I ask him if he would like to choose a block for someone else in his life. He chooses one for his mum and places it right next to him on the tree. It’s a transparent glass block. He says, ‘I always know what my mum is thinking, what she’s feeling. She’s see-through, like glass.’ We talk a little about what it’s like for him to know what his mum is thinking and feeling. Then he starts skimming through his inventory again.
He stands there as his character for a long time, still, and with his head bowed, as if concentrating deeply as he searches the inventory. I watch him silently and also glance at him on the video platform to see how he’s doing. He looks like his Minecraft character, head bowed in concentration. After a while, he selects a block and holds it in his hand. ‘I don’t think I can put her on this tree,’ he says quietly. He starts flying again and finds a smaller tree nearby. He places the block carefully on the tree. He tells me it’s his sister, who died, and says, ‘It’s a cake. She really loved cake and it was her birthday a few days before she died.’
Robert suddenly turns his webcam off and finds an invisibility potion from his inventory and makes his character invisible. I say, ‘It’s hard to be seen right now?’ He says, ‘Yes. Do you want to play hide and seek?’ I say, ‘Of course’, and add, ‘It’s going to be really hard for me to find you when you are invisible.’ Robert laughs and I see the little clouds of smoke from the potion that indicate where he is, moving off into the distance.
At the end of the session, Robert comes back to the tree where he placed the block to represent his sister. I say, ‘I wonder if it was hard for you to put a block here for her?’ He’s quiet as he searches for a while in his inventory and finds a flower, which he places on the ground by the tree, and says, ‘Yes, but I’m happy I found a place for her. I’ll make it nice for her here.’
