Sometime more years back than I like to remember one of my favorite games was the one by the name of… Read the title. I hate being redundant. 🙂
As I was playing Viva Piñata I lost one of my favorite creatures. Yes, you have to deal with loss in this game. She was a Macaracoon that I had dressed up.
And I think that, while she was a digital character I can honestly say that I had grown emotionally attached to her, if not loved her.
People will laugh at me when I say this, but lets look at this honestly for a moment before I continue.
People have told me that I can’t love something that can’t love me back. Really? What about unrequited love? Then I hear that, well, you can’t love something that isn’t able to even have the chance to have unrequited love. So…you’re saying that it has to be able to understand that I exist? Hamsters and other rodents are terrified of their “owners” so this also excludes them as well.
Anyway, let me just say that I was concerned with her well being.
I felt like a kid. I made sure that I always kept her at full happiness (this is important if you ever play the game) and I adored the way that her little feet made this adorable pitter-pattered sound, she would walk around my garden.
Then one afternoon I decide that it is time to start on one of the projects I had for my garden. It was some big construction that would expand and improve my main garden. The plans had been laid to put up fences, arrange rocks, dig a couple of ponds, and even plant some trees. As I was working I got notified that one of my Piñatas had fallen ill. Immediately my heart skipped a beat and I thought about my sweet little Macaracoon.
I click the notification, afraid to see which one it was. Sure enough it was my favorite Macaracoon, she had gotten stuck right in the middle of a fence. It almost looked like the fence was going through her tiny polygon torso, the worst part was that she’s was laying there crying.
Instead of panicking I think about the problem, how can I get her unstuck? After a moment or two I decide to just sell the fence, I was almost certain that that would get her unstuck. Once the fence was gone she was still stuck in the same place, crying. She must have gotten caught and her state couldn’t return to what it was before. Regardless of how many times I tried she would not move, not an inch, and what was worse was that she was still pouring out tears. I called the doctor and he was able to give her medicine, but nothing helped. Then I saw him.
I had gotten the shovel head that lets you stun him. But I was only stalling, he had his eyes set on her and I couldn’t change that. I had to fight him and still watch as he slowly progressed through our beautiful garden, all of my other Piñatas frolicked and played as if they didn’t have a care in the world.
I continued to hit him. Yet after a lengthy battle I had to suffer and watch as he smashed my poor sweet little wonder into a thousand pieces.
Her little Piñata pieces floated up into the sky as my other Piñatas flood in to devour her candied remains.
After a time she re-materialized outside of our garden right next to where she died. A shadow of her former self. Instead of roaming around, her feet left no pitter, no patter, she just stared. Right at the place where it happened.
Her coloration changed to black and white as she hauntingly looked into the past life she once enjoyed.
I played on without her by my side and watched as she would keep coming back. Always to that spot, yet never into her former garden home. She would always stay around that spot.