Arden.

I was fishing in Orgrimmar, in the lake beneath the imposing hall of heroes, Hall of the Brave. Gosupisoi was patiently explaining to me how to fish.

"Pull up that book of spells you've got in the bottom bar, the button with a sort of fishing rod on it, right-click it and wait for the fish to bite."

"It's not working!"

"What's not working?"

"It's nooot… working!"

"Oh! Did you put the rod in the weapon slot?"

"Ah, so that was it...!"

While I was growing prouder of myself by the minute, because I was finally managing to fish up frogs in the waist-deep water of the pond in The Valley of Honor, a fellow of level 60 stopped to fish beside me. Back then that was the maximum level. We were still in Vanilla; Blizzard hadn't yet released Burning Crusade. It struck me as ridiculous for a "guy" of level 60 to be fishing frogs in Orgrimmar. I'd already seen one warrior who, at that same level, fished perched on an outcrop of rock, deep in a cave in Valley of Trials, while I battled "artistically" with the swarm of little imps below. I had kept the pleasant memory of his "respectful" salute. I had believed, swollen with pride, that my acts of bravery had impressed him. But let us return to the shore of the pond in Orgrimmar. I made the rash gesture of sending the character Arden "a kiss." And here is what followed:

Arden: Is this your first character?

Ligia: Yes.

Arden: Cute. Are you a girl? In real life?

Ligia: Yes.

Arden: Where are you from?

Ligia: Romania.

Arden: How old are you?

Ligia: 25, is that all right?

Arden: Lol! It's fine! Do you like this game?

Ligia: Yes. But before I could add "it's nice," Arden came charging in with the question that was really on his mind.

Arden: Why did you send me a kiss? Why?

After which, the dialogue went off the rails.

Ligia (about the game): It's nice.

Arden: Blowing me a little kiss?

Ligia (at a loss for words): ????

Arden (clearly, insistently): You sent me a kiss: "Ligia blow you a kiss". Did I provoke you? Are you a greenhorn? God! Do we know each other from somewhere?

Ligia (from somewhere up on the Himalayas): Yes, I sent you a little kiss, what of it?

Arden: Do you do it with lots of guys? Do you have sex at random?

Cweel: ?

Fowwl: ?

It would have been fitting to tell him to go to... but my English wasn't up to it! Cweel and Fowwl each gave their point of view in turn, with a single question mark apiece, because my conversation with Arden was public — everyone in The Valley of Honor could see it, everyone in all of Orgrimmar, and probably far, far away across Azeroth. I can only assume the question marks were a reprimand, because Arden abruptly changed the subject.

Arden: Is Romania a beautiful country? What's it like?

Flowwl: !??! I'm confused.

Arden (to Flowwl): Why?

Flowwl: Because of what's going on here.

Arden: All right. In what sense are you confused?

Arden (persisting in his bravado): Do you want to have group sex?

I could no longer tell whom Arden was asking, me or Flowwl, but since he'd paused, I deduced it was me.

Ligia: No!!!!

Arden: Why? Why?

Ligia (resolved to put an end to a conversation from which I'd understood only that I shouldn't have used the "blow a kiss" formula on a stranger): Because I'm fishing, dear!

Arden: OK, goodbye.

Had I stumbled, so quickly, onto some guy out for a laugh who was bored? Or onto some desperate soul trying to draw attention to himself through a public conversation, when he could have used a private one, on whispers? Was he an aggressive type, a sexual repressive, or one of the many kids who flaunt their sex through every pore and bang it even against the painted walls of Orgrimmar?

I was still 25 and travelling through the lands of the Undead. On foot, since level 40 — when I'd learn to ride a wolf — was still sunk in murky distances and locked away behind quests with long, tangled tales. I wore myself out translating them word by word, grasping, at best, half the message they were struggling to convey to me. Then came the most amusing part. The great roaming, I called it. Most of the time I had no idea what I was supposed to do or where to go. But it didn't matter. I'd set off exploring and explore for hours on end, telling myself that the talented "boys" at Blizzard had surely thought of me when they put so much subtlety and humour into every detail of the game. Naturally, I would reach saturation. Then I amused myself watching the "valiant" heroes who happened to pass by me. I'd fall into ecstasy before one of them, frozen for a few seconds at the edge of a road. I'd think it would be a fitting gesture to express my admiration, but then I'd remember Arden and any urge would pass. I gladly helped those of a lower level than mine, and I was very happy when they thanked me. Not all of them did, but it didn't matter much.

One evening, after a day full of pointless adventures, I was resting, settled comfortably on a fir stump, beside the walls of the Ruins of Lordaeron. I had wandered into Eastern Plaguelands, and I shouldn't have, the region being far above my level. Below, deep in the earth, the Undead had built their fabulous capital, Undercity. At my feet, the slope dropped toward a narrow green valley — more a kind of defensive ditch — from which the water had vanished, and in its place there had grown some frail, rather pixelated cornflowers, partly the fault of my computer, somewhat worn out in body and spirit by then.

Vanity of vanities, all is but vanity and a chasing after the wind... — so, with sad humour, I defined my struggle to fight without hope of victory, all at once against the world, against myself, and against the game. Thus, invoking Solomon, the weight of the ruins behind me no longer seemed so heavy, while I looked at some tents pitched on the far side of the valley. They gave me a kind of safety and subtly slipped into me the desire to go on. I could cross to the other side of the valley and be done with the loneliness.

The zeppelin — the flying ship that runs regular routes to Orgrimmar and Stranglethorn Vale — glided over the tall, dark firs. I only noticed it after it had put the fear into my bones. It had menacingly invaded the sky above my head, and for the first few seconds I didn't know what was happening.

"Ha, ha! That really scared me!" I exclaimed in surprise, concluding: "So this game really is something!"

Just then Decebaal passed by me.

"Decebalus per Scorilo!" I wrote in white letters — that is, on general chat — and loosed the "learned" exclamation into the dark foliage of the forest in the land of the living dead, or of the dead living, I'm not exactly sure.

"Ye!" was the reply.

To my delight, Decebaal was in the mood to talk. The customary feeling-out followed: are you a girl? how old are you? where are you from?

"Want to talk on Ventrilo? It's a little program that's easy to install."

He helped me, with surprising patience, to install the "little program," and so made sure I was a girl. For a while we talked every evening. Something to do with the game had displeased him quite a lot. He criticized the fierce determination of some to have plunged entirely into that virtual world. If I understood rightly, he was upset that some confused it with their own reality. Decebaal became my friend. I picked out messages that were nice and discreetly flattering. I made efforts to keep his interest in me awake, hoping he would help me make progress in the game. My warrior had to be led by the hand in almost every situation, and my questions were those of an "absolute noob." I tried to get into parties, but almost every time, after a brief test of my warrior skills, I held no interest whatsoever for the companions I'd found at random out on the open ground, and I was abandoned. I didn't take offence. I was aware that no one had time to waste watching me trip my warrior over every tree that got in its way.

The surprise, for me, was that on Ventrilo I was talking on the channel of the Maat guild. A miracle had happened. I had struggled to find people from Maat, hoping I might make friends of them, and now I had a whole list at my disposal. But I didn't use this opportunity. Besides, given the gossip going around about the Maat guild, I hadn't really the nerve. I had read the Rules posted on the guild's portal. It was signed: God of the God. That was what its leader had titled himself. The application you had to fill out to be recruited had inhibited me completely. It looked like one for admission to Harvard or Princeton.

Gosupisoi knew Decebaal. She told me he was an experienced player and had a level 60 character in Maat.

Obviously, he had no time to help me "grow," as I had hoped. He had other things on his plate!

One evening, he was in Scarlet Monastery, where I needed to get to as well.

"What are you doing there, at your level?" I asked him.

"A quest I left undone. Have you seen the instance?"

"No."

"You can come with me, I'm on my own."

We went into the instance. Decebaal ordered me to stay well behind him and watch his feats of valour from a distance. Hm! Tiberiu had told me the same thing, once before.

Not long after we met, Decebaal asked me:

"Are you coming into our guild?"

"Into Maat?"

"No. We're making a new guild."

"I would come, but I'm in a guild with Gosupisoi. She's the one who actually looks after me — otherwise I really wouldn't understand much of what I'm supposed to do around here, across Azeroth. And besides, her boyfriend said he might get the two of us into Maat."

"Well, they're already with us."

The leader of the new guild was Wand. I was impressed when he showed himself concerned for my fate. I was in Desolace, in a little village of the trolls. I had come to the conclusion that it is, after all, worth facing a desert if at the end of the road you'll find the green shore of a sea with crystal water. Yes. After going through the excitements and mishaps that sorely tested my warrior's valour — forever eager to reach the edge of the horizon — I arrived in Shadowprey Village. At my feet the sea stretched out, and I marshalled my last physical reserves to take a good swim in the crystal water, then go to bed.

"You're a bit of a wreck. Let's see what we can do for you. We don't really have many people of your level in the guild!" Wand told me, on whispers.

A sort of monkey hung all over with tassels was hopping about in front of me. My first reaction was to strike back, to defend myself.

"Hello, GM! How ugly you are!" I said, once I realized the monkey was Wand himself.

I sat down in the middle of the path, because he had done the same.

"Heh, heh! Do you like this one?" he asked, and turned into a black feline.

"Aha, you're a druid! I like druids, but they have to be night elves. The Horde cows are really ugly."

The next day, the guild's first meeting was scheduled. I imagined we would all gather in the great square of Orgrimmar, or on the plateau in front of the citadel, lined up by the book, so the officers could inspect us. Well! That was how I saw the game!

Wand was deeply taken with the event. He couldn't sleep. Well, the business of sleepless nights in WoW lands is fairly common, but that evening Wand had solid reasons not to be able to sleep.

"I ought to go to Scarlet Monastery — I think they have equipment for me there," I told Wand.

Decebaal had run through the instance too fast; I hadn't managed to see almost anything properly. Then he had gathered up all the weapons and armour that had "dropped" from the "bosses" and abandoned me in the Library of Scarlet Monastery. When I asked him what to do there, he laughed and said: "Get started reading these books!"

"Let's go now! I can't sleep anyway. I'm nervous about tomorrow's meeting with the guild," Wand said.

A warrior came with us too. Wand put him to work. He watched him from a distance, with the superiority of the strong one, who resolved moments of crisis with a spell (read: a charm) cast at the right moment.

"Don't push too far forward, there's no point dying for nothing. The tank manages fine on his own."

We were talking on Ventrilo. My voice, alto verging on bass, slightly veiled, did not, of course, go unnoticed. With no apparent connection, Wand began telling me, among other things, that he'd had a friend all the way from India. Her whole family played WoW — the husband, the son, and the daughter.

"We talked for whole nights, including about the price of shoes across the world's meridians," Wand chuckled, remembering the lady from India.

What was I doing in Scarlet Monastery while they performed feats of valour? Next to nothing. I was admiring some fountains in ecstasy and musing: "What a beautiful monastery! A veritable Versailles!" I watched what the tank did. It was a very good lesson. My Ligia, too, had to learn what the tank's role is in an instance.

Shortly after I came out of Scarlet Monastery, I got a message on whispers.

"Got a little time to help me kill a rather special raptor? I want an item off it. It's me, Wand."

"With great pleasure," I answered at once.

"I killed a mage from the Alliance and we might be in trouble. From experience, I know he'll come back with a high-level char and kill us," Wand warned me.

That's exactly what happened. A night elf, very well equipped, appeared and killed Wand with a single blow, then me, because I'd jumped in behind him.

"He'll get bored and leave. It's a war of nerves. I've got time to wait — you?"

"No problem," I answered, and settled comfortably in the grass, beside my dead body.

Since we had to wait for the night elf to get bored and leave, Wand explained to me what the rogue class is like.

"They're killers, plain and simple. And sneaky. They can turn invisible, land some really nasty stuns, and they're very agile."

Wand had a special delicacy in conversation. Though so different in game terms, Wand's druid and rogue were obviously the same person. I was tempted to tell him who I really am. I was sure he would react well. "Yes, I think I'll tell him," I decided.

At the next day's meeting with the guild, the one who spoke, laying down the rules, was Decebaal, not Wand. After a couple of weeks, again it was he who commanded, on guild chat: "Leave the guild, we're rebuilding it without outsiders!"

"Why did you throw out the outsiders?" I asked him.

"They were weak. We're making a guild with only our own people."

Many in the guild had been in Maat. I asked them why they'd left it, seeing as it was a famous guild. It was explained to me: because there's too much segregation there; because a certain elite is cultivated and there's not much room for you in raids; because you can't get hold of epic gear.

Beneath the calm and the pleasantries on the guild chat, a state of conflict was seething — one that only I was unable to perceive. From my point of view, everything was wonderful. I liked Wand, I had "high-placed" connections — that is, direct access to the group's leaders — and that was far beyond anything I had ever hoped to gain. But Decebaal was becoming ever more unreachable as his popularity in the guild grew. Meanwhile, he had abandoned the shaman, Decebaal, and become a paladin overnight. He was called Odin.

I said to him:

"Now this is the way to play WoW! You've barely asked for something and everyone leaps to help you."

":D!" he answered me, with the emoticon that means a grin.

Not much more time passed. In the guild there was great commotion. Events unfolded as in a classical drama, where the climax coincides with the resolution and then hurls you, on your hands and knees, out of the auditorium.

Everyone was leaving the guild.

"What's going on in the guild?" I asked, while reading on chat, written in capitals: "WE'RE GATHERING IN UC AT THE TAILORING GUY!!!" That is, in Undercity, by the tailoring master.

Someone obliging explained to me:

"We're breaking up the guild."

"Why?"

"Odin punished someone, and Wand, when he logged in, promoted him again. It wasn't right to trample his authority. Odin got upset and left the guild. What has Wand done for the guild? Nothing, while Odin put in a lot of heart. Leave the guild and come to Undercity!"

Undoubtedly that was what I had to do. Wand's fate had been sealed. He was about to find himself alone in the guild.

When I reached Undercity, around 30 people were gathered around Odin, who was working hard at setting up the new guild. It was impressive. It was as if we were preparing for a raid against the Alliance.

The people in the guild were very friendly toward me. Everyone's main objective was to match the performance of the Maat guild, even if it was never stated outright. Odin periodically summoned us to meetings on Ventrilo, drew up progress strategies for the guild's "heavyweights," laid down rules, and put them to a vote on the guild forum. On Fridays, the Bucharest crowd met up for "beer." I began to recognize people by their voices too. I even set aside my principle of non-involvement and spoke at one of the meetings, trying to mediate a tension that had arisen between Odin and Hanuk, who criticized the barracks-like atmosphere Odin was gradually establishing in the guild. Hanuk was over 40; she had been in Maat, where she'd quarrelled with a guy who, as she put it, had gone too far and insulted her daughter.

I was successful, because Odin organized a party in the great square of Orgrimmar, broadcast over Ventrilo. It was actually rather fun.

It's strange, but even now, more than ten years later, I feel Wand's bitterness crossing space and time, tangling itself in the branches of the trees in my yard. The same trees that had witnessed Wand's joy and excitement on the night he founded his guild. I spoke with him when he had been left alone in the guild. I told him I had bet on him and that I was very sorry for the unpleasant turn things had taken. Shortly after, I noted with sadness that the druid Wand no longer existed. He had been deleted, or moved to another server.

At the Three Balloons.

The evenings at the Three Balloons were, one after another, a celebration. Felix was constantly cheerful. It was the basic substance he was made of, the one he fed on. Life, for him, was very colourful, people were fascinating, the world was a spectacle. Only the dogs attacked him consistently, and bit him a few times quite badly.

"Why do dogs attack me of all people?! Not one of them misses me!" he would ask me, very downcast. He loved dogs.

"You smell like a tomcat in heat," I would answer, half joking, half serious.

In the tiny room at "the Three Balloons," we could only sit in each other's arms. In such conditions, it's almost impossible not to suffocate. It wasn't like that. For hours on end, we projected onto the ceiling the film of the events the other hadn't been part of. Childhood, loves, traumas, friends, enemies gradually became the other's biography too.

I particularly liked the stories about the women he had known before me. Instinctively, I was gathering intelligence about the battlefield I had already become acquainted with. I was surprised that, although the "stories" seemed definitively over, when he spoke about his former lovers I glimpsed a current of affection for each of them. That put me on my guard, but in a way it also reassured me. And I liked it.

"Now it's your turn," Felix would say. "But I don't want to hear the Tom story again. I want a more recent one."

"I don't really have much to tell you. I can't find anything spectacular in my biography," I would say.

"Oh, come on! You really expect me to believe that? You know what a med-student guy told me once, after we'd danced at "Universitas"? — Let me know when you get bored of the chick, because I want a crack at her. If even I didn't pass you by, you can be sure others didn't either."

"It wasn't exactly easy, I have to admit. But it's irrelevant. What, you want me to list the guys who wanted to sleep with me?! Pretty much every one I talked to for more than five minutes — that's clear to you, isn't it?"

"It's not clear to me at all!"

"Fine, then stay, just as you are, unclarified!"

"Did none of them ever catch you in a tight spot?"

"Have you heard of the Scheherazade technique? I was this close to using it on you, too. Do you remember the business with the key that fell into your trouser cuff?"

"God, yes, how that ate at me that night!"

"You think I forget it? You pulled my hair because I laughed at you, and then it was you again: Forgive me, forgive me, I didn't mean to…"

"You were cynical."

"You tried to force my hand. Admit it?"

"I admit nothing!"

The whole thing had begun at the "Dunărea" bar. Maybe it's beside the point, but it was one of the buildings that fell in the '77 earthquake. I loved that bar. There was a very large aquarium there with little exotic fish I never tired of watching.

A few weeks had passed since the walk through the Botanical Garden, during which we had seen each other daily, except for the last two days, when, by his account, he'd been in Brăila to celebrate his birthday. Our reunion was full of exuberance. I had bought him an album of reproductions of Chagall's work, which I was in love with, and I did everything I could to convince him to love it too. Carried away, I said:

"I think I could stay with you days and nights on end without getting bored."

The reply came at once:

"So could I. And I'm very happy we can begin this very evening."

Felix laid a key on the table. I could no longer take back my words. Then something inside me told me, rather menacingly, that I would never be able to part from the man in front of me. All my cells seemed to know it. He was so familiar to me, as if he were my own blood! Only two or three neurons still stubbornly insisted on seeing things otherwise. "We'll see what comes of it," I thought to myself. I had managed to dodge all his stratagems for sleeping with me, without refusing him outright. He was challenging me again and had caught me with no escape hatch. If I refused him, vanity would come into play, and the risk of parting the very next second.

While the trolley glided beneath the lit-up lights of the city, I was building my strategy in my mind: "We'll part, but tomorrow morning. Tonight there will be a celebration, and Scheherazade will have to shine, because I am clearly not sleeping with him!" was my thought.

We went in through the gate of a fine building near Grădina Icoanei, and Felix began searching through his pockets. The key he had shown me in the bar had vanished completely. We came back out into the street, and I broke into a laughter I showed no signs of stopping anytime soon. I was jubilant, because everything had sorted itself out. Felix grabbed me by the hair and turned me toward him menacingly. He calmed down quickly and took me in his arms. "To hell with the key!" That was the final conclusion, and he walked me to the dormitory in Grozăvești.

"How that key ended up in my trouser cuff, I can't imagine. When I undressed — cling, cling, cling on the parquet. I let out a curse and burst out laughing, and woke Marius up. He said to me: — Laugh more quietly, man, I can't sleep and tomorrow I've got acting class with Bibanu!"

Felix could not be cruel. He loved his friends and his enemies alike. For the latter, he found justifications. He excused them with candour. Yes, he loved people for what made them distinct, but also for the role he assigned each of them.

We shared everything we had lived through in the times we had been apart. Together, impatiently, we were building a world so beautiful that we feared it might be only an illusion, a dream from which we'd wake all of a sudden, before either of us had managed to give himself wholly to the other.

When our "royal palace" suffocated us — for we were a stone's throw from the real one, in the centre of Bucharest — we'd go and circle around it until we concluded that it was still better in our own bed, at the Three Balloons. We roamed picturesque little streets — retro, we called them — and those dusks never again had any equal. Then there were the theatres with their glittering, inexhaustible world, the little taverns and the student clubs, plus the whole cohort of Felix's fellow students from the Institute, who had spectacle in their blood and the art of celebrating anything at all. Sometimes I was almost afraid to identify with this festive state, though it was ours and it was real.

We had to face daily details with nothing brilliant about them, because we weren't only the solar gods, gleaming, arched in embraces sculpted into the night. We had acute problems with the hot plate on which the potatoes, peeled at the head of the bed, fried lazily; with turning our pockets inside out to find the terrifying 30 bani for the next day's tram; with the cold that came down on us implacably — and he had just sold his overcoat in the spring.

But everything we did together became an exceptional state. Exclusively ours. Felix had been given to me. I assessed that precisely. I was by no means some empty-headed little goose who imagined she was the fairy princess deserving her Prince Charming, just by the nature of things. I had not been a character destined to sit in the stands and look down on the world from above. I had stepped into the arena and knew there was a hard fight there. It had not been easy. To round off the picture, I had, of course, been through a few spectacular defeats, but I had managed to preserve my freedom and my selfishness. I detested the idea of depending on anyone. I had never let anyone take possession of me, and I did not wish to take on anyone's destiny. The vanity I was so abundantly endowed with had grown a monster in me, forever lying in wait and ready to tear. Of course I let it show. It suited me and spared me a great deal of unpleasantness. I settled any affair quickly: "Friends — or we tear each other apart! But mind you, I won't leave a single shred of you!"

Now I was letting a man give himself to me, body and soul, and trying to do the same. It was the most perfect October in the world. That was when we gave each other Alin.

"You're the only mother my son could possibly have!" Felix said. Then he added: "I would have wanted my mother to be like you!"