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Since she'd gotten this body, Chryssa Glasgow had learned Three Things.

More things went unlearned. Secrets. Memories. A never-ending cycle where she always died at the end, enraged by her seeming misfortunes while simultaneously ungrateful for the things in her life worth celebrating. Died, and died young. Always. Well— all except this time.

That was what God wanted her to think.

God wanted her to be grateful, because this Chryssa Glasgow wasn't dying— not in any way that instruments would show, anyway. She had no disease, no fatal heart condition, no contract with dark powers-to-be. She was simply trapped in a half-life in her father's manor with no agency, no ability, and full dependence on the charity of "real adults" like her uncle to even get her hands on a VR console.

Knock knock. "Chryssa? You're in there, aren't you?"

"You may enter," came the breezy reply, and Chryssa's father entered the room to see his daughter sitting on the side of her bed, innocently polishing one of her antique sword replicas. Her WorldScreen was stowed inside her pillow, still cooling down from its recent use. "Hello, <my father>."

"You don't have to call me that, you know," he said, brows raising quizzically, and sat down on the corner of the bed next to her.

Chryssa didn't look up from the blade. She held it up, watching the sliver of his face reflected in its surface. It was an earnest face, bearded and well-trimmed and looking at her with well-meaning in its eyes. "Oh, I'm just practicing in case the cameras are on. How else will people know what our relationship is?"

He chuckled. "Family resemblance? Context? You crack me up, kiddo." Still in the reflection, she saw him look down at his hands. They seemed worn, wrinkled, weary. Too real.

This man was supposed to be her father. Chryssa Glasgow knew better. Her father never had a name— he was a background character, a figment with no face or hands or history. She shared nothing with this person— if he had sprung into being only moments ago before he walked through her bedroom door, she would never have known the difference.

So Chryssa regarded him with suspicion, for he was surely only here to deliver the next plot point. She'd been waiting for years— almost as long as she'd been wheelchair-bound. What's next? What 'interesting' new development would lead to her demise? What unexpected occurrence would plunge the family into poverty? What "fun" outing meant to expand her horizons would place her in the path of an oncoming ice cream truck, or a golf cart, or a herd of escaped bulls?

"What are you thinking about?" her father asked quietly.

"A herd of escaped bulls," Chryssa answered lightly. He sighed.

"Sweetie, nothing like that is going to happen."

"It could," Chryssa said, turning ghost-gray eyes on him directly for the first time. She didn't blink. Her tone was almost pitying. "I'm afraid anything could happen. You just lack imagination."

I.

Imagination— and Faith.

That was one of the Three Things she'd come to understand in this place. Just because you weren't dying didn't mean you wouldn't die. It was inevitable. If not today, tomorrow, this year, next year. Normal people didn't understand that. Oh, they said they did, but they didn't really understand. Privately, secretly, they still thought if I do everything right, nothing bad will happen.

If I eat healthy food and go to the dentist and look both ways before crossing the street, nothing bad will happen. If I avoid the bad parts of town and don't smoke and lock my doors every night, nothing bad will happen. If I keep my daughter inside where it's safe and forbid her from playing largely-untested games that might trigger numerous brain and health conditions, nothing bad will happen.

Ordinary people had faith in statistics. Statistically, nothing would happen. Statistically, it would be just another ordinary day.

Chryssa had faith in finality.

Real. Tangible. Unavoidable. And all-powerful, compared to the whimsy of everyday life. Apart from that fact, the world was her to shape as she pleased. Apart from that fact, she could do anything she set her mind to. But for how long? That was the question.

It didn't matter that she wasn't dying right now.

"Nothing bad will happen," her father said firmly, as if echoing her thoughts, and she turned away.

II.

The second of the Three Things was that Chryssa could never be satisfied. Unlike the first of the Things, this was not necessarily something that was true for everyone. Chryssa was sure there were boring people out there who were perfectly content with their farmhouse lives, or— conversely— perfectly miserable in their misfortune.

Chryssa was not everyone. Chryssa was the Precipice Shrine of people— bottomless and vast. Any good fortune was dwarfed by the darkness of her dissatisfaction. No matter how much God gave her, how little suffering she experienced, how many chances at happiness fell into her lap, she would never be satisfied until she won it for herself.

It wasn't enough to live a comfortable life. She had to tear that life back from the brink. She had to fight for it, to make sacrifices, to cut down anyone and anything in her path. A peaceful life she hadn't earned, through blood and tears and bitterness?

Chryssa rejected it. She didn't want it. She didn't want to just be alive— she wanted to live. That was why Morgana played. That was why Morgana kept playing, despite the dangers, despite the warnings, despite her father's fear. He was not her father, and this was not her life.

Her life was something she would build, and tear down, on her own.

"I'll go ask Martha if dinner is ready," her father said, breaking her reverie. The bed creaked as he stood up and Chryssa came back as if from a trance, blinking. She could barely focus on him. Was it just her, or did he already look fuzzy around the edges? "...You look like you need to rest."

"That's it?" she asked, unable to keep the disappointment out of her voice. A familial visit? It seemed she'd have to keep waiting a little longer for her fill of misfortune. That was fine— she was used to it. Biding her time, waiting for the world to turn on her. She had a whole WorldScreen waiting.

"That's it." He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. "Love you, kiddo. Come on out when you're ready." He left, and left a strangeness behind him that spoke of unsaid things.

III.

The last Thing was something that Chryssa, no matter how hard she tried— in the game or out of it— could not remember. Her thoughts skated around it, avoiding a secret truth. A book. A rod. A dark, door-shaped absence in her mind. A door...

Had she gone through it?

And if she had, which side was she standing on?

"Astonishing..." Bergamot said, suddenly turning her Rowlet around. Its head failed to turn, simply rotating in place so that it never changed direction.

She of course meant the Mew, but Rowlet could be quite astonishing in its own right. <BUH!> it said, head suddenly spinning so its round, dark eyes stared into one of the nearby mirrors. It was refracted from a hundred different vantage points, filling the room with round, owl-shaped faces.

"In any case," Bergamot said, returning her Rowlet to where she'd been carrying it under her arm like a companion pillow. "I just got back, what's going on?" Her voice was innocent, but her searching eyes lingered on the Mew currently bouncing around the tower like a cat-shaped blob of silly putty.

She hadn't been back to the cat tower in awhile because she didn't want to become one of those cat ladies, and also killing rats was boring work and could scarcely hold her attention for the time it took to set the cheese. Recently she'd become invested in acquiring a Psyduck, however, so she was in need of spare cats to trade to Gothic Bethany.

How convenient that when she arrive to do some grinding, a delightful secondary objective had reared its psychic head. "We can't scare it too much, or it'll just fly away again," she said after a moment watching Mew fly around. "If it's having fun, I expect it'll stay." They had to play with it. Being of similar temperament, Bergamot liked to think she had some insight.

She looked down at Rowlet. "Let's have a Growl," she said to the grass-type, which churred comfortingly. The sound echoed around the bleak hall of mirrors and she saw Mew's ears perk up. It drifted a little closer, curious about the sound. Its eyes were big and bright. Despite being hit several times already, it didn't seem afraid of them at all.

How strong was this Pokemon?

Morgana's Gyarados undulated silently through the trees, discomfited by the persistent fog that clung to the Timberlands. The serpent was little more than an ominous shadow as it dipped and wove among the evergreens along the far shore. They had come across a small lake in the midst of the fog, its surface masked by waves of pearl-gray mist.

It was more open here. There was still enough light for needles to grow even in the lower boughs, which were choked and dead in other parts of the forest. Route 2 lacked both Route 1's whimsical charm and Route 3's sense of openness— everything here was too-tall, too-close, too-dark, and too-cold.

Having lived in Alaska through winter, Chryssa was actually quite used to the bleak atmosphere. That didn't mean she liked it.

"Who are you talking to?"

...the sly voice from the trees was much more like Chryssa in real life than Morgana, her imperious, video-game villainess character. She was speaking to Tuesday, who had apparently followed the same wandering route through the woods that she had. Perhaps all paths in a video game were designed to lead people to the same place eventually.

"It's not this Ducklett, is it?" Bergamot asked, holding up a Ducklett she'd been cleverly concealing between her petticoats. "Because if it is, I have to tell you. It's already dead."

<QUACK,> said the Ducklett indignantly, wriggling free.

"Oh no, now you've done it. Quick, get it before it escapes."

"I'm here for my Statistics test, Professor," said a sly Bergamot Gristleborg, leaning against the doorframe of the classroom. Though her words seemed normal, the way she spoke suggested some tomfoolery was afoot.

"None of your tomfoolery, Riddle," the teacher said with a frown, gesturing towards the desks. "Have a seat like everyone else, please."

The room was almost absent of other students - since the test was open-book and people tended to play UNOVR on their own time, Bergamot hadn't been expecting to run into anyone else. If she had, she could have planned to cheat off their paper or bribe them for the answers or something equally devious and never-before-devised by kids in school.

She took a seat, and the essay question was presented immediately. It was exactly as she'd expected: the questions had been leaked online over 24 hours ago, along with the knowledge that Professor Ash herself would be grading them. The answer she had prepared, however, she was confident to be unique.



Confident this would be enough to raise her Statistics grade from a D+ to a C-, Bergamot passed her finished essay to the teacher and sauntered out of class, tossing her hair over her shoulder.

It seemed happy.

The little spider's mouth was curled up in an unmistakable smile, and its expression was so joyous and peaceful that Morgana found herself questioning her own villainous motives for a moment. How could she wake up such a happily sleeping Pokemon?

"It must be having a beautiful dream..." Bergamot murmured.

There was something nagging at her memory. Something she couldn't quite remember. Just at the edge of her thoughts.

"It must be having a beautiful dream..."

Mist swirled around them like a layer of clouds, muddying her thoughts.

"Pokeball, go," she said, her voice seeming a long way away. The Dewpider was sucked inside, sleep unbroken. Bergamot collected Celine beneath one arm, stumbling like a drunk person. The lion cub's growls and meows felt distant, like they were coming from someone else's body. Someone calling out from the other side of... somewhere.

Something's happening. To her. This place, it's trying to...

To stop her from remembering something important.

She had to get out of here.

The icy stream was a shock that brought her back from the brink of dreams, and as Morgana fjorded the water for the second time that day, she found herself troubled and unsatisfied.

...What had she forgotten?

Climb the tree.

Climb the tree to solve the mystery.

Perhaps snoring was not such a mystery to some, but Morgana played this game for stimulation. If there was nothing around to play with, she was bored. If someone was snoring, she had all sorts of options - bothering them, waking them up, taking screenshots of them to publish on the internet later.

Of course, most likely it was just a Pokemon. But Morgana's curiosity was piqued, and so she began the task of climbing the tree.

This was no deciduous tree. Its lowest boughs began tens of feet off the ground, forming a dark, conical shape like the bottom of an umbrella. No help there.

She took off her stilettos and held them in each hand, wondering if she could dig them into the bark and climb up like Wolverine.

Several minutes of scrabbling (and continued snoring from above) later, she gave up. Her bare feet pressed into wet leaves and she curled her toes reflexively, reflecting on the way they felt.

"It seems a Pokemon solution is in order," she said after a moment, eyes narrowed, still staring up at the tree like a witch at a small child in a treehouse in The Witches, or like a bear watching a beehive.