It was the smell of hot food wafting tantalizingly in the air that finally drew Rebecca out of her deep slumber. Stretching, she breathed deeply, smiled, and then slowly sat up in the bed. “Smells like strawberry pancakes,” she observed, while glancing around the room.

“Strawberry Eggos,” Matthew corrected, as he gently slid a silver covered tray onto the bed to the side of her. Sitting down gingerly beside the tray, Matthew slowly pulled back the lid to reveal to large plates piled high with waffles, strawberries, and whipped cream, as pinkish-red syrup drained slowly down the top and pooled around them. A large cup containing a light green liquid steamed and gave off a strong herbal odor, on either side of the tray.

“Looks good,” Rebecca laughed, “but where’s the silverware?”

Matthew half turned away and coughed lightly, before picking up one of the plates and slowly pulling one of the waffles off the stack and sticking the edge into his mouth. “Who needs forks?” He asked, as syrup slowly dribbled down his chin and back onto the plate. “Those are for those plebian NPCs. We’re too good for things like that.”

“Oh, we are?!” Rebecca asked with a half laugh. “Speak for yourself. I happen to like being able to eat like a civilized person.”

“Umm… Can we call it training?” Matthew asked, half sheepishly. “To build up your tolerance to holding hot things?”

“No, we can not,” Rebecca laughed, as she finally picked up the plate in front of her and tried to find the best waffle to start with without making a total mess out of herself or the bed. “You just don’t want to admit that you didn’t have any silverware in this big ass castle.”

“It’s not an ass castle,” Matthew said defensively. “Not big or otherwise. It’s a good castle. Just a little hard to heat sometimes.”

“Oh really?” Dabbing gently at some syrup at the corner of her mouth, Rebecca cocked an eyebrow in his direction. “How’s the cell coverage here?”

“It’s fantastic,” Matthew boasted, giving a thumbs-up. “I’ll have you know, I haven’t had a single telemarketer call me here, nor any of the political advertisers. I haven’t even had a satisfaction survey from my phone provider wake me up in the middle of the night and annoy me!”

Laughing, Rebecca finally gave up and just shook her head lightly as the continued their gentle banter back and forth while eating that morning and sipping on the strange green tea, which seemed to help clear the thick cobwebs from her head and left an odd tingling sensation in the back of her throat.

All in all, breakfast wasn’t a bad time and when it was over, Rebecca felt more like her old self since she had from when this had all started.

After breakfast, she followed Matthew back down to the massive dining rooms and kitchen area, and helped scrub the plates and try clean in a small tub of what which seemed put aside for that purpose. Laughing lightly, and trying to ignore the fact that she didn’t have any clothes yet to wear, she followed him back down for a quick dip in the pool once more to wash the sticky residue of the syrup, and the previous night’s passion, from their bodies.

It was after getting out of the pool that Matthew showed her where he’d hung her clothes and bracers upon one of the many benches which lined the edges of the pool, and she finally took time to get dressed. “So,” Rebecca asked, as she fastened the protective silver bracers around her ankles, “what are we going to do today?”

“We’re going to head back to the school,” Matthew told her with a light twinkle in his eyes, “and then you’re going to hunt and kill the gibberlings there while we search the place for anything you might can wear, and to see if there’s any sign of Kristy there yet. She may have found a spot to hide, or gotten away. We can’t know for certain, until we go look for her.”

“Kristy. Kristy. Kristy,” Rebecca mocked teasingly. “What is it with all you guys and her? You’ve got me now,” she reminded him with a half out. “What do you want her for?”

Matthew stopped for a moment and slowly ran his hands through his hair, taking time to actually think about the question. Finally, he just shrugged and half blushed. “Damned if I know really,” he added, sheepishly. “I think it’s more the idea of her and not really her that I wanted. This last year has been hell on me, stuck in the psych ward at the hospital for a while, and then placed under house arrest for a while for ‘observation’. I was bored out of my mind, and even being able to travel here and then visit some of the dungeons and all, I was alone all that time.

“I guess to keep me sane, I let myself build up this whole huge fantasy of me saving the cheerleader, wooing her, winning her, making her mine… I know it’s not real,” Matthew chuckled lightly, “and chances are, if I do manage to find her, I probably won’t even like her. But…” Letting his voice trail off for a moment, he half shrugged. “I guess that fantasy is something I’ve built up so long, and which I’ve relied on so much to keep me going, it’s not something I can just sit aside and give up so easily.

“It’s stupid,” Matthew coughed, “but it is what it is.”

“I don’t think it’s stupid,” Rebecca reassured him, comfortingly. “A day of this has been almost enough to make me question my own sanity, and I’ve had you here to talk to, teach me, and protect me. A whole year of being by yourself and people calling you crazy? I can see why you’d build up some fantasy to keep you going. I just hope the reality doesn’t tear you down, if it doesn’t match up to your expectations.”

“It’ll be what it’ll be, I guess,” Matthew shrugged stoically, starting to sound a little depressed.

“So why are we going back to the school anyway?” Rebecca asked, to change the subject and lighten the mood somewhat. “I still need to find my purse, wherever it went,” she reminded him.

Puzzled, Matthew asked, “What for? What the hell do you girls keep in those things that are so damnable important?”

“Birth control pills,” Rebecca stated calmly, arching an eyebrow in his direction, as if daring him to say they weren’t important, “and my phone are the two things I want most. My phone has pictures of my family. Has my life on it; at least it had my life on it, before this mess started. I don’t want to lose it.”

“Then today might just be your lucky day,” Matthew smirked. “I bet I’ve got your purse here somewhere.” Rubbing his ring to open the black hole again, he started pulling out dozens of purses, backpacks, and bags, and stacking them all in a pile in front of him. “I bet it’s in this mess somewhere,” he added, laughing as Rebecca’s eyes widened at the ever increasing stack of bags he was pulling out.

After a few moments, Rebecca yelled, “That’s it!”, as he pulled a plain denim pocketbook from the hole and went to toss it on the stack. “At least, I think it is,” she told him again, a little quieter this time. Holding it out to her, she took it and began rummaging around checking the contents of the purse. “It’s mine,” she confirmed, pulling out a small white pill case, popping a tiny pink pill out, and then swallowing it.

“Quest interface active,” Matthew commanded and then stared off into space, looking at something in front of him that only he could see. “Create quest called ‘Search for Heart of School’. Quest details are ‘to search the abandoned school and see if the creatures there have created a dungeon heart.’ Quest rewards are ‘one silver coin from Hel’. Quest failure penalty is ‘duty to serve quest giver for twenty-four hours and do anything they command’.”

Matthew took a moment to staring at whatever it was only he could see in front of him, looking as if he was reading something, before he finally nodded to himself. “Finish quest creation,” he stated, “and offer quest to Rebecca.”

Rebecca blinked a few times as a quest screen only she could see suddenly blinked into existence before her. “Accept it,” Matthew told her. “Quests are an important way to grow in this new world,” he explained.

“I accept,” Rebecca agreed, chewing on the bottom of her lip slightly in uncertainty. She didn’t like the penalty associated with failure of the quest, but she tried to tell herself that it really wasn’t all that different from what Matthew had already done with her last night.

“Good deal,” Matthew said encouragingly, giving her a thumbs up. “You’ve now got your first quest.”

“That’s nice, I suppose,” Rebecca replied, uncertain. “I don’t quite understand how it works yet,” she admitted.

“It’s simple,” Matthew grinned. “Just do what the quest description says and then you can get the reward. If you give up and quit before finishing it, you have to pay the penalty.”

“And you can make quests?” Rebecca asked wearily. “Can I?”

“Any player of the game can make official quests like these,” Matthew informed her, “and it’s up to the quest giver to choose what the reward is. You can even offer up some of your own experience as an award, but I don’t think you’ll ever see a player do something like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because you can only give experience as an award to someone of lower level than you, and you have to give experience as a percent. If I offered ten percent experience as an award to you, you’d get ten percent experience when you finished the quest and I’d lose ten percent – and it’s a lot more work to earn experience the higher you level becomes. Only a fool would offer up their experience to another in such a manner. Ten percent of a level to you might be a single gibberling killed. Ten percent for me might would take a thousand. It’s just not worth it,” Matthew explained.

“So I could’ve given you a quest to find my pocketbook?” Rebecca asked, making certain she understood.

“You could’ve,” Matthew agreed, “but you didn’t. You didn’t offer an award, set a penalty, or offer it officially. I just found it for you because you wanted it. I didn’t get anything from you for doing it,” Matthew insisted.

“Then can NPCs give quests?” Rebecca asked, as a different thought crossed her mind.

“They can,” Matthew informed her, “but I don’t have a damn clue how they do it. The game must know somehow when they’re serious about the job and the payment because once a quest is taken, it can’t be altered and you can’t refuse payment. It’s an unbreakable, binding contract between the two people once it’s agreed upon. The game enforces it just like it enforces the dress code for certain classes and all.”

“I don’t quite understand how it all works,” Matthew shrugged. “I just know that it works. It’s just like the TV in my room – I don’t know exactly how it all works, but I know when I hit the up button on the remote, I can change channels with it.”

As Rebecca nodded, lost in her own thoughts, Matthew went over and wrapped both his arms around her, and asked gently, “Ready to go back to the school then? Ready to work on your first quest?”

“I am,” she nodded slightly.

“Then off we go!” Gathering his magic together, Matthew yelled, “RETURN TWO!” A moment later the shimmering pool was left empty and tranquil again, as rainbow reflections danced off the crystal pillars and shadows playfully danced across the pile of bags discarded and forgotten not far from the water’s edge.