While the events of my undeath had often been turbulent as of late, I knew well that it was often best to relax my mind and spend some quality time with my thralls.

I decided to stop by my thrall Hannah’s suite in the hotel I inhabited. She had kept wanting me to play this computer game of hers called Cubecrafter. I had heard a few of my other thralls mention it from time to time as well since the early 2010s or so; it was apparently very popular.

Hannah hadn’t played it in years until recently, when her partner Celia had gotten her to play one of the new updates, but when she mentioned it to me and I told her that I had never played it, she had insisted that I needed to try it at some point, so here we were. She had called me “one of the lucky 10,000”, a phrase I didn’t quite understand, but it seemed to be some sort of compliment.

Hannah had sat me down at the desk where she kept her computer and kneeled next to me with a smile on her face. This was a game played with a keyboard, and I wasn’t altogether sure I’d be able to handle it well. Computer games weren’t my strong suit in any case. By my reckoning, they were still a relatively recent invention, but Hannah had been playing them for her whole life. I wanted to understand her interests as well as I could. But it still felt so recent that my former thrall Virginia had been having me play her favorite text adventures back in the early 80s.

“So you just need to click on that grassy cube to start the game, Mistress,” Hannah said. She pointed at the icon on the upper right of her computer screen, placed conveniently for my use.

“Such a good girl,” I said, reaching down to pet her on the head. “You placed it right where I would need it.” I had enough experience with computers, even my own, to know that it was not standard organizational practice to place programs on one’s screen background. They were more readily placed in the task bar or accessed via the start menu, as my thralls had informed me repeatedly over the years. Placing them on the desktop was something that I had been informed would make me look like an old lady, which I was not, despite my age. Hannah would only do this for my ease of use.

“Sorry, Mistress, I wish I had thought of that. I’ve actually just had it there since I was 10,” she said, looking a little flustered. “I didn’t have the greatest organizational sense back then and I never bothered to move it to applications.”

Wow. That made me feel seen. It was lovely to have a thrall with whom I had so much in common.

“You’ve been playing this game since you were a child?” I asked. Where did all the years go? Of course, while it sometimes left me a bit bewildered, immortality meant that this sensation did not bring me the great deal of stress it brought to humans.

“Yes, Mistress. Cubecrafter is pretty evergreen, I guess,” Hannah said. “It’s always been kind of an awkward thing, though, because the guy who made the game is a total transphobic jackass, and then it got bought by Chipware, and now you have to have a fucking Chipware account just to play the game.” She made a fake-vomiting sound, and for a moment, I was inspired to commit acts of great violence against the game’s original creator for daring to speak ill of myself and especially of my thralls in that way. I suppressed that instinct in myself, unfortunately. I’d risk exposure as a vampire if I did something dramatic like that.

“Mm, more something you put up with for nostalgic purposes,” I said. “I believe I understand. Shall I begin?”

“Yes, Mistress! I’m excited to see You go!” Hannah said, bouncing up without standing from her very adorable kneeling position.

I double clicked on the icon, and a loading sequence covered the entire screen for a split second, before changing to an image of a grassy yet blocky field with the title Cubecrafter and several clickable buttons overlaid. Ugh… even at minimum brightness settings in an unlit room, this screen was gaudy, at least to my darkness-adjusted eyes.

Ah… and the letters of Cubecrafter were blocky themselves, with the “A” in the title shaped like what appeared to be the face of an unusual creature.

“Is that who we, mm, ‘play as’?” I asked, pointing at the face, raising my eyebrow smugly as I believed I was onto something, getting far ahead of this silly game produced by a transphobic man.

Hannah laughed, covering her face and seeming a little embarrassed. “No, Mistress. That’s the Stalker. It’s a monster that can blow up your house if you’re not careful. It’s kind of the mascot of this game.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, clicking on “single-player game”. Ahh, now I was armed with knowledge. This game would not get the better of me as Virginia’s favorite text adventure, Zonk, had managed to, or Mona’s beloved Super X and The Tale of Laela half a decade later.

Clicking on that had loaded another screen showing a list of entries, named such things as “New World Order”, “A Whole New World”, and so forth, as well as a “New World” button located at the bottom. Ah, that was cute — I got the picture of where Hannah had appeared to source those titles from.

“You can pick any world You want, of course, Mistress, but it might be best to make a new one?” Hannah suggested. Her deference made my mouth water, no less now than in any other moment.

“Of course. Very well, dear,” I said, clicking on the “New World” button. A prompt came up commanding me to select a name for the new world.

“And what do you think I shall name this world, my darling?” I asked, grasping her right hand with my left one.

“How about ‘Mistress’ World’? If that pleases You,” Hannan giggled.

“Quite appropriate,” I said, typing out what she had suggested. I looked forward to Hannah seeing this world name in the list every time she opened the game going forward.

I pressed the enter key, and after another brief loading screen, a blocky, grassy environment similar to the one on the title screen appeared.

“Ah! Is this the game?” I asked. “Where is my character?” A series of hearts, much like the one in The Tale of Laela, was visible in the bottom left of the screen along with what appeared to be some sort of chicken legs, but there was no sign of any character on screen, not like I was used to.

Hannah giggled some more. “It’s a first-person perspective, Mistress. You can’t really see Your guy because You’re looking through their eyes, but their hand is right there.” She pointed to a rectangular prism that was visible in the bottom right. A crude depiction of a hand, but I supposed I could see the vision.

“Ahh, I see,” I said. “And what am I meant to do?”

“Well, You can use the mouse to look around, WASD to move, and You press the spacebar to jump,” she explained.

I tried out the controls as expected and got a decent feeling for them, moving the mouse around a lot and exploring the area around me. There was a small grassy hill with some flowers in front of me, a grove of trees to my left, a desert to my right, and above…

The sun!

Ah, but it was only a game, a game made by and for humans, in fact. I likely had no need to fear it in this context, no more than when I saw it in a photograph. Though it still made me worry…

“It’s not harmful to me, is it?” I asked, moving my character to the left to gain the cover of one of the strange looking trees. Its leaves were translucent, and I could still perceive the strange square sun from through them.

“What? Oh… the sun?” Hannah asked, taking a moment. “Oh, no, Mistress. Actually, it’s much more dangerous in this game when it’s dark. That’s when all the monsters come out.”

“Ah, yes, the Stalker and so forth,” I said, feeling assured again. “I shall be prepared. So strange to look at this from such a human perspective. I suppose to the creator of this game, I must be seen as less akin to this strange square-handed person than I am to these mysterious monsters. Of course, it’s not that I necessarily disagree. I am a nocturnal and dangerous woman, though I would never seek to hurt humans… well, is this character even meant to be a human?”

“More or less?” Hannah said, frowning in confusion. “It’s never been that clear. You can press F5 to see Your guy if You want.”

I did, and the results appalled me. What was this strange bearded man? More than merely his hand was cubic. Was this meant to be a generic representation of anyone who might be playing this game? If that was the case, I found this game’s creator more unpleasant than what I had already known.

“Who is this supposed to be?” I asked. “What’s their story?”

“He’s called Seth,” Hannah said. “I don’t know, he’s just some guy. He wants to like, build houses or whatever, I guess, and defeat the Void Dragon, Mistress.”

“You build houses in this game? Fight dragons? Are these the goals?” I asked.

Hannah giggled. “I guess so. Beating the Void Dragon is sort of an ending, but You’re not really expected to stop there. It’s an open-ended sandbox game.”

Fascinating. Games had changed since I had last played them…I had presumed I’d be playing for score or to finish the story. I figured I must have been missing something big. No wonder this game was considered influential. I wouldn’t let it get the better of me.

“Well, let’s start with the basics, I suppose,” I said. “How do I build houses?”

“Oh, sure, Mistress,” Hannah chirped. “If You hold down left click on a block, You can break it and put it in Your inventory. Then You can place down blocks You’ve collected with a right click and make structures that way. Housing included.”

I pressed F5 again to return to first-person mode, then looked at the dirt beneath my character, noticing for the first time a small outline around the grassy block. I held down the mouse button as Hannah instructed and the dirt was destroyed, dropping me into a small hole where it had been. The dirt block was now in the bar at the bottom of the screen, as well as in my character’s hand.

“I see!” I said. “And to what end are we building these houses?” I was eager to start and impress Hannah in the process.

“Again, Mistress, it’s not as much about the end goal as it’s just about playing and having fun,” Hannah said. “And You’re hardly limited to houses. You can build all sorts of structures in this game. But the main point of building a house is to protect Yourself from the monsters that come out at night.”

“What sort of monsters should I be prepared for?” I asked. “Other than the Stalker, of course.” Knowing one’s enemy was an important first step.

“Uhh… there are zombies, skeletons, giant spiders, sometimes You can see witches…”

“Any of my kind?” I asked, suddenly excited by the presence of undead beings. I was no monster, of course, but I had been labeled that way more than enough times for it to be fresh in my mind.

“No, there aren’t any vampires in Cubecrafter,” Hannah said sadly. “Goddess, I’d never get anywhere in the game if there were. I’d be offering myself up to them instead… well, I mean, if they were extremely hot women like You, anyway. Cubecrafter vampires would totally just be some generic Dracula types.”

Mm. An unpleasant thought. I hated that that book had defined how humans perceived my kind. I could do so much better. I freed my thralls from the shackles of free will and the patriarchy, and gave them all the love they deserved instead of preying on helpless peasants from an empty, decaying castle. I could actually connect with my own community. Alas, I had known many of my kind who did act that way, working within the system rather than escaping from it. My own begetter had been that way. The book was probably truer to undeath than I liked to admit.

“A shame,” I said. “Alright, tell me how to build a house, sweetie.”

“Yes, Mistress!” Hannah said, perking up at being given a command to obey like a good girl. “First, You have to punch trees.”

“Punch trees?” I asked. “You mean like this tree here?” I returned my character to the tree that I had had him stand under before, looking it up and down. “How do I punch?”

“Oh, I just mean hold down left click again so You break the tree trunk,” she explained. “Then You can use the wood to make all sorts of stuff.”

“Ahh… well, I had been training to be a carpenter, not a lumberjack before I was turned, you know,” I said with a little giggle. “But I suppose I can give it a try.”

I broke the trunk, and what I saw next made me think that the game must have been exhibiting some sort of horrible technical error.

“How… how is the rest of the tree floating?” I asked in horror. “That’s truly uncanny.” It reminded me of the first time I had failed to see my own reflection in the surface of a pond.

“Oh… that’s just how the game works, Mistress,” Hannah said nervously. “Blocks don’t need to be supported by anything, even when they’re part of trees.”

“I don’t like it. I think I’ll destroy the rest of the tree just to be safe.”

“I was actually going to recommend that anyway. You’ll need the wood, Mistress.” Ahh, so I had gotten ahead of Hannah on this. That was good. I had something to be proud of, and I looked at her expectantly for further information.

“So next, You’ll need to press escape to open your inventory,” she continued.

I did, and a network of cells similar to those in the bar at the bottom of the screen appeared. Seth was also visible, looking at my cursor as I moved it around. Vile.

“Is there any way to play as a more appealing character than this?” I asked, letting out an annoyed sigh.

“Oh! Yes, actually, Mistress. Until Celia got me to, I hadn’t played since I transitioned, and I didn’t like my old skin much at all so I just went back to the default one. But I can get a skin for You or make a special one just for You! At some point soon, if You want to keep playing this,” Hannah said.

“Hmm… yes, you should make one for me. I order you to, sweetie,” I said, blowing her a kiss. I knew my thralls liked it a lot when I ordered them around.

“Yes, Mistress,” she whimpered. “I’ll do my best for You.”

“Good girl,” I said. I’d soon have a character better suited for a pretty girl like myself. “Now what shall I do from this inventory screen?”

Hannah smiled. “See those four boxes in the ‘crafting’ section, Mistress? If You put the wood you just got in there, You can process the wood into planks that are better for building and crafting with.”

I did as she suggested, and I apparently multiplied my wood by four in the process. Now I understand why the game had “craft” in its name.

“How does he do that?” I asked. “Turn that wood into planks with his bare hands? It is not that easy. Believe me, I know that from experience.”

My thrall laughed, reaching for my arm to give it a little kiss. “I don’t know, Mistress! Seth’s capable of a lot of crazy stuff, I guess. People like to talk about how he can carry millions of kilograms if you fill up his inventory with gold. It’s a game abstraction.”

I didn’t fully understand what that last part meant, but I nodded my head.

“There’s gold in this game?” I asked warily. Gold was pretty, my favorite bracelets and necklaces both made from it, but… “Any silver?”

Hannah laughed warmly. “No silver, actually, Mistress. You’re safe from that, even in the game.”

I nodded, feeling reassured. “So what do I do with these wood planks? Simply build a house?”

“Yeah!” Hannah said. “It doesn’t need to be too pretty or exciting to start out. You could just build a 6x6 or something for now. But You’ll probably want more wood, Mistress, from some more of the trees over there.”

I looked toward them with trepidation, punching four or five more trees down with Seth’s bare hands. Strength like that was not normally seen in humans, if he was meant to be read as a human. Even one of my kind would have difficulty felling a tree so cleanly, let alone leaving the upper trunk suspended in midair in that unpleasant way. I made sure to cut away the trunks in their entirety before moving on to the next tree.

And before I knew it, I had created some basic tools, explored the very surface of a nearby cave, and constructed a small house and a workbench with Hannah’s direction. It was hardly the opulent suite I inhabited in the real world, but it would have to do in the world of the game. Hannah reassured me that there would be a way to construct windows in the future. It was alright to go on without them for now; there had been many times during my long undeath that I had been forced to inhabit basements or otherwise board up the windows when I didn’t have the luxury of blackout curtains. I’d survive without them here, too, even if my character would tolerate the sunlight of his world much more readily than I would. There was something nostalgic about being insulated by the daylight.

And speaking of… the sun had set in the game, and with it, an aura of dread was setting out over the world. The quiet, ambient music suddenly turned more menacing, and exiting the door of the house that Hannah had instructed me to build, I came face to face with the darkness about which I had been warned. Though I couldn't quite see the need for light, Hannah had instructed me in the art of Cubecrafter coal mining, and the interior of the house was decorated with torches. It would protect the house from monsters, she said, a claim which had unpleasant resonance with my own existence. And those monsters were suddenly spread out before me, directly beyond the comfort of my home.

“You’ve gotta watch out for the skeletons especially, Mistress,” Hannah said. “They can get you from far away with their arrows.” I was armed with a mere stone sword, not one of the stronger weapons in the game to my understanding. Hannah had recommended that I stay inside the house for the night, but I didn’t just want to stand around. I craved battle! It was the next best thing to blood in this ridiculous game world.

“Very well. And the Stalker? It will be out there as well?” I asked before going out.

“Yeah. It’s the light green guy with four legs. They’ll blow up if You get too close!” she warned.

The zombies and spiders proved themselves to be no major threat, and I kept my distance from the skeletons as best I could, slaying a couple when they came close.

“What am I doing?” I said as I collected a piece of rotting flesh off of a zombie’s corpse. “I’m becoming some kind of monster hunter? If my kind was in this game, I’d be forced to kill them too. Frankly, it’s depressing. None of these creatures pose practically any threat against me, and still I’m expected to kill.” It reminded me of days gone by, when I had slain vampire hunters who took up arms against me. Much better to simply make them my own instead, I had found since then.

“I guess not, Mistress,” Hannah said. “That’s just how video games are sometimes.”

Then, after a moment, she said, “oh, gosh, Mistress, look out behind You!”

I failed to take into account the hissing sound that had begun to play. There was suddenly a great crashing sound, particles of what seemed to be smoke overlaid over the screen, and everything went red.

Text appeared that read “hannahsparkles was blown up by Stalker”. Two options appeared: “Respawn” and “Title Screen”.

Why was the game claiming I was Hannah? I’d never forgive the Stalker if it actually tried to harm my thrall… but then I realized that this was surely simply because I was playing Hannah’s copy of the game on her computer, and beyond that, the Stalker was already dead, having blown itself up. I was upset, but there was nothing to take it out against, so I simply sighed in frustration.

“Shit, Mistress, I’m sorry,” Hannah said dejectedly. “If it’s any consolation, this is what happens for most people playing this game for the first time. That’s why they put the Stalker on the logo.”

“I see,” I said. “I suppose I cannot object, then. I was simply distracted by my thoughts about monster hunting. So much human media seems to focus on it.”

Hannah thought for a moment.

“I think a lot of humans want to believe that they stand a chance against Your kind, Mistress, even though they’d be better off submitting to You. Obeying…”

“Yes, you’re correct, my darling. They’re very, very silly in that way. Say your mantra for me and keep saying it while I piece myself back together in the game.” I knew hearing that from my loyal thrall would bring me some comfort.

Hannah tensed up and spoke, “I am Mistress’ loyal thrall. My body and mind are Hers to use as She pleases.” Meanwhile, I clicked “Respawn” and found myself back in the vicinity of the house I had built, a large crater located near the front door where the Stalker had exploded. My inventory had emptied itself, blown up, I supposed. My sword and pickaxe and everything? Lilith, that was frustrating.

Hannah continued, “I am Mistress’ loyal thrall. My body and mind are Hers to use as She—”, and though I was basking in her adorable submission, I had an important matter to address, retreating to the safety of the house I had built to speak to her.

I reached over to cup Hannah’s cheek and said, “Stop for now. I have a question I need to ask you.”

“Yes, Mistress,” she droned, lost in subspace after fulfilling her programming. I had no great desire to take that from her.

“Still ever so blank for me, sweetie, nice and relaxed. Tell me, can I recover my goods that were taken by the Stalker’s explosion?”

“They’re left where you died, Mistress…” she whispered, monotone and content with herself. I scratched her head and she moaned a little, eyes blank, staring off into the middle distance.

“Good girl. I’ll be careful to recollect them,” I said.

I ran back to where I had been killed, using the sprint action that Hannah had taught me about when I was gathering resources from a nearby hill. Monsters were still about, another Stalker included, but I gathered up my things and sprinted straight back to the house, closing the door behind me, successfully avoiding attacking any of the monsters in the process. Because of that, though, a few zombies followed me back to the house, and were now banging on the door, quite loudly in fact… I was now trapped, unless I was willing to attack them, which I really preferred not to do.

“Wake up, Hannah,” I said.

She came to attention, looked at me with a smile, and spoke, “yes, Mistress.”

“Good girl. How do I deal with these zombies? Will they go away eventually? They seem to want to enter the house very badly… are they like me, in needing to be invited in?”

“Uh, I guess You could frame it that way, Mistress,” she said. “I just took it as them not being able to break down the doors. They definitely don’t need invitations if you play on hard mode, that’s for sure. They’d break Your door right down. But on normal mode, the door’ll stay up until You open it. And You’ll be able to exit the house safely in the morning.”

“Ah yes, the monsters recede then, I presume? Return to their coffins, or whatever?” It was how humans would depict a creature similar to my kind. How silly.

“Oh, well, looks like the sun’s coming up now,” Hannah said. “See for Yourself, Mistress!”

It took me a moment to process what I was seeing, but peering out the window on the door, looking at the zombie with its arms partially phasing through the door in the way that video game objects sometimes did, I realized that the zombie was on fire. It was a primitive depiction like most things in this game, yes, graphically simple and not even all that evocative, almost painfully safe in that way.

Not wanting to let the zombie in, I simply destroyed the wood planks making up the house’s back wall to investigate further. All around, there were zombies and skeletons lit ablaze by the blazing square sun above. My eyes darted around the screen as I moved the mouse to observe my surroundings… it was horrible…. horrible! I could barely help myself from screaming out but I managed to lower myself to a mere gasp at this graphic display, hundreds of my kin dying around me in the most painful and visceral way I could imagine, if reduced to this strange, blocky, oversimplified depiction, in which those killed by sunlight simply fell over nicely and faded into smoke. If it happened to me, I would not be so lucky as my flesh slowly melted away…

“Oh, Mistress, what’s wrong?” Hannah asked, grabbing my left arm lightly with great concern in her tone of voice.

“They’re dying, Hannah, all of them, dying,” I said. “The way I saw Olivia die in 1923, my oldest friend among the undead, a charred corpse nearly reduced to ash. The way I might have died if Nicole had had her way. The way Valerie might’ve had I not held her back on her first night. I do not want to watch this for recreation.” My head hit the desk as I laid it down, needing to rest it for a moment to get my bearings and take my mind off of the horrific display.

“Oh wow, I hadn’t considered how serious this must seem for You,” Hannah said. “Should have thought of that. Maybe you’d like peaceful mode better? We can just focus on the building stuff aspect.”

I took Hannah to bed later that night, and I rested safely in her arms as she comforted me with the reassurance that the humans responsible for this game — not merely that singular transphobe, but all of them at Chipware and beyond — most likely truly did not understand the implications that this display would have for my kind. We were not considered at such times, not really. We were simply not a part of society, and I could hardly blame them for excluding me in that way since I did my best to avoid being part of society to begin with.

But my thrall assured me that I would like the peaceful difficulty much better. Monsters were not present there; it was the game reduced to its basics of creating and terraforming the world. With all of those distasteful elements removed, I could at least give it a try. And Hannah ended up guiding me in purchasing my own license for the game, so that the two of us might play together — hopefully I would have a much better time that way. I was playing on my laptop computer tonight, brought to Hannah’s room to play in her soothing presence. It would surely be a positive experience just for that.

This time we began in what Hannah explained was a savannah, a more arid-seeming area with large trees with orange trunks, no less susceptible to levitating in midair than their forest counterparts. A premade structure was located nearby, a village inhabited by what appeared to be… humans? Maybe? They were certainly not the same type of creature as Seth, their proportions more strange, exaggerated, possessed of large foreheads, bulbous noses, and empty eyes. I didn’t know what to make of them.

And Hannah had also created me a character skin to replace Seth, as I had ordered her to. She had gotten one for herself too, one portraying her beloved character Valentine from the game Paper X, a purple woman wearing a witch hat who Hannah described as a “transgender ghost girl”. Hannah had done a lovely job with mine during the preceding day; she was an aspiring graphic artist, though inexperienced, and created a simple, generic skin of a red-haired woman in a black dress not unlike my own appearance, though unfortunately, it seemed that the character’s proportions would always be the blocky, unpleasant ones of Seth. Better than those villagers, at least.

“So what are the villagers for?” I asked, walking among them. They seemed to do little more than perceive me idly. I was all too used to being watched intently in that way, with harsh judgment abounding. Did they somehow disapprove of the character skin I had chosen? I doubted that game characters had the capacity for such appraisal, but technology always seemed to march just ahead of what I thought possible, so I couldn’t afford to write it off entirely.

“Oh… you can trade with them, Mistress. Right click,” Hannah replied.

I right clicked on the villager. They had a trade offer of nine emeralds, a resource I had never before seen, for a single bookshelf.

“Nine emeralds for a bookshelf. Where do we get emeralds, my darling?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s a lot of emeralds, wow. You can find them underground under mountains, but it’s usually easier to get them by trading other stuff to the villagers,” she explained.

Was reading truly such a luxury in this world? I supposed they must not have had printing presses. Even in my own childhood, I had not imagined that mere books would be so expensive. It rather saddened me.

“Ah, yes, they’re also offering an emerald for twenty-four sheets of paper. How do I make paper? And how is the tree chopping coming along, come to think of it?” I had ordered Hannah to chop down several of the savannah trees while I concentrated on more interesting affairs. Thralls were useful for such things.

“The tree chopping’s going well, Mistress. I’ve got 40 logs now, should be more than enough to build a house,” she said. “Paper is made from sugarcane, not wood, if that’s what You were thinking. We can get some if we can find a body of water.”

“Good, good,” I said. “Build a house for both of us in the style you desire, then. I want to see what you’ll create.” I didn’t want to repeat what I had done already! That was what thralls were for.

“Yes, Mistress,” Hannah giggled to herself. It was lovely to be able to turn the most mundane of tasks into fulfillment of my girls’ purpose in life.

Meanwhile, I focused my attention back on the villager. They were looking at me. That was good… now I just needed to establish direct eye contact to take what was mine. An easy task for one such as myself, I thought, until I reminded myself that this was a mere game and I was forced to play by its rules by the medium itself. This villager was not an appealing thrall, but if I could have them give me all the bookshelves I desired, this game would be much easier. A shame that I couldn’t. I was not all that used to having to negotiate.

I left the villager and explored the rest of the settlement in frustration. Many more like that single villager were present, as well as various animals: pigs, chickens, a few sheep. All were passive, pleasant, not fearful of me as many often tended to be, even if the villagers gave me strange looks. I could not be altogether upset.

“I finished the house, Mistress!” Hannah said several minutes later. “I ended up needing to get a bunch more wood, but I think You’ll like it.”

I walked back to the starting area to observe my thrall’s faithful handiwork, and was quite impressed indeed. The house was constructed in the facsimile of a circle, or at least the closest to a circle that could be made in this cube-based world, essentially a square building with inset edges. It was quite tall, about twice as tall as the one I had previously constructed, and its walls were made of a striking orange wood, presumably the color that those savannah trees possessed on their interiors.

Inside, I discovered a two-story building, divided into two rooms by a staircase. The lower floor contained a crafting table, two furnaces, and several chests, and the upper floor was currently empty, though I presumed that it was simply incomplete. A pressure plate could be used to open the door from inside, something else that Hannah had already demonstrated to me.

“Very good girl,” I said. “You’ve served me well.”

Hannah, now sitting at her computer desk while I sat in an armchair by her side with my laptop, bounced up in glee, saying “thank You, thank You”, until she bounced out of her chair and kissed me on the lips, barely avoiding knocking my laptop off of my lap. I was caught by surprise, pleasantly, of course, and grabbed her face firmly in my strong grip to kiss her back.

“It’s a lovely house, dear,” I affirmed. “Sit back down so that we may continue, won’t you?” I planted another kiss on her lips to dispel any notion of hostile intent. I was simply excited to play.

“Of course, Mistress.” 

She obeyed like the adorable good girl she was.

“Good girl. Make me a pickaxe so that I might attempt cave mining once again,” I ordered.

“Yes, Mistress. Oh my gosh, You’re yearning for the mines, aren’t You?” She started laughing like it was the funniest thing she had ever heard, and I was left a little confused.

“Oh, it’s an internet meme about this game being so popular,” she clarified a moment later. “It doesn’t feel as funny since the movie came out, honestly.”

“There’s a movie based on this game? What in Lilith’s name is there to adapt?” I asked incredulously. It was so lacking in any kind of worldbuilding, only being defined by its simplistic visual style. Hannah had even admitted already that Seth had no real defined personality or goals. I would never have even a modicum of desire to watch him bump around on a screen on his own for two hours, let alone a silver screen.

“Oh, please, Mistress… don’t even get me started on the movie. It came out just earlier this month and it’s supposed to be pretty bad. I only saw the trailers, but, um, it wanted to be cool and to appeal to kids, and like, people who grew up with this game who are a little younger than me. It kind of succeeded, I guess? And they mentioned the whole yearning for the mines thing in one of the trailers, and it, um… hehe…” She was blushing now, seeming legitimately embarrassed rather than just flustered by my overwhelming beauty and allure as was common.

“Right. I don’t feel that I fully understand, but that’s alright, dear,” I said. Hannah’s character threw me a stone pickaxe which I accepted eagerly, admitting that I indeed yearned for the mines, I supposed.

“OK. Do You want me to come with You, or can I serve You in some other way?” she asked.

“I’ll do this alone, sweetie. I have a desire to see what lies within those caves without assistance.”

Hannah nodded. “OK, Mistress! I actually have a project I want to work on then, if You don’t mind. In the game. I think You’ll like it at least as much as the house!”

“I look forward to seeing it when I return,” I said, grasping Hannah’s left hand for a moment in the real world. She nodded, and I proceeded back out of the house, ready to face a cave entrance set into a nearby hill in this savannah.

With no fear of having to contend with any monsters, I set forth into the twisting caverns. There was some unnerving ambience present, but the darkness hardly bothered me. The interior of this cave was unfortunately sufficiently dark that I was forced to brighten it with a torch to see, though the low brightness and removed backlight on my laptop screen kept the light from being too overwhelming.

Over the course of my cave exploration, I took a few unfortunate falls which my character quickly recovered from, due to playing in peaceful mode as Hannah explained. It felt appropriate… I was used to regenerating from any ordinary injury at least as quickly as this.

I discovered many different ores… coal, which I was already familiar with; iron, which Hannah said was especially important, particularly if we wanted to build minecart tracks around the world in the future, copper, which Hannah said had very limited utility, confusing me as to why it would have been placed in the game to begin with; gold, a trade good which Hannah said would not come into use for some time; ruby dust, which Hannah said could be utilized as wire in an elaborate electricity system that would take hours to explain; and lapis lazuli, which could be used as a dye and to enchant tools much later in the game.

Emeralds and diamonds, the latter of which Hannah said were especially rare and valuable, were nowhere to be found, at least as I delved deeper and deeper. I wanted to find the former to trade with those villagers if possible, and the latter to impress Hannah.

She said that diamonds especially were found particularly deep underground, so I decided to dig directly down underneath myself. It seemed to me the simplest solution, after all… I could simply dig my way back up later if I needed to. It was a problem for the future.

About ten blocks down, I tumbled into a pool of lava and died. It seemed that even in peaceful mode, there were certain things that couldn’t be regenerated from. Frustrating, but unsurprising… something that hot would harm me in much the same way if I were somehow exposed to it, melting away flesh not unlike the sun itself. This was simply shocking, cartoonish, and a bit frustrating rather than horrifying for me, though. Lava was far less of a threat in my daily undeath than the sun above.

“MistressNaomi tried to swim in lava?” Hannah asked, reading the message off the screen. “Oh no! What happened?”

I sighed. “I was digging down to find diamonds. I did not expect the floor to give way.”

“Oh yeah. ‘Don’t dig down’ is probably something I should have warned You about. It’s risky when You can’t see what’s under You. Even in peaceful mode, You could take a fall long enough to die, too, if You’re unlucky.”

“I see. Well, no matter. I can return and gather up my goods, yes?” I asked, hope in my tone of voice.

Hannah seemed awfully disheartened as she said, “no, Mistress. When stuff falls into lava, it’s gone for good. Nothing You found can’t be replaced, though.”

I sighed deeply. What a frustrating system.

“Alright,” I said. “Why don’t you show me what you’ve been working on then, and then we can log off.” Even though it had been a mere forty-five minutes of progress, it felt quite significant. I was invested, and I wanted to impress Hannah above all else. I needed a break from this if I didn’t want it to keep bothering me.

“Sure, Mistress. Click respawn and it’ll be right nearby,” she said sweetly.

I did. In the vicinity of the house Hannah had built, something like a statue had been erected. It was in the rough shape of Seth, only about twenty blocks high. Hannah was actually standing atop it, a ladder placed on the front, obscuring the statue’s features a bit. It was constructed mostly of wood, with some sort of white cloth placed in lieu of eyes. The whole thing was quite magnificent, but…

“What is this a statue of? Seth?” I asked, looking it up and down in the game.

“It’s You, Mistress!” Hannah said, beaming at me, then climbing down the ladder in the game and sprinting to stand next to my character. She turned back to the statue and had her character look up at it, as though in awe of her own creation.

Ah! It was in imitation of my chosen character model, I realized as I looked it over. A four or five story tall statue made in my image… how adorable. Though it was crude due to the limited materials available in this world, it still made me feel honored. That helped wipe away the frustration I was feeling about falling in lava.

“I’m sorry You didn’t recognize it,” Hannah continued. “I’ll get better materials as we continue… I need to get more wool and dye it all so that I can make the colors and details really pop and represent You. And maybe I can make it more detailed so it looks a little more like You in the real world rather than these blocky Cubecrafter models.”

“All very sweet of you, dear,” I said. “And I apologize too for not recognizing what you created. You deserve recognition for your work. And you will be a good girl and continue working on it for me, won’t you? You’ll make it the best it can be.” I couldn’t wait to see what she came up with.

“Of course, Mistress! I’m always happy to serve and please You,” Hannah said. “Were You still wanting to stop for now? I did set up a little bit more inside the house, if You’re interested.”

“Oh yes, let’s wrap up soon, but I’d love to see that as well. You’re serving me well, darling,” I said.

Hannah looked proud as her character led me inside the house, walking up the stairs to the second story. I followed her and found the second story to be decorated with several flower pots, as well as two beds located directly next to each other.

“Yeah,” Hannah said, happy with herself as she spun her character around, looking at all aspects of the room. “I wanted it to be as nicely decorated as Your suite, Mistress. And I was thinking, what if I put my Cubecrafter bed next to Yours? And we were both girls?”

I was once again utterly confused by one of her statements. There must have been a lot I was missing.

“But we are both girls, Hannah. You know that as well as anyone,” I said.

“Yeah, uh, sorry, Mistress, it’s another one of these silly online things,” Hannah replied, flushing with embarrassment again. “About making like, these sorts of shy, awkward romantic advances in a game like this. I’m basically saying ‘what if we slept in the same bed together’, because of how the beds stick together like that. Please, could we, Mistress? I love Your body, Your smoothness.”

I smiled. “Of course. I don’t know that you’ll experience any of that in the game, but I’ll lie down with you anyway, if it would please you.”

We did, and my character ended up lying face up, unable to even see Hannah’s character from this angle. It was very silly, and perhaps not as romantic as either of us imagined.

But closing the game after that, there was something nostalgic about that awkwardness. I could see why it seemed to leave such a huge impact on people like Hannah. Maybe it would for me as well. I thought about that as I lay down once again with Hannah for her bedtime, both of us face-up at first before we began spooning, unable to see each other for that small moment. Even as we were mutually unobserved, no one could deny that love was shared between us. That meant something quite special to me, in the game world and here.