Chapter 288: 25: A Heart’s Instance

They all ate an impossibly large number of desserts. ZipZing's human transformation wore off while they were still eating, but Aishin just grinned at her and handed back her pebble's harness. Everything tasted the same as either fairy dragon or human, the desserts just seemed that much larger.

Even SilentSky tried all of the different desserts available. After a bit, Danika decided that she just didn't know him very well yet. He frowned at her so often that she had assumed that he didn't like her very much, but Aishin and Nao1 acted like the neutral face that he wore while eating was a cheerful expression for him.

Nao1 really did take her shopping afterward, even though her human transformation had worn off. Shrubbery and Kit logged on in time to participate too.

Danika protested their enthusiasm for the project with, "But why does it matter what my clothes look like when I can only wear them for a couple of bells per day? It's just more things to cram into my inventory."

"You can just get rid of the set you were wearing," Nao1 declared.

"Were they really that bad?" Shrubbery questioned.

"No, they were fine," Aishin answered first.

"Did you take her picture?" Kit asked with interest.

"Yeah," Aishin admitted, and Danika turned and gazed at him with surprise. He shrugged.

"They are pretty ordinary. They don't look much different than a basic starter outfit, so why buy that?" Nao1 complained.

"I didn't have a starter outfit," Danika pointed out.

Aishin glanced at her, but didn't say anything.

Kit told Danika persuasively, "It's not like you have to store one set of clothes, since except for your storage items, the ones you're wearing when you transform from human stay as part of your moonlight belt ZipZing."

Danika gave in and she had to admit that the outfit they picked out for her wasn't nearly as frilly as she'd feared from the types of things Nao1 wore. The green outfit sort of matched her scales, and the merchant who sold it to them boasted that the fabric had enough flex enchanted into it that it could fit everything from a small fairy to a large Bearmin.

She wasn't entirely sure if she was relieved that it wouldn't shrink all the way down to pixie size or not. She thought it would have looked pretty silly on her dragon form.

--

After they bought ZipZing's outfit, Kit headed back to the desert because she had another boundary quest. ZipZing could set the most basic boundary now too, so there were a few boundary setting quests coming up as guild quests now, but this one was a personal quest that she'd been guided to by the traveling merchant.

She didn't know if she was just tormenting herself by seeking him out everyday, or if just seeing his face was kind of comforting.

She saw him across the busy square in Fogton as she made her way to the new portal dais for Tianxia, the official name given to what everyone was coming to know as the City of Sand. He was also standing in the town square there when she arrived.

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She couldn't help it, she detoured automatically as her feet carried her over to him.

"Good evening my dearest friend," he greeted her warmly.

"Hello," she replied simply.

"I have heard many lovers tell each other that the name of their beloved one doesn't matter to them, but just as many insist that the name is of utmost importance," he commented questioningly.

Kit gazed at him for a long moment before replying, "For me the person has always been more important than the name."

She wanted to hug him and tell him that she'd never cared that he didn't have a proper name, but she already knew that he would now step away from her after only the briefest moment.

"Many adventurers reincarnate into a new life, but claim that they are the same person. How do they know if they are the same person?" he asked.

Kit gazed at him for a long moment with a baffled expression. She wished she'd asked ZipZing to come along. The younger girl had a lot of experience with games and was good at explaining things that seemed weird to Kit. But she knew that the young couple wanted to spend the last of their brief shared VR time together.

"You just know who you are, I guess?" Kit ventured. A white cat stalked along a half built wall at the edge of the square, and Kit suddenly thought of a comparison. "ZipZing said that the King of Cats had reincarnated as a snow leopard cub, but he was still the King of Cats, right?"

After a moment the merchant suggested, "So as long as you are still who you have been, you can be someone else as well, but you are still the same person?"

Kit nodded uncertainly. It seemed like a very complicated question.

"Do you want to be the wife of someone else, who would still be the same person then, since you can't be my wife anymore?" the traveling merchant asked curiously.

Kit froze. She glanced around warily, but no one else was standing near them at that moment. "I don't care what your name is," she whispered. The crack in her voice startled her, and she realized suddenly that she had started crying. She forced out the rest of what she wanted to say anyway, stubbornly, "But someone who just looks like you wouldn't really be you, I won't do what Lin Hao suggested and marry a copy."

The merchant gazed at her with a bland expression that suddenly annoyed her. He obviously didn't understand. A shattered laugh escaped her when he said, "I don't understand, you have never seemed to care which instance of the traveling merchant you were speaking with. Many people have called my different selves copies, and I often have a somewhat different appearance due to changes in my equipment?"

"But they are all you, you know what I said to you halfway across the world, all of our experiences together are stored within," her words stumbled, because she knew he wasn't really human, but she didn't know what the equivalent would be, "within your heart."

"Within my heart," he repeated. He went very still and Kit watched him nervously. She wondered if she should be messaging ZipZing, or maybe Silvam, if the elf really was Lin Hao.

Before she decided, he nodded to her and said simply, "Then I can be someone else and also the same person."

He gave her a warm smile, no different from a thousand warm smiles she'd received from him, and her heart rate skyrocketed.

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