Collide Gamer

“I like this, this is fun, this is lofty,” Sylph declared as she played with her new clothes. “John, John, how do I look? Do I look good? I mean, of course I look good, I always look good, I am your concubine and you look good, so I, as your concubine, have to look good as well. Cause good looking people stick together right? Or were those magnets? I think those were magnets. Or halfway molten gummi bears, as Sally once showed me. Mean Sally, laughing as she transformed the bag into one inedible mass of plastic and gela-gelu… yellow… gelatine! It wasn’t yellow though, more like a block of rainbow and…”

John zoomed out, just holding the hand of the air elemental so she drifted along him as they made their way through the crowd. What had his plan been for this date? Well, originally he wanted to take her to the restaurant as well, stuff her full of non-sugary sweet things and then present some choices as to what to do next.

Sylph had instead requested that they take out the French maid costume that they put Siena in whenever she did something truly annoying as punishment and that she gets to wear it. Therefore, instead of wearing her normal green leotard, be it in the normal or slightly changed swimwear version, she was now clad in a short-skirted, frilly-rimmed, black and white maid outfit. She did, however, refuse to wear the headband.

There was no part in John that could be annoyed by this decision. Two things he knew with certainty each girl in his harem could wear and could only look sexy in: French maid outfits and lingerie. Of course, that was only the list of outfits. For individual clothes there were also dresses, stockings, yoga pants and… well, the list went on.

Once she was in that outfit, she had declared she wanted to go to an event. So that’s what they had done. It wasn’t really a noteworthy thing, a pie eating contest that John didn’t want to be part of. Sylph, on the other hand, had smashed her face into the thing with gusto. She barely ate any of it and came in second to last place (ahead of a humanoid ant-person who ate two bites of the thing with the table manners of a baron).

As much of a waste of time it felt like, seeing her laughing face covered in red from the fruit filling was actually worth it. Cleaning her up had been a bit of a challenge though, since she refused to remain still for more than four seconds. In the end, he managed to do it.

Now they were back on the main deck as Sylph just pulled him around like a balloon attached to a broken navigator.

“I also want to see Undine jump in the ocean, I think that sounds like fun, I want to fly all the time so I wonder why she is still waiting. Don’t you think that swimming must be fun? I have a hard time doing it, I just constantly drift on the surface you know? I wonder how Siena does it, she doesn’t weigh anything and yet she can stand in the pool. Audible gasp! How does Chompy do it? He is actually diving! Why doesn’t he teach me? Could I ride him? Double gasp.” She inhaled twice, loudly, “Me riding a tiny crocodile! That would be totally adorbsa-dorbs. Do you think that…”

“Shhhhh!” an old lady interrupted Sylph. “The concert is about to begin.”

‘Concert?’ John thought and looked around. He had noticed that it was a bit more crowded than usual but had put that down to it just being a busier time due to the increasingly hot weather. The eyes of Jack (although technically it was Jack 2) also failed to spy anything interesting. How was there a concert supposed to be around a crowded pool with no stage anywhere? ‘Full-stop, John,’ he told himself, ‘this is the Abyss, so if there is supposed to be a concert, there will be a concert. I guess they will fly?’

That hunch was exactly on point, and John and Sylph looked up just in time to see thin sheets of glass fly out of the structures around the bridge. There were two kinds of uniform sizes to the translucent things, either large squares or smaller rectangles. The former found together into a large plane that hovered over the pool while the latter formed winding staircases.

Then a storm broke. Not one of thunder and rain but of sound and song. Hundreds of small green, blue and pink dots swarmed into the air. Each one moved on wings that fluttered too quick for the naked eye to see in detail. Little faeries armed with tiny instruments that somehow reverberated just as loudly as their full-sized counterparts. Like orchestral hummingbirds, they darted from place to place as a Celtic song full of harps and flutes touched their ears.

John listened to the song in awe as he watched the less fascinating display of people trying to climb the translucent stairs and falling into the water as they failed. Some made it halfway or even further up, only to then fall up to seven metres. Combined with the sharp looking edges of those stairs, John very much doubted that this would have stood the test of any safety protocols in a world without recovery magic.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” Sylph laughed out and immediately moved before John could do so much as protest. He didn’t even have a clue what she meant or why people were trying to get up there. From what he gathered through their mental connection, she didn’t know either, she was just doing what felt right. However, if there was one aspect of life where John firmly trusted Sylph’s judgement, then it was how to understand faeries. She practically was one, at least one of the cute, non-horrible variety.

So, they made their way through the crowd until they arrived at the steps. Which, as John then and there noted, weren’t actually made from glass but ice. As if they needed to make it even more slippery. The steps seemed to be fine, but the platform above began to melt as they stood there.

Sylph paid no mind to any of that. “Just one step from left to right,” she sung to the tune of the song. “Just one song to make it right. Something else that ends with right. And now I make my way up here,” she actually took the steps of the stairs, yet still it looked like she was flying. At no point did John have the impression she was in danger of falling. All that Agility she had didn’t just make her fast, the elegance that it gave her movements just was usually lost in the quirkiness and word-salad that permeated her existence.

She was still chattering throughout the whole process, but that was something only John heard through their shared mind. To everyone else, there was a little woman in a French maid outfit, with hair the colour of pale leaves dancing up stairs everyone else was trying their hardest to climb – barefooted. There was no envy in this crowd, however, no ill will or misplaced anger; when Sylph reached the top of the stairs and danced by her lonesome a circle around the edge, sliding over the ice like an Olympic skater, they cheered loudly for her.

‘Come on, come on,’ Sylph wanted, gesturing him to try. ‘It’s not so hard, just trust your feet to take you up!’

Well, John didn’t exactly know what to make of that announcement, but he did have a dancing class earlier today so that had to be good for something. ‘Here goes nothing,’ he thought and raised his foot. Without any grace or skill whatsoever, he tried to first move slow and with method and then, once his shoes began to slip, took hastened steps that sent him out of balance and cast him into the warm waters below.

‘No, no, not like that you dum-dum,’ Sylph laughed into his mind, a breeze in the face of which it was hard to get annoyed with his failure. ‘You Silly Sally Summoning Summoner you, not like that at all. Try again, try again, I want to dance!’

John made his way to the edge of the water and pulled himself out. Quietly he thanked himself for the decision to change into his trunks, the only other clothing he was still wearing were a pair of sandals. He didn’t quite want to walk over the ground hundreds of unknown species were treading on with unprotected feet. ‘I know how this dance goes though,’ he told himself and closed his eyes for a moment to lose himself in the music. Putting his shoes into his inventory, he positioned himself in front of the stairs again. Up above Sylph stopped her dancing to stand at the end with two outstretched arms, waiting for him.

‘Just trust your feet will carry you upwards and they will. How? Dunno,’ Sylph chirped into his mind, and he began ascending. It was rhythm of feeling and music, interwoven in a way John had to question was more than coincidence. The music seemed perfectly timed for the background harp to always make a light note whenever his feet began to feel the cold of the ice he was walking on. He only had eyes for Sylph, her smile and waving hair was where he wanted to be. Thinking was a mistake, he just had to do, had to trust in the whimsical nature of his instincts and the tones surrounding him, swelling into even greater melodies as he left the area surrounding the flying orchestra and moved into the heart of it all.

At the last step he threatened to fall forwards. It would have been quite the painful landing, face, chest, stomach and groin would all be hit by the edge of some step to varying degrees of damage. However, he was already in the range of Sylph’s hands, and so she caught and pulled him onto the icy plane above.

Staying still here, barefoot, was a mild torture. Only constant movement, pirouettes and jumps saved their soles from the freezing cold. For a moment they were the only ones up there, but soon others managed to find their rhythm between hearts and ears. As they were all filled with a common song, they managed to dance in unison. Alone, in pairs, in groups, people were dancing with each other, sometimes coming close, sometimes distancing themselves. The faeries flew around them.

Earlier today John had danced before, a private dance of shared clumsiness slowly evolving. This was a different dance, this was a trial. The platform thawed away from the inside out, those with the keenest instincts danced where the ice was just thick enough to still hold them, whilst others eventually fell through the platform that could no longer sustain their weight.

There was less and less room, but the competition didn’t get touchy at any point. There was a silent agreement that they would all just fall when their heart no longer guided them accurately. Parts of the outside also broke away until there was nothing more but a ring, just half-a-metre wide, to step upon. There were only four pairs of two left, and they moved at equal distance from one another. The faeries formed two spirals in their musical flight, a tunnel through which they all moved.

Sylph and John’s dance on the fairies’ ring had nothing from the traditional movements that he and Nia had learned earlier. It was still a dance, it still used the same basic move set, but it was used in an almost archaic fashion. Their steps weren’t measured, Sylph didn’t think about guiding John or being guided, they just moved. Before either of them noticed their minds had already become one.

It was hard to synchronize his mind with the tempest elemental, much harder than with anyone else, except maybe Stirwin. All of the other girls, they were coherent, thought at a normal pace and communicated in ways that one didn’t need to think about. With Sylph, he had to actively stop trying to understand her to get the point. It was hard, especially for an overthinker like him.

But in this moment, right then and right there, none of that mattered, they were one, they had cold feet, their hands were touching frequently, the dance employed hugs and kisses, even a short piggyback ride and Sylph was laughing as he twirled her around just on her hands as if she was on a carrousel.

The sensation of falling would be spared from them, as instead the remaining ice lowered into the pool beneath. Their cold feet burned as they touched the warm water, their dance becoming slow and sluggish in the different environment, and once they were submerged to their thighs and the ice melted completely in the pool, they had to stop.

Slowly their minds decoupled. John opened his mouth, “Sylph that was breathtaking, I don’t… is that how you always fe-“

“John, John!” she interrupted him, floating on her back with all limbs stretched out. “See? I told you, I told you I only float!” she acted like she held her breath, which was mighty difficult as she was made out of air, and tried to dive. To no avail. “I am floaty-girl. Float-Sylph. Super Sylph, superpower: acting as a safety vest!”

John looked at her with stunned disbelief for a moment, unable to connect the dancing elemental with the childish girl. Then he laughed with his whole body, from the bottom of his belly to the full capacity of his lungs to his wide-open mouth. It didn’t matter what he was unable to connect consciously.