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The sun turned green when it hit the leaves, and cool when it was blocked off by the shade they cast. Michael’s hooves sank into the soft, damp dirt of the woodland road as he stepped between two low-hanging branches and used one hand to push the bows aside. He ducked his head slightly, careful to flatten his ears against his skull to avoid the leaves and the silvery dewdrops that still covered them, even this deep into the day.
When he was past the two branches, he paused and kept one of them held high above his burly shoulder. Behind him came a sharp voice.
“I don’t need you to protect me from a fucking tree , Mike!”
Michael rolled his lone eye at Shroud. He shrugged, “Oh, okay then!” He dropped the branch and let it whip back down into place, right onto Shroud, just in time for the shorter teenager to step directly underneath it.
He looked over his shoulder in time to see the widened, eight-eyed look of terror that bloomed on his younger brother’s face. Shroud gave a startled yelp as soon as the branch came down onto his head of thick, charcoal back curls. Michael laughed so hard that a dull ache formed in his belly.
“H-HEY HEY HEY !” Shroud hollered in surprise. The force of the impact sent dewdrops flinging this-away and that, all through the air.
“What?” Michael said through a strained, wobbly smile. “I just let go of the branch! I didn’t do ‘nothing to ya.”
“You-you fucking-”
Shroud’s eyes all narrowed and came stitched together. Eight ruby, crimson-red slits leered into Michael Underscore Beloved, each one curved and sharp and outlined with a faint, reflective glow.
“...you fucking dick ,” he finally managed. “I’m gonna tell MUM you were mean to me when we get back home .”
“You won’t, though.” Michael said very confidently. And he was .
“I will!”
Michael rolled his shoulders back in a lazy half-shrug. He tilted his head, and raised his chin a bit to sniff at the air. The leaves overhead rustled in a faint breeze that sent ripples through the sunlit canopy and shifted the shadows about on the muddy forest floor.
Mud…wet plants…mushrooms…the faint hint of summer wildflowers.
“Why’d you even wanna come out all the way, anyhow?” Shroud questioned as he brushed past, making sure to elbow Michael in the side as he did. Four of his six arms were crossed sternly in front of his chest. The other, uppermost pair dangled at ease by his sides. He wore a pale pink tank-top that had been tied off near the bottom to expose the soft skin of his ebony black stomach, which like the rest of him, had a glossy polished texture to it, save for his limb joints and shoulders, which were all covered in darker gray freckles.
Michael himself just had an old tee he’d thrown on this morning and a pair of jeans he wasn’t worried about getting muddy. Michael’s snout wiggled as he licked his lips and poked his tongue absentmindedly against one of his pale, shiny new tusks. “Dunno! I just felt like goin’ somewhere new today, I guess.”
“Didn’t you say that your legs were sore this morning?”
“Damn dude. What’s with all the questions?” With a tiny laugh, Michael ruffled Shroud’s hair and delighted in the way his brother’s arms flew up in a wild panic to push his hand away. “What, you jealous your big bro’s having another growth spurt?”
“Yeah,” snarked Shroud, “sure. I am SOOOOOOOOO, so SO fricking jealous that you’ve outgrown three pairs of underwear in two months and spend all day in bed, moaning and whining for Mum while Da and Pops get you more regen ointment shit. Consider me downright GREEN with envy, Mike.”
“Rude,” he snorted.
Shroud grinned smugly while Michael only huffed. He furrowed his brow. He put on a strong face of refined, composed indignation.
They carried on down the path for a while.
After about twenty or so minutes of silence, wind, birdsong and bugs buzzing in the underbrush thicket, Shroud finally apologized. His voice was very small, “I’m sorry…”
“It’s cool,” Michael said as he forgave his brother instantly, “it’s whatever, man. I forgive you.”
“Do you wanna find some flowers somewhere and make some crowns, maybe?”
They did that a lot…when they were very little, still small enough to fit in their parents’ laps. The thought honestly didn’t sound too appealing after the past week spent rotting away under his bed covers: sore, stiff, hot and all around misery in the nightmarish ordeal that was having a teenage body.
“Ooo, maybe…couldn’t hurt to look around for some.”
Look they did. Unfortunately, they didn’t have very much luck. Michael could smell the flowers on the breeze somewhere vaguely off in the woods, but going to follow the scent would mean dragging themselves off the road and through the tightly clustered trunks and the unfriendly-looking ivy leaves that covered many of them.
Shroud suggested that he could climb through the trees to scout ahead for a clear shot through and guide Michael along through it. A good idea, yeah.
“But what if you fell and broke something, and I can’t find you because it’s dark and I can’t walk through the brambles?”
Shroud visibly wilted a little. “Gods, Mikey, since when are you the super anxious one here?”
“Do you have a healthy fear of what Mum would say if he learned you let me go off to do something stupid that ended with me getting hurt?”
Shroud’s sigh said everything. Fair enough! They could find something else to do while out on the trail, surely. I-Spy. Rock Paper Scissors: On the Road Edition. They could follow the road around until it took them to an open field where they could flop down and do a bit of cloud gazing.
“Wait,” Michael said suddenly, “do you hear that?”
Shroud froze, “Hear what?”
Michael raised a clawed, hooved hand to quickly silence him. “Sssh! Quiet…I hear…I think I hear water , somewhere.”
Soft, but yeah. He heard the faint whisper of running water just a ways past the treeline directly to their left. If they followed the road along its gently sloping bend in that direction, they’d probably be taken right to it!
A splash in a nice cool river would feel great , hot as it was.
With a quickly shared nod, the two brothers broke into matching sprints through the trees.
—
Shroud grimaced the moment Michael pulled off his shirt. “Oh gods. No. No, Michael. Remember your hair . Remember what Pops said the last time you rolled around in some-”
Michael did not hesitate.
Michael smiled.
Michael jumped, and landed with a wet, sloshy plop .
“MUD!”
Mud and piglins were a tale as old as time. Michael saw the shiny, speckled stretch of wet dirt that followed the river’s flow and all at once, felt his instincts kick into high gear. It was gooey and thick. Shiny, too, and a rich blackish brown in color that darkened the closer you got to the water. Michael tossed his tee aside and made a running jump so he’d land smack dang in the middle of it. Belly first: like the Nether Lords intended, probably.
Part of him briefly laughed at the reference to gods he had no real relationship with. The rest of him was as giddy as a babbly baby newborn piglet. The cool, fresh relief of the mud as it was pressed underneath his weight flooded through him instantaneously.
He sighed, rolled over onto his back, and raised his arms high into the air.
“Ohhhh, this is heaven .”
“Sorry in advance for spoiling your slice of heaven with my unsightly guy-boobs.”
Michael blinked. For a second, he snapped out of it. “Hhheeey, they’re noooot .” His voice came out heavy and slurred. His legs wiggled about clumsily, causing more thick black mud to be smeared against his knees and on the side of his thighs.
Shroud casually dropped his shift next to Michael’s, then began to walk around the plot where Michael was laying on his way to wade into the water. As the river swallowed Shroud up to his waist, the spider hybrid’s smile softened at the clear water that lapped against his exposed chest.
“One day I’m gonna get these things chopped off. Then maybe I’ll finally join a swim team, or something.”
“You’d be good at it,” chimed Michael.
“Go play in the mud, Mike,” Shroud teased.
Pops had spent at least four hours picking clumps of hard, dried mud out of Michael’s mane the last time he took a proper mud bath. That was roughly three months ago, give or take. Michael could vividly recall the annoyance in his father’s tone as gentle fingers took great care to tear the bits of calcified dirt out of his hair without tugging too hard on the roots.
“Oh Mikey, what are we gonna do with you…?”
Kiss his forehead and hug him once it was finally over, apparently. Yeah. Pops wasn’t good at being upset for very long. Which was apparently very funny to Dad and Mimi, who claimed that when they were all younger ( “Like you and your brother’s age.” ), Pops had this quirky phase where he went around threatening to blow up people’s homes with literal nukes whenever they made him upset.
“That’s literally not what happened!” Pops had cried loudly.
“Also, he used to say he was gonna kidnap your mom anytime he hung out with Uncle Eryn. Because he was jealous .”
“No. No no. You are not gonna bring that shit up in front of the kids , gods Ranboo!”
“He threw a cup of coffee at Wilbur once, I think.”
“Oh yeah, I remember that.”
“No I didn’t. It was Quackity. Didn’t happen though, but if it had , I wouldn’t have thrown it at Wilbur .”
“This is giving me flashbacks. To Logstedshire.”
“Tommy, no.”
“You are pulling a Logstedshire right now, Tubbo…with your gaslighting.”
“I want a divorce from both of you.”
Bleh…Michael didn’t want to think about his parents’ weird arguments right now. He wanted to think about how bright the sunshine was when he waved his hands in the air. How warm the light glowed against his rounded stomach and soft, pink-tinged chest.
Using his hands to scoop a glob of mud into his palm, he dropped it onto his belly and ran his hooved fingers around through it. Blissful coolness quickly lathered him the whole way over.
“Having fun?” Shroud called.
Michael mumbled a semi-coherent reply. Something roughly to the effect of, “Hhhhhhhsmmmm yeahg , is per’pehct .”
Over the sound of Shroud’s bubbly laugh, Michael heard himself give a happy, content grunt, free of shame.
The mud was cold, wet, and wonderful. Very different from what he’d read about in the soul sand flats section of a book he’d been reading about the Nether. The sands there got so hot from being so close to the lava that they turned mushy and runny enough for you to swim in, or apparently soak if you were a Nether-dwelling piglin like the book described.
A memory came to him.
Faint…dim…and hot.
And scary.
—
Everything hurt. His whole body was so sore. His nose was clogged, and breathing through his mouth caused cold sharp air to claw its way down his tight, dry throat.
He could hardly see through the tears. The snow didn’t help. It fell around them in an endless white haze that melted into the gray fog that hung between the trees and buildings of the tiny seaside town. Two pairs of boots crunched through the snow.
“Are you sure this is gonna help?”
“It might! I don’t know!”
“What do you mean ‘you don’t know’? Is this gonna help with the cold, or is this just gonna make him feel worse ? Ranboo!”
A pained voice. Scared, angry, protective. Then a thinner and deeper one, riddled with worry and sheer panic.
“I don’t know-I’m sorry! I-I just read about it, a-a-and the book said the heat in the Nether might like-like uh clear him up a bit, y’know? Help with the fever, maybe?”
“How the fuck does bringing our baby into HELL sound like a good way to cool him off?”
“I don’t know!”
Loud. Too loud. He whimpered. He whined. The wind was so sharp against his face. It roared and it hissed. Then there was another sound. This one was all warbly and deep, like a quiet voice of some monster that whispered at you from under the bed, but you couldn’t understand the words.
Through the haze of his tears, he saw something bright. Something purple, glowing through the snowfall.
“Stop screaming! We’re scaring him.”
It was a mouth. A big, wide, open mouth. They were going right towards it. The black rectangle stood just a few steps away, stoic against the shifting sky. It was filled with dancing purple swirls.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s alright. This is gonna help you feel all better, okay? Just hold on a bit. Hold on to Papa.”
Everything was white.
Then it was all purple.
Swirling, dizzy purple.
Then the purple was gone, and suddenly it was hot . Too hot. Everything was red. It was dark. He was on fire. Hurt, hurt, hurt.
Something screamed at them. A monster. Dada yelled something and a purple burst filled the hazy smog that flooded the world with bright, neon light. Something moved around. A flash of silver. The thing in the smoky air above screeched a pained death knell as a loud bang tore it into nothing…then it was quiet again.
But it was still too hot .
“I got you! I got you both…”
“Ranboo, I don’t think this is helping.”
“It isn’t?”
He whimpered loudly into his Papa’s chest. His head was as foggy as the crimson haze that filled the immense cavern all around them. He was hot, sore, scared, and now he couldn’t stop panting and gasping for breath.
He wanted to go back home .
—
Michael sighed lazily. A mud bath was a good way to spend the afternoon. When they went back home to Snowchester, he could probably throw himself into the tub before Mum noticed they were back and avoid any drama.
His hair spread over the mud underneath and around him. Thick, wavy curls fanned outwards over the darkly silvery claybed. His hair was a dark pink-red color. His fathers always said that it was the color of a summer rosebush.
He supposed he could rinse himself off in the river before they headed back out.
For now, though, a hand found its way over his heart. Michael sighed once more. Shroud said something that sounded like some kind of dumb joke, and he laughed without really hearing it.
It was a nice day.
Somehow, he knew the nice days would be forever. Nice days with lots and lots of mud baths.
Fuck…yes.