Reality? Who wants to live in reality? What is reality?

It all depends on perception.

I'm not sure how others perceive me. I'm not beautiful. I'm ordinary in every way. My boyfriend tells me I have a cute nose. It's not. It's just a nose that suffers from my awful allergies. I have a self image problem. But, since it isn't dangerous, I haven't really looked for a way to fix it.

Most people would say that I'm quiet. In a way they would be right. When I'm in public with people that I don't know or I'm not comfortable with for whatever reason, I am quiet. No. I go beyond quiet. I am silent, shy, withdrawn, and distinctly uncomfortable. Almost prostrate with fear, yet I try to hide it. Sometimes, I think I succeed, and I must if all people ever say is, "Oh Leah? Yes, she's the quiet one in the corner."

Inside is an entirely different story. Inside, I am loud and brash. Inside, I scream my opinions to the world. Inside, I carry on heated debates on whether black is white, if the sky is blue, or any other subject I feel like covering. Inside, I rule.

Role Playing Games (RPGs) are addictive, and enjoyable. They allow me to let some of my real selves show through in a creative environment. It has become an obsession. It has become something of paramount importance to my life. But I still don't think that many realize that I let more of myself show in the games than I do in "Real Life".

Inside, I am royalty, a Princess.

Inside, I am an Assassin.

Inside, I am a Thief, a Rogue.

Inside, I am a Healer, a Priestess to the Gods.

Inside I am many things, many people. I have numerous sides. I can be dangerous, but I am always honorable, no matter who is in charge. I will not lie. But like a thief or an assassin, I will give my trust only rarely.

I can be regal. Responsibilities rule my life. I try to help, to make it so that others do not feel like they are in pain and agony. On the other hand, I can be completely irresponsible, tossing everything to the winds to get my hands on my books or somebody else's. It doesn't really matter which so long as the story is engrossing. Or perhaps I will run off to an RPG to let all of my selves out to play.

People say they know me well. But I wonder. Do they see beyond the facade I present? Do they see beyond Leah and into all of her others? What do they see? Do they listen to what we all have to say, chaotic and contradictory as it may be?

"Once upon a time, there lived six sisters. The oldest sister was named Arian, and she looked after the rest. Being the only responsible one�" Arian begins.

"Hey!" objects Rhiannon. "I'm responsible. I have to be responsible. I'm a healer."

"If you were responsible, Rhiannon, you wouldn't have helped Daria steal those books," Deirdre interrupts, with a snicker.

"Well, you wanted to read them too, Assassin," Rhiannon snaps back. "You certainly can't call yourself responsible."

"Sure I can. I always have a reason for the people I kill. I won't kill them without a contract and Arian always researches my employers and the people I kill. I call that responsible. And anyway, Azriana can always resurrect them," Deirdre returns with heat.

"Hey, leave me out of this," Azriana splutters, looking up from her tome of necromantic spells.

"Ladies," Arian growls, "could I get on with the story please?"

"Fine, but you need to fix the beginning," Deirdre and Rhiannon chorus.

"Arian was the most responsible of all the sisters. She was a Princess and became a Paladin Priestess. She was sworn to serve the Goddess of the sun, and had been charged to make sure her sisters didn't grow up evil.

"The next eldest was Riana. All of the sisters were highly intelligent but Riana frequently seemed the most intelligent." Arian continues, only to be interrupted again.

"She is not the most intelligent and she certainly doesn't act like it," Daria put in. "She'd make a lousy thief." Arian sighs as Riana looks up.

"Funny, I certainly thought I was more intelligent than you. After all you can't even do a simple chemistry experiment, let alone fix anything that's broken around here. You're hopeless, Daria," Riana snarls.

"I am not. I can too do that stuff. I fix my lock picks all the time."

"Of course you do," Riana's voice drips sarcasm, "you straighten them out, or buy new ones. That is not fixing stuff. Fixing things constitutes, oh making the microwave work after you fried the wiring."

"Daria, Riana, enough," Arian shouts. "I said she seemed the most intelligent, I didn't say she was the most intelligent. Goddess above and below. Now be quiet."

"Yes, Arian," Riana and Daria say.

"Riana frequently seemed the most intelligent, if only because as an engineer she was the most logical of them all. Riana tended not to depend on her intuition like the rest of her sisters. She preferred to have a nice solid and scientific answer to most problems. In this way she attempted to balance out the rest of her sisters.

"The next eldest was Azriana. She was the only Mage among the sisters. In fact she studied necromancy. Her obsession with the dead was only rivaled by her younger sister Deirdre's obsession with causing people to be dead."

"Hey! I'm not obsessed with dead people. They're just better conversationalists than most live people I've met," Azriana interrupts, with an offended look on her face.

"I'm not obsessed with killing people. Would the lot of you stop slurring assassins?" Deirdre adds with an injured sniff. "I can fix people almost as well as Rhiannon can, my Goddess just doesn't help."

"Funny thing about that," Rhiannon tosses in. "You worship the goddess of the dead, not the goddess of healing like I do. And you're not a priestess."

"I did say almost," Deirdre answers. Daria giggles.

Arian sighs again and struggles to finish her tale. "After Azriana came Rhiannon, the healer Priestess. She tended to get on Deirdre's nerves because she'd heal all of the people that Deirdre had been hired to kill."

"It wasn't my fault. I'm a healer, it's what I do, and they came to me for help," Rhiannon protests volubly.

"I wasted some of my best poisons on them too. Rhiannon stop interfering! They were legal kills by guild rules," Deirdre yells. Arian almost whimpers.

"Anyway, after Rhiannon came the twins Daria and Deirdre. They were a thief and an assassin respectively. They were both the best at what they did, but like all the sisters, they tended to be a little scatterbrained." Arian takes a deep breath and hurries on before they can interrupt again. "Daria spent most of her time thieving or finding ways to get out of her chores. She was always trying to procrastinate and could usually get her sisters to do it with her. After all there were all those books they had to read, and music to listen to.

"Deirdre spent most of her time trying to find contracts that were allowed. After all, since Arian had spent so much time and effort on keeping all of her sisters good, there weren't as many contracts available. Pickings could be very slim for a chaotic good assassin. She also spent excess time re-killing people her older sister had healed."

"I'm going to get you for that, Rhiannon," Deirdre growls softly. Arian hurries on.

"Arian moved her sisters into her castle and raised them to the best of her ability. It turned her from being just a responsible person into an organized and super responsible person, if you didn't count her bad memory. She tried very hard, and for the most part she did a very good job. Her sisters grew up into lovely young women who could and would argue over everything, who were addicted to books and writing, and were very conscientious about their professions."

"We do not argue about everything!" all of Arian's sisters shouted.

"Fine. They argued about almost everything. But they were very happy people. The end," Arian says, cutting them off like they had done to her so many times.

Dragons fly through the sky. Midnight wings carry them over my castle. Salamanders dance in fireplaces and on candles and torches. Books decorate the room where a debate rages fiercely.

Sylphs flutter joyously, carrying the words over crystal air. They bring back the sounds of roaring waterfalls that mimic the heat of the argument.

We argue over what books to read, buy, or get from the library. Whether we should get book five in "The Blending" series, or if "The Captal's Tower" has come out. If we want to reread "The Belgariad" or "The Lord of the Rings." Or maybe we should just find something new that we've never even heard of.

We argue over the music. Whether we should listen to Les Mis�rables, something by Loreena McKennitt, or something else entirely. Over whether or not we should do the homework before or after the game. Inevitably Daria will win, irresponsibility will lead us into procrastination, while Arian, responsible to a fault, will quietly sulk in the corner.

"I always see you writing, and I wonder what you write about," my friend says.

"I'll give you the URL to my web page. Some of my stuff is up there. Some of it is even finished," I reply.

The paper lay blank and empty, a pen next to it. I reach forward, and begin to write. Nothing matters, but the words that belong on the paper. I have no topic, nor any purpose. The only desire is to write and put the words onto paper where they belong. I must obey the compulsion. I have no choice, none of us do.

The argument grows louder reaching throughout the castle, causing it's other denizens to smile.

"Obsession is such an ugly word, can't we just say that we really like something," Deirdre shrieks, as she sharpens a dagger. Daria merely laughs as she tosses a bottle of Deirdre's very best poison into the air. She had just stolen it for the fun of the action.

Rhiannon looks up from the bandages that she's rolling and sighs. "No, we can't say that we just really like something. We have gone beyond really liking. We are obsessed."

"Rhiannon," Deirdre says, "sometimes you just aren't any fun."

"Hey, I just call them as I see them," she protests.

"Becky! Where did you put my book!" I shriek at my sister.

"I didn't touch it," she says in return. I stare at her suspiciously. I feel sure that she is omitting something, but I can't prove it, and she knows I can't.

Feelings of paranoia sweep through me frequently. My books will go missing. Someone will try and tickle me. Everything will go wrong.

Just because I can't prove these things, doesn't mean they aren't true. Just because I'm paranoid, it doesn't mean that someone isn't out to get me. And assassins and thieves have to be paranoid that's what keeps them alive.

I grew up hearing bad jokes about my last name. It's German, and I'm proud of my heritage. My family has given up trying to correct the pronunciation. But I spent years having to listen to people make sounds of explosions while they laughed at Leah "Bomb". Is it any wonder that I've become obsessed with explosions, or that Riana, the engineer, was born in my head?

My fascination made chemistry interesting. I, we, were all scared we were going to blow up the lab.

"Riana," Daria hisses, "be careful. I don't want to die, I haven't stolen enough books yet!"

"Forget your thieving, Daria. Be careful not to let the salamanders loose when you light the Bunsen Burner. They've been dying to get at my poisons," Deirdre snaps.

"And my healing herbs," Rhiannon adds.

"Those are all minor things," Arian snaps. "If she blows up the lab or frees the salamanders we'll fail chemistry. If we fail chemistry our GPA will be ruined and we'll never get out of this town."

"Good point," they agree. Riana looks up.

"I should just blow up the lab to get the lot of you to be quiet. I'm an engineer, for the Goddess' sake. I know what I'm doing."

I am incapable of passing up a sheet of blank paper. Writing is one of my obsessions. Books are another. I go crazy if I don't have any music in the background. I must have it to sleep, or even think during the day.

People don't understand why I don't like silence. Silence gives me the creeps. I don't mind quiet.

Silence reminds me of all the things that I have to do, of all that I have to worry about. I worry about my friends. My allergies. My boyfriend's asthma. How I have to pass my courses with such and such an average. On whether I can make anything of myself, of my dreams. Then I get tense, and I get headaches from the tension. I hate pain, and unfortunately here in the "Real" world Rhiannon can't make them go away.

Magic, mayhem, chaos, and order. Life in the places that I create, while not ideal, is distinctly more enjoyable than life in the so-called Real World. I tend to live too much in the worlds of my making, so my grasp of reality can be a little tenuous.

No. That's not quite true. I have a very good grip on reality. I just ignore it. I would rather not deal with reality, so I create my own. The difference to me is merely a minor detail.

I see nothing wrong in a world with Dragons and where the elements and their elementals have free reign. Where Fire's Salamanders long to burn everything it can. Where Air's Sylphs can dance and carry messages. Where Earth's Gnomes do their work in piece and Water's Undines decide the fate of those in the water. This merely makes life interesting.

That's one of the greatest things about gaming. If it's a fantasy game, there are always going to be worlds that will be close to the ones I create, where I can run free, and never be bothered.

"Deirdre, will you stop pulling Death out of that pack of Tarot cards? It's freaky," Daria shivers.

"No, it isn't," Deirdre and Azriana say together.

"Of course you think it isn't," Daria replies with a frown, "being an assassin and a necromancer, respectively."

"That doesn't have anything to do with it," Deirdre snaps.

"All the card means is change. And you can't say that we don't cause a lot of change."

"Exactly," Deirdre agrees.

"It means dying," snaps Daria back. Arian looks up from her book.

"No it doesn't, dear. It just means change. It can mean a change from a living state to a dead state. Or it could mean any other type of change we could come up with. And that is all it means."

"It is most appropriate for us. That's why it's our card. We cause death, we cause life, we change people from a living state to a dead state, or a dead state to an undead state. You, Daria change people from having things to not having them. I change them from being wounded to being whole. Riana changes things from being broken to being fixed. And Arian holds us all together. Those are just the most obvious things. Death isn't a bad card, and it is ours." Rhiannon explains.

Do people see what I see when they look at me? Do they listen when I speak? Are they willing to look out of this humdrum world to see the real me, in all my fractured forms?

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