of the stars

As a pretty small child absolutely obsessed with fantasy role playing games and, lacking siblings to play with, I was pretty elated to be introduced the expansive universe of the MMORPG. As far as I was concerned, the genre included only one game, which was on the computer of my slightly older friend who lived far away and ignored content age restrictions. I was particularly enamored with the character option to play a humanoid rat person (with the humanoid cat person being a close second, if not tie), perhaps because of my affinity for the Redwall books. It was all my nerd child self wanted to do. But because my this friend lived far away and my mom didn’t want to buy media that she thought was too mature for my age, I only got to play the game a few times. I had a good imagination and spent years drawing and acting out my beloved humanoid rat character and biding my time until I could buy the game for myself. 

I had a dream last night that I was co-hosting a party at @glumshoe‘s house and when I asked each of the roughly sixteen guests whether they would like tea, each of them responded in the affirmative and I had to set about finding a way to heat all of the water. When I asked my co-host whether or not there was a kettle I could avail myself of, I was received with polite and friendly confusion. I told them my name and that I was hosting, which they accepted with surprising grace, given that they didn’t know who I was. They introduced themself and it was when they leaned in closer, crinkling their white button-down shirt and vest on the lip of the counter, “My name is--” that the dream caught on a snag. It glitched for a few seconds while my brain buffered, “--Ship. You can call me Ship.” They gave me an apologetic smile so as to say, “Sorry, I know. File not found. You don’t know my real name.”