Chapter 8 - 6
The main lights slowly came back online, the darkness giving way and the room returning to what it was before everything had happened but the music stayed off since the DJ had disconnected his gear not knowing what was happening.
Within seconds, Reyna was by my side and her arm was around me.
“Ana!”
she said to me with a mass of concern in her voice. “Ana, are you alright! Oh, God! Please be alright!”
She brushed my hair from my face which had managed to slide out from my ponytail, and helped me to my feet. Everyone in the room stared at us, unsure of what to think. As I looked back over them all, I noticed that they were all recording and streaming all that had just happened to all of their friends who weren’t in the room. In other words, everyone on the game had just seen what had happened. “Ana…are you OK? How do you feel?”
“I feel,”
I said, taking in a deep breath and looking down at my hands, a faint purple glow still emanating from them. “I feel…so alive.”
I looked to Reyna and saw the worry in her eyes. Like her and everyone else in the room, I had no idea what had just happened to me. All I knew was it felt as if I’m been hit with a bolt of lightning. As I stared at her, light purple sparks began falling down in front of my eyes.
“Oh, God!”
Reyna said as she pulled back from me. She was looking up to my name plate which for some reason appeared to be sparking, glowing, and alternating in color be between red, blue, and purple. The voices in the crowd began gasping again. Although I could tell my name plate was there, I could not see what was happening to it.
“Reyna!”
I said, unsure of what was going on. “What is it? What’s happening? I can’t see it clearly.”
“Your nameplate,”
she said, still staring at it, her mouth slowly openings as if in awe. “It’s…changing.”
“What do you mean?”
I said to her. “Changing how?”
Reyna initiated a pairing with me and I accepted.
Once paired, she shared her HUD and let me watch what she was seeing.
Sparks were flying out of my name plate, mostly in purple but occasionally other random colors.
After several more seconds of various sparks and hues, my nameplate doubled in size, making my name appear far larger than any other player and below it, where there had been nothing, appeared some additional wording.
“Reyna…what is that? What does it say?”
Reyna stared at my nameplate for a few more seconds and then back down to me.
“Ana,”
she said to me in a confused and slightly fearful voice. “It says… ‘Ana…The Lotus.’ It says you’re The Lotus, Ana.”
Reyna once more looked up to my nameplate as it continued to glow and change colors.
After staring at what appeared to be my new and improved nameplate for a good 30 seconds, I closed the visual feed from Reyna.
Taking back my own view, I realized that most of the people in the room had moved closer to me to take a look not only at my nameplate, but also at my body, the faint purple glow dazzling virtually all of them.
I looked back over to Reyna who seemed relieved that I was alright, but still concerned over what had just happened.
At no moment during any of my playtime in Aurora had anything like this happened.
Nothing even remotely close to this was mentioned in the player’s guide and no mention had ever been made in the real world-only forums.
Just then, a random person in the crowd whom I’d never met before mentioned that the exact same phenomenon had occurred in two other locations to two other players at the exact same time as it did to me.
Voices became louder as word spread from one person to the next within the room.
Live feeds and recorded video were already making their way into the game only discussion boards and eventually the videos made it to the real world, all within just a few minutes of it all happening.
Several people projected their incoming visual feeds to a couple of spaces in the room so we could all see the occurrence in the other rooms.
While not exactly the same in presentation, the same event happened to two others. Their names, now plastered on every single discussion board in the game along with mine, were Spell Caster, ‘The Wizard’ and Mustafa, ‘The Beast.’ Each of the others had the same strange animation of lights happen to them, but Spell Caster’s focused on items like flasks, wands, and other gear typical of a wizard or spell caster. Mustafa’s focused more on animals, showing such powerful creatures as elephants and lions, and finished off with the image of a Bengal tiger.
“No!”
I heard Reyna say as someone reached out to touch me, the glow of my body apparently too much of a temptation to resist. “She doesn’t like to be touched unless you ask first.”
I turned my head to her and smiled, her immediate reaction to protect me and make me feel safe reaching far beyond our role play sessions.
“It’s OK,”
I said to her, realizing more and more people had been reaching out to me. “I think…I think I’m alright.”
I lifted my hand to my face and looked over my skin once more. Everything looked and felt the same as before except for the faint glow the event had left on me. I immediately began to wonder if this change was permanent or if it was temporary. “My body doesn’t feel any different.”
I ran my fingers up and down my arms. “Still feels like me. It’s just…glowing for some reason. Maybe it’s some sort of bug or something from what just happened.”
Everyone got quiet and stared at me for a few seconds until someone else in the crowd spoke up.
“What in the living hell just happened!”
they said loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. “What is going on with your nameplate?”
Another spoke out as well.
“And why can I see it now?”
they said. “I play with nameplates off but when this all happened, yours turned on for me.”
“I don’t know,”
I said, somewhat exasperated. “I wish I did! I really know nothing more than you all do!”
More and more people began to speak up and ask questions about what had transpired. I looked back at Reyna, the concern and sadness that had suddenly filled her eyes telling me exactly what I should have seen coming.
The following week was a flurry of activity as all of those who were off line for the event got to see the videos and their aftermaths. Within hours, Spell Caster, Mustafa, and I were instant celebrities in the game and for some reason everyone wanted to meet us. They all asked so many of the same questions. Why did this happen? How? How do you know them? They were all questions I had no answers to. As all the videos of the event gained views online, it was then that I realized my “coronation”
was different from Mustafa and Caster’s. No one came looking for them. There was no portal or strange man. This difference had been noticed by countless people who watched all three of the events happen which placed a spotlight on me. A spotlight I didn’t want.
By the next day when I logged into the game, a massive number of messages - text, voice, and video - had begun to accumulate in my mailbox, all from people wanting to know more, and each day more and more came in. Not only did I get requests for information, but I also began to receive gifts and gold from random individuals who only wanted to offer me kind words and their best wishes. The gold gifts had become so much that I had to author a mass reply to them all asking them to no longer send me gold and instead offer it to the creators of their favorite rooms or use it to buy gifts for their friends. Even after that though, the gold and gifts continued.
“Interview!”
someone yelled to me as I was walking with Reyna through a park which I had hoped would be a small escape from the near constant attention I had started to receive after the event. “Ana! I mean Lotus!”
I turned to see that it was an in game blogger who liked to publish articles, both internally and outside the game on the happenings and latest gossip that took place in Aurora. “Ma’am, so many people want to know about the event! Your new name…er, title! Is that what it is?”
“Title?”
I said as he walked closer to Reyna and I as we sat on a bench by a small pond filled with ducks and geese.
“Is that what you all are calling it?”
he said to me in a high pitched and lively voice. “I mean you and the other two have these new names now and they look an awful lot like titles that members of royal families might have. You know, like Duke of York or Dutches of Cambridge. That sort of thing.”
“I’d never really thought about that,”
I said, keeping my voice low and not even attempting to match his energy level. I looked over to Reyna and I could tell the constant attention I was getting was beginning to wear on her. I had tried my best to deal with it on my own, but I also wanted to be close to her so we could spend time together but it felt like there was no escaping it. “I mean if ‘title’ makes sense, then yeah. I guess.”
“So you are some sort of royalty then!”
he said back to me as if trying to convince me of his implication.
“What? No!”
I was getting irritated with where he was trying to take this and I had only made it worse by engaging him.
“If they shoe fits, right?”
I could tell he was really pushing for a story that would get him the clicks he wanted.
“No. The shoe doesn’t fit. I’m not royalty. I don’t know what the others have said or how they feel, but I can tell you right now I’m not royalty. Hell, I’m an escort for God’s sake. You really think an escort is worthy of being royalty?”
“Stranger things have happened!”
he said, all while recording me and making notes in his HUD for an article he would later write call “Our Royalty Has Arrived!”
Each day I logged on felt like more of the same.
I would get on, see that I had dozens and sometimes hundreds of messages, I would check to see if Reyna was on and then I would head out to try and get in some work.
I’d made plenty of money from all the gifts I was getting, but it never felt right to accept them.
I’d always felt that if I was getting gold or money, I had to work for it and if that meant going out and servicing clients, I was going to do that and that situation also brought with it its’ own complications.
Whereas previously I could manage to have a couple of clients a day which worked out fine for me, I was now suddenly getting bombarded with requests not only from my regulars, but from hundreds of others who weren’t even looking for sex.
Most of them simply wanted to meet and talk to me.
At first, I took a few of them on but found myself answering all the same questions over and over, most of which I didn’t have a good answer for.
They also wanted to touch me because of my faint, but ever present purple glow.
Realizing the requests would just keep coming, I had decided to raise the asking price for my services to see if that would curb it.
It had zero effect so I raised my prices a 2nd time that same day to a completely ridiculous amount that amazingly, many people were still more than willing to pay just to meet me.
That very day, I had become the most expensive escort in the game, making nearly 5 times as much as the next one below me, all while still being the most highly sought after.
Through all this, Reyna was there, looking after me and making sure I didn’t become overwhelmed.
As each day passed, I could see that all of this new found fame and popularity that had been thrust upon me was wearing on her.
She was becoming frustrated and irritable.
We couldn’t go out and spend our in game days together like we used to.
We couldn’t spend time in our rooms without me getting constant alerts about messages, gifts, and service requests.
As much as I wanted to appease everyone that came to me looking to talk, I had begun to slip and Reyna, the most precious person to me in Aurora, was quietly slipping out of my grasp.
10 days after I had been granted my title and all the additional responsibilities that came along with it, I wanted to do something nice for Reyna so I took her to a small outdoor cafe so we could have hot cocoa and blueberry muffins while we relaxed in the sun.
Little did I know, that date would be her breaking point.
“Hey you fucking whore!”
a voice yelled out as Reyna and I sat there trying to enjoy our time together in peace. “Yeah, you at the table! You suck any white dick today?”
With that comment, I could tell they were obviously screaming at Reyna, her association with me also adding to her popularity.
Thousands more people had been looking into her since we were always seen together.
They’d learned about her public fantasies and how she liked to play them out.
They’d talked to others that had heard of her and her kinks.
They even started a large forum thread on her and made fun of her and demeaned her, calling her fantasies stupid and accusing her of being an attention whore.
I knew for the most part Reyna could handle all the negativity, but the fantasy that she’d shared with me had suddenly become the topic of choice among many in the in game community who wanted to know more about her.
“Go away!”
Reyna yelled back to him as he stood across the street from us. “Trying to have some peace and quiet with my friend.”
“You mean ‘The Queen?’”
he said back to her. “Funny that of all the people in this place she chooses to spend her time with a race play cock whore! That’s your thing, right? You just love those white cocks!”
“Fuck off!”
I said, losing my cool with him. I knew Reyna could take care of herself, but he and all the negative attention she and I had gotten over the last ten days had taken it’s toll on me. I’d had enough.
“Uh oh!”
he said in a mocking tone which drew the attention of several other players in the general area, calling their attention to Reyna and I. “Queen’s mad, everyone! Look out! She might get her little whore friend to suck all our dicks to stave off the bad guys!”
“You fucker!”
I screamed while getting up from my chair. Reyna stood up as well, but not for him. She knew I never liked seeing people come after her or any of our friends and she knew I had no problem getting in someone’s face to settle things.
“Ana, no!”
Reyna could see I was livid. “Ana, stop! He’s not worth it!”
“Oh no!”
the man said, still in his demeaning and mocking voice. “Our little princess is mad! Better call the knights to save the day!”
I’d lost my cool and Reyna knew she had to do something. Knowing we were paired and on “follow”
where if one of us went somewhere, the other would auto teleport with them, Reyna teleported us back to my place so we could be away from the troll.
“Ana!”
Reyna said to me as soon as we spawned in. “What is happening to you! I asked you to stop and you were ready to kill that guy!”
“He was attacking you!”
I said, raising my voice for the first time ever in Reyna’s presence. “I can’t just sit by and let them talk to you like that.”
“I know,”
she said, trying to calm me down. I ran my hands through my hair in frustration and ripping out my hair tie allowing my long locks to flow freely.
“I won’t sit by and let them treat you that way,”
I said back to her. I pulled my hands from my hair and looked up to the ceiling. I stared upward for several seconds while taking a few deep breathes. The stress of all the attention and the ridicule that had found its’ way to Reyna was becoming too much. I knew something had to give and when I turned around to see Reyna staring at me in tears, I knew we’d reached that moment.
I instantly stepped closer to her but stopped short as she put her hand up in front of her to stop me.
I stood there a moment, flabbergasted and unsure of what was happening in that moment.
I said nothing to her, our only communication taking place through our locked eyes for over a minute.
She began to cry like I’d never seen before.
Reyna and I had shared some of our deepest and darkest secrets, many of which brought us to tears.
We had become accustomed to consoling each other and picking each other back up through it all, but I’d never seen her cry the way she did that day.
After each of our insanely intense sessions or even on days where it was just the two of us, all I thought about or wanted in my life in Aurora was to be with her.
I’d grown so attached to her that I had secretly started considering if I should reveal to her who I was in real life.
She’d hinted to me that she was considering the same, but I never pushed her on it, only wanting her to do so if she were completely comfortable with it.
“I can’t do this,”
she said to me, her eyes beginning to swell. “This is just…it’s too much. I’m…a burden on you. Since you got your title, it’s been non stop and I can’t…I just…god damn it.”
She was having a hard time expressing herself, understandably so. Again, I stepped to her and once more I was rebuffed when she lifted her hand to stop me.
“Reyna,”
I said, hoping to assuage her worries. “It won’t always be like this. They’ll eventually get bored with it and move onto something else. It’s just like getting something new to look at and play with. It’s shiny and new for only so long until they move onto the next thing. It will get better. We can do this!”
”I can”t!”
Reyna cried out in despair as the tears rolled down her cheeks. “I know you think it will settle down and things will get better, but people like that guy today…they’ll always be here and they will always say these horrible things. You can’t fight them all. It’s impossible!”
“But you didn’t do anything wrong!”
I said to her, wishing she would let me take her in my arms.
“They don’t see it that way,”
she said back to me. “To them, I’ll always be ‘that race play whore’ that somehow managed to get in your good graces. They’ll keep talking and spreading rumors and eventually more people will talk and they’ll wonder about you and why you’re always with me! They’ll know! They’ll figure out what we do together.”
“I don’t care!”
“But I do!”
“Why! I don’t give a damn what they think!”
“Ana,”
she said to me while covering her face with her hands. “Don’t you see? It’s never going to end. It will just keep happening and then they’ll come after you and they’ll destroy what you’ve become!”
“What have I become?”
I asked Reyna, unsure of what she was really getting at. “Reyna, what have I become?”
“You really don’t see it, do you.”
Reyna dropped her hands from her face and stared at me again. “You’ve become something more. You’ve evolved! You’re not just Ana anymore to these people. There’s a reason they come to you! There’s a reason they send you messages and send you gifts! I know you don’t really read all these forums posts and chat room discussions, but I do! Yes, a ton of people talk badly of you, but to most everyone else…you’ve become a beacon.”
Reyna moved closer to me as she spoke. “That flower that you’re named after now, the lotus, it comes in so many colors and each one has a meaning all its own.”
“What does that even matter?”
I said, hoping to misdirect.
“It matters now more than ever because of who you are!”
she said to me. “That faint glow you have about you…you haven’t even noticed what it does, do you.”
“It’s just purple,”
I replied. “Why does that matter?”
Reyna moved directly in front of me and grabbed arms by my wrists, raising my hands up to my face.
“Look again,”
she said. Looking closely at my hands, they were no longer emitting that light purple glow, but instead appeared more red and golden. “You don’t see it Ana, but I do. I noticed it almost immediately. You’re state of mind, your heart, your soul is tied to the lotus flower now. If people look closely enough, they can see it too. They can feel it. Just as I feel it right now!”
Reyna dropped my arms and placed her hands on my cheeks, getting so close to me that I could almost taste her lip balm. “People can see what you’ve become. To them, you’re whatever they need to you be. The colors of the lotus flower all have different meanings and ideas associated with them. Because of this and because of your new gift, people are drawn to you. They feel a sense of serenity when they’re close to you. I felt it from the first day. That’s why people love to be near you. They can’t help it. They look at you and see you as something beyond their understanding, but still real enough for them to touch.”
I felt my body begin to shake as I slowly realized the magnitude of what had really happened that day.
“I didn’t ask for this,”
I said, resisting the urge to pull Reyna to me even though I was sure she’d refuse. “I never wanted any of this.”
“I know,”
she said to me. “And you’re right. You never asked for this. People who find themselves in situations like this often never ask for their gifts. But this is you now. You were and still are the most loving and caring person I have ever met in my life! I was so scared to tell you about my darkest secrets but I did it anyway with the hope you would somehow accept me and you did! You really did and I was beside myself with happiness over it. You never saw just the kink. You never judged me on it! You accepted me and I love you for it. And…I care for you so much that I can’t…I can’t be a burden to you. I can’t let my life and reputation bring you down.”
It was at that moment that I knew what was coming next.
“You’re going to leave me,”
I said to her in a near whisper. “You’re going to leave me, aren’t you.”
I held tight to my emotions, hoping to stave off a meltdown. Even still, I felt a well of tears in my eyes and could not stop them. “Reyna…please….”
“I can’t,”
she said to me, her voice breaking as she stepped back from me. “I can’t do this to you. I won’t do this to you.”
“Stay,”
I said, my voice also breaking. I could feel my mouth distorting and my heartbeat becoming a sledge hammer, slamming into my chest plate. “Reyna, no….”
As tears fell from her cheeks and down to her shirt, she shook her head to me.”
“No,”
she said. With that, I could see Reyna bringing up her HUD. Tapping on her friend’s list, she scrolled to my name and selected it. With a few more taps, she’d removed me.
“Reyna,”
I said as the first wave of sobbing hit me. “Don’t! Please. Stay! Reyna, just stay!”
“I love you,”
she said to me, tears pouring down her cheeks. “I love you more than life itself. You are…the most wonderful person I’ve ever known in my life. I refuse to be your downfall.”
“Reyna….”
I watched her as she backed away from me and slowly made a series of selections in her HUD. “Stay with me. I need you. I’m nothing without you!”
With those final words, Reyna closed her eyes, hit one final selection on her HUD, and was gone. “NO!”
I brought up my HUD and immediately searched her name in the online player database. She had logged out and had set all her previously public information, including her profile, to private. I screamed out and ran to the wall, pounding it with my fists several times before turning around and falling back into it, letting my body slide down it until I was on the floor.
“REYNA!”I screamed over and over. “Stay! Please don’t leave me! Just stay!”
I cried uncontrollably for hours, cycling through fits of seething anger at those that drove her to leave me and utter despair where it felt as if a part of me had died. The only other time in my life where I’d felt such raw and uncontrollable emotion was the day I almost died at the hands of my ex husband, a day which haunts me even now. Having Reyna leave me so suddenly and under such uncontrollable circumstances, however, felt so much worse.
Reyna and I weren’t a couple, but were never just friends either. Some might say we were something in between. One could argue that for all intents and purpose, she and I were actually together, but never needed to make it official so to speak. We were just together because we sincerely loved being with one another. We were more than friends, but less than lovers.
The kinks we have, and we all have at least a few, are often born from trauma. And through those kinks and fantasies we are able to deal with the pain from those traumas. Reyna and I had somehow managed to discover each other by sheer luck and at the most opportune time. We each needed each other in the worst way and we had hoped we would understand and accept each other. However, that acceptance went far beyond what either of us could have hoped for. I didn’t just accept Reyna and her trauma. I embraced it. I’d come to love her so quickly and so deeply that suddenly having her taken from me caused me to spiral out of control in both Aurora and in real life.
I stopped eating. I lost weight. I stopped going out for food and necessities. I stopped working. I would lie in bed under my blankets for days at a time. At night instead of putting on the headband and logging it, I would lie there and stare at it, wondering how this had all happened the way it did.
When I did eventually log back in, I’d returned to find that all sorts of speculation had started up. I’d not logged in for 9 days and people noticed I had been missing. Some thought I had quit while others thought I had been suspended or completely banned for some reason. Others that knew Reyna and I figured out what had happened since both she and I had suddenly disappeared. The night I returned, I spoke to several of our male friends that participated in our fantasies and confirmed to them that Reyna had decided to “take a break.”
I also told them that I would no longer be participating in any of the role play sessions anymore which bummed out several of them not simply because they’d no longer have a go to for sex, but also because all of them actually gave a damn about Reyna and I.
For the next several weeks, I did all I could to try and not think about her. I kept myself busy with activities, interviews, and appearances. When I wasn’t busy drumming up support for a new club or talking to someone who just needed a shoulder to cry on, I ended up doing what so many people with a broken heart did - I fucked the pain away.
I ended up calling a few of the friends we had that did our sessions with us and had sex with them on several occasions. With each encounter though, they began to notice that part way through, I would become listless and unresponsive. At one point, I’d even been brought back around by one of them because I’d let my mind wonder so much that I’d completely checked out and didn’t even realize we were having sex. The sweetheart that he was, he stopped and covered me with a blanket and tried his best to comfort me. The entire time, I sat there with no expression on my face and no hope in my heart.
I stayed in my room most days for a while after first coming back and tiring of the constant interviews. I worked on my wardrobe and played with colors and new designs for clothing. With all the money I’d made from promoting rooms and granting interviews, I was easily able to buy a new apartment which I later found out was the most expensive in the game. It was insanely large and had more rooms than I knew what to do with. Even given it’s vast size, I found myself sticking mostly to my wardrobe and bedroom, leaving all the other rooms virtually untouched.
Over time, I found myself beginning to crawl back out of my shell and recovering as best I could. I started to leave my real life place again and I rediscovered my appetite after losing 14 pounds off of my 108 pound body. I worked more and spent time outside the game to do other things like read books, watch movies, and play other games on my PC. In game, I would continue to promote rooms occasionally and put on my best face for everyone. The interest in me never waned and people still wished to spend time with me/ They wanted to touch my hands and arms because of my glow which, as Reyna had pointed out to me, did change from time to time depending on my mood.
Before I knew it, life had returned mostly back to normal. I felt good, but never great. I smiled, but not in the same way I used to. I laughed but, as with my smile, not as big or heartily as I once did. The trolls, while still a problem, eventually lost interest in me for a time because I simply never engaged them. Everything had become manageable and even fairly good in most respects. But then, like that lightning bolt that had struck me a year and a half earlier, there she was again, standing right in front of me, my hand in hers as she held it to her chest. And in an instant, it all came flooding back and I was shaking as I did that day she felt she had to leave me.