work, taking out tools in turn to start bringing the apron to shape.

“How are you liking the game so far?” I asked, watching Skid work.

He grunted as he shaved an edge off the leather. “I dunno yet. I’m really trying to grind this job to see if I get any kind of dex bonuses.”

Marianne glanced at me, apparently waiting for a translation. Clearly the dwarf wasn’t interested as she was wholly involved with her work.

“Uh... he wants to practice this work so he can gain more dexterity,” I clarified.

“Ah,” she said, nodding. “I… suppose that is… one way to look at it.”

“My strat is to grind this job for a while, get a full leather set, make enough for a bow and some daggers, grind the hunter’s guild quests and locksmithing guild quests then I should have enough gear and dex to pull off a rogue build,” Skid said, “My buddies wanted me to do burst damage DPS and I think I can pull off some sick hits with sneak attack crits if I keep doing this.”

I blinked. While I more or less understood what he was talking about I had no idea how I could convey it to Marianne. I eyed her and just shrugged helplessly. She nodded, rolling her eyes.

“You were looking at a pally build, yeah?” said Skid, looking up at me.

I nodded. “Right. I mean, I don’t know how that works here, but if I have to fight, that’s kind of the way I wanted to do it. I played a tank in RoR.”

He nodded. “I still haven’t seen any real clothie classes. I saw that chick from this morning working with the alchemy trainers, but she said they’re just doing potion making and shit. No real damage. I haven’t seen any real healbots either. Maybe the devs didn’t patch them in yet?”

Marianne looked at me again, clearing her throat, and I tried to explain. “Uh, he said that he hasn’t seen any real magic yet. No wizards or clerics...” I said.

“In Whiteoak Falls?” asked Marianne indignantly, “Of course not! The nearest temples are either the Hunter’s Shrine deep in the woods or the Lord of Stone, deep in the caverns. The Mender’s are a half a day’s ride from here. Most clerics spend their time cloistered away to commune with the gods, and it’s not like the chosen and their powers grow on trees. The alchemists do a little bit of magical cantrips, but the true wizards are either in the big cities at the university or in the towers out in the wilds. Magical equipment is expensive and can be dangerous if precautions aren’t taken. There’s a reason the alchemists work in the cave district…”

“Why?” I asked, curiously.

“So that when they set something on fire, it doesn’t burn our entire tree down,” grumbled Marianne.

“Right...” sighed Skid, holding up the apron, “So you gotta go out questing for the caster classes.”

“I... suppose?” said Marianne, a little unsure. Skid handed me the apron which I threw over my head. It was heavy but it fit me.

“Good work, Skid,” said the dwarf. She handed me the completed gloves that she had finished putting together. “Try these.”

I put them on, and like the apron, they were heavy and bulky. I looked at Marianne in dismay. “How do you work with all this!?”

“You get used to them,” she said with a smirk, “the alternative is some nasty burns.”

“Try these on,” said the dwarf, handing me a pair of heavy-soled leather boots.

I knelt down and pulled them on. They were fairly long, coming up to my knees and required me to criss-cross the laces to get them right, but once I did, they fit perfectly.

“Looks good,” said Marianne, “Do they fit comfortably?”

I nodded, walking around in them. They were snug, if a little bulky.

“Might need to grind your strength,” said Skid, looking me over, “maybe dex too. Leather is going to have bigger prereqs than cloth.”

I nodded to him politely. “They’re fine.”

Marianne fished out some gold coins and passed them to the dwarf. She gratefully accepted them, nodding politely to her. “I don’t understand anything this human says, but godsdamn if he isn’t a hell of a worker. Bring your human back some time and maybe she can tell me what in the nine hells this one is talking about.”

Marianne laughed. “I will.”

“Later,” I said, waving to Skid.

“Later. Hit me up if you want to party up. We could use a tank,” he said, nodding to me,

We stepped out of the store and back onto the wooden walkways. I carried my leather apron and gloves in my arms as we moved along.

“I guess I shouldn’t complain about you anymore,” said Marianne, shaking her head, “if I didn’t know better I’d have thought that other human was speaking a completely different language. It certainly didn’t sound like any common tongue I’ve ever heard.”

“Humans like Skid tend to see things in... numbers. Patterns,” I said, keeping pace as I tried to translate for her. It's not like she'd understand what a 'gamer' was, after all, “When he talks about ‘grinding’ it’s about taking the time to practice and develop skills. When he talks about builds, he’s talking about... um... specific ways of dealing with fights. Like, a tank just rushes in with heavy armor and keeps aggro... sorry, aggression or attention of the enemies focused on them instead of the rest of the party. Or, for Skid as a DPS, he was looking for dealing damage from a distance and from cover.”

“And, once again, humans are only thinking of things through the lens of fighting and battle tactics,” she said, eying me warily, “gods, you’re worse than orcs.”

I winced again. I had no desire to be like the monsters that past humans had been. “Give us time. This world is... different than we were expecting. Not bad, but different.”

Marianne nodded patiently. "Well, for what it's worth, you seem to be getting along well with everything."

I nodded, smiling as I followed her, bouncing slightly with my step.

As we rounded the curve back to Gresh’s shop, we saw that he was not alone. Two people in shining armor were standing outside the store talking to him. One was an elven lady with thin blades at her waist. Her dark hair was tied into a tight, braided bun at her neck, and her features were cold and severe as she listened to Gresh speak. The other...

The other was Leon. He had a shield slung over his back with a tree-shaped design and a heavy club hanging from his waist. He was now dressed in a full suit of heavy armor in the same style as his elven partner.

I blinked in surprise as I realized that the two of them were acting as members of the city guard. The people this morning had worn similar armor during our orientation. We drew closer, a growing sense of worry settling in my guts as we listened.

“Can you describe him?” asked Leon, addressing Gresh as he scribbled out some notes in a small leather book.

“About so tall,” he said, indicating a height a few inches shorter than him. “Dressed in black. Like a cloak. Didn’t get a great look at his face. Just held out the crossbow and told me to hand over the gold.”

“In broad daylight?!” asked the elf in disbelief.

“Yes,” Gresh said, sighing. “That was the whole morning’s worth.”

“How much?” Asked Leon.

“I’d have to check the receipts, but it was easily over fifty-five gold pieces,” he said, running a hand through his hair. 

“We’ll make some inquiries,” said the elf. “Rest assured, that we are not going to let this kind of thing go unchecked here.” She eyed Leon with a pointed look. “Obviously some people here haven’t yet grown to understand the nature of law and order in our city.”

“We’ll make this right,” said Leon, holding out a hand, “you have my word.”

 Gresh took it and they grasped each other’s wrists for a moment. “Thank you.”

“Let us know if you see anything else or if anything else about the robbery comes to mind,” says the elf, shaking her head. “If you’ll excuse us.”

As she turned back towards us, the elven woman's eyes met Marianne’s. “Ah.”

“Hello Frieda,” said Marianne evenly, her gaze narrowed coldly.

The elf, Frieda, nodded, giving a strained smile. “Sorry, cousin. No time for pleasantries. String of human robberies all along the row.” She gave a terse look at me. “I assume this one has behaved herself?”

I shivered underneath her gaze, but Marianne put a protective arm around me. “Zoey has been nothing but pleasant and thoughtful. As all humans are not, in fact, the same.”

Frieda grunted. “Hm... just watch their hands. They tend to stick.” She pushed past us and out of sight, jostling me slightly as she did so. 

Leon moved to follow her, but stopped in front of me. “Hey Zoey,” he said, smiling at me, “how’s your day going?”

“It’s been good,” I said, returning the smile, “it’s been really fun. The food, the sights, the people...” I frowned as I looked to Gresh, shaking his head as Marianne went to comfort him. “Are there humans who have really been stealing?”

“I’ve had to talk to at least three of them today,” groaned Leon, “I’ve had to make it clear to them that, for one, they are not as stealthy as they think they are and for another thing, that when they do things like that it makes it harder for the other humans in the city. And now we have some wannabe cloaked robber running around with a crossbow looking for gold.”

“But you’re going to catch them,” I said, confidently. “Right?”

“I’ll do my best,” said Leon, nodding. “The Chief Constable liked my ‘moxie’ in dealing with that brat this morning and asked me to join the city guard. Said we needed a human on the force to try to get the rest of them properly settled. It’s been busy.”

“Come on!” called Frieda from outside, “let’s go, human!”

“Right!” he said, calling back. He looked at me, sighing. “Duty calls. I’ll be at the guard’s barracks, if you need anything. See you around, Zoey.” He jogged past and caught up to Frieda, his armor clanking as he went.

"Well, let's get you your order then," sighed Gresh miserably, opening the door to his shop to usher us in.

Marianne and I stepped inside and up to the counter. We could visibly see that a crossbow bolt was embedded in the wall behind him. “Oh my gosh...” I said, feeling miserable on his behalf. “Gresh I’m so sorry.”

He waved it aside. “Wasn’t your fault. And we’ll make up for it.”

“Surprised you didn’t pound that robber flat, Gresh,” said Marianne, crossing her arms. “I know you have a warclub under that counter.”

Gresh nodded. “It was a kid, Mari. A stupid kid who thought he was invincible. Gold pieces aren’t worth bloodshed.”

“I feel bad about not paying for the clothes now,” said Marianne, her voice tight. “Are you sure we can’t-“

He shook his head. “Course not, Mari. It’ll be fine.”

“I’m sorry about this,” I said again, “humans aren’t really like this. I mean... not usually. We can just be...” I searched for the words. “A little short-sighted sometimes. Impatient.”

Gresh nodded. “Those are faults found in all races, Zoey. Here...” he handed me a heavy pair of overalls and a blouse like the one Marianne wore. “That should do for you... do you need a bag?”

I struggled to balance the armload. “If you could.” 

Gresh nodded and picked up a burlap sack and passed it to me. I took the purchases and stowed them away, now able to throw it over my shoulder.

“Gresh... I... gods this is terrible,” said Marianne, her expression pained, “you have been so kind and the last thing you deserve is something like this.”

“I’ll survive,” said Gresh, waving it aside, “you know I always do.”

I saw her face soften somewhat, as if... saddened by something deeper than the theft.

Marianne hesitated a moment, before leaning over the counter and wrapping her arms around him. Gresh seemed just as surprised, but gave her a quick squeeze before pulling away. 

“I’ll see you later,” Marianne, blushing faintly. "I... I need to stop avoiding you. You're the best tailor on the row anyway, and clearly Mrs. MacDougal isn't going to have me in her shop anymore."

“I shall wait for your return until then,” said Gresh, smiling with a similar faint greenish blush on his face.

Marianne stepped away, nodded and stepped outside. I waved to Gresh and followed her.

We set out for the forge which, of course, required traveling via basket again. I felt the pottage inside me churn as the basket dropped and I felt my stomach in my head. I screamed, unable to contain my terror. For a moment I was horrified of the thought that I was no longer standing in the basket but simply falling slightly above it. Finally, the basket lurched to a stop and, again, Marianne helped me stagger out.

I groaned, shaking. Marianne chuckled again. “You’ll be okay. No more baskets for today.”

“T-thank you...” I said, trying to keep my lunch in place. We traveled the rest of the way on thankfully level and stationary ground and as I felt my stomach settle, I decided to ask something I probably shouldn’t.

“Why did you and Gresh break up?”

Marianne stopped. She looked at me, her face filled with all kinds of conflicting emotions. Rage, shame, fear, embarrassment... they resolved themselves into a blank emptiness. “We weren’t right for one another,” she said, her voice hollow.

“He seems nice,” I said, keeping pace with her.

“He is kind to a fault,” she sighed, “but that isn’t enough.”

I waited for her to continue and as we walked past the fields between the cave and tree districts, I assumed she wasn’t going to say anything more. 

But finally, she spoke again, “Gresh wanted kids. He wanted me to settle down and raise them... Orcs don't live as long as elves do, and even though I'm half-blooded, I have some years to go. Gresh couldn't wait. It... it wasn't anyone's fault...” she trailed off, her voice tightened. “To be honest, I wasn’t ready. I had so much more I wanted to do. I can’t work the forge if I’m pregnant. I can’t work the forge if I have to nurse a child. I want to get better at my craft. I want to forge something spectacular. I want to set off to the big city and open my own forge. I want to be one of the big names. Having kids would have put it all on hold.” She looked at me, her smile watery, “I don’t have time for motherhood... not now.” She laughed bitterly, “I'm not much of a woman, am I?”

I shook my head. “Marianne... you’re not a woman because of having babies or getting married... you’re a woman because of who you are. You have every right to go out there and make a name for yourself. I’m sure you’re an amazing smith.”

She laughed at me. “You haven’t even seen my work yet!”

“Well,” I said, smiling, “you’re an amazing person, at least, and so you’re probably an amazing smith too.”

She hugged me. It was sudden and I was surprised by the strength of her embrace. I had to admit, given that I’d just experienced receiving hugs as a girl for the first time, I was able to admit that this game was realistic. She felt warm. She felt safe. She felt...

Well, not human... but real.

It was unbelievable. Marianne was just supposed to be an AI. An NPC. She was just computer code. But, compared to Skid, who was technically human... I felt like Marianne was the more real one. She was the one holding me in a warm hug. She was the one sniffling quietly on my shoulder. She was the one who loved and who had dreams of her own.

Skid, on the other hand, had just been thinking in terms of numbers, statistics and power. No offense to him, but it felt like he was the computer program between the two of them. Marianne was the one whose tears dotted my cheek. Computer programs weren't supposed to do that.

But… it was just a game, I had to remind myself of that. It was so easy to forget that this was just a dream. But, in the moment, I acted human. I comforted her, holding her in return, whispering that it was okay. 

Maybe she wasn’t real, but I was. And I intended to act like it.

When she settled a little, clearly embarrassed for losing her composure, she made a point to try to adjust her features into an approximation of stoic as we stepped back towards the forge. 

Even so, we walked back into the flames as friends when we left it as strangers. 

In a small stall in the back, I changed into my work clothes, which were much more suited to the heat. The overalls were a little rough against my skin, but they did the work of keeping sparks from touching me. The blouse breathed like it was barely there, and for that I was grateful. As we stepped up to her station, Marianne made it clear to the fellow workers that I worked for her. Anyone who gave me trouble would have to answer to her. They all agreed readily and fearfully. 

She showed me the process of heating the metal to temperature, hammering it to shape, cutting and grinding it and then tempering it for a quench. She let me try to hammer a little as she held the glowing bar in place with a pair of tongs. I brought down the heavy hammer and slammed it into the glowing orange steel. I felt the jolt of the metal hitting metal running up my arms and shoulders and the resounding clang filled my skull and joined the others in the forge.

The metal had barely moved. It took me a furious barrage of blows, half of which missed, before I could get any real dent in the metal. Marianne showed me how to swing, to get power from your body, not just your shoulder. To slip into a rhythm and use the “bounce” of the hammer to move into your next swing.

It was grueling, hot and miserable, but working alongside her drew me in so easily, I was somewhat let down when the forge was closed down for dinner.

There was a large mess hall of sorts where all the workers met for dinner. Large, slablike tables with crude stools circled around them filled the large stone space. Lanterns burned both on the walls and at each of the tables. We lined up around the room and as we stepped up to a window carved into the rock, a dwarf man handed us a bowl of thick stew. I had to double check that it was actually stew and not just a clump of vegetables and meat, as the chunks were so big.

“We get served dinner here?” I asked, Marianne, surprised.

“Of course,” she said, looking at me strangely, “we worked hard. Stew isn’t particularly expensive and fed workers are good workers. Alexander takes good care of us.”

I nodded. “He seems nice. He stood up for me when I said I wanted to join.”

She smiled as we sat down at a table. “Yeah... things were a little different back in the past, but the forgemistress Alana Mason basically turned it all upside down. She ran the forge and ran it well. Alexander never forgot that, even after she passed. It was part of the reason he gave me a chance when everyone else told him to turn me away.”

I scooped out some stew for myself, eying it carefully. The vegetables were recognizable mushrooms, onions and potatoes and carrots. The meat on the other hand looked... odd.

“Do I want to know what this is?” I asked, holding up a chunk of meat.

Marianne considered it carefully. “How about this? Eat it, tell me if you like it, and if you do, I’ll let you know what it is.”

I looked back at the spoon, frowned, and took a bite. It was chewy, with a sort of strange texture, but the broth and vegetables really seeped into the flavor. It was good. So I swallowed and looked at her expectantly.

“Tunnel grub,” she said, sheepishly. “Big giant worm things we farm in the deeper caves.”

I considered that for a moment, regretted it, then forced myself to have another spoonful. It was still good. Marianne laughed as I powered through it, despite the imagery.

“Glad you two are getting along!”

Alexander loomed over our shoulders and placed massive hands on both our shoulders. The weight of his shovel-like hands made me double over slightly.“How are you finding your feet, Zoey?”

“Good!” I said, smiling wide. “Thank you, sir!”

“Clothes fit okay?”

“Yessir,” I said, looking down at my outfit. I was surprised to find that the leather apron and gloves hadn’t been as difficult to manage as they had been at the beginning of the shift. Maybe Skid was right and I had developed my strength stats. Or at the very least gotten used to their weight.

“How’s she doing?” He asked Marianne. 

She nodded in agreement. “She’s bright. Still a little soft, but she’ll toughen up quickly. She’s going to work well under me.”

Alexander raised an eyebrow. “Really now? You're just taking her as an apprentice just like that? That sounds like the kind of decision a chief forgemaster should be making.”

“Of course, sir,” said Marianne, nodding politely, “but I think we both know that was always going to be your decision.”

“I’m just going to pair you two off because you're both women?” He asked, eyebrow still aloft.

“No sir, because you want your best smith training your best novice,” she said, folding her arms. “I saw you watching us. You saw how fast she could move. She’s smart, too. Give her time to learn the technique and she’ll shape metal like clay.”

I blinked. Had I done that well? I was just doing what she told me to do. Maybe she was just that good of a teacher?

Alexander nodded. “Well, I’m glad you’re close, because I have another favor to ask of you.”

“Um... yes?” She said, caught off guard

“I don’t feel right keeping her in the barracks with the men,” he said, eying the others. “How much room do you have in your apartment?”

Marianne tensed. She seemed to be considering the situation very carefully. “Uh...”

“I’ll add a stipend to your wages for putting up with her,” said Alexander, sighing, “I understand it’s an imposition, but it’s just until she’s able to support herself.”

Marianne looked at me critically. I smiled, guiltily, “uh... if it’s too much trouble...”

She sagged, visibly tired. “Okay... Yeah... I think I have a cot to spare. Me and her will go over the specifics. I’ll have her at the forge bright and early tomorrow and ready for work.”

“Splendid!” said Alexander, clapping both of us on the back. “I’m looking forward to seeing what you ladies will accomplish together! Alright, if you’ll excuse me...” Alexander wandered off.

Me and Marianne just stared at each other over our stew. 

“Um...” I said, blinking in surprise, “I...”

Marianne ran her hand through her hair, pursing her lips. “It’s... fine... I guess I should have expected this.”

“I’m sorry...” I said, looking down at my soup and away from her gaze, “I’m not trying to make things hard for you.”

“If you room with me, you gotta help out around the apartment,” she said, her voice stern. “Cleaning, cooking... I want you to pull your weight.”

I nodded silently.

“But...” she trailed off.

I looked up.

She was smiling. “I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be nice not to have the place feel so damn empty.”

I grinned. This was amazing. I was living with another girl. And, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was feeling more comfortable living as a girl. In the past day or so, I’d been living like a real girl, or at least a girl in a fantasy world.

I looked like a girl, I spoke like a girl, I had a girl’s name, I had a girl’s clothes... and spending this time with Marianne had let me have more precious time to socialize like a girl. Just like with Anika and Beth, I could use this time living together to really get more girl time and learn about the world of RoEM.

It was exciting.

We finished our stew and Marianne led me back out through the forge, now silent, and darker as the sun had set. The cave was lit entirely by lanterns now, as the sun had fallen outside. As we stepped out into the larger cave, it was like the night sky, with lines of lanterns hung above us. All of the other people were streaming out now, too, clearly done with their own work. Marianne led the way up to the upper levels of the cave.

“This way is the residential section,” she said as we ascended the stone steps, “My apartment isn’t exactly huge, but it should be enough space for the two of us.”

I nodded, excited.

“I’ll get you a key for it, obviously,” she continued, “and I’ll loan you a few things until you can get them yourself.”

She led us to a stretch of wooden doors inlaid into the stone. She counted out the last one before the turn of the corner and pulled a key from out the front of her shirt. She slid the key into the lock, turned, and pushed the door open.

It was dark, save for the light of the moon streaming through the carved window. She reached off to the right and picked up a lantern. She clicked a knob and the lantern sprung to life, light filling the apartment.

It was, indeed, smallish. It was maybe as big as my real life living room plus the kitchen. There was a stove sitting in the corner next to the window, with the smokestack snaking out of it and out of the window. There was a bookcase cramped with battered books in the other corner, next to a lumpy bed with a comforter and pillowcase. There was a table in the center, with a pair of chairs. Close by, a tall cabinet leaned against the wall, next to it there sat a three tiered shelf with boxes and dishware. The apartment floor was smooth stone covered in thick woolen rugs and the walls were covered in something I hadn’t expected.

Weapons. Swords. Axes. Spears. Bows. Amor. Shields. There was even a helmet with faceplate sitting on a small table. I could see there was a small workbench in one of the corners, with tools and materials stacked around it. I was awed by the scale of a full armory lining the walls of her home.

I spotted that there was a little more apartment which curved around a hallway, but that looked to be most of the space.

“Home sweet home,” she said. I stepped in after her, just stunned by it. She locked the door behind me and hung her key on a nearby hook embedded in the wall. “Pantry, washroom, stove and... um...” she looked around. “I think the cot is in the crawlspace, give me a moment.”

I set down the bag with my gloves and apron and my dress down on the floor, still gaping at the apartment.

She scurried around the corner and I followed her. There was a small space, barely an alcove which had a pile of random things. To her left, I saw a large wooden wardrobe and to her right, I saw a small room with a hole carved into the floor and another window overlooking the falls. The window had some kind of contraption, like a gutter set in a bracket which sloped down into the room. There was a towel set on a hook next to it and a bucket with a bar of soap inside.

“Ha!” said Marianne triumphantly, yanking a tangle of wood out of the pile. “Let me just get this reassembled. I... hadn’t expected to have to use it again. Pull that blanket and that pillow out of the pile, yeah?”

I knelt down. It was somewhat difficult to make it all out in the low light. There was a collection of shirts and clothes, some necklaces and bracelets...

And a carved plaque of wood with scrimshaw set into it. I’d seen that design in Gresh’s shop. I realized that the clothes were too large for Marianne. These were things that either Gresh had owned or things that he had left with her.

There was the sound of hammering behind me and I pulled out a lumpy, clean-ish pillow with a knitted blanket. I looked back to see Marianne had assembled a cot from a bracket of wood and a canvas support. 

“Done,” she said, setting the hammer back on her workbench. She looked up at me apologetically. “Sorry... I know it’s not comfortable. I’ll see if we can’t squeeze in another bed.”

I nodded. “It’s fine.” I indicated the room beside me. “That’s the bathroom?”

She gave me a look. “Uh... if you want a bath, there’s a bathhouse across town. That’s just the washroom.”

“I mean, that’s where you clean yourself and... um...” I made a helpless gesture.

“The spigot catches water from the falls for cleaning yourself or the dishes or the apartment,” she said, raising an eyebrow, “if you need to relieve yourself there’s the hole...”

I realized, with some relief, that I didn’t need to use the bathroom. While I experienced hunger, there was no trace of needing to empty myself. I assumed that it would have been difficult as my privates were still covered with skinlocked underwear. And using the bathroom would definitely have been a problem for RoEM’s rating if it were properly realistic.

She indicated the hole in the floor. “Washwater drains down there as well.” She laughed a little. “Please don’t tell me I have to tell you how to wash yourself.”

“Um...” I looked at the spigot. “So you can use that for water? Like you can shower in it?”

“Yeah,” she said, “soap is in the washbucket.”

I tentatively stepped into the room, peering at the spigot. I looked at the lever next to it. “So I pull on this...”

“The gutter extends out to catch the falls’ water,” she said. “More you pull, the more water it catches.”

“Okay...” I said. “I think I get it.”

“Good,” she said, reaching down and starting to pull off her shirt. “Because I’ve got to clean up.”

My eyes nearly popped out of my head, and I spun away from her, my face burning like a stove.

“What?!” said Marianne, her voice tinged with confusion. I could hear her still pulling off her clothes.

“You’re just going to get undressed here?!” I cried out, flustered and keeping my eyes firmly locked on the wall.

“Uh... yeah? I’m not going to shower with my clothes on,” she said, uncertainly. I could hear her stepping closer to me. “Are you okay?”

My face burned even hotter. “I mean... you’re just going to undress with me here?!”

“Do... do you have a problem with that?” she asked. She laughed. “What, are you shy, Zoey?”

“I... um... well...” I sputtered.

“We’re both girls, sweetheart,” she said, chucking, “I don’t have anything you don’t have...”

“Um... uh...” I couldn’t respond to that. I couldn’t admit that I’d never seen a naked girl before. Heck, I was confused about how they could get away with a naked NPC in this game anyway! It wasn’t supposed to be that sort of game!

Wait... it wasn’t supposed to be that sort of game, right? I glanced over my shoulder.

The good news was that she wasn’t completely naked. Instead, she wore a leafy pair of panties and a bra. Maybe the NPCs had skinlocked underwear as well? The bad news was that she was stunningly attractive. She was curvy, muscular and her body was much more feminine than my own could have ever been.

She was pretty, I had to admit that... but strangely, I wasn’t just feeling that sense of panic around an attractive girl. I wasn't even sure if I was really attracted to her. There just was a feeling of... 

Inadequacy. I knew, in the back of my head, that she was just a program. Code. It wasn’t fair for me to compare my body to hers. Especially considering I was still technically a boy. But even so, she had more hips, bigger breasts and...

I blushed deeper and forced my gaze forward.

“S-sorry...” I said, gritting my teeth. “Uh...”

“Oooooh...” she said, her voice quiet. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know...”

“Know?” I said, still not looking.

“You fancy girls?” she asked, warily.

I thought about that. I shouldn’t have had to, really. I was a boy and boys should like girls. But truthfully, it was hard for me to really say that I liked girls or boys. The idea of liking boys was terrifying, as I knew my parents would kill me for having feelings like that. But liking girls was just as awful because just being around them made me feel the exact same way I felt standing next to Marianne.

Inadequate.

“I...” I sighed. Could I tell her that? She was just an NPC, of course. And she was, in theory, a friend. “You’re beautiful...” I said, sagging. “And I’m really not.” My throat tightened. “It’s hard...”

“Turn around...”

I did. She was now wearing her blouse again, obscuring her body. Her eyes were soft as they rested on me, filled with sympathy.

“Zoey... you look lovely,” she said, putting a hand on her hip, “you’re tall, you’re strong and most importantly you have a kind heart... Any guy or girl alike would be lucky to have you.”

I swallowed hard.

“Look, if it bothers you, I’ll keep myself covered, okay?” she said softly, smiling.

I took a deep breath and tried to push back the torrent of feelings. “T-thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, “this is home for you now, I want to do whatever I can to make you feel welcome.” She stepped around the corner. “Let me just wash up and dry off and you can use the shower after I’m done.”

I sat down at the table in the center of the room, resting my face in my hands, just trying not to cry. I felt stupid. Like I had ruined everything. She would think I was weird or a freak or a pervert. I couldn’t figure out why I was feeling this way in the first place. 

Dad had told me that it was natural to feel excited around women. Of course, it came with the feeling of guilt that you weren’t supposed to do anything about that excitement until you married that girl. But I didn’t feel excited, at least not the way other boys seemed to be.

It felt like...

Jealousy. I'd experienced it often enough when I saw kids my own age who weren't homeschooled or weren't forced to go to church and could actually have a normal life. But this was something so much intense. I wanted a body like that. I realized that it was a burning desire that seared through me. It wasn’t just a phase or experiment. It was something that cut to the center of my being.

I was a boy who wanted to be a girl.

Marianne stepped out, her hair wet and plastered to her head. She was wearing an oversized shirt and towel wrapped around her neck. “It’s free now.”

I nodded, looking up from the table. I stepped around her, locked in a daze, and I stepped into the washroom. I stood alone in the room for a while before I took the painful process of removing my clothes.

I told myself I wouldn’t look down. It wasn't right for me to be ogling myself or anything weird like that. I just kept my gaze locked on the water spigot and pulled the lever. A stream of water poured out of it, and it was ice cold. I gave a yelp of surprise, but I realized that it shouldn’t have been surprising. I had just been used to hot water for most of my life.

For what it was worth, though, the water was actually welcome. After a long day of work and excitement, it was nice to cleanse it all away. I washed myself as best as I could without looking, using the soap to scrub away the grime of the forge.

Finally, I shut off the water and watched it drain down the hole in the floor. I shivered and even as I wrapped myself in a clean towel, I still was freezing. Even so, I did so without looking too much at my new body.

I looked around and found another oversized shirt set beside the doorway, so I tossed it on and carried my work clothes in my arms. I peered around the corner and found Marianne kneeling beside the iron stove, holding a small bellows and blowing air into it. The window curtains had been closed and drawn together, save for the piping which slid underneath it. As she worked to build up a flame, I saw a growing fire inside the stove, and I realized that she sought to warm herself and dry off in front of it. I saw that she had her towel drying on a rack nearby and I placed my own next to it.

She looked over her shoulder and motioned for me to sit down next to her. Awkward or not, I was still freezing and pressed myself shoulder to shoulder to drink in the heat.

“Still need to wash the work clothes for tomorrow,” she said, tending to the fire as it grew. “I’ll take care of it tomorrow morning.”

I had no idea how to do laundry without a washing machine so all I could say was, “Thank you.”

We just stayed there, staring into the fire for a while. It was strange not having a phone or a screen to watch in the downtime. I realized that I hadn’t checked my social media or any of my feeds. I had just been immersed in a simpler world.

“It’s all so strange for you here, isn’t it?” asked Marianne, “what’s it like in the human lands?”

“Um... in some ways it’s easier...” I said, staring into the flames, “other ways harder. A lot of things I take for granted now that I’m here.”

“You miss it?” She asked, feeding a log into the stove.

“A little...” I said honestly, “but really, this has been the best day of my life. Everything’s been so... real.”

She sighed. “I kind of envy you. Everything’s so new for you. So bright and shiny.” She looked off to the side, staring at the sword hanging on the wall. “I miss that feeling. It feels like everything is tarnished from my perspective.”

I followed her gaze. “Did you make those?”

She didn’t answer. “I’m warmed up now. I’m going to turn in for the night.” She stepped up and  crossed the room to turn off the light. We were once again plunged into darkness, save for the glowing fire within the stove-cage and the slice of moonlight slipping through the curtains. She jumped into her bed and settled in, and finding myself just as tired, I crawled over to my cot.

It wasn’t precisely comfortable, but it was warm and cozy as the cot was near to the stove.

“Goodnight, Zoey,” said Marianne, from the other side of the room.

“Goodnight, Marianne,” I said, wrapping myself in the blankets. “And thank you for everything.”

“There’s more to come tomorrow,” she said.

I smiled wide, sinking into sleep, excited for what the morning would bring.

Only remembering, just as sleep overtook me, that I wasn’t going to wake up here.

———————————

I woke up to quiet music beside me.

I looked to see the holographic projection of the REMbox slowly scrolling through the credits of Realms of Eternal Magic to quiet orchestral music. I rubbed at my eyes, looking around the room, my room, with a sense of disconnection.

I had just spent 16 or so hours of time with my REMbox even though I only slept for 8. The latest REMbox version had recently allowed for the implementation of accelerated dreaming which allowed you to spend what was essentially a full day even if you were only sleeping for half that length in the real world. It was a little disconcerting when you first tried it, but dedicated REMbox gamers got used to it.

What I couldn’t get used to was the body I was now wearing. My chest was flat beneath my t-shirt and I didn’t need to check between my legs to know what was now there. I hugged myself, feeling my body shake as I recognized the scale of what was missing. What didn’t belong. I rubbed at my cheeks to wipe away tears only to feel the unpleasant sensation of fuzzy, burgeoning facial hair. It was wrong, it was all so painfully wrong.

I sobbed as quietly as I could, hugging my pillow and desperately wanting to go back to sleep. I knew it wasn’t an option. There was a hard limit to how many hours you could play. And Mom would drag me out of bed and ground me if I tried to skip out on our classes for today.

I would have to wait until tonight to go back. I would have to survive in this world one more day before I could go back to RoEM.

I heard Mom shout my name from downstairs. The name wasn’t Zoey. I felt cold and hollow as I heard it. The dream was over. Zoey was gone and nobody except for me knew or cared who she was.

Someone who only generously could have been called “me” pulled my body out of bed and into the bathroom. It was strange to see the modern bathroom in light of what I had experienced in RoEM. Sparkling white tile, painted walls, an actual toilet and sink. Even the bathroom rug. All of it was so much more convenient. But I still found myself missing the cold shower in a stone cave. I missed the feeling of ice cold water flowing over my body with-

The probably-me pushed forward, stripping off my clothes and stepping into the shower with little input from my conscious mind. The water was scalding hot which helped take my mind off of it. The steam made it easier to avoid seeing unpleasant things. The heat made my body feel more indistinct. If I closed my eyes... I could pretend a little longer. I could shampoo my long hair. I could soap down my arms and my chest-

My flat chest. 

I felt another jolt of gnawing emptiness. Had I always felt like this?! Had it always hurt this much? Or was it just the realization of what I’d been missing? The probably-me took the rest of the time to get my body appropriately clean while the me inside remained miserable, sad and empty. It took the hot water dissipating to a bone-chilling cold for the-me-outside to finally take the time to leave the shower.

I wrapped the towel around my torso without thinking... only to realize I had nothing to conceal. I turned on the bathroom fan to clear out the steam and started to blow dry my hair. I would have to tie it back, revealing my more masculine face. That was what was expected of me.

I did the rest of the morning routine. That was what was expected too. I got dressed in boy clothes, as expected. I went downstairs, as expected. I sat down at the kitchen table, seeing Mom and Paige as expected.

“Nice of you to join us,” grumbled Mom snappishly. She pushed a plate of eggs and buttered toast in front of me. “You know, you are not the only person in this house, young man.”

I kept the pain from her words bottled inside as best as I could. “Sorry, Mom,” the probably-me replied automatically.

Mom was dressed in a button-down shirt and a denim skirt, still holding the spatula she used for the eggs as if it were a weapon. I didn’t have the will to look her in the eyes, so I kept my eyes locked on my plate instead.

Paige yawned, shooting me an ugly glance as she did so. “Sure would be nice to be able to sleep in, but apparently I have to get up an hour earlier than you just to get any hot water...” she complained.

I hated how much she resembled Zoey. She was older, more mature, more confident, but I could see the same facial hallmarks I saw when I looked in the mirror back in RoEM. The person I should have been. I stared down at my plate, clenching my fists.

“Paige, leave your brother be,” Mom turning to her. “Can we not do this every single morning?”

Paige made a sort of agreeable grunt and dove into her phone, gesturing in the air at the holographic projections only visible in her eyes.

“Finish up your breakfast,” said Mom, rising from the table, “we have calculus to go through for the two of you and I want to make sure you have your derivatives down.” Mom said my name again and I had to contain my wince. “You’ve been slipping.”

“Sorry,” I repeated. 

Homeschooling was just as dull as it ever was. I would do what Mom told me to do. What I did wouldn’t quite be good enough. I would do it again until she stopped being upset with me. Repeating the process until the day finally ended.

I got “screen time” during lunch and found that Gavin had been blowing up my message app in the past few hours.

[HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT!!!! Were you on RoEM last night?! That shit was AMAZING! Dude, I’m on a fucking boat with lizard and snake people! We’re like pirates and shit! It’s fucking SICK! This game gets ALL OF THE STARS, HOLY FUCK! You gotta tell me what you’re doing!]

[Eating lunch.]

[Dude, I mean what are you doing in RoEM?]

[Uh... I became a blacksmith I guess.]

[NICE! You can make swords and axes and armor and shit. That’s really fucking cool! You gotta craft me up some sweet loot when we meet up. I’m stuck with this rusty, jank-ass sword. Might as well have a damn butter knife.]

I thought about the idea of us meeting in-game and I cringed. How the hell would I explain that I was a girl?! 

[It’s going to be hard to meet up. I don’t even know where Whiteoak Falls is compared to anywhere else.]

[Yeah I don’t know shit about the cities either. We just left Duneport or something and we’re going to some place out west called Cresthaven. Look, when we finally get enough money and gear to set off on our own, we can party up, yeah?]

I didn’t have the heart to disagree. [Totally...]

[I’ll try to see if I can get a map. Dudes are all freaky about humans. You get that too?]

[Uh yeah. They said that they had wars with humans and that humans were all about battle and stuff.]

[I don’t get it. It’s kind of unfair that everyone is huma-phobic from the start. I get enough racism from the other players… I don’t need that shit from the NPCs.]

[I had a few bad moments, but I’ve had pretty good experiences with my forgemaster and my roommate. They’re a dwarf and a half-elf.]

[Oh shit, you got dwarves and elves and shit? We got a whole bunch of scaley folks here. Like, lizards, snake people, fish people. Your roommate is like an elven archer or something? Legolas or something?]

[She’s a blacksmith like me. Half elf, half dwarf. Tough. Really tough.]

[“She”? Dude you shacked up with a girl? You got an elf waifu, bro?!]

I grimaced.

[We’re just friends.]

[So you got friendzoned by an NPC?! Woof...]

[Dude... it’s not like that. Knock it off.]

[Sorry… just joking. My bad.]

I sighed again. He wouldn’t take me seriously. He wouldn’t take any of this seriously. 

[You got a class picked out?] Gavin continued, letting the awkward moment drop.

[I mean, they really don’t have a class system, but I was going to go with paladin.]

[Oh yeah. You going to bring back your paladin from RoR?]

[I guess?]

[I mean, you’re not going to wear that skirt and boobplate this time, right?]

I cringed. It felt like a knife in the gut. I missed that avatar. I realized that she had looked a lot like that idealized image of me I hoped and wished for. Long dark hair, wide hips, large breasts. The graphics had been horrible for RoR compared to RoEM, but at the time it had been all I had.

[It wouldn’t really do much if I did. That armor really didn’t cover much...] I could have screamed as I began trying to joke around it, trying to play it off... it was agony. The pain was all too real and I was just forced to pretend it didn’t exist.

[Shit... What did you name your paladin? Something cutesy to try to scam the simps. I can’t remember what it was.]

I shoved myself back from the table, dropping my fork. Mom and Paige both looked at me over their own meals and I waved them off. “Sorry... bit my tongue.”

They stared at me for a moment longer but went back to what they were doing. I swallowed hard and picked my fork off the floor. My heart was pounding in my chest. I remembered what I had named my paladin. Of course I did. It was the name I picked when pressed by Anika for the first time. It was the name that had been hiding in my head for years and years. 

Zoey.

It was the tag hanging above my avatar:

<3_Z03y_<3 [Paladin LvL 70] [GankSlayerz]

Zoey. That was where the name came from. A pretty girl needed a pretty name.

Nobody cared though. Of course nobody in my guild called me that. Gavin called me the same name everyone else did. So I’d forgotten about it. After all, Zoey didn’t really exist.

[I can’t remember either.] I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t even remember what I had been eating, I wanted to throw it up.

[Whatever. Point is we got our paladin bro with us. And when we get good enough, we can all go on raids and shit together like the old days.]

[What are the others doing?] I asked. I needed to take attention off myself. It was like being stuck in a spotlight of pure flame. I needed to be invisible again. I needed this attention to end.

Gavin talked about the rest of our guild friends. Words just scrolled by as I tuned out. This was hell. There were all these feelings festering inside me, with no escape from them I could find. The cold burning feeling in my chest was going to be the new normal. Sleep couldn’t come soon enough.

I told him I had to go back to school work. That I would talk later. I didn’t know what I would say to him when that time came, but I knew that my relationship with Gavin was permanently changed. And it was never getting better

I sleepwalked through the rest of the day. The game was filling all the available space in my head. What would I do when I woke up back with Marianne? What would we be forging? What kind of food would we be eating?

I looked down at my real-world dinner. Mashed potatoes and roast beef. As I chewed it, I wondered if it was fair to compare Mom’s cooking to the computer generated meals I had in RoEM.

Dad, now back from work, was talking with Mom about his day. He was still wearing his white shirt and tie, his jacket hanging off the back of his chair. He was big, taller than me, and much more muscular. He worked out regularly. I didn’t have a great view of his face in my head as, same with Mom, I didn’t make much eye contact with him. I just tried to blend in with the wallpaper like always.

Paige seemed to be employing the same strategy, disinterestedly eating her meal. Everything was going smoothly enough...

Until Dad said my name again. I looked up, daring to make eye contact with his bearded chin.

“When are you getting a haircut, son? Your hair is getting longer than Paige’s.” His voice was steady, but there was the edge of command to it.

I brushed it aside nervously. I had it tied back, just to keep up appearances. “Uh...” I sputtered.

“We’re heading to the hairdresser next Thursday,” Mom said, peering at me. “Goodness, it really is a little too long.”

“Get it chopped off,” he sighed, “You should be applying for work for next summer. Nobody’s going to hire you looking like that. You look like a damn fag, for God’s sake...”

“We’ll get it cut properly,” said Mom, nodding.

And that was that. The only vestige of femininity I had was as good as gone. With no input from me. At all. The food in my mouth tasted like ash. My insides were a cold wasteland. I cleared my plate as quickly as I could, set the dishes in the washer and left, giving the excuse that I wanted to work on one of my school projects Mom had assigned.

Instead, I turned on some light music and collapsed on my bed, tears streaming down my face. I did my best not to sob, as doing so would only alert my parents and make things worse.

I hated my life. I hated everything. I wanted to die at that moment. I wanted to die and spend the rest of my life in RoEM, instead. This was unbearable. I was cursing myself for dressing up as a girl in the first place. For shining a light on how painful this was. For daring to want anything more. I just struggled to breathe through my suppressed sobs... shaking and contorting with the effort.

It passed after a few minutes, or at least abated to the point where I could properly breathe again. I sighed, still reeling from the visceral emotion burning in my skull. I needed to escape this. Sleep was hours away and I needed to be Zoey now. It was an ache I needed to soothe and I couldn’t think of any way to do it at the moment.

I sat up. There was an option. I had to dig through my contacts, but I still had Beth’s tag. Someone who had only ever known me as Zoey. I fired up the Tagswap message app, hoping and praying she wanted to talk. I hadn’t talked to her at all since that lunch and I was vaguely worried she had forgotten about me.

[Hey Beth?] I typed, waiting anxiously.

The seconds became minutes which were like broken glass moving through my veins. Until I saw that she was responding and this one chat window became my entire world.

[Hi! <3 Oh my goddess, how are you doing Zoey? How was your first day of RoEM?]

Of course, she would want to talk about this. But even so... just seeing my name... the name I craved... on that projected screen, made the pain of the day begin to melt away.

[It was incredible. It was so realistic. The AI is unbelievable. It all felt so... there?]

[Immersive, right? You just get sucked into the world.]

[Yeah. Some of the other players are still kind of confused by it though. We had someone try to start a fight and go PvP for no reason.]

[Yeah we had the same issue in our city. I think some people are still treating the game like it’s Grand Theft Auto or something and they can just do whatever they want and act like jackasses without any consequences. It’s really annoying. Where did you spawn?]

[Whiteoak Falls.]

[Oh! I know someone who spawned there! Did you meet Leon?]

[Yeah, he’s with the city guard. He kind of got everyone sorted out when we first gathered up.]

[He’s a really nice guy. We were beta testers together and we kept in touch. He said that the city down there is beautiful.]

[It is. There’s the giant tree district and the cave district. The houses and buildings are all carved in. And there’s the giant waterfall that turns a huge wheel for power. They use it to keep the forges hot. It’s hard work.]

[Is that where you’re working?]

[Yeah... it’s boiling inside and the metal is hard to move, but I have an NPC showing me the ropes.]

[Yeah, the game tries to pair you up with someone to apprentice under so you can find your feet.]

My stomach seized up. That was news to me. It made sense, of course, but the realization just made everything I had experienced with Marianne feel so hollow. It was scripted. It was like saying you and Mario were best friends. They were programmed to be your friend. Marianne was just a puppet, programmed to make me feel better. It wasn’t real.

I stared miserably at the screen before Beth sent me another message.

[You still there?]

[Sorry... thinking. I didn’t know NPCs had to be friends with you.]

[Friends? Oh no, not at all. I knew a lot of testers who had really rough relationships with their partners. My partner and I are a little contentious from time to time. And Leon says his partner just plain hates him. They’ll train you, but if you treat them badly they’ll return it in kind. And some NPCs just have some bad attitudes.]

The feeling receded slightly. I didn’t know how much of our relationship was predetermined, but I was willing to accept that it was something I had actually invested in. Marianne and I had really gotten close, and that was something I had made happen.

[Oh yeah, I saw that Leon’s partner really didn’t like humans.]

[Yeah he said she came off as a little racist. I was having the same issues. It’s not surprising, given the history they have with humans.]

[I don’t know why RoEM had to program it in that humans were the bad guys. My friend Gavin was complaining that it makes the game so much harder when humans are scripted as having this really awful reputation.]

[Oh... well... the developers didn’t program that in, exactly.]

[What??? What do you mean?]

[It wasn’t the RoEM devs that made the NPCs distrust humans. Did the NPCs talk to you about the human wars?]

[Sort of. It was hundreds of years ago or something.]

[It was actually a few months ago. I was there for it.]

I rocked back at that revelation, my other feelings disappearing in a flash of shock.

[What?!]

[The beta test was basically set in the world hundreds of years before the game we’re playing now. Essentially, the devs used the test to let the NPCs develop their ideas of humans.]

I tried to wrap my head around that. 

[But it was hundreds of years ago?]

[Hundreds of years in game. Basically after the end of the beta and after the humans did their damage, they just accelerated the NPCs and their society to build off of what happened. I figured it out when I asked about the legends and read into them. Humans basically became the new bogeymen of the world of RoEM. I felt a little sick when I realized what had happened.]

[Oh... so the beta testers were that bad?]

[Not at first. It was about the way it was in the game yesterday. Some people were dicking around a little, but most of them were just totally invested and amazed by how immersive the world and its people were. It was only in the last few days of testing that some of the players decided they wanted to “cut loose”. They said that the devs were just going to reboot the server after the test anyway, so why not just have some “fun” before it ended?]

[What did they do?]

[They became monsters. Killing, looting and destroying everything around them. They burned down cities and threw kingdoms into disaster. Men, women, children… countless lives were lost..]

I felt sick to my stomach. People... not programs... people, did that. Real people who might still be playing the game.

[Holy crap.]

[It was unbelievable. Zoey, the NPCs begged for mercy as they were killed. I know they’re programs, but they begged to spare their spouses and kids... I don’t know if AIs have souls but I sure as hell know that some of those players don’t.]

I had a brief flash of the NPCs I saw last night... Marianne, Alexander, Gresh… And those horrible things happening to them. Gresh, in particular, had been face to face with a human who didn’t care about him… only looking for money and power. The idea haunted me.

[We really are the monsters of RoEM.]

[For what it’s worth, it wasn’t everyone who lost their minds. Me and Leon and a few others stepped up to keep people safe. Alive. We had a bit of a last stand. Fought against the monsters with everything we had.]

I was in awe. I imagined Beth and Leon and all the others standing against the hordes, locked in battle to defend the innocent.

[Did you win?]

[We got people out of the city safely and held them off as long as we could. We paid with our lives for it.]

[Wow.] I could only type those three letters. Nothing felt sufficient to express my awe for these people. These heroes.

[It was a hell of a way for the beta test to end. And the devs apparently didn’t want our struggle to go to waste because there’s all these tales about the human Guardians. In Stonebridge Pass, if you ever go there, I’ve been told there’s a statue dedicated to all of us.]

[That’s amazing.]

[It was pretty incredible. But I would be grateful if we didn’t have another major war like that again. The people of RoEM deserve their peace.]

I desperately wished I could have an adventure like that. A chance to stand and defend the innocent. It was the whole reason I wanted to be a paladin in the first place. To take all the damage and pain and suffering so others wouldn’t need to. To stand firm and unmoving against unthinkable odds.

To be brave.

And in that moment, I decided I would be a little braver. Beth was a good person, I told myself. I could trust her with some of these feelings.

[Can I ask you a question?]

[Sure!]

[How did you figure out that you liked girls?]

There was another anxiety-ridden pause that made me terrified I’d gone too far. The indicator that she was typing felt like it was an oncoming train as I painfully waited for it to resolve.

[Oh. Well... in some ways I always knew, I guess. Boys really didn’t hold much interest for me and I wasn’t gushing over the same celebrities that my friends were into. But when I saw other girls and women... there was just this spark inside. Like, a warmth. Everything people were describing about love only made sense to me for other girls.]

I breathed a sigh of relief. She wasn’t mad. I tried to square that with what I had been experiencing. On one hand it wasn’t quite right... but on the other hand, it felt familiar too. There was something inside me that wasn’t matching everyone else. Beth followed up as I paused.

[Are you working through some feelings right now?]

I should log off, I told myself. I can’t do this. I’m not brave, I’m not a paladin and I’m not Zoey. I can’t tell her this. She wouldn’t understand.

But if she couldn’t... then who would? I pushed forward.

[Maybe? Someone asked if I liked girls and I didn’t know how to respond.]

[What was your gut response?]

[Maybe? It’s all kind of complicated... there’s all these other feelings in the way.]

[How do you feel about boys?]

[My parents would kill me if I liked boys.]

My finger hit the send button a fraction of a second before I realized what I sent. I started panicking again, trying to find a way to fix it.

[What?]

I frantically typed out a response.

[Sorry, girls. Typo. I don’t know how I feel about them. It’s like... hard to figure out how I feel when I have everything the world is telling me I’m supposed to be drowning it out.]

[I get it. I was right there with you at your age. I felt like I was drowning. Like I was trapped in this cage that was all around me and I was just sinking into the water.]

I swallowed hard. It was like she was reading my mind. I may not be gay, exactly, but she still understood that feeling. The feeling of being trapped.

[How did you get out?]

[I started small. I met Anika, obviously, and she helped me stop feeling afraid. And as I reached out and talked to other LGBTQ+ people, I found that I wasn’t alone.]

I sighed. But there weren't people like me. How could there be? I was a perverted freak who wanted to be a girl. What would I have in common with real people like Anika and Beth?!

[What do those letters stand for?] I asked, deciding to focus on something less uncomfortable.

[Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and more. There’s a longer acronym, but it’s easier to use the shorter one.]

I frowned. I knew the first two. I had a guess about the third.

[So bisexual means you like both boys and girls, right?]

[Sort of. Basically it means you like genders the same or different from your own. Gender is a little more complicated than just male and female.]

I let that slide. Given my current confusion, I could agree.

[What does transgender mean?]

[Again, it’s complicated, but the best answer I can give is that transgender people are people where their gender identity... their sense of what gender they feel inside... doesn’t match up with what their body is.]

I stared at the screen. 

A whole tangled knot of feeling caught in my chest, making me feel like I was choking. My stomach dropped out of me. I had to cover my mouth, keeping some kind of scream or whine from escaping me. I stared at what she wrote and read it and re-read it. All the pain and agony and emptiness and doubt and misery.. all of it, all those awful poisonous feelings...

There was a name for it.

Transgender.

[Are you still there, Zoey?]

[How do you fix it? Can you make it go away?] The words left my fingertips before I had a chance to think of them.

[What?]

[How do you fix being transgender?]

[Oh. Most trans people do what’s called “transitioning”. They start dressing and looking like the gender they identify as. Sometimes they’ll take medications and undergo surgeries to tailor their body to better fit into their sense of self.]

I realized something with a horrible sense of dread. I HAD heard of this. Not by the name “transgender”. Dad had talked about a person he used to work with once... a “man who dressed like a woman”... a “fag trying to sneak into the women’s restroom”... a “dickless freak”. He had talked about them with so much hate... so much fury. Like they weren’t even human. 

And... that might be me?

[Is that what tr*nnies are?] I frowned at that when the word was filtered by the client. [Wait... why did it censor that?]

[Because it’s a slur, sweetheart. It’s a term that is offensive to trans people.]

[Sorry... that’s just how my church and my dad talks about them. He says that transgender people are freaks who want to cut their privates off, sneak into women’s bathrooms and touch little girls.] I heard Dad’s heavy footsteps shuffling around downstairs and I tensed, now terrified that Dad was somehow aware that his child might be a transgender.

[Oh dear. No, sweetheart. I know a lot of religious people are very afraid of trans people, but they’re really not like that. Yes, some trans people will get surgeries to make their privates match up with what they’re comfortable with. But not all… and that’s not all that defines them. They’re not monsters, Zoey. They're just people.]

My eyes widened. Was there a surgery that would give me a vagina?!

[Wait, they can do that?! Change their privates?!]

[Yes. Although not every trans person feels the need to change that way.]

[Why not?! If you could have the right parts, why wouldn’t you do it?!]

[Because some people don’t think that their gender relies on them having the right parts. Zoey, I might be misreading, but are you having some gender issues yourself?]

I winced again. I should log off. I should shut down the client and block Beth. I shouldn’t speak to her anymore. This is wrong. It’s dangerous. She’s trying to make me like her. She’s grooming me or whatever the church was called it. I’m just confused and this is her making me worse. She's turning me into a sinful monster and I need to stop her.

I’m not a transgender. I’m not a freak. I’m not this ugly twisted, awful thing my family hates. This isn’t me. It can’t be. I have to turn this off. I have to stop this. I can’t do this.

I shut down the client. I moved to block Beth. I moved to pull my phone earpiece off... only to freeze.

If you do this, you’ll never know...

The thought wafted through my brain. I hesitated. I couldn’t dismiss these feelings. I needed answers. I had to know. I logged on again.

[I don’t know.] I finally replied.

[It’s okay if you want to be a boy, honey. Or you don’t need to be either. Or you can be both, even. Gender is expansive.]

I nearly threw up. I threw myself at the keyboard in a fury.

[I don’t want to be a boy!]

[Okay then.]

[I hate it. I hate my body. I hate everything that’s wrong with it. I want to go back to RoEM and have everyone treat me like a girl again.]

I paused. I was breathing heavily and I realized with a hot sick sensation that it was over. I had ruined everything. I would never be Zoey to her. Ever. She would hate me, she would never forgive me for pretending. She started typing.

[I don’t understand.]

I couldn’t think of an excuse. I was tempted to log off again. But... even if I would never see her again... I could at least tell the truth. Even if she laughed at me... I would still be brave.

[I’m sorry, Beth. I lied to you. I’m a boy. I dressed up as a girl for digitization that day. The scanner tech saw my ID but still put me into the system as a girl. I don’t know why. The first day of RoEM was amazing because I had a girl’s body and everyone treated me like a girl. For the first time, I could be Zoey, even if that isn’t my real name. I’m so sorry I lied to you and I can understand if you don’t want to talk to me anymore. I just really liked being treated like a girl.]

There was another pause. I started crying, trying to stifle my sobs. I just hoped that nobody could hear me. It was difficult for me to see my screen from crying so hard. I just tried to wrestle those breaths down my throat and keep myself together.

[Okay, Zoey (and I’m going to keep calling you that, if that’s okay), I want you to know that I still very much want to be your friend. I was in your shoes a few years ago... not quite to the same extent... but I know how hard it is to be afraid and scared with nobody you feel like you can trust.  But I’m here, and I am grateful you have chosen to trust me with this.  You are not alone, you are not a freak and you are who you believe yourself to be. If you say that you are a girl... if you know that is what you want to be inside... then you’re a girl.]

It was everything I wanted to hear. It was everything I’d wanted to believe. If anything, I cried harder, mostly in relief. She didn’t hate me. She didn’t think I was a freak. I was still Zoey... at least to her.

My Dad told me to keep down the giggling and go to bed. He closed his bedroom door and I winced in the silence that followed. I typed out the one thing that filled my head at that moment.

[My parents are going to kill me.]

[Okay, so if you don’t feel like it’s safe to come out to them, then I would advise you to find a safe space for yourself. Obviously RoEM is a great space for you to express your gender and get comfortable with it. Do you have any other friends who would be supportive?]

I shook my head, even if I knew she couldn’t see it.

[I don’t know. Gavin is my best friend, but I don’t know how he would react... I don’t know if he would even believe me if I told him.]

[You don’t need to do it right away. But it would be healthy for you to expand your circle of trust. I’ll reach out to some friends and see if I can’t get you someone with more experience in transition. But at the very least you can talk to me about this whenever and however you feel comfortable, okay? You are not alone.]

I sighed, falling backwards on my bed. It was late. I was surprised to find that it was late enough for me to log into RoEM. This conversation had devoured the hours in the blink of an eye. God, I wished Beth could be in the game with me.

[It’s late. I need to get to bed.]

[Right. Before you go, just remember Zoey: You are never alone. I’m here for you. There are others too. I am so proud of how brave you are. You are an amazingly strong girl and you can get through this. I believe in you.]

[Thank you. I really don’t understand all this... but it means a lot that you listened. Can I ask where you are in RoEM?]

[Golddell. It’s the capital of The Golden Kingdom, the continent where we all live. It’s north of Whiteoak Falls. Hit me up if you head that way. You can do this, Zoey. Get some rest and take the time to be yourself. I’m here if you need to talk in the future.]

[Thank you so much Beth. Good night.]

[Good night, Zoey. Sweet dreams.]

I logged off. I turned off the lights, jammed the crown on my head and tried my best to find sleep again. 

I could deal with this tomorrow. For the moment, I could dream.