Mirror Image

part i - spawned

In the warm and crisp air, with the sun beating down on her legs, she blinked her eyes open and woke... or rather — 'what's the right word...?' — spawned. All around her, thousands of small flowers in differnt shapes and a rainbow of colors bloomed, releasing a sweet scent into the air. She gingerly picked herself up from the ground, noticing how her limbs felt light and full of energy. She blinked a few times to clear her mind and looked around.

The world was quiet, save the soft rustle of grass underfoot and the trickling river nearby. A sloping mountain quietly began it's ascent into the sky on the opposite bank. 'No birds?' She looked up, into the light blue sky speckled with semi-transparent clouds. White text faded into her view, right above her head, startling her.

"peachy_sky"

Her words, melodic and soft, was whispered into the air like the chirp of a nonexistent bird and carried away by the breeze.

peachy_sky.

Her gamertag.

She knew it with the same odd certainty she knew she had spawned, and not woken.

Peachy Sky.

Peachy smiled for the first time since spawning — a hesitant, fleeting smile. She basked in the warm air of the flower field for a bit longer. Then, a nagging feeling started at the back of her mind, prompting her.

'Find or make shelter. Night is falling.'

Peachy glanced at the sky again, ignoring her gamertag this time. The sun was just past the halfway point of it's journey. Instinct alone led her to follow the river, for a slight distance — that is, instinct, and the part of her that realized she loved the soft whispering of water over sand and gravel.

The flowers thinned out, he small river — barely meters... or 'blocks'... across — soon opened into a vast ocean. Peachy shivered as the sun kissed the horizon and a cooler night breeze drifted past. In front of her spread a small beach and the stretching plain of salt water. To her left, the small river and mountain that seemed oh-so unscalable. To her right, a sea-level peninsula with scattered trees promised a dense forest of oak and birch trees. Unlike the welcoming air of the flower fields she just left, none of these locations seemed particularly appetizing.

'But I can't build in the flower fields, that's spawn. Others will spawn there too, soon.'

The thought surprised Peachy. How did she know that?

The peninsula she now stood on seemed quiet in the nightfall. It wasn't scary, nor unwelcoming — simply quiet. Melancholy.

The rapidly darkening sky persuaded Peachy to start building a shelter on the lonely peninsula, whose trees cast fading shadows on the cool grass. Her makeshift shelter — a small staircase leading into a 6 by 6 room — was the only source of light in the increasingly hostile environment. Peachy shivered, gathering her few supplies in a small chest before building a bed. There, she tucked herself into plain white sheets and slept her first night, on a melancholy peninsula, with the sound of rattling bones and soft hissing above her.