When Danika asked Shrubbery worriedly, "How are you doing?" Shrubbery insisted that ZipZing should read her messages before they talked.
But she had barely opened the first one when Shrubbery added, "But I'm OK. I'm doing better than I expected in some ways, and worse in others."
Danika read quickly, starting with the ones from Shrubbery and MatchlessMinion. Shrubbery had written only one short worried message, while MatchlessMinion had sent a message each day, each one longer than the last, but the gist was the same: "When are you coming back?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to worry you, I was just working on something that I hope I can show you later," she told them apologetically.
They exchanged puzzled glances, but MatchlessMinion said, "Sure, don't worry."
Aishin had sent only one message before she'd told him that her game messages could be forwarded to her, and then he'd sent a string of increasingly worried messages. The last one sounded mostly angry, but it was from before he'd shown up in person and he'd already admitted that he'd been getting angry with her. It made her feel guilty about ignoring the messages again though.
There was a short sharp warning from SilentSky, "Don't forget that your relationship with Shin affects us too."
Danika sighed. Her last message was from Logical Heart and it said, "The memory quest is great."
She gazed at it with a puzzled frown until Shrubbery asked, "What's wrong?"
"Logical Heart mentioned the quest I want to show you, but I don't know how he knows about it, or how he knows that I have anything to do with it?" she replied.
"What do you have to do with it?" MatchlessMinion asked curiously.
While Shrubbery asked, "Quest?"
"Um," Danika replied nervously. "You might not like it if you didn't like the fallen star's illusion, but…" she trailed off as Shrubbery gasped.
"Oh no," Shrubbery said worriedly. "It was a fallen star?"
"Yeah, why, what's wrong?" Danika questioned just as worriedly.
"It's fine, she just fed it to her tree," MatchlessMinion said dryly.
"What?" Danika asked blankly.
The dryad turned and pointed to the canopy of her tree. "I didn't realize that it was made from something so rare," Shrubbery said apologetically.
Danika blinked as she realized that the whole tree top had taken the shape of the sleeping Eyes in the Sky that she'd set into the heart of the fallen star. "Woah! That's so cool!" Danika exclaimed.
"Thanks, by the way," Shrubbery added.
"I didn't know if it would be comfortable to look at, that's why I left my stone space there so you could store it if it was uncomfortable," Danika explained. "It was bigger than it looked so it wouldn't fit in a regular pouch."
Shrubbery covered her eyes and laughed while MatchlessMinion elbowed her in the knee.
"Is this a private moment?" Ryullusion asked.
"No, you're OK," MatchlessMinion informed him, but then he turned back to Danika and informed her, "but our permanent guild hall needs room for Shrubbery's tree and garden, because everyone comes here instead of going to the rented inn."
"My residence in Windbur is a tree branch," Danika replied, "so do you think we could grow a really big tree, like the one where the goblin fortress was destroyed, and build a guild hall in it?"
"One of my guildmates in the Gardening Club was working on creating a good treehouse hybrid, that would grow its own rooms," Shrubbery suggested with interest. "But this garden is too small for that."
"What if we bought one of the buildings beside us and took it down?" Ryullusion suggested.
They all turned to survey the buildings on either side of Shrubbery's garden. It was backed by the city wall, and faced the public Koi ponds, but the buildings on either side had never seemed very interesting. On the other side of the Koi ponds there was a tea house.
Danika asked Shrubbery doubtfully, "Would you like that? You used to sound like you'd much rather be able to move out of the city."
Shrubbery shrugged and replied, "I used to think that, but being in the center of the Empire is really pretty convenient. And I like having everyone come to spend time here, I think it would be cool if we could do it?"
MatchlessMinion clapped his little hands together and declared, "OK, the plan for our future guild hall is set!" Shrubbery giggled and Ryullusion smiled. MatchlessMinion turned to ZipZing and demanded, "Now explain about this quest?"
"Is it the new memory quest?" Aishin asked as he entered the garden. He flashed a grin and made a beeline for ZipZing and held up his hands for her to land on.
"How do you know about it?" Danika asked.
Saaki probably shouted into Aishin's ear as his voice came through Aishin's headset, "Don't start without us!"
Aishin replied calmly as Danika landed on his hands, "We won't." To her he said, "There was an update announcement when I logged in. Do you need to restart?"
"I'm restarting," MatchlessMinion announced.
"I saw the notice," Ryullusion said.
"You were talking about the update quest?" Shrubbery asked.
Aishin looked at ZipZing's expression and kissed her on the nose. "Restart, we'll wait for you," he instructed.
She didn't argue, and logged out. When she logged in again a moment later she was greeted by the usual black notification screen. She read it with a dazed feeling.
It made the hidden update public with a few simple lines: "In preparation for the Upcoming Expansion changes have been made to the way character data is stored. To celebrate this, a new quest has been added. Visit any shrine to the Twins to purchase the celestial token that will allow a character, a party, or even an entire guild to undertake the preservation or destruction of a character based Memory."
When she returned to the garden Aishin was saying, "If we wait for Kit I'll have time to get home so I can play from my console instead of my phone."
Shrubbery replied nervously as MatchlessMinion reappeared beside her, "Speaking of consoles, um… we gave away the VR-medi pod you gave us."
Aishin asked expressionlessly, "Why? I'd have taken it back if you didn't want to keep it?"
"It, it helped her so much!" Shrubbery explained nervously. "The hospital requested it. Um, they also cleared all the remaining bills, but they weren't as expensive as it was."
"The doctor practically bullied her dad into it," MatchlessMinion grumbled.
Shrubbery placed her hand on his furry head and said more firmly, "It will be loaned out for free to other terminal patients in the final stages."
MatchlessMinion crossed his arms and glared at Aishin, but Aishin only said gently, "That sounds like a good place for it then."
Danika zipped up to him and asked, "What would you have done with it anyway?"
Aishin flashed a grin at her and replied, "Nothing much, just kissed my girlfriend a little more often, and maybe taken her back to that hotspring like I promised once she's completed her ridiculously long quest."
ZipZing's wings sparkled pinkly and Shrubbery blurted, "Did you know that if you die while you're in it, you die like you're in a novel or a television drama?"
Everyone turned to stare at her. She waved her hands and explained, "She got hero time, or at least a really extended death scene. She said that all of these alarms went off when her heart stopped, and it kicked her offline and summoned emergency pickup all on its own. She was already at the hospital when I got there, and it was like she was hyper on sugar. They said it was all the adrenaline injected to restart her heart, it didn't work though. Her automatic breathing response stopped too, but it was keeping her blood oxygenated and circulating anyway. But she was kind of technically dead for hours before she stopped talking."
Danika didn't know how to respond, or even if she should be amazed or horrified.
MatchlessMinion scolded Shrubbery, "You'll scare ZipZing, she's in one right now."
Shrubbery gasped and told Danika, "No, no, don't be scared, it was amazing. It was wonderful. It gave us extra hours together that we couldn't have had any other way to say goodbye. She said she wasn't in pain, and we got to say all the things that everyone says they regret not saying, and listen to a lot of silly chatter. You're fine, don't worry."
"Yeah, I'm OK," Danika agreed.
Kit arrived a moment later, looked around at everyone and said, "Sorry I'm late? What am I late for?"
Danika laughed. It had only been a few days, but the few weeks in the game had rounded Kit's belly enough that there was no questioning the cause anymore.
"We're going to do the new quest with the whole guild, if you can stay long enough," Aishin told her.
"What about," Kit began and then caught sight of ZipZing. "Zip! You're back! You need to finish learning to transform so I can hug you!"
"It's not like you could hurt me with a hug," Danika pointed out. "I'm a dragon, I'm stronger than you are."
A second later Kit snatched her out of Aishin's hands and squeezed her tightly while complaining, "I miss having VR. It's just not the same. I can barely tell I'm holding you."
"Then let me go now?" Danika said in a voice muffled by the druid's arm in her face.