When I Woke Up

1 Cup of Coffee

I awoke to the wind blowing outside my window.

It startled me, the whistling of the wind different from my deep slumber. My eyes opened to sunlight shining in them, causing me to groan and roll over and off the bed. Umf, my body hit the ground like a sack of potatoes.

"What is this?" I said aloud, adjusting myself onto my hands and knees. Usually there was the rest of the bed to the right of me, but I had rolled over just a bit and fallen. The ground also wasn't the carpet I was used to, instead it was cold, beige wood panels. For a moment, I laid there eying it. What?

A ringing of bells at my head made me jump up, startled. In front of me was a tiny gray and white gyroid, who shook and rang bells every ten or so seconds. Suddenly, the reality of where I was dawned on me and I stood shakily, looking around. It was my room in Animal Crossing: New Leaf. The rococo wallpaper, sweets bed, pink regal couch, ice cream cone lamp...it was all here.

I felt the urge to scream but sat down on one of the museum chairs at the base of my bed, shaking. This couldn't be real, I thought, feeling the texture of the white leather. My hand shot onto my lap, shocked at how it mirrored the feeling of leather in real life. And this certainly wasn't real life.

There was no mirror in my room so I walked over to my computer desk that sat in the corner. The little pink laptop on there was closed, unlike the actual furniture in the game. I sat down in front of it and opened it, eying my reflection. I looked just like my character. My hair was shoulder length and green, the bangs pulled back. My eyes had all white around the blueish green color, three lashes extending downward from each eye. I felt at my nose, it being only a red triangle, but somehow having nostrils now. Could I smell?

Beside my ice cream cone lamp was a barrel planter and I headed over to it, getting on my knees to sniff the flowers. The sweet aromas filled my nose and I fell back on my bottom, trying to figure out how this could be. My character had always been me in a sense, but now that I actually was my character, in my Animal Crossing world, I felt lost and scared. It was like a fantasy in my from my childhood, where I would go to bed and wake up in my current favorite anime or book. But as a kid, even when I had wished and prayed I would transfer worlds, it never happened simply for the fact that it was impossible.

But here I was, I thought, walking over to my window that sat above my bed and peeking out. There was the moving water of the river, the trees shaking from the breeze outside. It was all alive. Which meant all of my villagers were, too. Or maybe they were the same as before, I thought, tiptoeing down the stairs. I had done this a thousand times in game but it gave me a queasy feeling now, as if a villager was sitting on my couch at this very moment.

No one was downstairs of course. That would be preposterous, I realized. Standing at the landing I observed that where there used to be only a walkway for my bathroom on the left there was now a door, as well as one for my Christmas themed room in the back. But to the right the walkway remained, the kitchen visible even from here. Bubblegum K.K. played from the red cassette player in the living room, and the TV was quiet but reporting the forecast of sunny skies and rain later in the afternoon.

It was very, very real.

~-~

I stepped outside, closing my front door quietly behind me. A cool breeze blew softly past me, making the water on the pond just in front of me move in small waves. The trees were rustling and I watched them, eyeing the perfect apples I knew would be there. The white stone path lay in front of me, my gaze following it to the stone bridge that goes over the flowing river. Beside my house sat Berwyn's, my boyfriend from out of the game. I knew he wouldn't be there. I had made him as a character so I could use his house as a showcase of different furniture series, and he had never played or even held my 3DS. Still I stared at it in disbelief.