Yesterday afternoon was a moment in another reality and it lives just down the street.
Galadran and Fiacha from our Everquest guild do, that is.
I'd met Fiacha, or really her puppetmaster Laryssa, in Montreal a year ago, and in the afternoon of driving around to all the medieval clothing shops while she chattered about her stage-combat class or this or that perfectly wonderful thing I decided that this bright, whisky-swilling girl was someone I could swiftly enough call a good friend.
When I showed up in Toronto, I forgot that she, and her beau who even my picky boys approved of, lived here.
Yesterday, when Cfoo decided to organize us into a lunch-outing, it turned out that they live Down The Street, that they're as happy to see me as I am them (despite already having a good geek grouping), that Laryssa has a thumb greener than my entire leg (that makes sense in my head), that they're both Anim� obsessed and ultra cool and stupidly funny and
Wil makes me realize just a little bit of what it might be like to meet a monstre for the first time.
See, he claims Scottish descent but his colouring is so much like mine, pale and pasty and his round cheeks, like my round cheeks, give off this geeky innocent vibe, almost angelic if you believed in that sort of thing and with his high-pitched voice and computer-slouch, you'd never expect him to say
"so I got butt-raped by this Uggnaught in the Jedi game and have I ever told you that you're an idiot?"
I spent a moment looking at his mouth wondering how he could hide an ENTIRE demon in it.
Wandering home I was late for dinner, traffic and oversized grocery stores (I'm still not used to the dimensions and Cfoo wasn't helping with his galloping about with a bag of York Mint somethings in his hand) and Cristal called and PMS hit her a day earlier than me and she was suddenly alone and the nearest warmth was Toronto.
She's still planning on coming here. All I need to do is find a gay karaoke bar and we're set.
After that we went driving, returning a video that despite having been rented out for a WEEK (or probably because of) ended up three days late.
Then we went to the gas station to pump up my bicycle tires.
Then we had a spat.
Then I said a stupid thing, and went out bike-riding, alone, in the dark, on a bike that I don't really know how to ride.
Fifteen minutes later I was sailing over the handlebars, skidding along the pavement the way I usually do on snow, and limping rather brokenly home.
Into anger, underlined by a good bout of nausea, scraped elbow throbbing in time with my skull.
But we talked. It took a while, but we talked.
And y'know what? I'm relieved. I'd been waiting for what a "first fight" could be like between two violent histories, and quite frankly I think I learned what I was looking for.
We fight because we're so similar. Stubborn and aware of our intelligences and just insecure enough to be overprotective of them.
Fortunately, after the first bout of red, we remain very similar.
And we both listen. And that, that is something I was hoping to learn.
This morning all that is left of that twisting of the egoes is a scrape on my elbow and a slight bruise on my noggin'.
Oh, and a Fiacha and Galadran in my palmpilot.
What a day for accomplishments.