Eden of the Eclipse

32 - Come on, It'll be Totally Fun

"Would you look at that? I didn't burn it too badly," Arthur gloated as the trio walked.

Lucy rolled her eyes. "The sheer nerve of you."

The forest smelled of burnt wood and ash. She glanced around, they had been walking for only a few tens of seconds, and—though the stench still lingered—the flames were gone, and she could already see signs of plants sprinkling back up from the ground, trees regaining their vibrancy as if they hadn't been made into husks, and fallen, charred, logs rotting into fine grains. If she wasn't mistaken, in a few minutes, the forest would be back to normal. So, technically, Arthur wasn't wrong. But, of course, she'd never tell him that or it'd simply stroke his ego even moreso.

"Interesting, the rate of plant growth in Eclipse is surprisingly fast. . .wouldn't that affect the food and construction economy and the fauna? Hmm, though this growth speed could also be dependent on the strength of the means used to destroy the forest." Shana muttered beside her, eyes swinging around, pondering and taking a mental note. Tackling away in her head at yet another bit of information in her next features and systems article sure to arise. "Alice, could you take some pictures for me and send them to my database?"

[Alice will do! Do you also want me to routinely take these pictures and short clips over the next few minutes, until the forest is back to normal, so you can have a timelapse?]

"Yes please."

[Noted! Alice will also measure how fast it takes!]

Shana smiled. "You're amazing."

[Hehehehe] The small figure of Alice giggled, floating around Shana's head in jubilation as the usually restrained girl praised her.

". . ." Lucy, on the other hand, felt like she should comment on just how quickly her friend had become acquainted with the convenience of Alice.

"You know," Arthur languished, lazily drawing his eyes towards the girl who became excited at the prospect of analyzing such a thing as the rate in which digital grass grew. ". . .you must really love collecting information huh?"

Shana eyed the boy. Then Lucy. She momentarily opened her lips, then closed them.

". . .it's my favorite thing in the world," She said, quiet, and clear. "I'm my mind, everything used to appear like chaos on the surface. Unsystematic. Even new experiences used to scare me to the point that I found it hard to leave the comfort of my room. But collect data, analyze, experiment, and draw conclusions and you can place order into anything; especially the systems that make up a game. When everything clicks, and you get gritty with the details, the numbers, the calculations, the systems. . .there's nothing more beautiful which puts my mind at ease."

She nodded to herself.

"My family used to worry about me a lot, because explaining games was the only thing that could occupy me and that I found helpful in expressing myself," She said, "I used to ignore everything else in life. Family. Friends. Academics."

Lucy raised a brow. Was that the same girl who was now already attending college at her age?

"What changed then?" She asked.

"I started treating life itself as a game I could learn the rules of and play well," Shana muttered. Now, she was blushing. Just slightly. A thin smile on her lips. "If it wasn't for the desire to analyze games—and thus life itself as if it were a game—I'd still be that little autistic kid who couldn't get a grasp of reality and couldn't make friends no matter how much she tried."

A lightbulb lit within Lucy's mind as she realized, finally, why the girl had been so happy that she hadn't chastised her for the bouts of experiments she had done while they had battled through 'Goblin's Outpost'. It finally made sense why she always seemed off in her own little world, aloof and withdrawn, until curiosity sparked her interest in a game mechanic or design. To Shana, perhaps, that was simply how her brain worked. How she enjoyed living.