{-Myr-}
Oh, she had a lot more questions than those two, but figured she should probably wait until Hannah actually answered them.
Unfortunately, Hannah’s confused expression seemed to confirm that there wasn’t much hope of the kind of answers she was looking for. “I mean, I’d never talked with her parents about her. They don’t usually mention her on their own and, if they do, it’s always in passing. I assume she’s doing fine, since they didn’t seem worried or anything since the last time I saw them. Never thought about asking where she could be now, though.”
“Do you want to talk to her while we’re there?” Zetai asked.
Myr nodded. “I want to know how she’s doing…”
“I’m guessing she’ll be somewhere in the mountains?” Reynneak was looking at the map and all the little quest dots on it, occasionally clicking on one of them to get more details. “Seems like most of the quests want us to go up to the mountains anyway. We can keep an eye out for her while we’re there and then all three of you can catch up when we find her.”
Myr smiled to show her thanks.
“I’m still trying to figure out how much you two remember now,” Tinath remarked, almost cautiously. “Do you remember what’s past Ilataesi?”
“Everything in Eslasera and what we did with Bezyu,” Myr replied casually, Llewel mumbling something to prove he was the same.
“I’m guessing there’s still nothing about whatever happened at the end with Cassidy..?”
Llewel shook his head. “For better or worse, neither of us remember any of that yet. I’ve tried, it’s all still just one big blur.”
“Is there a specific reason you’re asking them about it?” Zetai prompted. “That’s something a little too weird to just ask without giving a reason for it.”
“I’m just curious,” Tinath muttered. “I know what happened from the real world side of things. I don’t know what caused it, though… at least, I assume it was because of something here and just ‘time’ like Mr. Mair told most of the people who asked.”
Myr, if she really thought anything special about it, didn’t consider it enough to question anything. She didn’t notice Llewel’s expression until it was too late to try to reassure him on her own.
“Something here?”
Tinath didn’t look any more willing to say the answer than he did to ask it. “I guess you probably… wouldn’t know a lot about that situation.” She sighed. “But you should, as her friends. I guess to make this a little easier, how much did she tell you about her life while she was with you?”
“I don’t remember her saying anything specifically about it,” Myr recalled thoughtfully.
Llewel apparently had more to add. “She avoided ever saying stuff about what was going on in the real world. She never really told me what kept her so long. Once she just said they visit her mother.”
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“Oh, yeah, that was one of her favorites,” Tinath said. “It was vague enough to just satisfy whoever was asking, without making them realize she wasn’t saying everything. She tried telling me that, too. Unluckily for her I’d met her mom before she’d said that.” She hesitated, then continued, “I’ll take full blame for ruining whatever casualness is still here and outright say it: Mrs. Mair is a nurse at the closest hospital to where we live.”
Everyone fell into a collective, awkward silence. They all knew what it meant, though it seemed no one knew what to say. Zetai mumbled something that earned a nudge and whisper from Reynneak but, otherwise, the next one to actually say something again was Tinath.
“Yeah, I’d felt the same the first time I heard about it… and it doesn’t really get any better the more you know.” She gave a half-hearted shrug. “Really, it was the only reason I ever met her. She’d spent pretty much her entire life with that hospital practically being her second home. She ended up missing a lot of school, but that was something more easily arranged. Their concern was that she didn’t have friends, so they ended up talking with the vice principal and I’d somehow gotten nominated to help her. I don’t think anyone outside of their immediate family completely understood what was going on with her. She definitely didn’t tell anyone when they asked. It took her a while to tell me. Avoiding the complicated stuff involved in it, it more or less boiled down to, ‘she’d be lucky to make it to her thirties.’”
“She’d promised us that she wasn’t going to leave,” Llewel mumbled. “So that really was something she knew she couldn’t keep?”
“It wasn’t that she knew she couldn’t keep it, but she wanted to be optimistic—she didn’t want you to worry about her. I don’t think it had anything to do with how much she trusted you or what she thought you’d be capable of handling. She probably assumed you had enough troubles as it is and didn’t want to add her own into that mix. For better or worse, that’s what she was like for everyone.” She paused. “Back to the first part, about it having to do with this. A part of it was that she wasn’t supposed to get too upset or worried about stuff—it usually made things worse. So, even though Mr. Mair told everyone else it was just fated to happen, I had to wonder… if it had anything to do with whatever she was doing here. I don’t mean what she did with you, but… everything else that must’ve happened near the end. If you’d remembered that part, I could’ve known if it was one or the other.”
“He hadn’t said anything to you?” Reynneak asked. “Not even for a bit of closure?”
“Well, think about it. He had no good reason to.” It was hard to tell if things were heading towards a more comfortable subject for Tinath, or if it was just as bad as everything else. “Two years ago, I was pretty much up there with the streamers who could make or break a game’s sales. Telling anyone someone died right after playing your game—regardless of circumstances—is risky enough as it is. Telling someone who could easily get tons of possible buyers not to get it, and convince some friends to do the same for their circles? He’s smarter than to take that risk.”
“Yeah, has to try to save himself somehow,” Zetai mumbled. “I still don’t get why he’s trying to get rid of the sentient NPC thing. Since the story isn’t any good, it’s practically the game’s only redeeming quality.”
“Welcome to the greatness of whatever techniques they know,” Tinath sighed. “All the games they made were like that. If there were flaws, somehow the great characters and seemingly-lifelike world was enough to keep most people from complaining.”
The conversation died there, leaving them only with whatever questions no one wanted to ask and the answers they’d already been given. Myr only found that her memories made a bit more sense, but she hadn’t been the one drawing attention to it—she hadn’t been the one Casrane had avoided telling those stories to.
She couldn’t tell what Llewel was thinking of, if he was glad to have that piece of information, if he was upset that Casrane hadn’t been the one to tell them. But eventually, he was the one that broke the silence.
“Thank you,” he said slowly, “for telling us.”
Tinath gave him a small smile. “Hey, you two were just as much her friends as I was. It’s not a problem—you deserve to know just as much as I did about what was going on.”