But, here’s the thing: the thing is that under ordinary circumstances, Billie would have nothing better to do than to watch a woman with a raven’s head wriggling upstream through the crowd around the lobby bar, over to the fountain and that epic bubble of blood. The woman holds up a pink drink, she’s standing on tiptoes, and a slick four-fingered hand emerges from the bubble of blood and takes the glass from her. Is it a love story? How does a woman with a raven’s beak kiss a bubble of blood? Paul Zell, how are you and me any more impossible than that?

Maybe it’s just two old friends having a drink. The four-fingered hand orients the straw into the membrane or force field or whatever it is and the glass empties itself like a magic trick. The bubble quivers.

But: Paul Zell. All Billie can think about is you, Paul Zell. She has the key to Paul Zell’s hotel room. Back before she met you, way far back in FarAway, Billie was always up for a quest. Why not? She had nothing better to do. And the quest always went like this: Find yourself in a strange place. Encounter a guardian. Outwit them or kill them or persuade them to give you the item they’ve been guarding. A weapon or a spell or the envelope containing the key to room 1584.

Except the key in Billie’s hand is a real key and I don’t do that kind of quest much anymore. Not since I met you, Paul Zell. Not since the Enchantress Magic EightBall met the Master Thief Boggle in King Nermal’s Chamber and challenged him to a game of chess.

While I’m coming clean, here’s a minor confession. Why not? Why should you care that besides the Enchantress Magic EightBall I used to have two other avatars in FarAway? There’s Constant Bliss, who’s an elfin healer, and frankly kind of a pill, and there’s Bearhand, who, as it turns out, was kind of valuable in terms of accumulated points, especially weapons class. There was a period, you see, when things were bad at school and worse at home, which I don’t really want to talk about and anyway it was a bad period during which I liked running around and killing things. Whatever. Last month I sold Bearhand when you and I were planning all of this, for bus fare. It wasn’t a big deal. I’d kind of stopped being Bearhand except for every once in a while when you weren’t online and I was lonely or sad or had a really, really shitty day at school.