Danika flew straight forward as fast as possible. She renewed her invisibility and the featherweight instantly when they wore off, and within a few minutes she was zipping over the river and into the forest. She darted into a tree and messaged Aishin that she was out, but in a different direction.

She eyed the familiar dark stone. If one of her friends had been waiting anxiously inside, she'd have already entered to let them know that they were outside the town. But she just didn't know what to think of Xander.

Aishin found the tree she was hiding in within another handful of minutes. Danika darted down to him and handed him the stone. Aishin raised his eyebrows at her.

"I haven't told him he's out yet," she admitted.

Aishin's eyes crinkled at the corners, but he didn't laugh. "Let's move farther from the town first then," he suggested quietly.

Danika nodded, and a moment later they were rushing south and east at the same speed they'd used to approach the town. ZipZing sparkled brightly as she followed Aishin through the forest like a little kite. He stopped at the edge of a peaceful looking meadow, that was shining golden in the approaching sunset.

Aishin set down the stone and entered. When he didn't reappear a minute later, Danika dropped beside it and said, "darkheart".

She appeared in the stone room with her Wind Slash ready, but dropped her aggressive pose when she saw that Xander was hugging Aishin and exclaiming, "Thank you so much! I knew you must have had auto reject turned on!"

Aishin's face wore a grimace, and he tried to pry Xander off, but the other man clung to him with the determination of an octopus.

Danika suppressed a laugh and pointed at the center stone. Aishin blinked and then smiled. He pulled Xander sideways far enough to get his foot onto the stone and said, "Exit!"

Aishin logged off before Danika made it out. She turned and watched as Xander danced around the meadow hugging his Dusky Sea Snake's aquarium. He laughed and asked, "I guess I look a bit crazy?"

"A bit," Danika agreed.

"I've been sitting here for hours, afraid to log off without being able to put this new stone in my inventory!" Xander explained.

"No one else can put it in their inventory when a player is inside, even if you're logged out," Danika explained kindly.

Xander stopped dancing around and turned to stare at her. "Seriously?" he demanded.

"Yeah," she replied with a grin. "I don't know if that applies to NPCs too, but it might," she warned.

"Wow! Cool," Xander exclaimed. "Let's test it!"

"I need to go too," Danika demurred against assisting.

Xander spun and demanded, "Wait!"

She blinked and asked warily, "Why?"

"Where are we? I came up the river from the ocean!" Xander complained.

Danika laughed. She turned and pointed, "Kalunay is in that direction." She spun and pointed east, "And the human capital should be out that way somewhere, it's got portals to every big racial capital as well as a portal of return."

Xander huffed, but then shrugged and said, "Well, ok. I guess that will do, it's been ages since I went there anyway. Have a good day then."

Danika didn't explain that she was logging out for the night, she simply nodded. She wrote a quick message to Shrubbery and another to Kit explaining how the cub's return to his mother had gone.

Xander said, "I'm so jealous that you get the cub as your messenger."

"I've definitely never seen one like your walrus though," Danika replied laughingly, and quickly logged out.

--

She slept well despite all the questions still bouncing around in her head when she closed her eyes. She had another string of messages waiting when she checked in the morning after completing her exercises.

MatchlessMinion wrote: "Aishin sent me the blanket Sea Song Tione used when I asked, and it's awesome. It's weird, because you'd think a blanket would just make you hotter, but it's comfortable. Thanks for the suggestion."

Danika replied: "At least it's magical, what's weirder is that in the real world long black robes are cooler than going naked in the really hot deserts."

Aishin had sent his usual short greeting, and a phone number. Danika changed her mind three times before replying with an equally short greeting as a text.

Shrubbery had sent her pebble and was already online. Her message read: "Sorry, and the snow leopard messenger is super cute, even if he's not gold. Also, I looked, and you can't actually buy a walrus messenger! Xander must have gotten it from a quest too. I went back to my garden because it's been another week in the game since I tended it."

Danika replied: "That's cool. I'm mostly only going to work on finishing collecting the rest of the plants I need for the familiar spell until my interview anyway."

After finishing up with the messages, she logged in from her phone before her shift started and flew to the nearest village. There she inquired where the nearest town with a portal was, and flew onward whenever she had a bit of idle time during her shift.

On her lunch break Danika returned to the human capital and bartered the goldenberries in the market for the seeds of more of the plants she and Aishin would need. There was one that she couldn't find anywhere, and even the traveling merchant said he couldn't sell her any.

Danika dithered for awhile, and then sent Justin the Grey another friend request. It was instantly rejected, even though he didn't seem to be online. She growled at her screen in much the same tone the snow leopard cub had. After a moment she sent Quin a message: "Justin has me on auto reject or something, so I can't ask him directly, but could you find out where he got a plant called Winter Gem? Or if he has a seed he could trade to me?"

She hastily flew ZipZing to a rooftop and entered her garden to plant the rest of the plants she'd acquired. The spell didn't indicate a particular age or anything for the leaves needed, so only the flowers would be tricky to have ready in time.

For the rest of the afternoon, Danika did not play on the side, she had her phone read to her while she worked. She began by listening to all of the official publications about "Living Jade Empire". She avoided all of the unofficial speculations about the game, and stuck to just what Starcraft Technologies and their associated companies had published.

She was still listening when her shift ended, and had only scratched the surface. Not only were there large sections of the game's site that she'd skipped over, like she'd originally skipped the information about dwarves, but there were tons of publications about the systems that "Living Jade Empire" was designed to show off.

Other than during her own VR-medi pod purchase, she hadn't ever tried to research the hardware the company designed. She sat near her window, beside her houseplants in the small patch of late afternoon sun, after she finished her shift. She listened to several more articles, before suddenly realizing that this was when she usually met up with Kit. She felt guilty about having not considered the girl at all as she'd played on the mobile version earlier.