mor . . . Oh.
Rather than having to waste more time trying to figure out why her mouth had the smacking taste of an ashtray filled with stale cigarettes, she realized that the culprit was right there in front of her. Or, rather, underneath her: the outline of a rapidly drying pool of drool on her pillow. She self-consciously glanced both ways with a quick jerk of her head and darting of her eyes as if she were checking to make sure no one saw her. She knew no one would be in her room, especially while she was asleep, but that didn't stop her from checking anyway. Reaching down, she unceremoniously flipped her pillow over to hide the evidence and smoothed down the top of the pillowcase as if nothing had ever happened. She then checked herself in the mirror and, much to her relief, was pleased to find that the drool pool demon had left most of her face and all of her hair unaffected.
As she was wiping off her face, she realized she had a yellow sticky note stuck to the back the sleeve of the t-shirt she had slept in. I must have rolled over on it in the night, she thought, looking at the quickly scribbled memo containing the media company's hotline number.
She still wasn't sure what she was going to do with it. On one hand, as an out of work college graduate with a bad gaming habit that ate up more free time than watching sleepy kittens on YouTube, the money it promised was definitely a desperately needed bonus. On the other hand, however, she felt like calling the number would be betraying everyone. They had spent so much time together and gone through so much. The whole act of talking about Darwin’s guild and divulging information felt like it would be a stab in the back to the entire faction.
She tried not to think about it as she grabbed her fluffy, pink bathrobe from the closet, threw it on, and began meandering towards the kitchen downstairs. 12:00? Noon? She questioned herself as she passed by the clock hanging on the wall beside the stairs. Did I actually sleep past noon? When is the last time that’s ever happened?
“Don't tell me you're just now waking up,” Robert said as she plodded into the kitchen. He stopped typing and looked up at her over the laptop he had set up on the kitchen table. “Well, at least the coffee's fresh. I just made it.”
“Well," Kass grumbled in return as she tried to focus on getting her head to stay squarely on top of her shoulders until she could get some proper caffeine in her, "you can blame your stupid game’s traveling system.” Mornings are the worst. It gets harder to wake up every year. It’s like they’re trying to ease you into sleeping forever so death doesn’t come as a shock. “Whoever came up with the idea of 'Hey, let’s make a fully-realized, life-sized world for the player to navigate’ should have been made to walk across it himself and spend time considering how annoying it would be to traverse before even having a real mount.”
“So, you want the game to contain a system that lets you always magically appear wherever you need to be without having to travel?” Robert chuckled, “What would be the fun in that?”
“Well, maybe not always allow me to instantly get everywhere I want, but at least let me skip the areas that are tedious and only built for travel--like boat rides, for example.” Kass poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table next to her father.
“That doesn’t sound so bad, but there is still a problem with that,” Robert said, closing his computer and turning to give Kass his full attention. “You’d lose over half the world, ya' filthy landlubber.”
“Landlubber?” Kass looked at him, blinking in confusion. “Do people still say