When Ed poked her head into my doorway, I was elbows deep into mob hunting statistics from the three regions closest to Darrow Hollow.

“Did you see the lady?” she asked. Her sea green hair framed her round face in luxurious ringlets, and her eyebrows narrowed  above her thick-rimmed glasses. I saw her expression in the one-tenth of a second I took to glance up at her, but caught up as I was in riding the upward trend of gobkin femur sales in Krekka Forest, I didn’t register the signs of growing irritation that I should have been watching for.

“Uh - Lady?” I mumbled, always eloquent.

“Lady.” Ed repeated. “In the sitting room. Tall.” She paused, apparently running out of adequate descriptors. “Willowy.”

“Why is it willowy?” I mused, making a note on my scroll next to a particularly high spike in hobtobbit ear sales. “Why not birchy, or aspeny? There’s nothing particularly willowy about a willow, if you think about it.”

Words fascinate me. We use them a thousand times a day, but never really think about where they come from. Who, I wondered, first described a woman as “willowy?” Had she been standing next to a particularly lithe, attractive willow tree? Had she taken the comparison as a compliment, or had she objected to being weighed up against a tall, woody perennial plant?

“Anlace!” Ed barked from the doorway. “Pay attention!”

That darned name pulled me away from both my etymological musings and my statistical research. I hated my player name - at least the first part of it. Ed knew that I never would have chosen it if I hadn’t been drunkenly scrolling through synonyms for “dagger” in the global user interface during my character creation and thumbed the first option without even realizing it. Just one of several interface blunders I had made in that first hazy week. Now she used it against me when she was feeling particularly nasty about something. Usually her boss. Which was me.

Most people around town called me “Tred,” which I accepted, because bad puns are better than bad first names. That’s me. Tred Lightly, trepid research investigator. I’ve always liked that word, trepid. No one ever uses it. You hear about intrepid detectives all the time, but what about really meticulously careful detectives? Safe detectives? Trepid detectives.

I glanced through the narrow glass window between my study and the drawing room. From my vantage point behind my unnecessarily large solid oak desk, all I could see was the vaulted ceiling of the outer room and the pile of scrolls blocking the rest of the view.

“How am I supposed to see people in the sitting room if you keep blocking my window with your scrolls?” I asked, reasonably.

“Those scrolls are the only reason this business is still running,” Ed retorted. 

Retorted. Such an interesting word. Did that originally mean to bake a cake a second time? Or… there was some other meaning for tort, wasn’t there? Something about lawyers, or…

My eyes must have gone blank again, because the next thing I knew, Ed’s round face was inches away from my own. In different circumstances, that might not have been such a bad thing. Ed wasn’t unattractive, but her proclivities didn’t swing in the male direction. As such, I only had professional thoughts about Ed. Mostly professional thoughts.

“There. Is. A. CUSTOMER. In. the. DRAWING ROOM!” Ed shouted, emphasizing each word individually, as if I was some kind of empty-minded idiot. Sometimes I was, but the shouting was unnecessary. Mostly unnecessary.

“A customer?” I asked, confused.

Ed shook her head and walked back to the doorway. “That’s it. I’m done. I quit. Georgina will be by in a minute to take me home.”

I sighed in relief, taking comfort in our old ritual. “Fine,” I said. “Don’t come back.”

“I won’t,” she replied. “Don’t forget to sign the tax reports before you close up. You know the mayor’s secretary gets all huffy if I have to sign them for you.”

“Fine, fine.” I said. Then I gave her another puzzled look. “A customer?”

“That’s right,” she confirmed. “Go make us some money. Maybe level up a time or two while you’re at it. You can’t keep letting your XP decay like this. You’ll end up losing skill points that we need.” She started to leave, but then turned around one more time. “And don’t forget your keys again.”

She exited back to her own desk, and I heard the sound of items being packed into her purse, which went on for longer than one might expect. It was still weird the way so many large items could fit into such a tiny purse. Our world was a strange combination of the commonplace and the absolutely impossible. A few moments later the door opened and closed as she headed out to the street.

“A customer,” I repeated to myself. “How unusual.” I thought about just ignoring her. I was sure that if I just buried myself back in hunting reports that eventually she would go away, and I could keep doing the thing that has consumed my life since I got thrown into this ridiculous game. Coasting. Not gaining too many levels. Not losing too many levels.

It would be for the best, I decided. If I talked to this “customer,” she might accidentally pull me into some kind of multiplayer quest. EmQs always gave good experience, with a multiplier for each human occupant involved. Even if a GM didn’t get involved and the whole thing ended up being procedurally generated, the XP reward could be as high as two full levels, and the bump on the leaderboard could be significant, depending on your current standing.

So I went back to studying mob stats for the mayor, trying to find the slow leak in tax revenue that would ensure my continued status as a mediocre investigator in a mid-level region with a very uninspired skill tree and completely unranked on the leaderboard. A half-hour went by. Eventually the lady went away.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Except of course she didn’t, because I’m still writing this, and you’re still here. Thanks for that.

Call it curiosity. I’m no Catkin, but eventually the mystery of it got to me. I sighed, pushed away my scroll, and walked to the door.

The lady was, in fact, willowy.

She was thin, lithe, and athletic. Her hair cascaded around her in a waterfall of dark moss and leaves, and her clothes seemed almost grown onto her in a thick bark-like texture. Her legs did not end in feet, but in writhing roots, which blended into the stone floor of the sitting room without damaging it, as magic things tended to do in our simulated environment. She sat on a high-backed wooden chair in the ornate sitting room, her hands clutched around a small leather scrip. The skin on her exposed arms was also bark-textured, though around her face it was smooth and ageless. However, her knit eyebrows and compressed lips made her look worried and tired, and more adult than her teenagerish size and figure implied. Her eyes seemed fixed in place about a pace in front of her feet. Well, her roots. Her lower extremities.

I cleared my throat to catch her attention. “How can I… um… help you, ma’am?” I asked, a little unsure of how to proceed.

The woman started and jumped to her feet. “The sign says you’re an investigator?” Her voice was that of an adult woman, not high and clear like a teenager nor gravelly like an older person.

“Ah, yes.” I said. “The sign. You… figured that out.” Town ordinance said that all businesses must have at least a wooden shingle sign over their entrance, with at minimum a word, symbol, or acronym that could recognizably describe the nature of the business, even small businesses tucked in a small office of a crumbling old mansion. Not wanting to attract relevant business, I had managed to get away with just three symbols on mine - the capital letter “N,” a simple drawing of a vest, and another drawing of an alligator. It had produced a few prospective customers looking for men’s over-clothing or domesticated swamp animals, customers that Ed turned away without bothering me, but in the four years since I had hung the shingle, not a single customer actually looking  for an “N-vest-gator” had ever presented themselves, which was exactly as I had intended.

The woman seemed nice, in a leafy sort of way. I decided to let her down easily. I have a lot of practice with letting people down, in a wide variety of methodologies.

“Listen,” I said. “I’m not the sort of investigator you’re looking for. I mostly deal in numbers and financial matters. I don’t find lost familiars or spy on ex-lovers or dig up dirt on ex-business partners, or . You’d be better off making the trip to Bartertown and hiring someone there. I hear that Shawn Pie is still working his way up.” My mouth twisted at that last part. I couldn’t stand that sanctimonious prick, but he was the only detective class player I still knew who hadn’t moved to at least a B-tier region. I don’t exactly attend networking events. The fewer players who know my name, the better.

The woman shook her head, shedding leaves from her hair that fell toward the floor but disintegrated on contact. A spark of something lit in her eyes - irritation, or maybe even anger. “I can’t stand that sanctimonious prick,” she said. “Besides, he’d never take my case. He only works jobs that are high XP and low effort.”

“Ask the undersherrif, then. Or a magistrate.”

“I did. They said they couldn’t help me.”

“Then take an FT to Castletown. There are dozens of detectives and private eyes there.”

“I can’t fast travel there,” she said. “I’ve never been there. And I would never survive the walk. Besides, I don’t know the investigators in Castletown. I don’t trust them.”

I scoffed. “You don’t know me either. Why would you trust me?”

“I know  you solved that XP leaching case for Tom Baker. He got to move up with his wife because of that, and that jerk who had been stealing his effort got shunted all the way down to an F-Tier.”

I groaned inwardly. Would I never live that down? I thought almost everyone who knew I had been involved had either moved up or got kicked down to Troll Town where they belonged. That stupid stunt had cost me three levels, and taught me an important lesson: don’t get involved in personal cases. Personal cases get messy and complicated, and solving them costs you levels that take time to mitigate.

“Again,” I said, beginning to feel irritated. “That was a numbers case. Is your case a numbers case?”

“No,” she said. It’s more important than numbers. It’s-”

“You don’t think numbers are important?” I asked. “Lady, we live in a simulated RPG run by an intergalactic accounting consortium. Our lives are DM’d not just by earth nerds, but by space nerds. Numbers are always frogging important.”

Frogging? That was a new one. Damn that profanity filter. Damn damn damn. At least I could still swear in my own head.

The tree lady wilted a little at the heat in my voice. Then she seemed to gather herself. She lifted her head, and her mouth formed a determined line in her youthful face. She looked like a person who has made the same plea a dozen times and gotten the same answer, but has no choice but to ask again. “Maybe so, but some things are even more important. Some people are more important. I am desperate, and so far none of the people who are supposed to help me have been willing. I need you to help me.”

Oh no. I knew where this was going. I sighed. And then I made the mistake of looking at those big, worried hazel eyes. She looked straight back at me. In them I could see… oh hells. Hells and hockey sticks. That was hope. This was bad. This was very bad.

She took a step toward me. I resisted the urge to back away. In truth, I wanted to cower against the most convenient wall until she went away. But I wasn't that far gone yet. Not quite.

“My name is Willow,” she said, and I couldn't quite hold in an inappropriate bark of terrified laughter.

She sighed. “Yes, it's rather on the nose. But that's not what matters. This is what matters.” She reached into the scrip and pulled out a drawing. On it I caught a glimpse of curly dark hair in braids.

Nope.

Nope.

I threw my hands up between us as if warding off a blow. “I'm sorry, ma'am,” I said hurriedly. “I can't help you. You need to find someone else. Please let yourself out when you're ready. Goodbye.”

And with that I fled out the door into the street.

Unfortunately, I left my keys. 

I turned back to the door of the large, run down mansion where I rented office space for my business. I did not want to go back in there. I didn’t want to see her eyes accusing me of being an uncaring, self-absorbed bastard. I already knew that about myself.

But through the window I could see her. She stood in the same place. Her arms wrapped around the parchment she had pulled from her bag, hugging it tightly to her chest. Her head was bent, and her lips moved as if she were speaking quietly to it. Tears leaked down her cheeks, and where they fell, tiny green sprigs sprouted from her bark-textured clothing. In those eyes were a look I knew very well. It was the look of someone who realizes they have failed the person they love the most.

Well.

I sucked in a breath and let it out. I smoothed my outfit, then I reached into my inventory pocket and pulled out my own player statistics scroll. I scanned it.

Anlace Lightly

Level 37 Human Research Investigator (Unaffiliated)

Leaderboard Position: Unranked

There was more, but those were the ones I worried about the most. How was this going to affect the status quo I had worked so hard to create?

I tucked the scroll back into my inventory and shook my head. It didn’t matter, did it?

I walked back inside to take the case.