4 Leaf Clover

The minutes were slipping by quickly. Tommy took an eye from the computer to spot the clock, and read 15 minutes before 11PM. That meant for Gretchen it was almost midnight. Time was running out.

In the 3 and a half months he'd known Gretchen, he'd truly believed he was talking to an actual human being. The words and actions each other saw in-game seemed like a reflection of sorts of real people. To Tommy, there was no distinction between in-game and irl.

Gretchen saw it the other way. Even with their daily chats on messenger and their trading pictures a week after meeting, her words at times were specifically mentioning the word "irl" and "in-game".

Their opinions clashed. After 3 months, Tommy told Gretchen he'd loved her. At first, she laughed and said it was just a game. Their argument on it began and continued on for days in-game and on messenger with breaks to level and discuss other subjects in between.

Just a week ago, Tommy was told by Gretchen of the movie Serendipity. The main characters in it had discovered their love was in the stars, by massive amounts of luck. The woman had found the 5 dollar bill the man had written on, while the man discovered the book the woman wrote upon years after separating.

The idea of the movie led to Gretchen's ultimatum. If they had truly loved each other, she noted, then luck would surely come their way. In exactly one week, they'd each, separately, try to find a 4 leaf clover. If they were meant to be with each other, they'd both find their lucky clover. If they couldn't find it, then what they had couldn't have been love.

Tommy had no choice. After Gretchen said the exact deadline time, she walked out of his screen and immediately blocked his whispers. Tommy had been in the Mandagoras map ever since.

After downing what was possibly his thousandth Mandagora, Tommy spotted another one spawning to his left. He immediately went to it and started attacking. What he hadn't noticed at first was that it was targetted by another player's spell. His fight with the Mandagora was finished by a Lightning Bolt, coming from the mage that was far away in the screen.

Suddenly, in place of the downed Mandagora on the ground lay what he'd been looking for in the entire week: the sign from the stars. He immediately tried picking it up, but found it belonged to the mage.  He knew, though, that he could try a few times and pick it up by the time the mage came to it.

Question was, would he try?



Note:  This just came into mind after my RO friend told me of how his glove drop was looted by someone.