Nen turned on me like I’d done something to him.\u00a0 “Why don’t we have this game?” he accused.<\/p>\n
“Um,” I scratched my head.\u00a0 “Because I’m about a year behind in video games?\u00a0 And why…” I went with it, “Why would you care? Is there a secret fey Nintendo league or something?”<\/p>\n
He gave me the look that said once again I had disappointed him. \u00a0“We have sought your dreamers, your poets and your singers, those who balance on the edge of madness, teetering on the precipice of that which might be. Your wizards, your explorers, and yet it is in games of make-believe that you visit us. \u00a0Every island of the Neverneverland is populated by the dreams and wishes of children. \u00a0Do you forget the crazy wars you had with your neighbors from the deck of your treehouse, and yet it was turned into a ship of tall sails, and you navigated by the depth of the golden sunlight and the whispering of waves given sound by wind-tossed leaves? \u00a0You do not understand the hope given to those who cross into the mortal realms by games such as Mass Effect, where human and alien can live in a negotiated harmony, and sometimes even things like love. \u00a0We are your monsters so often, the trolls and goblins you make into stumbling blocks, sharing the names of kith and brethen and yet even the noble elf of Arda is an elevated perversion of our true natures.” \u00a0He shook his head. \u00a0“And yet, in games, do you dream. \u00a0Your demigods, your heroes, touched by the flickering fingers of the other… how can those of us who are the other not feel the kindredness of spirit?”<\/p>\n
I was moved, but I gathered up some of my concerns anyway. \u00a0“But the argument is that such games conquer and replace imagination, that they provide so much input that the potential for make-believe is railroaded into predestined paths where one’s stories are all the same.”<\/p>\n
“But is that how you play?” he asked. \u00a0“Do you not make up the motivations, change the choices of your characters and give them limits so you are not playing in the same world as your friend?”<\/p>\n
Ed chuckled. \u00a0“That’s true. \u00a0I might have defeated the great dragon the same way all my friends did because of the constraints of the story, but I made different choices up to that point. \u00a0Choices the game granted me, admittedly, but ones I justified in my own head, using my imagination.”<\/p>\n
I made a non-committal noise. \u00a0“But you can’t make choices the game won’t let you make.”<\/p>\n
Ed smiled. \u00a0“You could go running naked down the street, but you won’t. \u00a0How is that any different?”<\/p>\n
“We’re closer to South Boulder Road than Colfax?” I offered, trying to make it a joke.<\/p>\n
He gave me a similar look to Nen’s disappointed scowl.<\/p>\n
“Honestly, the difference is that I could. \u00a0Not that I won’t. \u00a0There are unkillable NPCs, there are a lack of consequences if I go into peoples’ houses and steal their stuff while they sleep. \u00a0How many of the old games let you steal their stuff, should the programmers have put any thing in there, while they were awake and in the house talking with you?”<\/p>\n
“You’re arguing realism,” he pointed out. \u00a0“The rules of our lives include things like thermodynamics and chemical reactions. \u00a0I think what Adam was saying is that when we throw out some of our rules, we’re closer to Faerie.”<\/p>\n
Nen gave a partial shrug of agreement. \u00a0He was reserving something.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, our lives have consequences,” I said. \u00a0I was surprised at how bitter it came out.<\/p>\n
“They do,” Nen said. \u00a0He stood closer to me for a moment, looking into my eyes. \u00a0“There are always consequences with monsters. \u00a0You forget how many children we’ve led away, dazed by the glamour of the arcade. \u00a0The lights, the sounds, the confusion, they make for a fertile feeding ground. \u00a0It’s not so easy these days to have a child trip into a ring of toadstools, or stand at a crossroads in the moonlight, or even open the wrong door.”<\/p>\n
Something about his last few words echoed in my head, and I moved away and grabbed for the arm of the awful blue couch to steady myself. \u00a0“But what about those Beyond? \u00a0You guys have no such rules. \u00a0We fake them in games and fiction, like that you can’t break your masquerade, or otherwise show yourselves to the general public, or that you bend reality to…” I stopped. \u00a0“You do that. \u00a0That part’s real enough.”<\/p>\n
“Bend it. \u00a0Even your most puissant wizards will not break it. \u00a0Have you ever wondered why?” \u00a0He took a step away from me.<\/p>\n
I thought it was because they couldn’t, but… maybe I was wrong.<\/p>\n
Ed seemed to be thinking about it. \u00a0“Doc here, he closes doors. \u00a0I’ve asked him probably a dozen times if not more why he does it. \u00a0Sometimes when he’s in his cups he says because they hurt him, and I think that’s true, and sometimes he has explained that such things leak or bleed into our reality, and really, I’ve seen that. \u00a0It’s weird and I don’t like it. \u00a0It’s uncomfortable. \u00a0But basically, he’s said that it’s wrong. \u00a0I don’t mean like in a moral judgment sort of way, but in a whole cycle sort of thing, like it disrupts a natural process.”<\/p>\n
“A virus has a natural process,” Nen said.<\/p>\n
“As do parasites,” Ed countered. \u00a0“But we’ve given a denigration to that word for a reason. \u00a0It’s an unbalancing of the forces. \u00a0It’s a relationship that is taking advantage of someone, and that’s a violation of what is right.” \u00a0He shrugs. \u00a0“Maybe I make it too simple for your wizards and your magical creatures, but that’s kind of where I am.”<\/p>\n
He sat on the couch. “I have to think of these things. \u00a0I’m an exterminator. \u00a0I work with the way bugs think. \u00a0I have to know that this kind likes warm, dark places, and where the warm dark places of the house might be. \u00a0It’s not unnatural for mice to get into your walls; it’s safer for them. \u00a0Better place to raise their young. \u00a0Same thing with all sorts of creepy-crawlies.” \u00a0He shrugged. \u00a0“But we’ve drawn lines in the sand. \u00a0We’ve said, ‘This is our territory and we don’t want you here because what’s good for you is not good for our kind.’ \u00a0And that’s where I leave it. \u00a0I eradicate flies and mosquitoes where I can. \u00a0They bring disease. \u00a0On the other hand,\u00a0I relocate bees, not spray them. \u00a0I have a friend who does the same thing for critters who haven’t gone too far into a comfort zone with humanity. \u00a0It’s like the coyote problem; they’re not scared of us, so they won’t obey the rules we expect. \u00a0What’s it they say in India? \u00a0A tiger who has gotten a taste of human won’t stop. \u00a0Not that we’re super-delicious, just that our rules are being broken – we live on the top of the food chain and anything that tries to take us down is a danger. \u00a0E, here, he draws the line in the sand. \u00a0He closes the door because we’ve got our territory and magical creatures have theirs. Maybe I’m not paying attention to the bedbugs’ feelings, but sometimes you have to decide who you’re going to put first.”<\/p>\n
I almost clapped — that was quite the speech — but it would have sounded super patronizing. \u00a0“I think… Wizards respect rules more than other people,” I said, slowly. \u00a0“They have to work within them, integrate themselves with the limits and become really intimate with the boundaries. \u00a0If they don’t,” I had a sudden idea, “if they don’t,” I repeated, “they find themselves out of it. \u00a0They slip Between. \u00a0Could that be some of what makes other worlds?”<\/p>\n
Nen just smiled. \u00a0He seemed less upset with me. \u00a0“Good,” he said. \u00a0“You’re starting to think.”<\/p>\n
“I’m always thinking,” I complained.<\/p>\n
“Yes, even when we should be drinking,” Ed said. \u00a0He opened the bags up to look at our selections. \u00a0“Hmmm,” he pondered. \u00a0He got some glasses out from the little shelf area we called our bar since, well, forever. \u00a0“Movies or, well, now I hesitate to offer them, but games?”<\/p>\n
“First,” Nen said, “a toast.” \u00a0He pulled a small flask out of a pocket of his coat, and poured about a finger’s worth into each of our cups. \u00a0“To the interstices,” he said, passing us each a cup. \u00a0It smelled like a spiced mead. \u00a0“Where friends meet and lovers linger, to the weaver and the spinner, the wizard and the wise man, the maiden and those lovely women less than,” he waggled his eyebrows dramatically and then drank.<\/p>\n
Ed grinned, “Lovely women and men less than,” he corrected and drank.<\/p>\n
I just raised my cup and then drank my share.<\/p>\n
If you have never tasted faerie wine it makes no difference how I describe it. \u00a0It wouldn’t be the same for you that it is to me. \u00a0There was no elderberry, clove, or ginger, and it burned and cooled the throat at the same time. \u00a0It lasted on the tongue, a bouquet of spice and soothe, a place of intersection and a place of too many doorways. \u00a0You could get drunk on a drop and stay sober on a gallon, but the amount Nen poured was just right. \u00a0It did not taste of alcohol at all, yet just sniffing it made me feel like I was on the philosophical drink of the night. \u00a0It seemed almost a waste to drink anything after it.<\/p>\n
Ed damned Nen most whole-heartedly after the moment of silence that accompanied the drink. \u00a0“And furthermore, sir,” he used a set of epithets that surprised me with their vehemence. \u00a0“Now anything we taste is going to be terrible in comparison. \u00a0You pull that kind of stuff at the end of the night when you’re ready to think and then pass out.”<\/p>\n
Nen just smiled. \u00a0“Games, then?” he asked, reaching for a controller.<\/p>\n
After a while I couldn’t say the taste faded, but it did impact what else we had, even the glasses of water Ed’s mom brought with her (and the snack; she makes a mean queso-bean dip.) \u00a0She shared a few drinks with us before excusing herself and asking that we try not to tromp around upstairs after 3am. \u00a0What can I say? \u00a0She’s a mom.<\/p>\n
Nen trounced me at the battle games. \u00a0As a matter of fact, I think I broadly if still vaguely accused him of cheating until I went up against Ed and he trounced me, too. \u00a0On the other hand, I’m a bit of a button masher when I don’t know the system. \u00a0(Although I’ve learned to try multiple hits of the same button and facing unusual directions to try to find power moves.) \u00a0Ed and Nen were pretty well matched, but Nen won most of the time. \u00a0We changed games about fifteen minutes before Zach was expected to make it over.<\/p>\n
“So he’s here most of the time?” I asked Ed.<\/p>\n
Ed nodded. \u00a0“Yeah, we’ve been talking about getting a place.”<\/p>\n
“Sounds serious. \u00a0Moving out from mom’s and all?”<\/p>\n
“Mum’s actually the reason I’ve stayed. \u00a0She’s been really good about Zach and I, but I know the house would be very big and very lonely. \u00a0She’s… she doesn’t need my help exactly, but she needs someone around. \u00a0Someone to cook for,” he grinned. \u00a0“Which is probably one of the reasons she likes Zach. \u00a0He may be tiny, but he can put away food like he was…”<\/p>\n
“Don’t reach for a metaphor. \u00a0We were young men once.”<\/p>\n
“Hey, I’m not that much older than him.”<\/p>\n
“Wiser in the ways of the world,” I pontificated. \u00a0“Master of many secrets, conqueror of things creepy and crawling,” I began. \u00a0“Hey, did you know I have a song?”<\/p>\n
“Doc, if someone wrote a dirty limerick for you and you set it to music, that does not qualify.”<\/p>\n
“No, it was sung by a spriggan. \u00a0That’s got to be worth something.”<\/p>\n
“Can you sell it on eBay?”<\/p>\n
I didn’t look at Nen. \u00a0“Nope.”<\/p>\n
“Then it’s not worth anything. \u00a0Greatest Spriggan Hits, volume 4, Songs of the Door Doctor.”<\/p>\n
“Hey, I’m not making fun of you for living at home with your mom. \u00a0This was a real thing. \u00a0Like a poem.”<\/p>\n
“I wouldn’t make fun of his mother,” Nen piped up from where he was crafting armor. \u00a0“Not a powerful witch like her.”<\/p>\n
“A what?” I hit my head against the side of the couch. \u00a0“Oh no. \u00a0Not another one.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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