Two other players stood in front of him though, so Danika prepared to wait patiently, but the merchant called out, "Oh there you are ZipZing! Were you successful?"

"Yeah," Danika replied easily. She glanced at the two surprised but expectant looking players and realized that the girl was probably the owner of the hood which meant that the huge scaly dog was probably her half wolf brother.

The merchant verified her suspicion and cheerfully introduced the two players. If her brother had already arrived, Danika suspected that she'd probably failed to fulfill that quest. She pulled the cloak out of the newer storage ring on her tail anyway.

The girl exclaimed happily, "You got it!"

Danika handed her the cloak without mentioning any reward and Falling Ash shot his sister a sharp silent look. After a moment she told ZipZing, "Thank you!" She glanced at her brother again and added, "Please accept this small reward."

"Sure," Danika agreed. She accepted a small ring without examining it. Even if it didn't pay much, the dialog that announced that it had given everyone in the guild Karma already made her happy enough. It had counted as another completed guild quest.

--

After she finished up, Danika returned to her garden for a bit. Ais.h.i.+n was still there, but seemed inactive. She checked the time and considered logging out for a late lunch.

"I'm going to log out for a bit," she announced so that Ais.h.i.+n could read it later.

Ais.h.i.+n startled her by suddenly flas.h.i.+ng a grin at her, and asking, "What's your plan for dinner?"

"Um, I don't have any specific plans?" she replied.

"Our evening shoot got rescheduled. Can we have dinner together?" he asked.

"Sure," she agreed. She had less enthusiasm for it than she wanted to admit to.

He noticed because he asked, "Are you sure it's ok? If you're too tired or have seen enough of me for one day it's ok?"

Danika laughed and protested, "I haven't seen enough of you!" But she also admitted, "I just don't really want to go out again."

"I could bring take out, or we could get delivery?" he suggested.

"Do you want me to cook something?" she asked hesitantly.

"I'd love that if you wouldn't mind, but you don't need to if you're tired," he replied quickly.

"I don't mind," she a.s.sured him.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed her out of the air and kissed her nose. "OK! Have a good break then, and I'll definitely see you later, probably about eight, but I'm not sure exactly."

"Alright," she agreed happily. She wasn't sure what else to add, so she just logged out without saying anything else.

--

Since they'd be having a later supper Danika went ahead and made herself a light lunch, and sorted through the possible things she could make with what was on hand.

She was looking at recipes online when she suddenly stopped and closed the browser. While it would be cool to make something nice, she decided that she also didn't want to make s.h.i.+nichi something that took more effort than she was willing to put into cooking on a regular basis. Instead she just started something easy that she could finish in a few minutes whenever he arrived.

She'd always liked the line, "Begin a relations.h.i.+p as you mean to continue it." That didn't mean that she wanted to jump into everything at once, but she wanted this relations.h.i.+p to be something that they could maintain indefinitely. And if it worked, maybe even for their whole lives.

Thinking that made her wonder for the first time what would happen if they got married someday. She'd heard of celebrities whose contracts prohibited marriage and romantic relations.h.i.+ps, but s.h.i.+nichi didn't seem to have one of those, because he'd said low profile not secret. She frowned and wondered if it were too soon to ask about things like that, or if it would be better to ask right away.

She did do her exercises after eating. And then she took a bath and dressed in something she considered cute before pulling herself back into the VR-medi pod.

--

Shrubbery was online when ZipZing returned to 'Living Jade Empire' so she sent a quick message asking if they should meet up.

Shrubbery replied via her little golden mouse messenger, which reminded Danika of the snow leopard cub telling her that she should make it so that he could choose which message he carried. Shrubbery said: "I need to work on my garden for awhile, but I'd love to hang out? It feels like it's been awhile?"

That gave Danika pause. When she stopped to think about it, they hadn't really hung out together while Shrubbery did her gardening since Eyes on the Sky had been with them. She replied quickly: "I'd love that! I'm kind of tired out today and Ais.h.i.+n is coming over for dinner so I want to save up some energy."

When she zipped into Shrubbery's garden a short while later, Shrubbery asked curiously, "Why are you so tired? Didn't you have all yesterday off?"

"Yeah," Danika agreed, "and I can't really explain why I'm so tired. Meeting with my father really went pretty well. I mean, he has apparently been hiding some pretty stupid ideas for wayyyy too long, and he's got a girlfriend he was afraid to admit to, but it was good."

"Um, wow," Shrubbery commented. "No wonder you're feeling tired."

Danika shrugged and landed on one of the seats beneath the squirrel shaped tree canopy. Hikaru came out of her own pebble bound garden to visit Shrubbery's firefly colony, and Shrubbery quietly tended to her many flowering plants.

After awhile Shrubbery asked, "Do you want to talk about it? I can't tell if you're just being quiet to be polite."

Danika blinked, and then laughed. "I'm not being polite, I'm just zoning out."

Shrubbery replied with a smile, "Oh, okay."

Danika thought for a moment and then asked, "Will you feel bad if I say I don't want to talk about it?"

"Of course not," Shrubbery replied stoutly.

Danika made an effort to not just lay there staring blankly though and asked, "a.s.suming that we're successful in purchasing one of the buildings beside us, won't that add a lot of extra garden maintenance time?"

Shrubbery sat back on her heels and looked around her garden for a moment. "Well, I guess it all depends on how fancy it is? We don't have to plant the s.p.a.ce around the guild hall tree with anything high maintenance?"

They whiled away half of a 'Living Jade Empire' day talking about whether they should come up with a symbolic color scheme, keep things professionally trimmed looking, or even make it like a small patch of wildwood within the city.