[ti]private[/ti]We built this city

To Glace, there was nothing quite as perfect and comforting as freshly fallen snow.

And nothing quite as unpleasant as freezing rain. It sluiced off the battened hatches, rushed off the tilted roofs, and slicked the streets, chilling the dark cobblestones and coagulating in thick, dirty puddles. The rain fled Glace like snakes from a saint, leaving a chill that made his feet ache. He had no umbrella, nor want for one.

His UI sounded as he reached the foot of the Church steps. A young girl rushed out and greeted him, offering an umbrella. Was she an NPC?

"I'm fine," Glace lied, taking the proffered umbrella. "Totally dry," he agreed, mouth pulled into a youthful smile. "I'd love to see inside. You said it was your church? Did you build it?"

As the young church owner proudly gushed about her creation, Glace felt a genuine smile creep up on him like daylight savings. "I've never done building in game," he confessed. He laid a hand on the thick wood. "Doors like this need many years to get creaky. How efficient."

The church nave was soaked with clandestine energy, the air thick with just-muttered chants. "I do not have Kyogre," Glace said, surprised by the clarity and prevalence of the NA ritual. How many people had the legendary that wasn't even available on EU? He wanted to ask how common hatchings were, but 'Ygglybuff' interrupted with a joke about her name. Above her head, the username Yggy Br00ks was clearly visible in blue text. Perhaps she did not have that username display enabled.

"Then you can call me Glaceon," he replied, pointing up to his username. "What guild are you in?"

He watched the ripple of pixels cross Ygglybuff's body. "It's not impossible, but I've never knowingly abandoned any child of mine." Glace said. "I have many kids these days. Adopted or found. Reborn into my family."

"A lot of people call me Father, and you're welcome to if it would fill some hole in your heart."

Glace narrowed his eyes, curiosity breaking his demeanor. "Both are common enough tragedies," Glace said. "Children are left alone for one reason or another."

He had begun to read Yggy. First the obvious relief at the lack of Kyogre, apparently this church's patron, and now this outburst at the idea of abandonment. Something had hurt this child deeply. Was Kyogre just another way of talking about her Dad? Did she fear the return of her patron for the truth it might bring? For the sad reality coming home to roost?

Perhaps the fruitless search was anesthesia to self-reflection and reality.

"My place is not to judge, but to balm," Glace said. "I am a priest, and I provide peace to all who need it." He pushed, gently for now, at her refusal. "Peace is not just for the religious. It is natural to want to overcome sad and hurtful events in our pasts."

Glace lowered his voice as he followed Yggy to the basement. He spoke as if he were sharing a secret that his God, or more judgemental ears, would not want to hear. A secret just for Yggy. "It is even more natural to want to focus on something positive for a change. To escape to a happier place. Even the brightest of us get weighed down by too much negativity."

"That sounds like a hard situation to be in," agreed Glace. The drippy candles lit his face from odd angles, obscuring him in asymmetrical shadow. "You don't want them to return because of how much they hurt you in the past, but you've spent so much time and effort trying to show them that you want them back."

Glace reached the bottom step. "I think that happier places are not found, but made. You chose to stop coming here, and in doing so you made your world a little happier."

There was a beat of silence, where the vision of a happier world expanded in Glace's mind like a soap bubble. The dreamy film of his ideal world, of a land filled with rushing wind and floating joy. Of towering pines, heady lavender, and the inevitable fall of the Precipice Shrine.

As the blackness of the basement resolved into night colors, his vision became overlaid on reality. The pines were vast columns carved with washing waves and sea-foam motifs. The lavender was the dull, stone-soaked scent of incense burned long ago. And the Precipice Shrine was a ceremonial hole, so deep and empty of water that the interior was dyed in black.

It was smaller than the original, but it made his gut twist just the same.

Glace's mouth was as dry with anticipation. "Tell me," he said, the words like charcoal on his tongue. "What would it take to make your world a happier place?"

Bill liked mythology. Not for the comparative religion angle, or the animal-headed stories, but for the parables.

Stories are told to teach us something, and the long-bones tales of dust-gone empires only spread and endure because their lessons are universal and relatable. They tell us human stories, only dressed up as gods and monsters.

Take Sisyphus. Was it a story about a tyrant who cheated the gods and Death? Yes, but when Bill imagined the face of the damned king rolling his boulder up that hill in Tartarus he could just as easily imagine himself in the same situation.

Everyone has a boulder, be it penitence, trauma, or a hard-packed lie. Everyone rolls that boulder.

But the fascinating part was what happened when we set that burden down for a moment. For just as Sisyphus must exhale with relief when he watches his work clatter and scrape back down the mountain, so too do we take a sick relief in seeing how far we pushed our boulder.

In those moments, when we are reflecting on our works and bemoaning those to come, we exhale clear truths, voicing them to ourselves.

And maybe one another.

We all have a boulder. And for some of us it is a missing father.

Bill wondered is Sisyphus had children of his own. Ones that missed their father, now that he was trapped in Tartarus for eternity. Perhaps they understood the relief he chased, and the higher forces preventing his return.

"You will find your father," Glace said, his voice solid as keystone. "Family has a way of gravitating together."

He tried to picture a gargantuan, gothic baseball stadium rising from the suburban sprawl of Briarbane. "He would certainly notice it," Glace agreed. "I'm sure that your father is looking for you too. Have you received any hints about his location?"

Glace hated putting words in people's mouths. And he had no intention of pulling them out, either.

He cultivated an aura of safety, non-judgement, and heartfelt confession, and it did wonders. People would often come to him to tell him about problems or wishes or little things that dug in their mind like thorns.

The funny thing about confessions is often they come as a surprise to everyone involved.

As Yggy's words filled the empty church with enough confession for a congregation, Glace felt a growing suspicion fill his gut like swallowed ice. His mother bought this game. Perhaps he was wrong, and Yggy's father was out there in the wilds, sending an extravagant, wordless gift to his child by way of an apology or a cryptic clue.

Or maybe Yggy's mother just wanted to see a little joy back in her child's face. Maybe false hope was better than true disappointment and rejection.

"I don't think I'm your father, Yggy. I'm sorry," Glace said, sitting down. "I haven't even been on this server for very long. I'm from Italy, did I tell you that? I was born there and used to play on the European server. I live in New York now. I do have a son. Two, actually, and both of them live far away from me. I miss them a lot, and I wish they'd visit me more often. I miss taking them out to baseball games."

He sighed. "You like baseball, right Yggy. How about we catch a game sometime?"