The Tale Of An Old Vampire

Two years ago, while I was still kind of young in my second life, I met a woman. She was a vampire dominatrix though the lifestyle really doesn't play any role here. We chatted a bit so I've learned that she's very old, something like the late beta. And while she was a great conversationalist, intelligent, informed and remembering the old days of the grid, there was something in her eyes or voice that was… well, not sad, something even beyond that. Like she has passed the state of sadness, got used to it and learned to live with it. Something I really couldn't point at at the moment.

She lived in her castle, somewhere at the mainland, with her girls, let's say there was three of them. They were her slaves, lovers and friends. They were her only friends. As much as I gathered, the castle was secluded, maybe even hidden in the sky, and protected from entering. She cut herself off from the rest of the grid and was leaving the place very rarely. Every now and then she had to go out to renew her clothes, probably get presents for the girls and maybe some furniture, but even then the sight of the rest of the grid was too harsh on her eyes.

I guess that many of you now show the exact amount of misunderstanding that I had at that moment. I was one year old, the avatar at her peak. Grid was huge and colorful. All over the place were people sparkling with the ideas. Windlight sky was smiling at us. Life was an adventure. It just wasn't right to sit home, somewhere in a dungeon, be it even the most beautiful dungeon, with only three friends, be it the best lovers in the world. It just wasn't right. But now I know better.

It's inevitable, at one moment each of us gets that "seen it all" feeling. The older we get there is more and more empty sims, less and less places capture our attention let alone the imagination. Less and less friends we have. Avatars don't die but they do go back to databases to never come back. We don't have much nerves to talk to dozens of people to discover just one that is worth an another conversation. Our favourite club got closed. And that's the fifth time that the favourite place has to be deleted from the picks. We have inventories with 30K or 50K items and no new pair of shoes can tickle the heart.

So, why doesn't she doesn't leave, you ask? Why doesn't she join her late friends in the databases? Because she can't. And that's the hard part. Nevermind her lifestyle and fashion, she is a vampire. She is doomed to live. She loves her girls. And she loves second life, though there is not much left of it for her. But she loves the feeling of being on the grid. And she loves herself, I guess. We fall in love in our own avatars, that's the essence of this world. So there she is, logging not so often as she used to, but more than she needs to. Waiting to see how the story ends. If it ever does.

So there I am now, three years old in this world of imagination and illusions. Naked, holding an umbrella, falling from the sky, as the tradition says I should do on my rezzday. That symbolism never fails. Sometimes it's about the unknown that you jump into. Sometimes it's the nakedness and the feeling that you exposed yourself to the end. Sometimes it's the emptiness of the vast space around you. Let's see what comes in the next year.