Light of Dawn

The collage of cartoons sound effects--boom, slam, pow, whistle--was enough to drive her mad, which was precisely why Tatum had decided to make it her alarm in the first place. After all, if you slept until 4 PM on a weekday you deserved to be woken up with that much discomfort. 

Then again, when you're unemployed and under-qualified for everything you can apply for, it's not exactly like you're eager to start every new day as soon as you possibly can. Waking up means getting out of bed, checking your inbox, and receiving either a) a whole lot of nothing, or b) a slew of 'Thank you, we have received your application. Unfortunately...', which was enough to irritate even the most zen of people.

Thankfully, she had the escape of mass murder to take her mind off of things.

Deciding to forgo breakfast that morning, Tatum curled up on her computer chair, shook her mouse, and woke her laptop from it's sleep. The screen flickered reluctantly--she knew that feel all too well--but eventually caved in, allowing her to log into her 'World of Warcraft' account and connect to her favorite horde realm. Sure, she had some alliance toons, but nobody needed to know that... that's what 4 AM no-one-is-around-to-see play time is for, right? 

Right.

The minute she logged in she sifted through her 'friends online' list, looking for the usual suspects that she sent her first messages to while her dock icon for the standard mail app loaded the familiar '0' in the bottom left corner. 

Mental note to self: Scour Craigslist. Again.

Before she even managed to run through the entire list of online contenders, a pink whisper showed up.

[Nialler] whispers: It's about time! GET ON SKYPE.

Despite his pushy in-text attitude, Niall had the ferocity of a baby kitten, which was probably why he was one of her favorite people to talk to in the game. Being a girl that played a game like World of Warcraft made her a unicorn, and being an attractive girl--well, not that she was vain... or that anyone knew that... but they made assumptions from voice chat--made her an easy target for pawing, oohing, and aweing. It was bad enough to be assaulted via pixels in trade and general chats, getting whispers asking to take your avatars outfit off, or be their online-girlfriend, but the thought of having it done over voice chat? It was enough to make her skin crawl, and there were definitely guys out there that were notorious for it.

Right from the start, though, she knew he wasn't like that. They met in a random dungeon group,  attempting to level their characters the fastest way possible despite the high chance of running into... less than kindly folks, and immediately hit it off. After all, if you find a kindred spirit who can make jokes about 'looking for groups in Alderon places', how could you let them go? He was a tank, she was a healer, and they made quite the pair, turning dungeon runs into more of a race if anything. In fact, they ran dungeons together for five more hours straight that night, not even realizing how long it'd been because it didn't seem like a chore anymore. He added her, and for almost a week they talked, leveled, and joked, without him even trying to find out if she really was a girl behind her computer screen.

Because, more often than not, the person with a girl character... wasn't actually a girl. And it was comforting for her that he didn't even seem to care whether or not she was--that he wasn't talking to her because of her gender, or because he wanted to ask her to flash some skin on cam (which was more common than you'd think), he was talking to her because he genuinely enjoyed talking to her for more than romantic purposes. It was nice, in a virtual world where she was treated like property, to be valued as a person instead.

Or, well, a blood elf. Same difference.

After a few weeks of playing together, and even joining the same Guild, one of their guild members suggested that they get on voice chat for a raid. It was a lot easier to guide 25-man teams through the mechanics of how to kill a monster if everyone could react and hear, instead of having to type and wait for everyone to respond and read it. 

Immediately she panicked, knowing that out of the entire guild there was one other female, who hadn't been on at the moment. But she was a healer, she was vital, and not getting on would mean sitting the entire raid out--and more importantly, missing out on an amount of loot that meant an embarrassingly big deal to her. 

To [Nialler]: OH MY GOD, I CAN'T. Should I pretend to be sick? Fake a seizure? I think my palms are getting sweaty already. I'M SEEING STARS. I'M GOING INTO THE LIGHT.

[Nialler] whispers: LMAO. Relax. Breathe. If you want I can sit it out and voice Skype you instead to talk you through it, I know the whole fight anyway.

For some reason, though, it didn't seem as intimidating as she thought it would. Also: loot. Literally epic lootz. So they added one another--both being those people who had profile pictures of their favorite movie characters, not themselves--and he talked her off of the ledge. Maybe it was the fact that he didn't seem surprised that she was a girl, or maybe it was his accent that made her feel like she was knee deep in an episode of Game of Thrones, but she actually felt a bit flustered talking to him. And for the first time, she started to wonder what he looked like, as it hadn't occured to her before than that he... well, he could very well be a forty year old man living with his 'mum', growing a neckbeard and collecting his own toe nails.

How attractive.

Still, their friendship persisted for months, and even went beyond World of Warcraft. They played together on Steam, XBOX, and even PS3. It was refreshing to escape into fictional worlds that were lifetimes, and sometimes light years, away, with someone that didn't ask so many questions. 'What do you want to do with your life?', 'What are your dreams?', 'What are your goals?'. Did people really not feel how uncomfortable they made others when they asked those questions? If someone wanted to humble-brag about that stuff, surely there's an app for that. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, anywhere they could  type. No need to make someone feel bad about themselves in person, or in words, instead. Honestly. Rude.

Through odd-jobs, being fired, hired, let go, seasonal-ed, and every other work in the book, the only constant in her life was being able to escape to a safe place on the internet, where she maybe didn't feel so bad about her shortcomings in life. Nialler had, for all intents and purposes, become one of those safe places. Not like Han and Luke inside of a Tauntaun, but still. Safe, snug, warm, and cozy.

To [Nialler]: Don't bunch your 'knickers', I'm a-comin'.

Although her voice had that just-woke-up tone, she agreed to logging in, knowing that if she hadn't he would just keep asking until she changed her mind. It was probably her fault for caving so easily to begin with, but hey, at least she didn't have to put on make-up to voice chat. Not that he'd ever seen her anyway, so he wouldn't know the difference. 

INCOMING CALL FROM NIALLER.

"Jeez, what's going on with you? Isn't it close to midnight there? Shouldn't you be curled up in your snuggie already, waiting for your cocoa to finish?" She joked, although if it were her that's exactly what she'd be doing at that time.

"Listen Miss. Doesn't-wake-up-until-the-middle-of-the-night, quiet you. I HAVE NEWS! ARE YOU READY? Are you sitting down? Well I guess you have to be, you're at your computer, eh? You'll ne--"

"You're doing the rambley thing again. You need a ramble intervention. Or start a website to rival tumblr, called ramblr. Or just get to the point, dude."

"I'M GOING TO AMERICA!"

And suddenly, her escape from reality was becoming incredibly, irrevocably real.