bestiary
\ BES-chee-er-ee, BEES- \ , noun;
1. a collection of moralized fables, especially as written in the Middle Ages, about actual or mythical animals.
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Martha
looked from the screen to the controller.
She had been following her son’s instructions for well over an hour now
and she still was having trouble getting the hang of it. She didn’t know why, it just wasn’t sinking in
for her. She wasn’t technically
illiterate. She understood computers and
smart phones just fine. Better even than
some of her coworkers. But this was just
over her head.
“Ok, so
what do I do again?” She asked. Charley, her son, groaned in exasperation.
“I told
you, mom, press the ‘start’ button.”
“Oh,
right. That’s the little one here,
right?”
“Uh
huh.”
Martha
pressed the button and watched the result on the screen. A menu popped up, presenting her with
information that she was only starting to understand, if one could call it
that.
“Ok, so
what am I doing now?”
“Go to
your bestiary now.”
“And
that is…” She asked.
“There,
over there on the bottom.” Charley said,
trying to point it out.
“Oh,
yes, I see it now. Let’s see, I do this,
then this, and there we go.” She said
while navigating the small, blinking cursor to the spot. A list of names popped up. “Oh, what’s this?” She asked, looking over the list.
Most of
them she could recognize fairly easily.
Entries like ‘wolf’ and ‘snake’ were fairly self explanatory, but others
were not. Those such as ‘dire rat’ and ‘goblin’
were a bit harder for her to pick out.
Still, she could guess as what the names were.
“This is
your bestiary. It’s a list of all the
monsters and stuff you’ve fought. It
tells you about them. You know, things
like stats and strengths and weaknesses and stuff. It’s so that you can fight better next time
you encounter that kind of enemy.”
“I
see. That’s a nice little feature. So then I should be able to find the one that
I just beat, right?”
“Up. Scroll down, and I’ll tell you when to stop.”
Martha
followed her son’s instructions until he told her to stop. The cursor ended up on an entry titled ‘flying
fish’. It seemed like it was a good fit
for the last enemy she had dealt with at the very least. The enemy in question had indeed been a fish
that didn’t seem to need water. It had
nearly destroyed her, even though it was still early in the game. Martha called up the info on the enemy.
“There,
there you see!” Charley shouted,
pointing at the screen.
“There’s
no need to shout, I’m sitting right here.
Now, what exactly am I looking for?”
“The
strengths and weaknesses. I kept telling
you to use lighting, since that’s what these things are weak against. But you kept on using water, which is why you
almost lost.”
“I
see. But I thought that, since it’s a
fish that was out of the water, I just needed to give it some.” She said.
She was joking, really. The first
time she used a water spell, she had done it out of experimentation. Every time after that she had used it just to
mess with Charley a bit. She was his
mother after all, if she couldn’t annoy him like that, than what was the point?
“That’s not how the game works. You have to use things that’ll hurt them, or
they won’t go away.”
“Oh. Too bad.
Well, I’m sure I’ll do better next time now that I know. Although, I think it would be nice if that
was an option. You know, try making
friends with the monsters instead of fighting them.”
“Moomm.” Charley said in frustration.
“Oh, I’m
just kidding, you know that. Now, let’s
keep going. How do I get out of this
again?” She asked, doing her best not to
smile as her son rolled his eyes and explained it to her once again.
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I'm sure every mother out there knows exactly what it's like to have a child get annoyed with them. And I'm almost positive they do it on purpose just to get that reaction. Seriously. It would explain so much of so many kids childhoods.
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