She was eating strawberries from her garden in preparation for another round of illusions when the cub reappeared. The snow leopard cub looked around her garden and huffed a sigh as he delivered Aishin's message. Danika told him a bit huffily, "If you don't like it, I can switch messengers! I bet you want to just choose which messages to deliver don't you?"
The cub gave the growling meow his real form had outgrown, as he dropped the message, and the game translated it as, "Good, you make." He was still staring at her as he vanished.
Danika stared at the spot he'd been for too long before reading Aishin's message which read: "Are you serious? Can you call me in ten minutes?"
She disconnected and then let her fingers hover indecisively over her phone screen. She wasn't sure when ten minutes was. After a minute she called anyway.
"Another minute," he answered, but he didn't hang up on her.
The background noise sounded like the kind of loud party that the romantic interest calls from in a bad comedy. Danika even clearly heard a woman complain, "Just one more Aichi dear!"
Shinichi laughed and replied, "A quick one?"
"Yes!" the woman agreed happily.
There was a soft smack that Danika imagined as a kiss, while holding the heel of her hand against her own forehead and telling herself with silent logic, 'He's a celebrity, he's not trying to hide whatever it is, stop that.'
After another minute there were sounds that matched doors and the party faded and was replaced by the noises of traffic, and then the distinct noise of a car door cut off even that and Shinichi said, "OK, I'm here. What on earth Danika? You really can't be asking me seriously about where babies come from. And if we're going to talk about babies, that should be done face to face, not in the game?"
"Um… it's because," Danika hesitated and then finished with, "nevermind."
"You're not secretly some sheltered princess of a strange little country somewhere whose secret service has blocked your internet searches about basic biology are you?" Shinichi asked.
She spluttered at the question. "Where the heck is your imagination taking you!? In the game! Do you know how babies are made in the game!?"
There was a long pause, and then he replied dryly, "Well, apparently when two people love each other very much, and wish that they could have a child…"
Danika would have closed the call except that his words were almost the same as the traveling merchant's had been. After a minute she realized that he was probably reading from a help page on the game's website and her cheeks burned. It was a good thing she wasn't in the tech support division.
Shinichi finished reading with, "That's pretty cool. I kind of love this kind of thing. In 'Living Jade Empire' there can be unexpected children, but there are never unwanted children, it's the best kind of fantasy."
Danika stared at the phone.
"You're thinking something weird or unnecessary now aren't you?" Shinichi asked.
Danika gathered her thoughts and asked uncertainly, "Do you have a child?"
"No child of mine will ever be unwanted," he replied a little angrily.
"Um, sorry?" she apologized hurriedly. "I just couldn't guess which thought you meant was weird or unnecessary."
After a moment he laughed and asked, "What were the other options?"
Danika rolled her eyes and replied, "I think you'll probably know what to write for Shrubbery. I think that woman kissed you. I think you're hiding in a car to talk to me."
"What's wrong with Shrubbery, is her character the one that's pregnant? She just took another photo. I am, how could you tell?" Shinichi replied promptly.
She replied much more slowly, and all she said was, "Eyes on the Sky is gone."
"Oh," he said softly.
They talked quietly until Danika fell asleep. She answered all his questions eventually, and he stayed on the phone with her even after the rest of Underneath got into the car with him, but she fell asleep before he got home.
When she woke up in the middle of the night, she logged back in for a few minutes, and saw that Aishin really had written the kind of short gentle reply that she wished she could have thought of on the guild's message board. She cast the illusion spell once more, showing Eyes on the Sky sleeping peacefully with a half eaten berry in her tiny paws, and let it settle over the fallen star, where it stayed even after her spell timed out.
She exited her garden and flew through a summer day that was too bright and too warm for her mood, and took the portal to Fogton. ZipZing streaked toward Shrubbery's garden and laid her pebble on the seat where she often left it. A moment later she brought out the heavy fallen star. She couldn't lift it into Shrubbery's tall tree, and didn't want to injure it with the stone's weight either.
After a moment she used all her spidersilk thread and her binding string skill to heave the stone up onto the living seat where Ryullusion and Eyes on the Sky had laughed together. The seat might suffer from the weight, but it wouldn't hurt Shrubbery like damage to her tree might. After a minute she moved the pebble that held her garden to the seat beside it.
She still couldn't think of the right words, and adding 'me too' after what Aishin had written seemed equally insufficient, so she just logged out again without writing anything.
--
At the morning meeting of the sixth, Danika announced, "I know this is really selfish, but I want to build a new God and a new quest."
Everyone turned to stare at her. After a long moment Devon Yu said mildly, "Want to tell us about it then, before I make my announcements?"
Danika blushed and replied quickly, "I'm sorry, it can wait."
Devon shrugged and informed everyone, "Lin Hao released the new quest overlay system last night, and nothing broke before I checked with him this morning. The NPCs have successfully been infected with souls, and those who find favor on the Twin Goddesses scales after their reincarnation is unlocked with the desert expansion will be able to reincarnate."
Devon continued, "Please check up on all the NPCs currently associated with a repeatable quest and the quests themselves. Josh Beagle in the seventh came up with the virus-like rewriting system to push this hidden expansion out, and seemed fairly confident that it would be capable of converting the existing quests, but it's our job to double check them all."
He warned them, "And be aware that with the new overlay system an entire quest can now be added to the game without going through the usual approval and processing by the seventh, double check each other carefully, and let me know if we should create the permanent beta testing division that Lin Hao and I have been contemplating."
He answered questions for awhile, and Danika herself asked several and was really excited about the whole thing. She was a little shocked when Devon Yu turned to her five minutes before the meeting was scheduled to end and said firmly, "Now Danika, tell us about your God and quest."
She gulped, and then lifted her chin. "The game had the wizard Wise Ardlee instruct me to catch a falling star," she began.