Reeve returned to her seat and took up the branch and hatchet. Although focused on her work, she listened carefully to the sounds of the forest should danger find them. She occasionally glanced at her father, who was either practicing accessing his Inventory or suffering from an extremely itchy back. She completed the handle of the shovel first and then began shaping the blade, which would be narrow, limited by the diameter of the branch. When half-finished, she looked up. Her father had four objects, including the bee smoker, arrayed in front of him in a semicircle. He wore a toothy halfling grin. As she watched, he picked up the bee smoker and dropped it over his right shoulder. Crlack-k-kak. He turned to stare at it. Reeve resumed working the wood, now making only small strikes to chip away the final excess from the blueprint she could see overlaid onto the nearly finished tool.

Whump. She jerked her head up. A second object—a broad bound book—lay behind her father next to the bee smoker. She blew a strand of dark hair away from her face and thought uncomfortably that their situation was reminding her much more than she’d have liked of babysitting Avery Monklee from across the street. Though, to be fair, two-year-old Avery would probably be better at this than her father. But, at least her father was entertaining himself right now. She stowed her hatchet and examined the finished shovel, checking for any deviations from the blueprint. She’d learned the hard way that even small imperfections could have a major impact on the durability and effectiveness of crafted objects.

Reeve looked back up at her father. There were no longer any objects on the ground in front of him…because they were all now on the ground behind him. She must not have noticed the quiet fall of the bee veil or of the quill and inkpot. She rose from her seat. Her father looked up at her and gave a weak smile. Running her hand carefully up and down the shaft of the shovel to check for potential splinters, she walked around the buried halfling to retrieve the objects and placed them on the ground in front of him. “I’m going to dig. You keep trying. Think of your Inventory as you hold the object behind your back.” She dropped the cutting edge of the shovel to the ground next to him.

“Ohhhhhh.” He nodded at her. “I was thinking of the object.”

She placed her foot on the cut-out step at the top of the blade and leaned her weight onto it. The blade sank smoothly into the packed dirt, nearly to her foot. She smiled, bent, levered the handle, and tossed aside the dirt pried loose. She took more scoops, slowly backing around her father, a shallow trench following her. She was starting her second complete circuit when her father gave a small whoop and used his thumbs to twang both suspenders.

“Did it!” He grinned so broadly at the empty ground before him that his pointed ears were pulled down and out slightly by his taut cheeks.

“Good job,” she said, finding that she really meant it and doing a double-take to look more closely at him. For a moment, she’d seen him only as a halfling, a legit inhabitant of this world, instead of her dad. “Have you ever worn suspenders before?” She resumed shoveling.

“Never! But I must say I’m enjoying it.” He twanged both straps again.

“That’s just great, Dad.” Her father finding a previously unrecognized love for suspenders was not what Reeve wanted him to take back to real life. She shook off the tragic mental image and looked up to find the sun high in the sky. She switched feet and tried to shovel faster.

“Can I help?”

“You can start trying to dig out the loose stuff between you and the trench.”

Walter nodded and began scooping tiny handfuls of dirt and throwing them aside.

When, after twenty minutes, they exposed his knees, Reeve dropped the shovel, panting from the continuous effort. “I’m going to try to pull you out. Just let me know if I should stop.”

“Because you might accidentally hurt me?”

“Well, yeah. I’ve torn limbs off people in combat before.”

His eyebrows tented. “That’s a little close to home.”

“Trust me, I’ll be careful. The last thing I want to do is accidentally kill you and have you respawn right here, free of the ground, after all this work.” She snorted at the thought, but then saw her father tucking his arms into his sides protectively. “I mean of course the main thing is that I don’t want to rip your arms off…or your legs…any part of you really…listen, this isn’t getting any better, just let me try to pull you out, I’ll be careful, OK?”

With a small nod, he raised both arms. Reeve, who was almost four times the height of her partially buried father, became even more uncomfortable with how much she felt like she was babysitting. She bent to grasp him under each arm and started pulling, gently at first, until she was beginning to actually strain.

“Evie?” Her father’s exhaled question sounded as though it had literally been wrung from his body.

She lightened her force. “No good?”

“It started to feel like my feet might come off.”

“Of course.” She let him go entirely. “Halfling feet. I’ll keep digging.”

She sat next to him, legs crossed, and bent to work the shovel around him, taking only small amounts of dirt at a time.

“Wait, wait!” Walter said, ten minutes after she’d attempted to pluck him. “Feels looser down there. Let’s try again.” He raised his arms.

Reeve swung the shovel into her Inventory and then stood to pull. He came loose immediately, and she set him down next to the hole.

“That’s better!” He wiggled his hairy toes to dislodge dirt still packed between them. “Good work, Kiddo.”

Reeve shook her head as she squatted to brush dust and clumps of dirt from his breeches. Swiping down one side of his pants, his leg felt to her as thin as a broomstick.

“Dad, could I…” She bent lower and slid the cuff of one leg higher on his calf. She kept going, the cuff not catching as it rose smoothly past his knee and up his thigh. “What the heck? These are like Grandpa Franklin’s legs.” She wrapped her hand around his thigh just above the knee and her fingertips overlapped her thumb.

Her father bent from the waist to consider his legs. “These aren’t normal for a halfling?”

“I don’t think so.” She sat back on her heels. “How did you distribute your Strength points?”

“Strength—“

“—when we were in the dentist office, and you were building your avatar, you had to choose how to distribute your Strength point allotment across your halfling’s body. She waved her large hand around, taking in his chest, arms, and legs. “Where’d you put them?”

“You’d said that the setup didn’t matter, since we’d only be taking a quick look at the game, so I just tried to choose whatever was quickest. For that Strength part…,” he looked up and pushed out his little hairless jaw as he thought, “I think the picture of the halfling started with one point everywhere, so I just put all the rest into the first spot.”

“The first spot? At the top? The arms?”

“Yes, I believe that’s right.”

They both looked down at Walter’s halfling body.

“Could you roll up a sleeve?”

“Sure.” He unbuttoned the sleeve of his shirt and began rolling the fabric. After two turns, he said, “Well, that’s different.”

They both stared at his thickly muscled forearm.

Walter reached across his body with one hand to feel his other bicep. “Hmm,” he said, jutting his lower lip appreciatively. He flexed the bicep he was feeling. “My goodness!”

Reeve rested her elbows on her knees and held either side of her head. “You’re ripped, Dad.” She reached out and wrapped one hand around his side, giving him a gentle squeeze. Despite the little pot belly that protruded between his suspenders, at chest level she could feel his ribs, easily. “Your arms are ripped. The rest of you is skinny, and all of it’s perched on chicken legs.”

Walter chuckled. “Well, I guess halflings aren’t known for being big, right?“

“It’s not that. It’s that we’re going to have to travel by foot until we figure out how to log out, and I can’t imagine you’re going to be able to move very fast or very far on…” Reeve gestured at the sticklike ankles visible below his breeches then covered her face with her hands.

“You OK, Baby?”

She nodded, ran her hands through her hair, and coughed away the sob threatening to escape her throat.

“What is it?”

She let out a breath that caught a few times before she was ready to speak. “I just need a minute.” She wiped her nose with the back of one hand. “I’m going to go down to the stream to get some water. Can you wait here?”

“You want me to wait here?”

“Yes, I want you to wait here. Can you do that?”

“Of course.”

“You’ll wait right here?”

“If that’s what you want, Honey.”

“That is what I want. Would you mind sitting there?” Reeve pointed to the downed trunk.

“Sit on that tree?”

“Yes, would you mind sitting on that tree trunk until I get back?”

“Not at all.” Walter ambled over to the trunk and took a seat. He looked from side to side and then leaned back against a tree behind him.

“I just can’t get over how realistic everything is,” he said. “But it’s a game!” He chuckled softly. “And you! Running around and making shovels and digging holes! Fan-tastic.”

“I’m glad someone’s enjoying it, Dad.” Reeve turned toward the stream and pointed. “So, I’ll be back in a few minutes.” She turned back toward him and pointed to the trunk. “And you’ll wait right there.”

“Right here.”

She nodded.

He crossed his ankles in front of him, gave her a twee halfling wave, and then intertwined his fingers behind his head, the very picture of a content halfling who was definitely not going anywhere.