章 128: Flying By

Aishin came to a halt and Danika turned and looked at him questioningly.

"I'm too tired to think clearly," Aishin admitted. "Should we split up so that we're both tracking him from different angles?"

"Do you still have the compass you lent me?" Danika asked.

"Yeah?" he replied questioningly, and pulled it out of one of his pouches.

"First let's just see if we're always moving in the same direction," she suggested.

"Ok," he agreed simply.

They continued to follow the Whereabouts compass, and the normal compass told them that they were always moving generally east. After awhile Aishin stopped moving again. Danika stopped and looked around warily.

After a minute she asked, "Aishin?"

After another minute she cast her light cantrip and formed a ball of light right in front of his eyes. A moment later he said, "Sorry, sleepy."

"Garden," she instructed.

He didn't reply immediately, but after a moment he flashed a despairing emote expression. Danika giggled. He stuck his tongue out at her and set her pebble down on the grass and said, "I guess it's goodnight then ZipZing."

Danika zipped up to him and kissed his cheek. "Goodnight," she agreed. She wondered how that looked from the mobile version, or if it just looked like their simplified avatars bumped into each other. He'd arranged to do what she'd wished she could, and she was forced to admit that she had already gotten more attached than she'd meant to.

The point must have been communicated, because he gave a short laugh and said, "I need VR. Dragonheart."

Danika zipped down to her pebble and followed him into her garden in time to see his figure vanish. After a moment she checked the time. They'd been moving across the dark field for quite awhile, but she could play for another quarter of an hour before her own alarm would go off. She quickly watered her plants with her aqua stone, exited her garden, and used her binding string to attach it against her belly.

Her little firefly followed her out. Danika hesitated, and then let it follow. She gave up on stealth and zipped at her top speed across the dark landscape in the direction the Whereabouts compass indicated. She worried about Hikaru keeping up, until she saw that whenever the firefly fell too far behind, it teleported to her in a very traditional game pet manner.

Danika and Hikaru shot over the shallow rise of a small hill that Danika hadn't even detected until the land fell away in front of her. A small stone cottage stood beside a small pond. The cottage had a very crisp air to it, a sort of determined feeling that there was a clear line between everything that was on the inside and everything that was on the outside.

The cottage was also currently dark and silent, though the faintest wisp of smoke curled from it's straight chimney. Danika zipped around the cottage to make sure, and the Whereabouts compass stayed fixed on the cottage. Lights flickered into being around the pond as ZipZing and Hikaru passed between it and the cottage.

A crowd of local fireflies signalled to Hikaru, and Hikaru's light spoke its reply to the natives. Danika wondered if Shrubbery would have been able to understand them with her tree's gift. Danika gazed at the cottage indecisively.

If the druid was asleep, waking him up before asking him to teach her sounded counterproductive. But she really shouldn't stay connected for the other hour before dawn arrived. After thinking for a minute she retreated to the top of the rise and undid her Binding String and laid down her little pebble.

Hikaru followed her up the rise after a minute. Then Danika entered her garden and logged off from inside it. She figured that that way at least her immediate environment would be safe when she logged in again.

When Danika woke up, she laid her arm over her forehead and sighed before moving. When she faced herself in the bathroom mirror as she brushed her teeth, she told herself, "You're going to have to explain it to him if you go on like this, and it's probably better to do it sooner than later right?"

She knew that she was giving herself good advice, but she was still reluctant to follow it. When she read Aishin's short morning greeting she smiled, but she sent him an equally short reply without adding anything.

The advertisements that greeted her when she turned on the large screen she was working in front of informed her that her new interest in Underneath had been noted and suggested that she might like to listen to the recording of the live performance they'd done a few days ago.

Danika chuckled and turned on one of the auxiliary screens that she hadn't been using lately and started the recording playing on the side as she started her shift. Her efficiency dropped when the words to one of the songs that she'd never heard before made her miss a jump in the hopping puzzle. She paused the older game and backed up the recording, and played it again, just in case.

The lyrics repeated, "like lightning across the sky, or like a silent lullaby, engraved on my heart from the inside. It's amazing how the days zip by with you at my side, zip zing flying by…"

Danika stared blankly at the screen in front of her. "SilentSky must think I'm an idiot," she said aloud. Zip and Zing were worked into the lyrics of the song in at least a dozen places, and it couldn't really be described as anything but a love song although the word love was never used. Her cheeks burned.

When she tried to restart the hopping puzzle, her hands were trembling too much. After a moment she logged herself out early for her break. She picked up her phone and stared at it for awhile. Finally she sent: "I just listened to 'Flying By'."

Aishin replied a minute later: "Um, are you mad?"

Danika stared at the question with a puzzled expression. She replied: "Why would I be mad?"

His reply was slower and she waited impatiently. Eventually she scooted over to her counter and prepared a drink and snack, since she was wasting her break. When his reply finally arrived it said: "Because I used your character name in the lyrics without asking? Because you didn't say anything about what you think about it? I don't know. I'm suddenly getting very nervous about it… It seems like a really self centered thing to have done."

She replied quickly: "I like it. I was just really surprised."

She sent another message just as his reply arrived: "But I'm afraid of disappointing you…"

His read: "I'll warn you next time."

Another reply arrived a minute later: "Idiot. That's just a record of how happy I was then. Today is even better and tomorrow hasn't even happened yet."

Danika sent back: "Ok." But she scolded him aloud, "I'm not the only one being an idiot. You don't even know what I look like yet." She gazed out her window and added to the sky, "And I might be going a little crazy, since I keep talking to myself more and more these days."

When she logged back in, her hands were steady and her movements were quick.