"Oh, you're on your phone," she said with a bit of disappointment.

"Yeah," he agreed.

"What are we doing?" she asked. Hikaru flew in happy looking spirals through the warm steamy air.

He handed her a small bottle, which pulled her out of the air, but it floated when she hit the water. She floated too. Ais.h.i.+n said, "Oh. Maybe you won't really be able to help. Filling 500 bottles."

His character neatly filled another bottle and he stored it and drew out another with quick motions. She struggled a bit with the bottle and then abandoned it and attempted to paddle to the large rock that held the rest of his gear. Ais.h.i.+n scooped her up and placed her on it when he saw what she was trying to do. "Can't swim?" he questioned.

"ZipZing can't," she agreed.

"Sorry, I should have told you more," he apologized.

She found a niche in the rock where she could wedge herself just above the water line and said, "Let me try from here."

He'd already collected the bottle she'd abandoned and filled another, but he handed her a new one. "It's apparently an ingredient for health potions," he explained.

On solid ground she could use her dragon strength and maneuver the bottle. After they'd been filling bottles for awhile she thought back to the geyser that had spouted water of youth and asked, "What's with this game and the magical properties of geothermally heated water?"

"It's a standard legend isn't it? Millions of people really believe that hot springs are healing?" he questioned in return.

"I guess so," she agreed.

"A couple of my dad's friends are total hot spring enthusiasts, although I've never heard them say that they're magical. But they may have visited every known hot spring on the planet by now," Ais.h.i.+n said after a while.

"Wow," Danika replied with amazement. "They travel a lot?"

"Quite a lot since Mirage is pretty much retired apart from a handful of concerts each year," he explained.

Danika paused. "Your dad is in Mirage. Being a musician is the family business?" she questioned.

"Not exactly," he replied and flashed a grin at her. "My mom was a florist, and she said her parents ran a bar until her father had a heart attack."

"Oh," Danika replied, she noted that he hadn't mentioned his father.

But he continued, "My dad's family were apparently all normal salaryman types, although I've only met one great niece of his who came looking for an autograph." Danika realized that he was talking about Kobayas.h.i.+ Ryuske when he mentioned the autograph. "But he should have expected me to take it up after seeking out a kid with an interest in music and then encouraging a real education in it," he said after he filled the last bottle and collected hers.

He scooped up his gear and waded away from her. Danika launched herself into the air and followed him. Hikaru trailed behind.

They exited the warm cave into the snowy landscape and Danika s.h.i.+vered. Ais.h.i.+n re-equipped his usual dark clothes without any sign of discomfort, but Hikaru hurried up to her and vanished into the pebble strapped to her back. Ais.h.i.+n caught her and set her on his shoulder before traveling downhill at his usual reckless pace.

Danika didn't object and simply hooked her claws into his sword belt and cuddled up against him for warmth. He delivered his filled bottles to the traveling merchant in a small village and logged out. Danika asked the merchant where she was now in relation to the dwarven town she'd left, and was a little surprised to discover that they were in the same mountain range.

By the time she usually woke up to begin her morning routine she was already most of the way back to where she'd left Kit.

--

When she checked her email she had a message from Starcraft Technologies waiting. The t.i.tle was rather ominous: "Application Result" It made it sound like the interview really had been a test. Her hand trembled as she opened it, and she closed her eyes and scolded herself. "You're doing fine with your ordinary jobs. Better than fine lately."

Then she opened her eyes and read, "Thank you for applying…" Her eyes skimmed over the formulaic words until they reached the line, "your application has been accepted." After that it requested that she contact HR and arrange to attend a two week training course at their headquarters, preferably the one starting in ten days.

Danika gazed at it for so long that, in order to fill out all of the forms that HR automatically directed her to when she followed the contact instructions, she didn't have time to do her exercises. On her first break she notified the game studio, and made a list of other tasks that would need to be accomplished.

--

A week pa.s.sed in a blur, despite spending each evening moving deeper into the dwarven kingdoms with Kit, Shrubbery, and MatchlessMinion who had caught up to them the next evening.

The only thing that had felt like a major accomplishment was that ZipZing finally learned the Shape cantrip off the silver ring, so that she could pa.s.s it on to Shrubbery. It only had a couple dozen charges left in it though, so she also started trying to teach it to Shrubbery directly.

SaltySiamese and Justin's party were at the southern end of the dwarven kingdoms and Danika began to wonder if their quests were leading them all to the same place in the middle. When the Heart Moon rose for the first time it was just a red sliver, and none of them took any real notice of it until they logged in to the announcement:

"Parties of 2 will gain 2 extra Karma for each quest completed during the Week of Hearts."

"This event lasts for one game week, 48 hours. There will be many festivals and several new repeatable quests will be introduced all across 'Living Jade Empire'."

The timer at the bottom of the notice informed Danika that the event would begin in just under 23 hours.

When she dismissed the notice screen and entered the game, Ais.h.i.+n's little bat was waiting. She wondered what the snow leopard cub had done to annoy him, but switched her own messenger back to it.

She read Ais.h.i.+n's message: "Be mine! If you don't Nao1 is demanding that I partner with her, because Edwardian isn't really interested in the game. Save me? But it's ok if you need to pair up with Kit or Shrubbery."

She blinked. She'd seen SilentSky online sometimes, and he still belonged to the Blood Hunters guild like Ais.h.i.+n had, but she hadn't realized the rest of his band were actually playing too. They'd seemed like they'd only come to see him become her familiar.

She raised her face to gaze up at the fattening heart moon which had grown pinker as it waxed. It wasn't actually heart shaped, although the crater patterns on it were. She really wanted to tell Ais.h.i.+n yes, but she didn't want to leave someone else without a partner, and with the party limit of five there was bound to be an odd person out in every full party like theirs.

She sighed and messaged Kit first.