Maps
“Okay, real talk. How do I know which way is north? Are we supposed to have a compass as well?” I asked, staring at the map in frustration.
Lynn clucked her tongue, “Well the ocean is to the west. So use that.”
“Okay, great.” I paused, “Which way is the ocean?”
Lynn rolled her eyes, “It’s over-” she paused and looked around. She kept turning. She began humming to herself. “This is impossible. I know Octavo City better than I know Puerto Maritimo. And I grew up in Puerto Maritimo.”
“Yeah,” I nodded, “but the in-game navigation system was top down. Now we’re in the thick of it.”
“Gods, that’s true.”
“You notice we curse like Yssians now? In fact I think I did it right away,” I said. “Yssians are polytheists, so I say: ‘gods’ instead of: ‘oh god.’ I already knew they did this from watching you play, but it’s weird that I just picked it up automatically, isn’t it?”
“Now that you mention it, yeah. It is weird. I already did it, because I love the game.”
“Which is weird.”
“It is not!”
“There is no question that it’s weird!”
“Anyway. You’re right. It is odd that you picked up Yssian habits so fast. We talked about feeling more emotional when we first arrived here. I think you noticed that everyone seemed to fall in love so fast. And we chalked it up to this being the internal logic of the game and the world. Could this be the same? Is the game still influencing us? And if so, how much is it doing that?”
“This officially crossed into creepy territory. I liked it better when we were just talking about being lost.”
“You ladies are lost?” A white haired man in a blacksmith’s apron said, stopping in his walk.
Lynn smiled, “We are. We normally travel by carriage and, well, we're both hopeless with maps.”
“Oh you’ve got a map?”
The man showed us the direction of the ocean and the cardinal directions. He pointed out hills and buildings in the distance we could to mark the cardinal directions. And then he pointed out where we were on the map. Finally he named off the cross streets we needed to look for as we walked.
“Thank you so much!” Lynn said. “May I ask you name please?”
“Jacques Favret, Lady. And it was no trouble. Glad to help.”
“Do you live around here, Mr. Favret?”
“My smithy is right here, Lady.” He pointed a block down the street.
He smiled and we parted ways. As we walked away, Lynn giggled, “He’ll be more glad than he expected.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“He’ll receive a formal letter of thanks and a small award of cash. And I’ll have my staff look into the quality of his work and if we can throw some contracts his way.”
“Just for directions?”
“He called me Lady. He had no idea he was speaking to his Baroness. And he just volunteered to help. That’s worth something. I’m not going overboard. He’s only getting the contracts if his work measures up.”
“Still,” I smiled, “It must be nice to be able to just do that sort of thing, yeah?”
“It is.” Lynn paused, “Are we lost again? This was supposed to be Caliburn street. But look. That says: Rue du Forgeron.”
I looked around, “Okay that’s the clock tower. So that’s north.”
Lynn shook her head, “North is that way? We are lost, it should be that way! We just left him.”
“Is Mr. Favret still getting his reward?”
Lynn sighed, “I suspect that this is us and not him. Come on, let’s find this intersection on the map. We’re running late.”
.png)
Comments
Post a Comment