Complete - Missing Marbles

Figuring out what to do with her body—her game body—the night of her first experience in Terrasphere could have been quite confusing. When she “logged out” did her avatar just stay frozen in place until she returned? Did she physically disappear? Snooping around Honeyhome like a nosy neighbor and demanding answers from a couple reputable-looking people, Janet finally found answers. Relieved she didn’t need to rent a hotel room for the night at the local inn (that sounded just like something this game would require—punishing you for being away from it—every bit the illegal den of sin Janet had always assumed of Rated T video games) she signed out.

The next day, after her husband had gone to work, Janet signed back in. "Terrasphere" closed back in around her, overpowering the real-world sensations of the reclining chair and the laborious rise and fall of her chest. Sunlight, and birdsong. Woodsmoke. She opened her eyes, and she was back in the center of Honeyhome. She tucked a strand of brown hair behind her ear—her hands still smelled like fruit from helping the grocer deliver them the day before. “Well, this is certainly an improvement,” Janet said aloud. Some part of her had been afraid she’d spawn back on the same frigid coastline every time she started the game. Climbing a cliff with soaking-wet shoes was not how she liked to start her day, thank you very much.

Something was different, however—the merry villagers of the quaint little town seemed agitated, and having been away throughout the night, Janet could not imagine why. As she asked around, a single phrase dominated all: the twins have lost their marbles. First she’d assumed they were speaking in phrase, but the more she looked, the more she was assured that literal marbles—a child’s plaything—were gone. “Now, now, what are all these tears for? There's plenty of marbles in the world,” Janet said, squatting down in front of the weeping duo so she could speak to them on eye-level. The words you should take better care of your things, didn’t your parents teach you better? was on the tip of her tongue, but since the twins seemed emotionally distressed, she held it in.

“Girls, I’ll look, but I can’t promise anything,” the teenager said sternly, wishing she had a packet of disposable tissues to pass out. “Do you remember where you had them last?” If they gave her a solid place to start, she would do her best.

 

Janet mouthed the words ninety-nine, only a hiss of breath passing her lips. How many?!

She had absolutely no obligation to look for such an unreasonable number of marbles. She should just pat the two little girls on the head, say “I’m sure your parents will buy you a new set,” and walk away. However, Janet also had… nothing better to do. She’d spent the previous day delivering sacks of bananas, for crying out loud, it wasn’t as if she’d established standards. Until she got her feet under her, perhaps this exercise in futility would help her better understand what this game was about.

“Fine,” she said, adjusting her gaping jaw and standing back up. “I’ll… see what I can do.” If nothing else, if she could just find a few of them it would at least delay the amount of time it took the twins to lose them all again. Surely they hadn’t lost all 99 at once, after all.

Where to start? The eighteen-year-old brushed off her skirt and looked around herself, wondering where to begin. She doubted an animal would have scavenged bits of glass—perhaps a bird, but certainly not a dog—and judging from her journey the day before, the entire forest would take weeks to cover. It was best to seek out these “aunties” the twins had spoken of—if the old women hadn’t seen the marbles, Janet could at least get some more coherent information out of two reasonable adults.

She had a feeling this was going to take all day. If she wanted to find all 99. If she didn’t break down after the first five and march down to the girls’ parents’ home and give them a talking-to for carelessly letting their young daughters litter the natural area.

Well, at least she could give them some peace of mind in the meantime, so the villagers would know someone was foolishly humoring their beloved twins. “Don’t cry anymore, I said I would try. Tell me where your aunties are, girls, and I’ll start looking.”

Thrown die:

31

 

Janet began to realize what a bad idea this was when the twins insisted on leading her to their aunties rather than just giving directions. It should have been the first glimpse into what some people called a wild goose chase—though in this case it was 99 wild geese, and she had to find each one of them before the chase could even begin.

She gave an indignant hmph! at the girls’ questions, striding along briskly behind the scampering children. “No, I’m not—you know it’s not polite to ask a lady’s age,” she caught herself, unable to completely mask her annoyance. “I’m from somewhere very far away, yes.” As for being an adventurer... Janet felt her cheeks color. “Oh, I don’t really think of myself that way…” she trailed off, embarrassed for some reason. Adventure? Her? Some small part of her felt like it blossomed at the sound of the word. Janet, the adventurer. Secretly pleased, the eighteen-year-old decided to forgive the twins for their nosiness and just enjoy the stroll to their aunties’ house.

Had she known the girls meant every older woman in Honeyhome, she might not have been so quick to forgive them. She caught on in the second or third house they visited (collecting marbles all the while) that these were not blood relatives and her face flushed deep, scarlet red. “You’re telling me you aren’t related to these girls? At all?” she asked testily. What in God’s name are they doing with children’s toys, then? She felt like a bible salesman, rapping on door after door and striking up the same old tired conversation. “Hello, these girls seem to have lost their marbles. Have you seen any of them? My name is Janet, yes, I’ll come in, no, I don’t have time for tea. Thank you.”

By the time they’d made their rounds, the soles of Janet’s feet ached and a quick count of the marbles showed they only had thirty-one. “Do you girls know how to count in multiples of five?” she asked with false sweetness, pointing at each little globe. “Five, ten, fifteen, twenty… ninety-five…”

It was too much to hope that would work. Janet checked the clock in the town square as they passed by it. She still had quite a few hours before John came home, and she couldn’t abide the thought of having wasted so much time for nothing. She might as well continue. “All right, let’s check the forest. Where do you girls usually play? Make sure to be careful, we don’t know what kinds of wild animals live there, do we?” What an absolute pain—Janet supposed she was going to have to follow the two little girls again.

Thrown die:

92

Forest​

 

Janet felt she’d indulged little Maya and Freja quite enough for today—additionally, she was irritated that she’d dismissed the forest so quickly as a possibility to begin with. The fact that she and Haru hadn’t slipped and broken their necks on all the marbles strewn around on their way into town was an absolute miracle. Even when the twins reached ninety-nine—Janet had kept count, of course—the brunette couldn’t stop until at least all of the obvious marbles had been collected. It wasn’t as if they were biodegradable, after all! A large part of her mind wanted to take them all to be recycled, but she hadn’t seen anyplace half so civilized in her two days of touring Honeyhome.

“Yes, I might as well come. Lead the way,” she said, preparing to follow the girls back into town. She had her suspicions they just made up a new name every time they found a marble—it wasn’t as if Janet was keeping track, and she wouldn’t know the difference. “You girls are certainly multitalented.” The teenager’s feet were very sore by this point, but her new desire to give the children’s parents a talking-to put some more energy into her step. Yes—I’ll explain how irresponsibly they’ve raised their young ones. They shouldn’t be littering, they shouldn’t be playing in the woods alone, and they definitely shouldn’t be talking to strangers like Janet who they didn’t even know! Of course, it wasn’t the twins’ fault. They were merely children, too ignorant to know better.

With that same logic, however, Janet couldn’t just leave them alone to find their way back. She had no doubt they were capable of it, but some part of her insisted on it. She had a little bit of time left, after all. Moreover… The villagers were so upset that the twins were sad. Now that they’re happy, surely they’ll see that I was the one who helped them, right? Her stern expression wouldn’t betray the fact, but part of Janet craved that gratitude. She, a kind young lady, had selflessly donated her entire day to help a couple of woebegone kids whose happiness seemed to light up the rest of Honeyhome. Some measure of celebration would be appreciated. “You girls will take better care of your things next time, right?” Janet nagged, making sure to stay just a couple steps behind the twins. “Marco and Ruby will be very sad if you’re always forgetting them!”

 

It had been a long day of marble-hunting and fluctuating moods, but it looked like it was going to end with Janet in relatively high spirits. Annoyed as she was at them, Maya and Freja’s happiness at having found all 99+ of their marbles was catching (and the clear appreciation of the villagers they passed didn’t hurt either.) I would never have wasted a whole day doing something so silly in real life, Janet thought as they strolled past the horse paddocks, the grocer, one of the so-called aunties’ houses. Just imagine what the neighbors would think. But here, in this place, this game… well, it had seemed almost normal. Everything was so relaxed in Honeyhome. There was no place she needed to be, no one she had to wait for, and no reason not to help a couple of children in need.

Still, when the harried-looking woman opened the door, the twins’ “friend” had her arms crossed over her chest and her chin held high, flashing a dangerously intimidating look down on Maya and Freja’s mother (despite being a relatively short girl.) She gave a huff at the woman’s question. “That's correct,” she started, preparing to launch into her lecture. The jingle of coins from the mom’s wallet surprised her, though. “Is this normal?” she asked before she could help herself, taken aback. She knew she wouldn’t try to pay some strange teenager for playing with her kids, even if they had been inconvenienced. “No, no! I can’t accept this,” she insisted, pushing the coins back into the woman’s fist and closing her fingers around them. “I don’t mind. It was… diverting.”

This was not what she’d wanted to originally tell the parent of these irresponsible twins, but Janet found herself so anxious to reassure her that the lecture took a back seat. Maybe spending the last couple hours of marble-hunting with Maya and Freja had nourished some small seed of compassion for their mother. After all, Janet didn’t know anything about what it was like to raise a family in such a… well, a strange, rural, fantasy-game environment. She imagined the mom had to deal with a lot of this sort of silliness. “Yes, girls, you’re welcome. Promise me you’ll stop playing this game with the people who come through here, though!” Janet said sternly, stooping down. “Not everyone out there will be as nice as I am.” Straightening up again, the brunette cleared her throat. Adventurer. Unfitting as it was, the title still thrilled her. I hope they take care in the future, she thought—all three of them!

 

Ryoma. Janet wondered what sort of a name that was as she looked down at the little piece of polished glass, holding it up against the light. It looked just like every other one of the 99+ marbles she’d helped collect that day to Janet. Nothing remarkable. Nothing unusual. She was about to hand it right back to little Maya or Freja (she hadn’t tried very hard to identify which was which) when a memory struck her.

At the park. Walking by the lake, sand sticking between sandals. David, three years old, little hand held tight in hers. John isn’t there—just the two of them, mother and son, a quiet moment. He reaches down. “A seashell!” Janet tries to tell him there are no seashells here, but the little glint surprises her. The little boy tugs it from the shore and holds it—a piece of beach-glass, weathered and smooth, its sharp edges round and blunted. A manmade creation, reclaimed and re-shaped by nature. David hands it to her, beaming, a shard of what was surely a beer bottle hurled by a drunk into the public park. To him, however, it is the most beautiful thing in the world. And Janet takes it, and thanks him, and takes it home and sets it on the mantle by the old Christmas decorations, and forgets…

“Thank you, girls,” she said simply, and put Ryoma in the pocket of her blouse. Perhaps it was a little more beautiful than the others, the way it scattered that prism when the sun shone through it. “I’ll take good care of her. Him? Enjoy your night.” She said goodbye to the family and walked away.

---

Later, after she’d signed off and finished cooking dinner for the night, Janet Crawford went and stood before the fireplace. Her ankles wobbled as she reached up, up, recoiling as she brushed a spiderweb. I need to dust up here, the older woman thought, puffing a little with exertion. Standing on her tiptoes in her house slippers, she finally felt the tips of her fat fingers clumsily brush something that wobbled off the mantle with a tink! Janet stooped to the floor, bracing her back, and picked it up. She blew on it. It was the piece of beach glass, as worthless (but meaningful) as the day her son had found it in the park.

That night, before she lay down by John’s already-sleeping form, she closed it in the top drawer of her nightstand. She looked at it for a moment, right beside the VR console, before she slowly slid it closed again. Ryoma. Like her actions today, a mere token of goodwill, childish and innocent—but impossible to forget.