Chapter 4: 4: Home at Last

Skye-

The light is beginning to die, and under the leaves, it might as well be night. I grab a strong-looking branch just in case I get jumped by a bug or animal or in the worst case, a player. With my increased strength and stamina it should be possible to take down someone at a similar level to me, but that’s a very strong should. 

While I was swimming, Ella sent me her current map data including the pinned location of our jungle home. You can see the general biomes of the entire map from spawn, but to get a good vision of the typography you have to travel to different areas and the game will fill in the map within a certain radius. There’s a stat in the menu called Awareness which I suspect will increase the radius of which the map will fill in around you, and probably other stuff, like giving you better night vision or something, maybe even better general senses. Could be useful to invest in. But the important part is that you can share your map data with people, which means sharing locations of homes and bases with your allies (aka your girlfriends). 

With that knowledge in hand, it’s just a straight line home to Ella and Tina. And sleep. I feel like I’m going to collapse from exhaustion. Walking straight is getting difficult, so I start using my stick as a cane to make sure I don’t trip in the jungle terrain. I’m almost there damnit, I just need to hang on a little bit longer! 

My trek takes me further and further into the heart of the rainforest. I can barely even keep my eyes open, but I ignore the tiredness and tell myself that it’s just a game. This tiredness isn’t real, and my digital body can take way more than this. But, as my half-closed eyes come upon a small wooden hut in a clearing between trees, and see the shapes of two people running to me as I collapse to the ground, I find that some limits can’t be broken. 

Ella-

It’s been a few hours since Skye collapsed outside, and she still hasn’t woken up. Tina and I have been sitting and looking after her since. I’m not sure if it helps or not since we’re in a game, but we’ve been soaking leaves in cold clean water from the stream nearby our hut and laying them on her forehead like a cold towel. 

“I’ve never seen anything like this in a game before, El. A player just collapsing for hours like this. Sleep is possible, sure. But…” Tina says.

“Collapsing is a different matter entirely, I know.” I sit by her side and stroke her back as she holds Skye’s hand. “She’ll be fine. Not like it would affect her real body at all anyway. Sooner or later she’ll wake up and everything will be right as rain.”

“Okay…”

I place my forehead against hers and stroke her hair. “It’ll be ok, really. Don’t be scared love.”

“Mhmm,” she murmurs in reply. I kiss her forehead and separate our embrace.

“Good girl. Now, how long has it been since you’ve last rested, hmm?”

“Uh… not since I got here I think.”

“So you should go and rest up too. I’ll look after Skye.”

“But-”

“No buts! We’ll wake you up once she wakes up. I don’t want both my girlfriends collapsing on me.”

“...Alright. Now that you’ve pointed it out I do feel like I’m about to collapse.”

“See? So go get some rest dear. I’ve got this.”

She nods in reply and heads into the other room of the hut with our big bed. In case we had a medical situation like this or a guest, I made a separate room with a few cots that I’m sitting in with Skye now. You can do a lot with building in this game. Once both of them are awake, we’ll have to do some experimenting.

 

***

Skye-

I rouse slowly from my slumber, being awoken by the soft and familiar breathing of Ella. I open my eyes and sure enough, it’s her, even if now she looks like the rainforest fused with my girlfriend. I could never mistake those sounds of her sleeping next to me, her hand interlaced with mine. I squeeze it a little, and she stirs.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” I say.

“Says the girl who collapsed outside and slept for a whole in-game day.”

“It’s good to see you, El.”

“You too, Skye.” She leans down and plants a quick kiss on my lips.

“So this is home base then? Where’s Tina?”

“Yep, we’re in the guest room/medbay. Tina’s sleeping in our bed, last I checked. She was close to collapsing from her trek over here. I had to basically shove her into bed.”

“I’m sure she would not complain about being shoved into bed by you babe.”

“Shut it! Before I shove you into bed!”

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“I would not complain either~”

She pouted and blushed, all cutesy like she always does when we tease her. God, I love this woman. 

“How long has Tina been resting?”

“Probably about… 4 hours? I haven’t kept track.”

“Hmm. We should probably let her rest a while longer. Wanna give me a tour of the place?”

“If you’re feeling up to it, definitely. Once we wake up Tina you’ll have to tell us about everything that’s happened since you spawned in.”

“It’s a helluva tale babe. As much as I love feeling like I’m in an action movie, I’m really glad to have some peace and quiet.”

She smiles and boops me on the nose, “Don’t jinx us now love.” 

“Oops! Sorry.” We both laugh at that, then quiet down when we realize that we have a sleeping girlfriend in just the other room. Don’t want to wake her. 

I get up from the bed and Ella gets up from her chair. “Tour then?” She whispers.

“Tour,” I reply.

***

Over the next hour or so, Ella showed me around our new home. Considering she just threw the place together soon after spawning, it was fucking impressive how big it was.

First, there was the medbay. There were several cots, but it was unlikely we’d have more than one or two people in there at a time. Ella said that we could also use it as a guest room for any allies we make too. I asked her what might happen if we have someone arrive in critical condition or with some kind of disease while others are staying with us. She was silent for a second, but she replied “I guess we just hope that the game isn’t programmed to spread any kind of disease. That or we’ll just make a proper guest room later. Separate from our hut for our safety.” It was a good enough answer for me.

We skipped over to our bedroom for the time being, since Tina was still sleeping. But from what I could guess is that it had a bed large enough for three and whatever amenities we might want or need. I hope that bed’s large enough… back when we first got our apartment we got a bed that was perfect for two, but way too small for three. Whoever slept in the middle didn’t have room for her own pillow and ran the risk of getting smushed between two sleeping girlfriends. Not to mention that it was hot and not in a good way. May we never have to suffer pain like that again. I trust Ella enough to know she probably remembered that fiasco and planned for it.

After that, she showed me the main room, which contained a small living space without much in it yet. Just a chabudai-like table and some soft green carpet-like material that Ella told me she crafted out of leaves using the game’s system. I don’t know how you would ever craft something like this by hand. In the same room was also a rudimentary kitchen that we could use to prepare some dishes. Cooking would probably have to be outside until we learn some way to get electricity working in this game though. A bit sad, but fire-cooked food has its own merits, and if we can make some pots then we can boil and make soups and stews. Even the thought of it had me feeling hungry. I wasn’t sure how long I could last without food, but Ella told me she had some traps set up nearby for some small game that we can check after Tina wakes up. 

Finally, she showed me up the stairs of the main room that led to the roof. It had some railing surrounding it that could work as low cover during an attack and it was raised up enough that we could have vantage over the entire clearing. Without thinking of tactics, the view was incredible. Our little clearing was a little overgrown heaven surrounded by a dangerous jungle. The chances of anyone stumbling upon it were low, so it truly felt like it was ours alone. 

I grab Ella’s hand as we look out over the clearing. It may not be much yet, sure, but this was that moment when you realize that you’re home. Standing there with one of the women that you love, looking out over the land that is yours, not just because you own it, but because you feel that it is a part of you just as you are a part of it. “You know El?” I say, “Don’t you kinda feel like we have two homes now?”

She squeezes my hand and lays her head on my shoulder–she’s a bit shorter than me, just like in real life–and gives an “mhmm,” in reply. “I think moments like these are why I love VR so much. You can live all these different lives and feel like you’re truly living in each one. It’s just not the same when you’re playing on a screen. Here I can feel the way the floorboards creek under my feet as I walk through the kitchen, the subtle differences in how your hand feels in mine between our game bodies, even though you grasp it in just the same way, so I still know it’s you. And I think most of all I love how colorful everything is, even if I’m used to it now after playing VR for years.”

She doesn’t talk about it often, but Ella has pretty bad color blindness–Tritanopia–and so full-dive VR was one of her only ways of seeing everything in full color. That doesn’t stop her from being as creatively oriented as she is though, even if she does need our help sometimes with picking out colors in real life. “It’s cute how many colorful decorations you always put into our VR homes you know,” I give her a grin and a giggle.

“I do? I never even realized!” 

“Babe, you colored the hull of our spaceship blood red in Luminos Empires, everyone thought we were a warship!” Luminos Empires is a universe simulation and MMO-style game where you could do all sorts of things between farming resources from planets, conquering land and creating empires, being a space pirate, etc. Having a blood-red ship was asking to be seen as hostile.

“THAT’S WHY WE WERE GETTING ATTACKED ALL THE TIME?!”

“Ella, dear…” 

“I’m so sorry…” She looked seriously guilty and my joking mood quickly switched to protective girlfriend mode, so I wrapped her in a tight hug.

“It’s ok, seriously! Just a game, silly girl. Tina and I loved that spaceship and you put a lot of effort into it. Not to mention she and I loved the combat in that game! Don’t you remember that one time she went on a sneaky spacewalk to infiltrate that ship that had us pinned, acted like an enemy crewmember performing active maintenance, and planted a bomb on the inside before escaping?”

“Goddess I had never been more attracted to her than I was at that moment.”

“Never had I!”

She peeked her head out of my shoulder and looked at me with eyes that sparkled in the sunset, and I, as I often find myself around these two beautiful girls, am helpless to do anything but kiss her slowly and melt into our embrace. Eventually, we’d need to separate and wake up sleeping beauty, but for now, we took this moment to simply enjoy each other’s embrace.

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