by Mia Archer
“Pity, I was thinking of going. We could meet up,” she said. “I’d love to see that costume. ;)”
“Yeah, well, maybe I’ll go someday if I get rich off of my writing,” I said.
“I’d like to read some of your stuff,” she said.
I pulled away from the keyboard. I blinked a couple of times. I stared at the chat window. At those words burned onto my flat panel. Sure I shared my stuff in the critiques every day, sure I shared my stuff with the people I role-played with online, but there was something about this that seemed different. I was suddenly self-conscious about sharing my work with this woman. Maybe it was the way she wrote. Maybe it was knowing she did this professionally. But for whatever reason, I was hesitant.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sure it would be boring for you…”
“No! I’m definitely interested! If you’re half as good as what you write in game then I have a feeling I’m going to be pleasantly surprised!”
I blushed and had to stop. I had to count to ten. It was like this girl was pressing all the right buttons, and I didn’t even know her real name. I had no idea what she looked like or if she was even a she. For all I knew it could be some fifteen-year-old kid who was home from school today. For all I knew she could be some old man. And yet I didn't think that was really the case. I didn't want to think that was the case. I was drawn to her in a way I hadn't been drawn to a woman before, in a way that had been missing even from my interactions with men, and to discover that it was all a lie would be crushing.
Catfishing was an ever present danger online, but something was telling me I should take a chance.
“Fine, what’s your email address?”
“[email protected]”
I arched an eyebrow at that. I was surprised she was actually able to get that email address. It’s not like Kaira was a super famous character in the series or anything, but she was a driving force in the narrative for anybody who bothered to pay attention to that sort of thing. It was the kingdom she created that led to the catastrophe that created the world I was running around in right now. The world I loved reading about so much. The world that had taken the real world by storm over the past five years with its explosive popularity. And I figured a name like that would’ve been snapped up immediately by someone who was way too into the lore like I was. Only here she was with that email.
Interesting. And it also made me respect her all the more. It was slightly cocky choosing that name, but at the same time it showed that she really knew her stuff. She really knew the story in-depth in a way that even a lot of people who'd read the books didn't because they didn't ever read any of the supplementary materials or appendices. A lot of people didn’t pay attention that deeply. They just enjoyed the action in the books or they enjoyed the boobs on the pay cable miniseries. No, that name told me this was a girl who really got the series. This was a girl who was definitely a fan.
And that made me both respect her more and want her more. Want her more? I thought about that for a moment. Thought about the strange feelings washing over me. Maybe it was just a bit of confusion in finding a kindred spirit, but I couldn't deny the heat and the rush I'd felt when I saw her sending me a message. I couldn't deny how I was feeling even if these new feelings terrified me. I might as well own up to it to myself even if I had no intention of telling Kaira and scaring her away forever.
It was ridiculous to fall for a girl over something silly like writing skills and the fact that she obviously was just as into my favorite books as I was, but there it was. People had fallen for sillier reasons than that, so why not an intense intellectual attraction? I was an intellectual woman first and foremost, and she was definitely able to stimulate my brain in a way most guys had never been able to, let alone a woman. That intrigued me. That turned me on if I was being perfectly honest, and I needed to start being perfectly honest with myself, damn it.
“Fine, I’ll send you something I worked up for class,” I said.
“No, I want your novel,” she said.
I blinked. “How did you know about that?”
“You said you’re in a creative writing program and you just got in a fight about liking genre fiction. I know you have a novel you’ve been working on. I want to see it.”
Now this really was asking too much! She was absolutely right, but I’d never share that with anyone. I even turned the screen away when Megan was in the room. Not that I’d actually worked on the thing in a while because I was so busy with the creative writing program and all the creative writing I’d been doing for the game. But still. Sharing something like that was so personal.
“Come on…” she said.
I sighed. “Fine. I’ll send you the first few chapters, but that’s it!”
“Glad to hear it.”
Damn. She was so cocky. So arrogant. So sure she’d get her way! I wondered what kind of woman she was in the real world, outside of the videogame, that she had that calm and confident demeanor. That she just assumed everyone was going to do what she asked.
I alt tabbed out of the game and opened up my email client. I had my own Elassa mail account. They called it Elassa mail, but really over the years it had morphed into a giant social network for fans of the series. I typed in her email and attached the file, but when I tried to send it at first it bounced back. I frowned. I clicked over to her profile but that was locked down too. Usually you didn't see that in the Elassa social network.
I tabbed back into the game. "Your account is locked down."
"Oh, right. Sorry." A moment passed and then the little icon that indicated she was typing popped up again. "Try now."
Again I alt tabbed out of the game. Again I drafted a mail and attached the file, but I held off on sending it for some reason. I stared at the screen, wondering if I really wanted to do this, and as I stared I realized that her whitelisting me for access to send her mail directly also allowed me to see her profile, though I wasn't going to tell her that. I figured if she was going to try and keep secrets then I was going to do the same in the name of revealing some of those secrets.
I got a good look at her profile picture. Not everybody bothered with the picture, but she had one. And I found myself staring, transfixed.
The character creator for the game meant you could pretty much write your own ticket in terms of looks. Most people chose a character who was muscular or slim in all the right places. Basically the perfect figure and the ultimate in wish fulfillment. What I’m trying to say is you didn’t see a lot of chubby characters walking around Tales of Elassa unless it was somebody who was doing it to make a point for a particular brand of role-playing.
Only as I looked at the picture attached to Kaira's profile, I wondered if she realized I was going to be able to see that picture when she gave me her email, I realized that in this case at least, assuming this was actually her and this wasn’t an elaborate catfishing expedition, there wasn’t much difference between the girl behind the computer and the beautiful character in game.
She wore a huge pair of sunglasses that obscured most of her face, but there was no obscuring the sexy contours of that face even if I wouldn't be able to pick her out of a crowd. She had the same pixie-cut short blonde hair as her character that looked unkempt but was so cute. And the rest of her. She was in a tight fitting tank top that showed off her smooth shoulders, slim arms, and what looked like a petite but incredible figure under that tight fitting tank top. I could see a strip of her stomach below and the hint of her belly button and I found myself leaning forward to stare in a way that I never had before with a girl, but I didn't care. I was all alone in the apartment and it's not like Megan was going to walk in on me by surprise. She looked like she was anywhere from five to ten years older than me and she looked absolutely delicious.
Not for the first time since I started interacting with this woman I found myself staring at the screen while my brain short circuited. What the hell was going on here? Could that really be her? That couldn’t po
ssibly be her! There was no way that a girl who looked that good, a girl this compelling and nice, the first girl I ever found myself truly drawn to, a girl who seemed to know what I was thinking before I even thought it myself, could be that gorgeous! The universe just didn't work that way. I wasn't that lucky. Of course it was entirely possible that I could be that lucky and still I'd be unlucky in that she wasn't into girls that way. But who knew? A day ago I would've said I wasn't into girls that way and here I was salivating over Kaira's picture.
I instantly felt self-conscious as well. If I sent her an attachment through my account at Elassa.com then she’d see my profile picture. My mess of brown hair. A face that was definitely not anything to write home about even if I did have guys pestering me all the time in what I was pretty sure were clumsy attempts to get a date. And I had a petite frame that definitely didn’t bear much resemblance to my buxom character in game. Not that I even knew if she was into tits at all, buxom or otherwise, and it's not like I was going to ask her and scare her away. Hell, I was scared enough of these strange feelings without terrifying the object of those feelings!
I thought of my profile picture and groaned. I was staring into the camera with a goofy expression that definitely wasn’t very flattering making the hand symbol of the Bendai sisterhood which figured largely in the books. The juxtaposition between that very serious hand signal and the weird look on my face wouldn’t be lost on her, but I looked absolutely ridiculous.
I couldn’t send her an email right now. I couldn’t send an email when she’d see that picture of me!
I alt tabbed back into the game fully intending to make an excuse.
“I’m waiting…”
There she was again with that infuriating casually insistent confidence. As though she expected me to send her my manuscript right now. And I found myself blushing, moving out of the game client again, and hitting send. It was as though I was under some sort of spell. It was as though she was able to get me to do whatever she wanted. I didn’t even realize what I was doing until I’d sent it, and immediately my hand went from my mouse up to my mouth. I stared in wide-eyed shock.
Damn it!
I moved back to the game. I waited to see what the damage was.
“Got it.” she said.
There was a pause. A pause that stretched into eternity. A pause where I was sure she was looking at my picture, where she was sizing me up, where she was realizing that the sexy seductive elf priestess was nothing like the girl in my profile picture. She was probably looking me up and down and thinking how ridiculous she’d been to ever pay any attention to me. I’m sure she’d come back and say that she didn’t have time to read my manuscript.
“My my,” she said, adding a smiley face to the end. “You are a cutie my lady elf.”
Was that what I thought it was? I reread the sentence over and over trying to process it. That seemed downright flirtatious. Usually I was pretty oblivious about that sort of thing, but this was like a massive signal being projected onto the sky that even I couldn't miss. I felt my breathing catch as I read the sentence. I felt warmth settle into the pit of my stomach. I couldn't believe it.
Damn it. This girl kept blowing my expectations away! I blushed again. I blushed! And I felt a tingle at the tips of my fingers that I was pretty sure was from getting turned on and not an impending stroke as I started typing. At least I hoped it wasn't an impending stroke. That would be just my luck. I start falling for a girl. The girl seems interested in me. I have a stroke and I'm dead or incapacitated to the point that I can't explore this strange new romance. Only that didn't happen as I kept typing.
“You’re not so bad yourself.” I said with a wink emoticon. I was so nervous as I hit enter but I did it.
Was I really doing this? Was I really flirting with a girl over the Internet on the basis of a picture and a silly crush? This was ridiculous! I hadn’t done this sort of thing in at least five or six years. Not since I was a teenager using the Internet for the first time. Not since I’d first got involved in non-Elassa role-playing communities that were best forgotten all these years later.
And yet here I was, very much feeling like the giddy schoolgirl I’d been back then talking to a cute guy. Only now it was a cute girl I was talking to, and unlike with those early role-playing chats this time I had actual proof that she was a cute girl. At least I hoped she was a cute girl. I wasn’t completely naïve. I knew there was still a good eighty percent chance that picture was bullshit, but a girl could dream, right?
“That’s all?”
I blinked. Was she expecting more? Was she really that cocky? Did she really need me to validate her looks? I have to admit that it took some of the shine off of the moment.
“Was there supposed to be more?”
“No, nothing…”
She seemed surprised. She seemed to be avoiding telling me something. And yet I’d just met her. I was still so surprised that she looked like that, I was still so surprised that she was the complete package, that I decided I wasn’t going to dig any deeper. Not yet. If she wanted to have her little mystery then let her have her little mystery. It was enough that we had what we had for now.
“Think I’m going to log off and have a read of your story,” she said. “Talk to you later?”
“Sure. Looking forward to it!”
“Me too.” And she winked at me. Well, it was a wink emoticon, but I'd grown up online. To me it was as good as the real thing. The physiological reaction it provoked through my body was certainly the real thing!
It was amazing how punctuation could make me feel so amazing. It was really just a semicolon and a closed parenthesis, and yet that simple bit of punctuation was getting me worked up in a way that I hadn’t been in quite some time. Since the last guy I dated seriously. Where "seriously" is defined as going on a couple of dates but I didn't really feel much of a spark when he tried to get physical so I'd called things off.
Since then I didn’t really have time for dating what with my busy schedule. At least with what I told myself was my busy schedule, though it would probably look rather pathetic to anyone who actually had a busy schedule or real responsibility instead of a full plate of video game playing every night.
The chat window indicated she’d gone off-line. I paused for a moment, and then I added her to my watch list. She must’ve already done the same to me if she knew when I was online. That sent another thrill running through me. A girl that gorgeous, a girl who could write like that, a girl who could make me feel this way with just a few words on the screen, and she’d obviously been interested enough to talk to me first!
It was weird, but I was starting to feel very much like that giddy schoolgirl even when I wasn’t talking to her. Just the thought of her was enough to set me off. It was an odd feeling, it was strange thinking of another woman like that, but it wasn't unpleasant. I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on, I was still really confused, but I knew that I liked it. And really wasn't that enough to see where this was going?
I closed out the game. Without her on there really was nobody for me to talk to at this time of day. Most of my friends didn’t start coming online until after the work day was over. As the game closed a window popped up advertising Elassa Con which was coming up very soon. I sighed as I looked at the pictures streaming past. It looked like everybody was having a hell of a time.
I’d been to a couple of local conventions, I even had a costume I put together that was slightly scandalous since it took a fashion cue from some of the more bikini oriented outfits that the sorceresses could wear in game, but I’d never been to the big convention. The one put on to showcase a combination of all the different component parts that made up the Elassa media empire.
People from the game were there. People from the TV miniseries were usually there. I even heard that Kaitlyn Morgan herself made appearances.
With a wistful sigh I closed out the advertisement. However nice it would’ve been to go to that convention there was no way a
girl who made what I made, absolutely nothing aside from loans and a stipend, would be able to afford a ticket out to Indianapolis. There was definitely no way I was going to be able to afford the price to get into the convention, or the price of a hotel stay. I heard those got really ridiculous as the convention got closer, and there were even a special team of moderators on the forums to make sure scalpers didn’t go around trying to sell hotel rooms via official channels.
No, it was definitely out of my price range.
I needed to forget about that stuff though. I had more important things to concentrate on. Like the fact that I had to get to work. All that talk about my novel, all the anger I felt towards Carrie, all of the encouraging words I’d gotten from this mysterious woman, had put me in a mood to write. Really write. Not stuff for the game.
I opened up my novel and got to work on it for the first time in a couple of months at least. The muse was upon me, and I was going to take advantage of the moment since I didn’t have much else to do until later in the evening when it was time to log back into the game.
6: Waiting Game
I went absolutely crazy in more than one way over the next couple of days. I started working on my novel at a furious pace. Words flowed from my fingers into the computer. I hadn’t written this much on one of my own projects in ages, but I felt inspired. Maybe it was showing my book to someone. Maybe it was the inspiration I’d taken from her encouragement. Whatever it was, I was writing like a maniac and I was putting out thousands of words a day which was unprecedented even before I got sucked into Tales of Elassa and spent all of my writing energy on the game.
Kaira was driving me crazy in other ways too. Mainly by her absence. I’d only talked to her a couple of times and so it was totally weird that I’d miss her like this, and yet with each passing day that I didn’t see her on I grew more frustrated. Her profile said she hadn’t been on since the last time we spoke a couple of days ago, not that I was stalking her profile and obsessively refreshing it or anything.