Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Gentle vibrations shuddered through his blanket. Gradually, he was dragged into a form of glowing consciousness, enough so that his hand found its place atop Maui’s head, fitting there like a wave upon a beach. His hands always moved before his eyes had a chance to open. Cracking his lids open, his world became entirely comprised of Maui’s purring, almost smiling face mere inches away, tiny cat breathes tickling his chin. His paws were folded under him, putting pressure right above his sternum. While Maui was no a hefty cat, laying his full weight in such a way was a considerable load. Not that Grian would ever complain. He loved waking up like this.

“Did you sleep well?” His voice was drowsy.

Maui chirped a response. Pearl, at the foot of the bed, leaning against Grian’s shin, parroted him, then stretched to the ceiling, hoping off the bed with a kitty harrumph. The two interlaced their tails together as they coyly looked behind, eyes full of thoughts of breakfast. Grian guessed it was pretty late in the morning for them to get up and moving so fast, without a second consideration to wait and snuggle under his arms for just five more minutes.

Groaning as he hauled off his blankets, he did some stretching of his own. A minor kink in his neck clicked satisfactorily after reaching his arms up. Now bare, his arms shivered in the cold of the bedroom. The curtains were colored gold from the warm sun, and it was early spring, but a chill remained. He was a bit impatient with how long the cold weather was taking so he had left the window open and buried himself under multiple blankets. He was ready for it to be spring, true spring. The seasons never addled his imagination and drive to build, but it was so much easier to lose himself in work when the sun also lost its way across the sky and decided to stick around.

To him, winters should have been placed at the end of the year, not the beginning. He wanted each year to start fresh with spring, grow into summer and cozy up in the autumn in preparation for winter, as if the year was a music box slowing its tune as the springs loosened. With another winter gone by, he could celebrate another year living in Hermitcraft. Another tally mark.

The cats complained loud and clear over how he was still in bed, so he complied with their demands.

One thing Grian always found strange about cats was their inability at certain times to walk in a straight line. They seemed to put great effort into leading him to a place he visited every day, the kitchen, so it confused him why they were also adamant at getting underfoot, especially when he was on the stairs.

“Stop trying to kill me. You won’t get breakfast that way.”

Pearl meowed innocently.

“You’re a little better missy. It’s you—” Grian scooped up the tortoise shell that curled itself around his foot. “That I’m most suspicious of. And that cuddling is getting more brazen every day. Nearly suffocated me in my sleep.”

As he carried Maui in his arms, the joke soured in his throat. Surely, he would wake up if that were to happen. He couldn’t just die like that. People didn’t die that easily.  

I really hope so.

Some people fell right off their feet. And died. A simple bump on the head and they were no more. Or the culprit could be a centimeter long cat scratch, left uncleaned.

Maui wriggled once Grian crossed the threshold of the kitchen. Grian opened his arms up quickly to drop Maui. He examined his arms. Clean.

Of course they are. Maui and Pearl never scratch. They’re good cats.

He prepped breakfast for his cats first. It was out of compassion and necessity, since if he took care of his own meal first he would never hear the end of it. Pearl and Maui’s shared food bowl was always filled with kibble, as they were free feeding cats. However, they were prissy and wouldn’t eat the stale pieces unless they were mixed in with something fresher.

Grian poured new kibble in, then looked over the rest in the bag. Nearly empty. He needed to get more. Taking a closer look, the bowl his cats ate from had a slight chip in the porcelain. He needed to make a new one.         

He smiled. Yes, it was a new chore on his always cluttered list, but it gave him a welcome respite to make something new and enlist a Hermits help. Joe was pretty good with pottery, surprisingly, which meant Grian had a perfect chance to meet up and spend the day together. With him being on the cusp of winter and spring, he wanted to do more things with Hermits, as that made the time fly by.

Today was busy, at least the first half. Etho recently finished the last details on his base. Finishing touches were always the hardest part, so they were a cause for celebration when a Hermit could stand back and be wholly proud of their build. He was going to give a mini tour to Grian, Scar, and Mumbo around noon.

Grian looked at the clock. He had a lot of time before noon. He went through the motions of preparing his breakfast sullenly. The cold floors—he refused to wear socks in bed—frustrated him as it was only another reminder of how obstinate he was being over it not “being winter” anymore. Grian was able to do a lot of things, and that included taking a looksee over his actions and actually seeing how childish he was.

He liked winter. It just wasn’t spring.

Springs were so much more and so much safer. He didn’t know how, they just were. With more to do, more blush in people’s cheeks, he was surrounded by this bubble of community, a shield against pesky fears like the ones taking root as he watched an egg cook over the stove.

 It’s almost spring. C’mon, what do I need to do to make it get here faster?

He groaned loudly. Maui, perched on a barstool, cocked his head at him.

“Maui, I know what we’re going to do today: we’re going to invent a way to move forward in time and prevent it from moving on. Think we can do it?”

Maui blinked at him.

“Yeah. Figured.” He flipped the egg over in the pan. As it sizzled, a melancholy fell over him. His thoughts put on an overused music disk in the base of his skull, playing a discouraging tune about the facts of his life.

The indomitable fact that was going to live through this day. Then the next. And the next, years passing until he couldn’t live in Hermitcraft anymore. And then his death. Or, not quite a death, but a stage direction to exit left. Grian wasn’t granted a normal end, not even an end at all. His deal with the Watchers was a single chance to live as a player again. Their influence was hooked into his code even in the Overworld, but it was what he had always dreamed of: a full life. As a servant to the Watchers, he was tasked with watching over Hermitcraft from its very start. His roots as a player, roots that the Watchers thought were completely severed, grew into an insatiable force, pushing him past his cowardice and asking, pleading, to have a go at it. They had agreed. Let him be a player once again, but not forevermore. When this body died, the game was up. Instead of an end, or a new beginning, his old life would resume, right back to where he left off, under their imposing gaze.

He flicked off the stove and slid the egg onto a plate. With the stove off, all he could hear was his thoughts. Anxiety crept up his arms and legs. Maybe he should be more careful. Give more thought to the placement of his feet. One small slip and—Poof! Game over. He could die any day now.

He forced himself to scoff at the idea. He was being dramatic, and in turn forgetting a crucial task he had to undertake whenever he made eggs. Both Pearl and Maui were waiting on barstools, expectant. He tore off two small chunks of egg white. Blowing on it first to cool it, he presented each hand to his cats. Their miniscule front teeth rasped against the pads of his fingers, and then they licked it clean. A smile broke out on his face, crinkling his eyes.

He had his cats. He had the Hermits. He had his place in Hermitcraft. That had to be enough, at least for a good while.

Turning away from the counter, he washed his hands in the sink. His own breakfast was getting cold, but he wasn’t thinking about that, he was thinking about how rough cat tongues were, and not at all about how everything he relied on couldn’t last forever.

Any day now. Isn’t that inevitable?

“As if,” he said aloud.

He had a full life ahead of him.

Chapter Text

The canopy of cherry blossoms on the mountain peak were the size of pink pompoms from where Grian stood. A slight breeze wafted the scents of Etho’s abundant front lawn towards him. Etho and Mumbo stood nearby, as did Cleo, who had walked by and decided to join for the sake of spontaneity.

This “season” as the Hermits liked to call it, was fresh, both the air and the ideas swirling in everyone’s heads on what to build and what to wear.

Grian put his hands on his hips and took an exaggerated sniff. “Ah! Smell that? There’s still the new season smell in the air.” He bumped Mumbo’s arm.

 “It’s called pollen and you’re a terror,” Mumbo said, wiping his nose with a handkerchief. “Keep going and I’ll have no choice but to fill you room with pollen while you sleep.”

 “How would you do that? Don’t know if your redstone magic can do that.”

 “Well, if means messing with you, I’ll have it working by the end of the week.”  

Grian laughed manically. Nothing could get either working faster than the prospect of annoying their friend.

 “Pollen or not, I love the ideas living near the mountain has given me. Though I still do miss my old base.”

Grian understood. It was the way of things, being a Hermit. Staying in place wasn’t their thing.

With Xisuma as their admin, they moved every few years or so. Admins were tied to the Overworld code, but instead of being rooted to the bedrock, they were connected to an ever changing weave that moved like moss over the ground. It was a way of the Gods ensuring that its players explored the whole world. When Xisuma felt the pull, the Hermit followed. The end of a season brought on a sort of grief, a feeling made bittersweet by the reminder that everyone around them went through the same process. Changing locations wasn’t losing everything, because the Hermits were always together, and that was what made it home.

Not that they left everything behind. Small bags were packed full of trinkets and clothing. Pets were more difficult to travel with, but the Hermits found a way to make it fun. Ever since the end of season six, Maui was adamant about traveling on Impulse’s shoulders, who was not exactly a cat person, but his wide shoulders were perfect for Maui to stretch out on. Cat Pearl was a bit more prissy, wanting to be held in the arms which was not viable over long distances, but Grian obliged as much as he could.

A smile crept onto his face as his cats were pictured clearer in his head. He needed to make them some new cat toys. At the end of season nine, he left their handmade toys behind to save room. He purposefully left them lying on the floor, as if anyone could come and pick them up. Grian found comfort in a common daydream of his where he imagined the state of his old builds. Anything could happen. Stray travelers down on their luck might set up shop, or perhaps they remained as monuments, home to moss and mycelium. His favorite version was where his old homes were invaded by a gaggle of cats, who played with the abandoned toys, raced down the empty hallways, and slept tucked away in the nooks and crannies.

 “Are you thinking about your cats again?” Cleo asked. Grian jumped.

 “W-what?”

 “You have that face of yours whenever you look at your cats. I can see it.”

 “Oh, haha, yeah, I guess I was,”

Cleo’s comment was both spot on and worrying, though he didn’t let that worry show itself. He was surprised by how easily Cleo said it. Sure, Cleo was a good friend of his, but he didn’t spend as much time with her as other Hermits, and yet she already picked up on many of his silent cues that blared his very thoughts. He was able to laugh about it out loud. Inside, though, a common anxiety spun around. Despite what some people said at times, that he wore his hearts on his sleeve and had megaphone vocal chords, Grian’s true story was hidden deep enough that the Hermits never knew it was hidden in the first place. When asked about his past he rattled off a backstory full of boring made-up subplots that left nobody with follow-up questions. That’s how he liked it.

Grian, the iceberg, his story hidden in dark water, with enough on the surface to qualify as a person. An iceberg carefully crafted and balanced on the sea, never giving in to the temptation of letting a bit more of himself breach the waves.

They would never know. He could never let them know.

Who knows what sort of questions would crop up the moment he let slip on some more hidden, idiosyncratic, emotions.  

 “Why do get so afraid when I ask to sleep over?”

 “I just said I liked your hair—why are you crying?”

 “Why do you look so guilty, Grian?”

The imagined scenarios curdled in his gut. Why why why. The worst type of question, in his opinion. The answer necessitated a story, and Grian hated telling those that involved himself.

Suddenly he became afraid that his spacing out was rubbed all over his face like grease, and that just one look was enough for his friends to ask why.

 “Enough waiting around, let’s start!” Grian beamed.

 “Uh, no, mate, not yet,” Mumbo said. “Scar isn’t here yet, remember?”

Grian looked left and right. Scar was running late, as always. Cleo sat on a log and sharpened her blade idly. Etho and Scar were at the entrance, talking about piston door variations. Grian preferred the prospect of entering a door, but clearly the others were more patient. Or, at least, more patient towards Scar and his tardiness.

Grian would be lying if his resting hearts rate hadn’t increased since first getting to know Scar. Nearly every other day there was some debacle where Scar was in the crossfire. Some hermits described him as clumsy and unlucky, and while Grian agreed with the first bit, he only saw Scar as the most fortunate man alive. So many close calls and scrapes with high heights or hordes of mobs. And yet the man took it all with a smile, a genuine smile. Grian didn’t know if he was envious or scared of Scar’s ability to dance with danger.

It made Grian almost nervous, and he knew it was an illogical fear, that Scar’s brazenness had a chance to rub off onto Grian, and that one extra bit of influence tipped the scales against Grian’s favor. One slip, one bad fall, one dodge a second late. Game over.

All Scar had to worry about was death. Grian had to worry about something far worse.

Scar was loyal, no doubt about that, and that was what made him and Grian such good friends. A multitude of other traits certainly helped their connection, Scar’s wit complimented Grian’s, his cunningness was applaudable, and the positivity he infused into his every step was the Bonafide truth, no crocodile eyes or faux smiles. The loyalty, though, was what Grian held onto. This small hope that, even when the cracks in the iceberg started to show and reveal the ship destroyer underneath, Scar would still be there, able to say I love you in his own special way.

Grian’s time was limited, though not in the usual sense. Grian didn’t age; a ‘present’ from the Watchers, an added feature they neglected to mention to him, only discovered after a failed attempt at cutting his own hair. Hair left in the sink, clogging the drain, and his head, exactly the same, not a strand out of place. And he could never tell the Hermits that he didn’t age, because he knew exactly what they would do next—ask him why. So, there were two possible endings—a sudden death; or a slow decay, where trust would wean as he dodged the questions of what exactly he was.  

That was a fact of his life, and he didn’t quite know how well he accepted that fact. On some days, it was as easily accepted as reading the temperature on the thermometer. On others, it was days spent in mirror reflections, or hands tangled in hair.

He wanted to think about something else now.

“Cleo,” he said. “Do you know the date?”

Cleo did, and she said as much.

“Thank you.” Grian did the maths. Six days from seven years. Seven years ago, Xisuma shook his hand and said welcome to Hermitcraft, Grian. One more year, so close to completion. All he had to do was wait.

“Hey Etho,” Cleo said. They had put away their sword and whetstone and was holding their comm. “Scar said he’s running late but will meet us inside. You good to start now?”

“If Scar says it’s good, then sure,” Etho shrugged. With that, the tour began.

Grian was thoroughly impressed with how well Etho laid out his base. Plants and woodwork in perfect harmony with each other, like the building had been grown, not built. An expansive paradise, exactly what a garden was supposed to be. More than once they lost sight of Cleo, her clothes and flower crown allowing her to blend seamlessly with the plants they admired.

Etho’s storage room was particularly interesting once Grian heard about “no redstone”. Underground, a factory worked tirelessly, the powered snow blocks peppered throughout cooling the heat generating components. Mumbo darted around like a hummingbird, constantly impressed by Etho’s genius designs.   

Above ground, with the open sky overhead, were mini farms, a place for Etho to test new concepts and components. At the very end, the sky boasting a mid day sun, the tour brought them to a small building on the outskirt. From a glance, it had no roof. Inside was sparse, a small platform in front of a small half a dozen block high pit. The ceiling was nonexistent, letting in natural light to feed the sugarcane farm below. To Grian, the farm looked quite basic. A tiny farm, one long row of sand bordered by a glass wall, and a wall of observers atop pistons. Water was under the glass and hoppers were hidden underneath the sand to catch the drops. The sugarcane was waist high.

While not a bad farm at all, Grian was a bit confused. This was not the sort of farm he expected from Etho.

Mumbo laughed. “Oh this takes me back. Quite an old model. Why did you want to show us this?”

“What’s the catch, Etho?” Cleo grinned.

Etho rubbed the back of his neck. “Well I wanted to keep it simple, just as a test. I may have gotten my hands on the wiring and changed some things about the pistons.”

Mumbo’s mouth flapped open. “Wow! Really? That’s amazing, I’ve heard it’s real difficult,” As he and Etho talked more jargon about redstone, Grian and Cleo shared a non redstoner look.

Redstone components were easily craftable and worked the same every time. Changing the wiring wasn’t quite as literal as moving around the innards of a piston, it was updating the code that created the piston. Not many redstoners messed with code in their farms, as it produced uncertain properties if they didn’t know what they were trying to accomplish.

“I’ve gotten some guidance from Xisuma, it’s fun to learn,” Etho admitted.

“I’m real impressed,” Mumbo said.

“Yeah,” Cleo added, “I didn’t expect this. I’ve always thought of you as vanilla, Etho,”

“Eh, I wanted to experiment more this season, and this was always an area I didn’t touch, so it seemed perfect. I didn’t do much, just changed how fast the pistons fired. Now instead of snapping the sugarcane, it crushes it directly into sugar and paper.”

“Oh, that’s real convenient,” Mumbo said.

“Yeah, it is. Though it took—” Etho wilted. “a lot of time, I’m happy with the final result.”

Grian was listening, halfway. He didn’t want to appear disinterested, but he wanted to admire the walls and touch them. While others filled their spaces with redstone, Grian preferred a place to run his hands over. And given how he could break redstone by simply being in proximity (especially, oddly enough, if the contraption had observers involved) he didn’t get much closer to the experiment Etho created.

Mumbo, Etho, and Cleo were caught up in their conversation, and Grian was caught up in admiring the choice of material for the walls. Suddenly, a deafening noise, a horn suitable for lighthouses, rushed into their ears. Everyone jumped out of their skins. Mumbo nearly startled himself off the edge, but Etho caught his arm.

Cleo was yelling at the source of the noise before it fully faded. “Scar!”

At the entrance, was Scar, a goat horn in hand, doubled over in laughter.

“How did you even make it that loud? You scared the death out of me!”

“What in the world?” Scar said, half wheezing. “I didn’t think it would be that loud.”

As the scare faded, Mumbo, Etho, and Cleo started to laugh as well, walking over to him to better tease the late Hermit and his prank that scared the offender as much as the victims.

Grian didn’t join in. He had been the closest and therefore most affected by Scar’s brazen prank. A hand was tightly fisted in his sweater over his hearts. If he removed his top, there might as well be small bruises where the hearts frantically beat on the walls of his chest. Gods, he hadn’t been scared like that in a long time. Being so stuck in his thoughts a moment prior added to the disorientation, leaving him genuinely annoyed.

But he was fine. Still alive, because fear couldn’t kill.

Scared to death. Now isn’t that a fitting end.

Stop it.

He really needed to think about something else.

Scar’s voice rang in his ears. “I swear I didn’t think it would be that loud. This was my first test.”

“I think I can still hear the echo!” Mumbo chuckled.

Etho admired the goat horn in Scar’s hands. “You should sell this to Gem, she’d love it for her lighthouse.”

Cleo tossed back her head, her giggles bouncing her curls up and down. A stray wind knocked by, plucked the flower crown right off, and with an almost practiced manner, carried it away. The lightweight crown evaded her reach, flying off to land in the pit. She huffed, muttering a “I’ll get it later,”  as Mumbo questioned how in the world Scar got the horn to be so loud.

Grian’s hands itched. Get the flower crown for Cleo, that was the perfect something to do. Pop down into the farm, get the flower crown, bring it back to Cleo, and in that span of time hope his hearts calmed down enough to interact with people. Much better than picking at hangnails.

Grian jumped down into the pit. It was a tight squeeze lowering himself into the farm, the sugar came took up most of the available space. He tried not to crush it all. He grabbed the flower crown and dusted the sand off it. A main structure of daisies with additional flowers added for color. Standing up, he made eye contact with the observer a block above him. He liked seeing faces in his buildings, the windows open mouths and the rooves sloping eyebrows, but observer faces unnerved him and this one was literally looking down on him.

Judgy piece of redstone.

He stuck his tongue out. The observer was unphased. Frowning, he rubbed at his eye. It itched, like it was somehow sticking out farther than usual.  

He heard a small click above him.

Wait, was that—

The piston rushed forward and squished his head like a grape.

Chapter Text

Grian snapped awake. Strangely, the first thing he noticed was that nothing in particular woke him up, no cat pawing at his face or a ray of sunlight coming through a drape-less window. The lack of stimulus made his skin crawl. Was he actually asleep before? Maybe he had always been here and never realized it before, life acting as a daydream to cover up the pitch-colored existence that was a shade darker than the one behind his eyelids. He breathed out and felt it against his lips, as if the expelled air didn’t want to spread out further into the nothingness. He was standing upright, unbalanced.

What had he been doing before? His mind was still catching up. A suddenness, and then—cutting away to a new scene before the old one could finish, the jerk of being yanked out of one’s own thoughts by someone in the reality asking a question—“Are you okay?”. No, he was not.

He died.

The piston crushed his head. The piston head was wide, no way for him to have any skull remaining intact. A one and done deal, like a clap of two strong hands, a director yelling “cut! That’s wrap!”

He must have left such a mess behind.

His life was behind him. He was dead now. He was standing in the little taped-off square labeled ‘dead’, with no discernable way out. 

That was it. His full life. He didn’t feel dead. Grian was stubborn, he never liked to admit when he was cold and always said “I’m not cold” as he held his insubstantially clad arms and shivered. Perhaps that what ghosts really were, not souls with unfinished business but instead refusing to admit and feel the environment around them. 

Can I be a ghost? Please? I’d much rather be a ghost. Anything but this.

Grian didn’t have the luxury of being a ghost.

Where he stood wasn’t the void. That substance (non-substance?) was kind, it held the world up after all, supporting a layer of bedrock and all the other rocks and ores laid atop it. This place was empty because in his hearts he knew it should have meaning laced into it. Color and depth had been stolen from this place, wrenched out of the weave by thin-boned hands.  Not even a place, just a backdrop in a poorly made film. A place fit for punishment. Grian was familiar with the featurelessness.

A disturbance in the emptiness. A warping, not something to be seen but felt as a prickle on the back of his neck. From that alone, he gauged height—towering thrice as high as he ever stood, bending like a bird hunched over the water searching for movement. Color—slate gray and purple that coated his tongue with dust and sent a shock through his skull, electric, and it almost made him flinch, jerk back, do the one action that prevented harm when in contact with a dangerous thing. Emotion—if it was even reasonable to make a parallel between living breathing things and what was behind him; eagerness.

He turned to look.

A long robe that bleed around the edges. Story high wings neatly folded behind it’s elongated back. Hands and neck obscured by fabric, and face (if it had one) fitted with a mask carved with a broken portal.

WELCOME BACK, SUNSET

“No,” he whispered. Like a prayer, a refusal. He barely felt the word as they slid past his lips and fell flat at his feet.

SO GOOD TO HAVE YOU WITH US AGAIN.

“N-no. This can’t,” his voice broke.

NOW WE CAN PICK UP WHERE WE LEFT OFF.  The dialogue, since it wasn’t a voice, reverberated and rushed through him, and he felt every inch of gratification that coated the very letters. He had to stop this, ward off the dialogue echoing from the mask worn by the shapeless tower cocking its head as if fondly remembering happier times. It couldn’t be. He was alive—just seconds ago—he felt it. He couldn’t be dead now. It was supposed to be any day now—not today.

“No, no, no, NO!” he yelled with the same ferocity of a trapped animal. “This can’t be happening!"

There was no echo. His voiced sounded muffled.

The Watcher spread open its hands. IT SEEMS YOU NEED A REMINDER. YOU DIED. YOUR FULL LIFE IS UP. 

“That? It was taken from me—it was too short!”

BE GRATEFUL FOR THE YEARS YOU HAD. WE NEVER WENT INTO THE DETAILS OF HOW MANY. SOME PEOPLE LIVE TEN YEARS. ONE YEAR. A DAY. WHAT HAPPENED IN THAT WORLD WAS THE END OF THINGS, NOTHING THAT YOU OR I HAD ANY CONTROL OVER.

Grian, in the airless space, gasped for breath, for purchase—searched for some claim that dispelled awful situations such as the one at hand. Make it into a bad dream, just another bad dream. He clutched his head. 

XELQUA.

"No," he whimpered. He couldn't be called Xelqua again. Far too soon. Xelqua didn't belong in Hermitcraft, Grian did. Grian was an odd name, as odd as all the others and so Grian fit in like a cog with the other names. He murmured names under his breath. "Mumbo, Etho, Impulse, Cub, Xisuma, Tango, um....M-Mumbo..."

OH? IT APPEARS OUR SUNSET HAS GOTTEN HIMSELF ATTACHED. A PITY, CONSIDERING HE KNEW HOW THINGS WOULD END. DID YOU REALLY THINK IT COULD LAST FOREVER? YOU DIDN’T HAVE MUCH TIME ANYWAY. YOU WERE GIVEN A LIFE, AND IT ENDED WITH A DEATH. THAT WAS WHAT YOU PROMISED. YOU CANNOT BREAK A PROMISE. Grian tasted something sour. The ambiance grew heavy and smothered him.

“I..I-I can’t. This can’t—” Tears were budding in his eyes. “Please give me one more chance!” he pleaded. “I can give you something. There has to be something I can barter with, right?”

He didn’t know if that were true at all. The Watchers took his memories from before his servitude. His childhood was a skeleton picked clean and bleached white in the sun, with no other clues left to find other than the fact that he existed, once upon a time. The grief remained though.

“There has to be something of mine you haven’t taken. I’ll trade.” Saliva pooled in his mouth, he wanted to be sick.

YOU ARE DESPERATE.

“I have to be—you will never understand what I just lost. It wasn’t enough!”

WILL IT EVER BE ENOUGH, XELQUA?

Grian’s hearts shuddered. One chance. That was what he was given years ago. He thought his jaunt in the overworld would be a respite, a chance to feel the grass under his feet and watch the trees grow. A vacation, he had phrased it, when negotiating with the Watchers. After that, he would return, a better worker with a clearer head. Unsaid, it was his chance to get closer--to touch and speak with the Hermits he had watched over for nearly a decade. A bit of fun, he was expecting, not much else. Grian never expected what actually happened, that he would get so close to the joy of living.

“You…” he cleared his throat and tried again, speaking slowly. “You promised me a full life. But it was too short. I want…I need a full, long life. That will be enough.”

The Watcher cocked its head to the left.

WHAT IS ‘LONG?’

He was surprised. It seemed as if the Watchers were intrigued with what he was saying. A glimmer appeared in his eye. This could be it, a second chance. If he said a number, they would count the seconds and probably attach a clock over his eyes just to show how his time was running out. The Watchers were always vague, why shouldn’t he? Better to argue the point later, though the odds of even getting the chance to argue again were so infinitesimal it was laughable.

“I want to live for as long as the lifespan of what I really am.” Good. That definitely secured him a handful of decades.

OF WHAT YOU REALLY ARE.

The Watcher spread its wings. They stretched unnaturally wide and circled him, a cocoon of graying feathers. Bending down, the Watcher was level with Grian’s body. He resisted the urge to flinch.

WE WILL GIVE YOU ANOTHER CHANCE—IN EXCHANGE FOR A SERVICE.

“A service? What sort of service?”

IT IS SIMPLE. YOU WONT EVEN STRAIN A MUSCLE.

The hairs on his arms raised.

YOU TELL THEM.

“…what?”

YOU TELL THE HERMITS. YOU TELL THEM ABOUT US. YOU EXPLAIN CLEARLY WHO YOU REALLY ARE.

Grian’s lungs ripped open inside his chest. The rest of him remained frozen, made of icy glass set to break if he so much as twitched.

Tell the Hermits. Show his inner code and story. Lay himself bare for their scrutiny. Reveal the truth about the monster hiding under the surface. He couldn’t. He would choke before he even got a chance. His thoughts became a torrent, stealing away any whisper of reason. 

Why do they want that?

He knew why. It was because it was what Grian feared most. Others feared death, Grian feared something far worse. 

The Watcher, purposefully oblivious to his despondent demeanor, circled him, feathers rustling like snide whispers.

WE CARE FOR YOU, SUNSET. WE WANT THIS TO BE EASY, AND UNLIKE YOU, WE TRY TO PLAN FOR THE FUTURE. HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN OUR LITTLE CONSTITUENTS, WHICH HAVE YET TO CHANGE? The Watcher brushed a wing against his cheek, ruffling his hair. WE HAVE SAVED YOU FROM THE PROCESS OF DECAY.

Grian nearly fell down in shock. Still, even now, the Watchers believed they were helping him. That they saved him. And now they were so proud, felt that they were so generous as to give him a second chance, only to force him into making a decision that will ruin his chance of a happy ending for good.

AN UNCHANGING FACE. WHAT WILL YOUR FRIENDS SAY AFTER YEARS, DECADES DOWN THE LINE, TO THEIR GOOD FRIEND WHO HASN’T AGED A DAY? IT IS BEST TO GET THIS LITTLE ISSUE OUT OF THE WAY SOONER THAN LATER, BEFORE YOUR PROCRASTINATION CAN GET IN THE WAY. PREFERABLY SOON.

The Watcher’s dialogue, which still hung in the air, curled in ribbons around him. He felt the words grow tighter around him.

Preferably soon—not now. Preferably soon—not immediately. Preferably soon—but there was still time, time to live again in the one place he could call home and time to stall the inevitable—The insurmountable task of revealing his true nature.

He needed to go back. It was all he could focus on, dreaming of going home and staring at that mask, hoping that the breaks in the symbol would heal themselves and he could step through and be surrounded by someone’s arms instead of gray feathers that played tricks on his mind.

There was no other option.

“…I accept.”

The Watcher rose higher, tucking its wings in, and extending a thin-boned hand. It reached for him, and he didn’t flinch. It touched his chest, right above his hearts.

THEN IT SHALL BE. YOU WILL RETURN AND SHALL UPHOLD OUR END OF THE DEAL.

YOU WILL LIVE A LONG FULL LIFE.

Chapter Text

Like coming back from a dream, Grian woke up. His body weight carved a depression in a mattress. He blinked sleep out of his eyes.

Am I really…?

He held his breath and watched to see if the world dissolved. His chest tightened, asking for air; the ceiling and walls didn’t bleed away. They were real. He was in his bedroom.

Slowly, his hands inched towards his face, fingertips settling on his cheeks. He took stock off the details. The chin that forever stayed clean shaven, the lips that never cracked in the cold, the nose that he broke once and healed perfectly without a trace of a scar. Locks of hair perpetually half curled tickled his fingertips. He never had to look in a mirror.

His trembling breath was caught in the hands over his mouth. One more test, one more thing to check before it was safe to get out of bed. In his vision, an index finger reached towards his eye, nail pointed straight down at the pupil.

Tink, tink. A nail on porcelain.

He still had eyes. Good.

He got up into a seating position. Pearl, the cat, was curled at the foot of his bed. She raised her head lazily at him, unperturbed.

“Pearl,” he said. “That worked.” She blinked at him.

“I can’t…” he let out a bone rattling sigh of relief that nearly collapsed him. “…believe it.” She looked at him with pupil filled eyes. Briefly, he wondered if she was using her stare reserved for ghost watching, or for everything else. He touched his neck, found a drumming of ten hearts making a steady pulse. A ring of something cold encircled his neck. Pinching the strand, he discovered it was a chain, the trinket weighing it down disappearing down his shirt, hidden. On the thin gold chain was an hourglass, full of pale sand, trickling piece by piece. While tiny, the grains fell slowly, as if consciously making the choice to move instead of leaving it all up to gravity. He flipped it upside down. The grains fell right side up. A gravity defying hourglass, looped around his neck.

No doubt that it was another Watcher gift. A time limit. He didn’t want to speculate what would happen when the lower half filled.

The dying sunset caught the edge of the glass. A sunset, which meant some time passed. He didn’t know how much, hopefully only a handful of hours.

A sick feeling coated his throat. The Watchers had a very lose perception of time. Sure, it may have felt like only an hour had passed, but it could be weeks, months later. Perhaps enough time had passed for the Hermits to pack up and leave, leave him behind, with not a scrap of a coordinate or direction for Grian to follow. The bedroom was real, but what about the world outside? The Watchers had some power in creating rooms, there was the possibility of Grian opening his door and seeing a landscape so far removed from Hermitcraft’s true location. He was lost in time, lost in place, he never specified time and place so of course the Watchers, the clever Watchers, pounced on the opportunity to screw him over yet again and there was nothing he could do

Pearl bumped her head against his hand. Her whiskers tickled his palm. Her purring was interrupted by her scratchy tongue licking his palm.

“…thank you.” She purred louder as he scratched the underside of his chin.

He got out of bed. His regular clothes were on, simple pants and that red sweater of his.

How did they do this?

The Watchers had very limited power towards influencing the Overworld. They always needed him as a middle man. For them to both bring him back to life and give him his regular outfit, meant that they were holding out on a reserve of power not yet realized.  

Maui walked through the doorway, sat, and stared up. Grian marveled at his cats. They could be scared silly by seeing a cucumber but were unphased by him suddenly appearing in bed, a dead man back to life. They loved him no matter what.

“Oh, Maui, what am I going to say?”

He felt as though in the eye of a hurricane, no exit strategy available that didn’t mean sailing straight through the storm. He wondered how long a creature could live in a perpetual hurricane. He entertained the idea of a small bird, constantly soaring in a circle, landing briefly to eat and sleep, before launching into the air again to avoid the stormy shifting walls.

Maui turned around and trotted off somewhere else. Maui was far braver than Grian.

Taking a deep breath, as though about to dive underwater, he walked out of his bedroom, down the hallway, and made it halfway down the stairs. The stairs curved, spilling out into the entryway, the door on his right. A dark oak door, no light streamed in aside from a thin strip where the door didn’t quite reach the floor.

Suddenly, the door creaked open, and the sunlight streamed in like a cracked egg yolk. Orange and red light, with the shadow of someone yet to cross the threshold.

Scar staggered in, movements uncertain, head held low. His dim green eyes didn’t see Grian, half in the dark shadows. He left the door open. From deeper in the house, Maui chirped a hello and trotted over. The paddings of Maui’s feet sounded like drumbeats. Scar sank to his knees in front of Maui. A scarred trembling hand laid itself on Maui’s neck, then Scar surged forward and grabbed Maui, clutching him tight to his chest. Maui didn’t mind, even as Scar buried his face into fur and shook silently.

In any other circumstance, Grian would have ran away in the presence of such emotion, in the presence of the fallout of his actions. Run away and not deal with the questions he would have to ask.

But this was Scar.

Gently, Grian put his foot down on the last step which creaked under his weight. Instantly, Scar’s head shot up towards the noise. Stillness in the air as Scar’s eyes met Grian.

Grian felt like he was walking in a dream, the ground surging up to meet his socked feet. Scar flinched and shifted away, holding Maui close still and shooting his gaze downwards.

“Oh, you’re a ghost. That’s what this is. I’m being haunted.”

Grian smiled weakly. “I’m not a ghost, Scar.”

Scar winced. Maui struggled in his grasp. “See, that’s exactly the sort of thing a ghost would say. I think you don’t know you died. You died, Grian.”

“I know. And now I’m here.” He took a step closer, onto the floorboards bathed in sunset.

“Maybe you have unfinished business. Uh, if it’s about Maui and Pearl, then you don’t have to worry. I’ll take good care of them, give them all the love and attention they need. I know that they get along with Katy Bee and Mr. Finnegan just fine, and I can take care of four cats—the more the mer—… Uh… and if you’re here because of how you died I…. Grian, I…”

It broke Grian’s hearts to see Scar speechless.

“Scar.”

“You should rest, Grian. Y-you deserve to rest, and you don’t have to haunt us for all eternity. You can rest. Please.” his breathy voice nearly died on his lips. Maui wriggled free from his arms. Grian sank down to his knees and greeted Maui approaching. He put his hand out and smoothed the ruffled fur on Maui’s back. Scar watched this, and Grian watched how his ashen face transformed into something cautiously hopeful.

Scar reached out and grabbed a fistful of Grian’s red jumper. His hand didn’t pass through Grian’s chest. In less than a blink Grian was yanked forward into an embrace, Scar’s chin hooked over his shoulder and tears were already staining his sweater.

The sun was in his eyes, so he shut them tight and buried himself closer.

Their pulses were in synch, running wild with relief.

Chapter Text

“Mumbo, I can’t breathe,” Grian said.

“Mhmm.”

Grian let out a small chuckle, as much as he could muster with Mumbo crushing him in a hug. It lasted a few more moments, which were counted with breaths, then Mumbo finally dropped his arms and turned around and opened the door to one of his mini shops and led Grian inside. 

“Is that how you’re always going to greet me now?” 

“Pretty much.”

It had been five days. Five entire days since what Grian decided to dub “the incident”. An uncreative name, but neither he, nor any of the others present at “the incident” felt it necessary to give it an original title or really give it any more thought at all. Only him, Mumbo, Cleo, Etho, Scar, and Xisuma knew the truth. Part of the truth, at least.

"What happened after?” they had asked him.

Grian had shrugged, bouncing his shoulders to keep his tone light, afloat. “I don’t know. I think something happened. It was like a dream; gone when you wake up. Perhaps lying then was not helping him confess to the truth now. Correction: it had been four days and 23 hours. The sand in the hourglass was near to fall to completion. To his dismay, but not unsurprising, flipping the glass over did nothing, the sands continuing on their path with no regard to gravity. It was assured that he had to hold up his end of the bargain, with no more of the stalling that he was so adept at.

He had the rest of his life to find out Xisuma’s past, but the next hour might ruin his life entirely. He wouldn’t pretend to be stupid. He didn’t have plenty of time, he had a hour –less than that, he realized, subtly glancing at the necklace—to tell the full story.

 Plenty of opportunities arose in the intervening time between when he woke up in bed five days ago to the present day in Mumbo’s repurposed mini shop that served as a kitchen, and with each passing opportunity he experienced a horrific stab of anxiety, as well as an overwhelming surge of relief. Because with each missed opportunity there allowed one more hour with his friends that he could call normal. Never mind that with more time piling on the other side of the hourglass meant it was getting harder and harder to come clean and show the blood on his hands. It was inevitable, he realized, and that was the hardest detail to overcome.

Because Grian was good at delaying the inevitable. That was basically his whole life, from start to finish. One day he would inevitably die and be back in the Watchers clutches. But not this day. Today, it was chatting with Mumbo over tea and small snacks, an attempt at continuing old habits and forgetting those few hours in a sugarcane farm that would haunt them for years.

Mumbo poured the tea into two cups. He passed one over the counter and Grian’s hands warmed when he wrapped them around the sides. The steam rose lazily. He remembered reading that steam was really millions of tiny gas particles whizzing around at ferocious speeds, colliding into one another and trying desperately to rid themselves of the heat energy they contained—and from a person’s viewpoint steam was a lazy thing, curling like fern fronds or upside-down waterfalls.

The tea was contained in a round metal strainer attached to a chain. He pinched the metal chain between his fingers—ignored what it reminded him of—and dunked the strainer up and down, watching how the tea diffused and stained the water. It was a nice blend of tea, already creating a heady fragrance. Thousands of years ago and two friends could have enjoyed the exact same past time, Grian thought.

“What do you think was invented first, tea or beer?” Mumbo suddenly asked. It seemed the redstoner was also thinking about history.

“Oh, beer, definitely.”

“Yeah? What makes you say that?”

“Just a feeling, I guess. Tea is nice and calming but beer gets you drunk, so of course people tried to find that first.”

“You make it sound like everyone was trying to disappear in the past.”

I would, if I could. Alcohol didn’t affect his system like it did for others. Another little detail the Watchers added in when they tossed him into the overworld. He had discovered this oddity years ago at a festival while staring at the ruddy cheeks and wide split smiles of his friends and wondered why he couldn’t do the same. Thankfully no one else noticed.

He blew the steam off the top and took a small sip. Lavender. Supposedly the herb worked to calm nervous systems. Perfect for right now, since the two hermits would take anything to help tamp down the anxiety still pervading through them days later. Though Grian could only really drink it for the taste.

“Can you imagine if beer actually made you disappear? Like, go invisible? That would be sick.”

Mumbo laughed. “You’re very odd.”

And wasting time, a part of himself badgered.

Everyone was odd in Hermitcraft; Grian could bet his life on that. But gods? It was only a joke really, a chance to make up stories for oneself, to pretend to be something larger so as to contain all the wild emotions that lived inside each and every one of them. Fanciful “backstories” were swapped around campfires. Tales of grander were built out of thin air in a game of “yes, and”. They were builders both in the physical and personal sense. A small joke became a bit, became a build, became a god. Then Xisuma ferried them along to a new land and the builder relinquished the title, ultimately preferring to be nothing more than themselves. The other hermits at least had that choice. Mumbo once joked about sharing a soul with Grian, and of course Grian laughed and went along; why would he not? They played with stories, dancing around the topic while making the stakes higher and higher. But at the end of that day, Mumbo had his soul intact, and Grian had laid in bed awake all night thinking about the idea of bearing such a personal fragment of himself. Sharing a soul. A beautiful sentiment, and that was what made it horrifying.

It was more strange for a hermit to not possess a little bit of magic. Sometimes it was just a bit of extra luck, or faster healing, or any of the physical oddities that many hermits possessed. Magic was a personal thing, either a potency they were always imbued with or a prowess that was earned fairly through a daring adventure set years before joining Hermitcraft. The community’s nature was to attract strange people, and soon enough each member grew connected into the weave with a shared love of exploration and creation.

When Grian went through every hermit, the overwhelming sense of otherness nearly drowned him. Most hermit’s origin of magic had a simple story, a beginning and an end, a reason for why it happened. He couldn’t place a beginning, and he was permanently stuck in the middle of things. And a reason for it all? He couldn’t help but laugh until it hurt when he tried to think of a “reason” for his life going this way.

Scar and Cub were well known to have vex magic. They had plenty of hidden tricks up their sleeves, yes, but the hermits knew that the most “harm” the those two could ever cause was conning someone out of a few diamonds. Half the time either hermit had to call away his brother for “vex things” Grian suspected it was just code for them to spend time together and scheme up pranks.

Cleo was a dead being. While the details weren’t as freely given to Grian, it was generally known  that through a hodgepodge of curious circumstances and outcomes, she had been granted a second chance because she had so much more life in her that had to be shown to the world. There was never any worry of losing control since she wore her scars with a pride that outshined any curse one could attach to her.

Xisuma was powerful, everyone knew that well enough. But he was known. They knew Xisuma and his extent. All the details that needed to be seen were worn on his suit while at the same time the admin could keep his privacy. Admins’ intentions were known and so they were trusted. Safe because they protected against dangerous entities.

The Watchers were not known. He had never heard even a fairytale mention them. They were so well veiled in the space beyond the void that he was certain not even Xisuma knew about them. If he did, he was sure to have put up defenses, and Grian would have never made it three feet into Hermitcraft before being noticed and promptly kicked out. It was all very confusing. The Watchers spent so much energy trying to stay hidden and yet they wanted Grian, their little pet project, to spill his guts. Not that he worried about the safety of the Watchers, but even mentioning a sliver of what the Watchers could accomplish was sure to place them at the very top of Xisuma’s “things to worry about” list.

He had dreamt up plans in the intervening days of how to go about it. At first he thought he could tell everyone, ask Xisuma for a meeting and say it as quickly as he could, likely flying away as soon as he was finished to wait out the initial aftermath. That idea was quickly struck down; too hopeful for what reality had to offer. Telling everyone while their curious eyes surrounded him was a nightmare, not a strategy.

Hours were spent pacing circles in his bedroom, scratching red lines into his arms whenever his mind struck down another stupid attempt. He had to go about it strategically. He went through all possible starting points.

He could begin with the incident.

Fun fact: I died.

Fun fact: I died.

Definitely not that. He didn’t want to worry them. He couldn’t handle their worry.

Because this was a conversation that never ended. He could say his piece and even end it with a bow but that wouldn’t stop the other hermits from changing, inevitably, changing. Their reactions, voluntary or not, determined his fate. He could almost see the scene that had yet to unfold: whispering in small groups, confrontations with Xisuma about how, as an Admin, he let a creature like Grian inhabit their community. Grian had to clear the water and lay out the basis of what he was.

The Watchers are a powerful set of entities. Not exactly gods. I am

a patron

 a servant

 a victim

affiliated with them to a certain extent and you don’t have to worry at all because

I’m just fine

How much did he have to say? How wonderful it would be to say: “My life belongs to the Watchers,” and fly out the window before anyone could even question what that meant. Did he have to answer their questions? Grian wished till it hurt for the Watchers to be satisfied with a single sentence, but he knew how silly it was to wish for things nowadays.

Maybe it was best to explain where it all started.

Long ago, so long ago I don’t even know when since I can’t remember my own fucking age

Long ago, so long ago I don’t even know when since I can’t remember my own fucking age

No matter what he said, they would ask questions. Those hermits he cherished so much had a curiosity that could tear him apart.

He felt like a rabbit being observed in a field. The observer felt at peace with nature; the rabbit felt hunted. The irony was not lost on Grian, rather the thick stench of it persisted in his clothes, that the watcher became so afraid of having the eyes turn on him.

He wondered how far he could go, how much he could share before the anxiety sealed his throat closed.

The Watchers are…

All knowing

Powerful

Unquantifiable

Monsters. And I think that means I’m also one.

The sick feeling from before scurried back into his stomach. He drained the last of his tea to drown it. He had to tamp it down, his feelings would get in the way and cause a wreck, cause him to slip and say the wrong thing.

And why would he want to spill his guts now, when everything was going so well? Here he was, in one of Mumbo’s mini shops repurposed as a kitchen, with the redstoner leant against the kitchen counter and Grian perched on a barstool, chatting amicable and even laughing as was bound to happen whenever he got in touch with his best friend. How could he ruin such a moment? He had to, that’s how. His mind was split into an actor and director, the latter yelling stage directions at a hopeless and frightened man frozen center stage.

He kept on thinking of ways to say Mumbo’s name. How he introduced the topic was crucial. Casual, professional, guilty, flippant, cautious, quick, detailed, emotional, plain, factual, vague—so many ways to say a just a single word that led into a full conversation.

He held back for just a bit longer. A few more minutes. He had to wait for a lull in the conversation. But oh, did he cherish those lulls, those moments of quiet companionship and chances to sip tea, followed by a break, a question or scenario or observation that continued the conversation again, as if it was natural. Like breathing.

The necklace, flush against his jumper and neck, seemed to pulsate alongside his own hearts. Each grain, another chance, slipped away. How many did he have left? He could feel it, the grains weighing down the bottom half turning into an enormous stone. Only a few more left, and they wouldn’t take their time. He had to say it.

Seconds left. “Mumbo,” the word left his lips and it disappeared before he could analyze how it sounded.  Mumbo, preoccupied with the kettle, turned to look at him. Grian wished he had eyes like his. The eyes Grian wore were dark, practically black with little white surrounding. Large pupils that others had described as curious, mischievous, knowledgeable. He accepted the compliments when they were first given then tried to forget them when he was alone. Mumbo’s eyes were basic, and that’s what Grian loved about them. You couldn’t travel inside them and pick apart every little detail inside. He had never seen hate or betrayal or disgust shine in those years and he desperately hoped that observation remained a truth.  

“Yeah bud?” Mumbo said. This was it. Say it and be free. He had so few grains left in the bottle.

There were too many things to say. He held the empty cup loosely in his fingers. He smiled, willfully blind.

“Can I get a refill on the tea?”

The final grain slipped through.

Grian’s whole world, the one he witnessed through his eyes, ruptured.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

                WE WARNED YOU WE WARNED YOU WE WARNED YOU BECASUE WE LOVE YOU AND YET YOU BETRAY US.

THAT SELFISH OBSTINATE FEAR YOU HOLD IS TEARING YOU APART AND WE ARE THE ONES HOLDING YOU TOGETHER.

WE TRY TO HELP YOU, SUNSET, AND YOU REFUSE.

AND YOU BELIEVE THIS IS ONLY ABOUT YOU.

YOUR FRIENDS THINK THEY CAN CALL YOU A FRIEND BUT TRUE DECIEVERS KNOW FRIENDSHIP AS A CURSE, NOT A REMEDY.

YOU WILL EMBRACE YOUR CURSE.

YOU HAVE HURT THEM, AND YOU WILL HURT THEM.

THAT IS YOUR NATURE, WHEN YOU ARE LEFT TO YOUR OWN DEVICES.

IF YOU STAY AS YOU ARE, THAT IS.

SO WE ARE GOING TO REDRESS YOU.

MAKE YOU SEE THE TRUTH.

THE TRUTH YOU HIDE FROM BECAUSE YOU KNOW WHAT IT MAKES OF YOU.

NO MORE HIDING, NO MORE RUNNING.

FOR A COWARDLY MONSTER CAN NOT ESCAPE THEIR OWN PRISON.

IT IS TIME TO TAKE OFF THE MASK AND WEAR YOUR PROPER FACE, XELQUA.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

There was a seed nestled in his body. It germinated in the sliver sized spaces between his organs and stretched him to his outer limits.

He was

Dying

Changing

Growing

Becoming what he always had been.

Chapter Text

The first bit of stimulus that traveled into his new skull was the sound of a teacup breaking. It must have slipped through my fingers, his foggy mind supplied. There it was, in pieces, on the kitchen floor. And there was his body, a corpse, also on the kitchen floor. A strange dissonance of seeing himself apart from a body that he always thought was his only one. His ears rang, some physical sound had slammed into them, or maybe they burst open after newly forming.  His new skull felt too high off the ground. The stone floor and the wooden ceiling—he felt both of those textures. Very cramped in the coziness of a kitchen. Such an out of place thing to be occupying.

There were too many perspectives to this. He saw them all, with eyes made of ether rather than tissue. He filled the scene, a poetic cacophony he had become. Too much happening at once—where was the negative space? He needed the negative space to shake off the new skull he was wearing. The new prison he was living in.

A large clawed hand—ink-black and thin-boned—scratched lines into the tiling. His hand—the vibrations of the etching sent shockwaves rattling through a new but already crumbling nervous system. This was in his control—so was the other hand, so were the wings and the wings and the wings sprouting from him like blades of grass through the cracks in stone pathways. This was him. Too much was him.

He saw his name in the air, then he heard it. From Mumbo’s lips and judging by the redstoners expression he had screamed it, his eyes fixed on the slumped corpse. It was disorienting how terrified and dazed his expression was.

One second. That was all it took. And now…

Grian wasn’t himself anymore.

He had changed.

Things were falling apart. He had seen buildings crumble from their foundations, toppling bricks sliding away from its compatriots with a mind of its own. One had been cheaply built by a miser, and the entire structure slid dejectedly into the ocean when the seaside eroded. This was long ago, but he never forgot how the people watched what used to be their home crumble with vacant expressions on their faces. He wondered if they decided not to scream and cry out, or if they had forgotten how.

The air was thick and wouldn’t go down his throat.

MUMBO. I MADE A DEAL A LONG TIME AGO WITH THE WATCHERS I SERVE THE WATCHERS I AM—

The pleas spilling from the open wound that approximated a mouth did not translate his thoughts into coherent speech. What came out was wrong, a distorted mess. The new skull pulled the words apart like taffy and packed gravel into the empty spaces. His panic was all Mumbo heard.

PLEASE LISTEN TO ME.

He reached a limb towards Mumbo. As the monstrosity got closer, Mumbo shook off his shock and pulled his sword out, brandishing it in defense, uncertain whether to strike at the invading entity.  His eyes were wide in the sudden darkness. There were no signs of familiarity in those pupils.

No recognition at all. And it was easy, in that moment, for him to decide what to do next. Because only one option really remained. He was so very practiced in it.

Grian turned tail and ran.

The doorway splinted and the porch caved in when he forced himself past. The fresh air seemed to hit his skin with a supernatural force, as if the miles of air above him were water, eager to crush him under the pressure and make his bones split. The scent of it was a dizzying concoction that overwhelmed his mind.

He didn’t need a full mind to run. It was instinctual.

The sun was starting to set over Hermitcraft. He fled east.

Each brush against the ground shot pins and needles into the foreign limbs, a steady beat that barely kept up with his heartbeat. It wasn’t regular running, it was darting forward and hoping to catch himself before falling to the ground and wasting less than a second before leaping forward again.

He heard sharp shouts—elicited at him being spotted no doubt. Their gazes left singed marks on his skin. The source of the eyes quickly disappeared in the distance behind him and the cold wind brushed the pain away. The ground underneath him flew by. Buildings full of windows shining with light, flashed by in a myriad of shapes and colors, and he had no time to say goodbye. The world the hermits had created using nature and a dream was blurring, and this was to be the last time he ever saw it. The sun on the windows made the buildings appear on fire.

His home was burning down to the ground.

He didn’t take any designed paths, he scaled roofs and fell to the dirt when he ran out of tile, heard the bones snap, heard them knit themselves together, continued his escape from home. He tore through alleyways between shops and trampled over gardens.

Then it was trees and rivers and rocks, which blended together and turned into only obstacles in his path.

Running away was all he needed to do. Get as far away as possible, out of sight out of mind. He was out of his mind. Nothing filled his new skull for longer than a blink, they were raindrops in spring thunderstorm.  

You left. You left a body behind. At least that one had a head attached. This hurts. Gods I’m dying. Gods I want to…

He’s dead. You killed him. I helped you. Why is it all echoing?! I can’t do this. I need to keep running. Fuck all this air in my lungs its making me sick. I’m going to be sick. Someone please help me. No one can see me. Never again. How could you do this?

The further he went the more an invisible string pulled at him, becoming tauter and tauter until he thought his spine would wrench free from the muscle and then he kept going for many miles more. He was running from death and running till he died

The brain and its memory is a horrible thing. It brought up happy memories, proud achievements, anything to console the already flickering half melted consciousness he possessed. They struck him with the rhythm of a grandfather clock’s pendulum.

It was the night—or rather the small hours of the morning?—when he finally collapsed, the adrenaline and fear trumped by pain and exhaustion. His chest heaved. He felt ribs nearly bursting from the skin, trying to escape. His skin wanted to turn inside out. His mind was still catching up: What happened what happened what happened what happened.

What happened was that he had ran away. He left a body behind, another to bury in the dirt. He always viewed ignorance, stalling, putting it off until later, as passive actions, but this, this was action, a decision that could not be remedied.  

A piece of him decoupled from the rest. Hermitcraft had a border; a changing border, much like how the ocean tide ebbs in a pattern along the sand. Xisuma’s protection magic was gone from his senses. He was no longer in Hermitcraft, no longer on home soil. The corded rope he had worked for years to braid, snapped like a tendon.

He held his hands in front of him. Where there weren’t coarse black feathers was graying, patching skin, rough and covered in scablike protrusions. Bird scales. Feathers cloaked his chest and limbs. His knees bent the wrong way. His hands fell too far away from his body when they hung by his sides. All out of proportion.

The full moon shined stubbornly, unaware or uncaring of his want for everything to be dark, to be disappeared in the dark. He refused to look up, but there it was again, reflected in the calm waters of a pond a few blocks away. Grian enjoyed watching the clouds; the moon not so much. The surface’s glassy sheen turned the moon into a living thing, for any stray breeze created soft ripples in the water and the moon’s craters dipped and swayed as if breathing. It was incredible how water and a night sky created a living mirror.

Perhaps he could…

That was what he needed to do, he reasoned. Get a good look, satisfy the curiosity. Take in all the details, take stock of all that was wrong.

It was puppetry, moving his body. A shamble. Standing up straight was no longer available to him; a weight forced him downwards, hunched and crooked and sulking. Soon enough he was close to the water’s edge. He leaned over. Nothing disturbed the surface but he swore the water trembled from his presence alone.

Wings half an arm long sprouted from the sides of his head and covered his face, their tips tinged a nauseating purple. When he moved, they moved. When they moved, he flinched. They hid himself, from himself–how courteous

Enough stalling. See it and know what you are.

He pushed aside the wings. Ashen white skin. A lipless mouth stretched thinly across the gaunt skin of his face. In place of curious eyes were hollowed pits the size of palms.

Deep in the eye wells was a pinprick of cold white light. The sight made him shake with horror. There was nothing left to recognize anymore.

A monster. A being with no purpose to its form other than to scare. A magnification of all the parts he hated when he worked as a drone under their watchful eye. A departure from anything rational. He could go on and on and on, but nothing distracted him from what was right in front of him.

He felt his past self grin and think himself oh so clever and say

I want to live for as long as the lifespan of what I really am.

He was a Watcher.

With a long full life ahead of him.

How long do Watchers live? He once asked.

They replied, LONGER THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE, SUNSET.

He opened his maw and screamed.

Chapter Text

Etho sat cross legged on moss carpeting with his back against a wooden pillar. He tilted his head back to knock it against the wood not so gently. He practiced breathing normally. Measured inhales and exhales were the only sound, save for the muffled clicks of his redstone-less storage room working its magic. It was a peaceful room, a far cry from how most storage rooms ended up. Décor was not sacrificed for efficiency. He had really liked designing it.

His muscles ached from all the activity from earlier. His calves, biceps, the space between his eyes. Hell, even his blood vessels felt strained thin.

He had done it. Finally, after spending the entire day, he went through every one of his redstone contraptions, scrutinized each component, and determined that nothing had been altered past its base purpose. No machine held any quirks or new surprises. A lot of dismantling, rebuilding, and occasionally swearing at roughly the 8-hour point, all to say that he didn’t have to do that in the first place. Which was the best news he could have gotten.

He had done a check four days ago. It was late at night, after everyone was sure Grian was safe. He barely made it past his front door when a steel wool like terror gripped him, whispering anxieties about other possible errors with his contraptions. He didn’t sleep that night in order to quiet the what if what if what if mantra.

Etho liked to experiment. Redstone was a fickle ore, it changed how it interacted with the world every now and then, a detail a good deal of people found frustrating, that Etho found exhilarating. New designs could mean more efficient redstone, or a contraption that used the least amount of resources. He held this ever-changing competition within himself simply for the purpose of saying that he could solve an obscure problem. He wanted to find all the ways to add something more to the world. Redstone was a way to explore the quirks of reality, and it infected its users irrevocably. There was no such thing as a “normal” redstone user.

When Etho woke up, at a ripe 4 am, his anxiety launched a full force raid on his nerves. He couldn’t sit still. He had to check again—just one more time, he reasoned—to make sure that nothing was “wrong”.

He wished he had a better memory with these sorts of things. He couldn’t remember which contraptions had altered components, which meant an overview of everything was in order. After that exhausting ordeal, he retired to his storage room. Did breathing measured to calm his hearts. Throughout the day he felt floaty, like gravity was hesitant to pull on him too hard. His hearts, however, were an anchoring point, a solid lump rock that beat thick blood around and around his body.

Inhale. Exhale.

He examined a yellowing bruise that coated his upper arm. He had been impatient towards the end and had his arm squished between a piston. Which was not unusual. Pistons occasionally misfired and trapped a limb or torso between block and that was always an inconvenience more than anything. It was a rite of passage for redstoners to sport bruises, often times they were worn with pride.

Pistons were made to help the player. Never meant to be dangerous. The bruise happened hours ago, time turning it into a sickly yellow. It shouldn’t have pain left when prodded, but Etho wasn’t a stranger to having a mind dream up things that weren’t really there. A mind like that was how he was creative, and how he made himself panic over such tiny things. Because for just a moment, that half second where he heard the piston move, he felt a pain in his head, and when the piston retracted he pulled his bruised but fine arm towards his chest and laid on the moss floor and spent however long it took to change a bundle of hearts beating so fast they could burst into an organ with a regular pulse while also wishing the floor could grow up and over him.

It was a horribly selfish part of him that was angry. Not just at himself.  Angry at how Grian died. It seemed cruel that the universe decided to kill his friend in such a horrific way using what Etho created as a game for himself. But Grian was back and everything was okay now. He didn’t know if things had to change or not. Etho and redstone went together like grass roots in dirt. Hard to separate. The notion of having to up and move personalities over a horrific event made him want to dig his heels in, but he couldn’t admit fully that picking up redstone again like everything was normal made him feel a bit crazy. If only there was a bit of patience—Etho was going to dismantle the machine anyways, if only there was a second of patience, of thinking things through.

Instead, everything else had happened. Leaving Etho utterly lost.

Really? Really? That’s how someone had to die? Why did it have to be so ridiculous. And then you brought him back. What are you trying to tell me universe? I don’t get it.

Etho had a hard time remembering a past problem that didn’t have some laughter mixed in as well. The moon could be falling down, and the hermits would still find some way to joke about it, turn anxieties into bits into comforts. They were able to talk about it. “Yeah, it’s stressful, but isn’t it interesting? Aren’t we going to get through it either way?”

Etho had no clue how to talk about what had happened. He didn’t know if he could ask, if the others were waiting for him to finally break the silence and say: “Hey, what happened? Do we just ignore it completely?” He didn’t really like that method, but everyone else seemed happy with it. If no one else brought it up, he wouldn’t either. That didn’t make it any easier to hold inside though. The guilt, specifically. He hadn’t made room for it yet and so it still shared the bed with him, overstaying its welcome.

He worried about the possibility of it staying forever. That guilt would be a new “design feature” to his personality. He didn’t want that but kicking it out on the streets right away felt wrong.

Do we go back? Move forward? Stay in the same place as always? I like none of those options.

He was trying to get better. Therefore, things were going to better. He wished emotions were as straightforward as lines of redstone.       

His comm pinged again. His nearly gone headache was not being helped by the constant dinging. With half a mind he wished there were some way to mute notifications, but past years made him learn that was a terrible idea. He picked up his comm with one hand and adjusted the mask over his face with the other. The comm was still poised over the last messages sent hours ago.

Grian: Mumbo, I’m lost. Where are you?

Mumbo: you’re lost? How?

Grian: the tracking device I stitched into your clothes ran out of batteries. I can’t find you in your mini city. Which building?

Mumbo: the one with the fans nearby

Grian: that doesn’t narrow it down?!

Grian: Why did you build so many fans?

Mumbo: because I’m a fan of fans

Grian: boo

Mumbo: I had to, mate

Grian: only I’m able to do that.

Mumbo: oh is it because you have a permit to tell bad jokes?

Grian: don’t tempt me. I will make that a thing and rule over this land with a cheesy iron fist.

Etho smiled. The messages were public, so it wasn’t eavesdropping, more so hearing a conversation through an open window while strolling by. It gave Etho a balm on his anxiety that despite what had happened, Grian was still functioning, just as he should. Etho wasn’t keeping tabs, no, he reasoned, he was simply checking in on a friend who was busy with secret recuperation.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Bduds would say, if he knew. Which he wouldn’t. It was over, after all. From here on out it was moving forward not…cleanup.

He thought about the bloody sugarcane rotting in the composter.

Etho readjusted the mask on his face. Patted down each pocket to check its contents and whether it was closed. Brushed the hair out of his eyes. Time to read the new messages.

Tango: Anyone else near the mountain? Just saw a huge creature!

Bduds: huge is an understatement! ITS TERRIFYING

Impulse: what is going on?

Tango and Bduds could have been referring to many things. A sniffer that was slightly bigger than usual. A pissed off Doc. Each other. It was hard to tell from the messages alone what they meant.

More messages. Hermits, scattered around the area, sending messages full of exclamation marks or question marks, saying they saw something large and fast and weird. They blipped into his comm with a regular pulse. People reported damages to bases and shops as the creature vaulted over them. What got the hermits concerned was that it seemed to be running away. Running from what? On the other side was excitement, people already trying to come up with a funny name for the strange guest.

Skizz: hot tamales this thing is fast!

Xisuma: What does it look like?

Skizz: couldn’t get a good look. It’s a massive blur. Doesn’t look like any normal mob.

Impulse: Zedaph…

Zedaph: I did nothing!

Bduds: I saw it first, so I get naming rights.

Tango: We saw it at the same time! It literally leapt over our heads! I get co credit.

Gem: take it to court later.

Gem: I spy something weird with one of Mumbo’s shops. Almost like an explosion? How did you even do that to your base Mumbo?

Impulse: Mumbo, you good?

Cleo: I’m nearby. I’ll go check it out.

Etho stood and stretched, taking in the new information. This was good. Something new to fill his head. Make him realize he was being dramatic. This was how Hermitcraft functioned, new calamities welcomed in before the old one disappeared on the horizon. Though this one seemed much more less likely to drive him half crazy.

Impulse: what’d he do this time?

Etho practically heard the tease in Impulse’s text.

Pearl: I swear if that man is messing around with end crystals again…

Scar: oh his poor shop! I bet he’s all covered in soot and huffy.

Pearl: Scar, aren’t you also nearby?

Scar: I have a lovely little Katy bee on my lap. Nothing on this plain of existence is getting me to move

Scar: So keep us updated Cleo! You’re the hermit news anchor for tonight, delivering a classic story of a hermit having something spectacularly blow up in their face.

Cleo: shut up.

Cleo: cut the thread.

That sent a slice of coldness through Etho’s lungs. No, no, things were fine, just a bit…serious. “Cut the thread” was a code phrase hermits came up with long ago to signify to the others that they didn’t want to talk further on a particular issue or needed to focus without constant comm notifications. Shut up and stay that way. He had rarely seen it be used.

Gem: Should I come over? I’ll be there in a jiffy.

Cleo’s response was disturbingly fast.

Cleo: Don’t. There’s no need.

Replies went from a flood to a trickle.

Dinner. Etho should make dinner. It was what he needed after a long day of work. He clipped his now silent comm to his belt and meandered towards his little kitchen.

How about some cooking?

He felt somewhat split in two, with one half knowing more than the other, like the conscious part of him was a young child and his subconscious was the babysitter trying to be cheery and distracting despite minutes earlier receiving a piece of horrible news over the phone…

He set down the ingredients with perhaps a bit more force than necessary. No more paranoia, he decided. He really wished he could give anxiety the same treatment as he did with laundry. Putting himself through a physical wringer to squeeze out the anxiety sounded quite lovely. And it could likely fix his back pain too.

While Etho kept thinking of all the absurd ways he wished he could approach his problems, his hands gathered up ingredients and started to peel, cut, mix, and ultimately light the burner underneath a pot full of the makings for a stew. He paid close attention to the distance between knife and fingertip. He didn’t want any more obstacles. Meal prep was supposed to be slow and calm. Time passed without notice, and it was lovely.

A bell rang in his kitchen. He paused, stuck in the middle of cutting a loaf of bread. The full-bodied sound came from his comm, though not the usual bzzt any hermit had grown accustomed to hearing.

Xisuma, ever the worrier, had installed an extra feature into the comms. If he ever needed to, he could create a message that, instead of the usual ding, played a bell noise, and continued to play that noise until the owner picked up their comm and responded. It was a feature that alerted the whole community. Emergency bells. Etho put down the kitchen knife and unclipped his comm.

Xisuma: Everyone, go to the meeting hall near center. This is not optional.

Joe Hills: woah. What’s up?

Xisuma: this needs to be talked about in person.

Scar: But Katy Bee :(

Xisuma: Now.

He swallowed the spit in his mouth. Okay. That was fine. A change in plans was typical for hermits, no surprise was too big for them. His hands buzzed with the vibrations caused by two dozen hermits sending a reply message. Names flew by before he could read them. He typed out:

Etho: got it.

The bell fell silent. The stove and the stew worked together to make a warm meal. He ignored the feeling that he was missing something.

He was so exhausted. He was trying to make things better. Things were going to get better. They had to.

He started to smell smoke.

Chapter Text

Grian pushed a finger into his eye cavity. The digit rooted around in the darkness, a half torn off nail scratched blindly at the walls, searching for the pinprick of white light. He wanted to squish it like a bug. His lungs were full of an entire night sky; he held his breath to focus. His eye wells were deeper than they appeared—as he reached in his wrist disappeared, the cuff of his elbow, too—He was afraid he would fold in on himself if he went further. That pinprick was indelible. He dragged his arm out, limp with defeat. Small trickles of blood seeped out, stopping quickly when the scratches healed shut.

That pinprick of white light shouldn’t make a sound, but it did anyway. Not the buzz of electricity, which was a sound one was able to be familiar with, to hold in tight spaces, the lamp buzzing as one read a book underneath. Pinprick light, the sort one sees staring down a tunnel, makes an alien sound. Akin to gazing down a large hole, hypnotized and unable to grasp the scale of it; a growing hush that slammed hollowly against its physical boundaries with a steady pace. The kind of sound that made one afraid it would rise up and crash over them as a wave, dragging them down. It replaced the music he always heard in the background, the song that told him to keep going; keep going to sleep and keep waking up the next day—a song of balance. At that moment he believed the world was spinning in a way so that it would throw him off its surface.

This had to be a dream. This couldn’t be made of flesh and bone.

He felt thick blood on his cheeks, which meant there were inner moving parts. The wounds had already healed. A curtailment to stop him from taking the easy way out. His skin scabbed over too fast. Courtesy of the Watchers so that he could enjoy his stay to the fullest. He was stuck in unyielding flesh and bone.

His thoughts were pushing on his mind, lifting it up and out of his skull, into the open air, while his annoying base instincts meant to keep him alive threaded hooks into it and dragged it back into place. His consciousness was a flopping fish on a grimy boat deck. The trees around him seemed to sense his stilted unraveling and shied away.

If only he had more time. More skin around the eyes to crinkle into a smile and say everything is alright. More space in his throat so that when anxiety constricted, he could still spew the words out: “I am a Watcher. Please don’t look closer”.

If only he didn’t need time at all. No time to waste if he hadn’t been stuck in his head and avoided the danger.

A vocab word he once learned and considered strange jumped out at him. Counterfactual. Like many obscure words, he found it impressive that a single word described a disproportionately large feeling. A counterfactual: scenarios of what could have happened. The what-if-it-was-like-this and the what-if-it-was-like-that type of ruminations that kept him awake through the night. He filled the holes in his character with counterfactuals. He was utterly absorbed in counterfactuals. They were all he had left. Counterfactuals were lonely. And loud. Weak from panic and shock he let them in to run rabid in his imagination. 

Maybe he should have talked to Scar instead of Mumbo. Or Pearl. Or Xisuma. He should have slept in that day, should have taken more time to get ready and stare out the window and decide to stay inside instead of going on a tour of Etho’s base. Or made Scar—Mumbo—Etho—Cleo retrieve the flower crown instead—

He swallowed the sudden thick bile in his throat.

A feverish realization came over him; one saying that this was the only way he could have had it happen. That it was always going to be like this. This was the worst thing that could ever happen to him. Could he really have it any other way?

Of course not. This is what you deserve. 

Blurry faced, he moved through the world. The trees shook with a parallax effect. His eyes and ears were dizzy. Perhaps he wasn’t really in a forest, but somewhere distant, seated in the audience simply watching the scene for entertainment, wondering what the underlying theme was to be had here. A wonderfully crafted cautionary tale or just bad writing? It would help explain why it was like puppetry to move if this was all just a play. For a few frantic seconds, he enjoyed imagining he was a puppet actor. 

Clumsy unfamiliar feet made him trip. A stone half buried in the dirt bashed against his chin. The pain jolted through him, scurrying down like a marble in a pachinko machine. Dirt fell into his mouth and eyes. His arms shook as he lifted himself back up. Pain refocused himself, for just a moment. He had felt it echo, his inner moving parts reacting to the stimulus. Not something a puppet could do, not something an actor should feel. There was no director nearby to yell “Cut!” and end the scene.

He had to face it fully. This was what he was. A Watcher. The thing he hated the most.

The cut on his chin healed but the blood on his feathers stayed behind. The world waited for the next fully improvised steps the monster would take.

Walking forward on two legs was difficult. His body felt already molded from years of service, an aged servant bent into a lowercase r. Thin trails were cast in the dirt where his many wings draped on the ground. He left footprints that would surely make any sane creature run away in fear of. He ducked under branches. Being tall was out of sorts for him. 

After clambering over a small hill, he heard water. It caught his attention. Water was a never ceasing distraction. He loved building near water. Or fully in water. His first real build was a ship in a bottle, with meters of ocean above his head as he went about his day. Occasionally he got nightmares about the water draining away, sand replacing ocean. What was most strange was the dream giving him a non-spoken understanding that it was his doing. That he built the destruction. Those dreams left him waking up in a cold sweat. 

Despite the nightmares he found himself drawn to building a home on the banks of rivers or ponds. The constant sound and smell of a current soothed him. What he loved most was the sight of it moving.

He hurried forward. The moon supervised his antics.

Before him was a thin creek. Shallow enough that if the sun were out, it would make the rocks on the bottom shine, yet deep enough to cool sore feet. Trees grew their branches over the creek.

The water was so nice to stare at. The stream curlicued, streaming over and around its own flimsy tail in a sort of dance. Eddies gathered for brief seconds, ultimately carried away once the whirlpool lost its momentum. The creek continued on, taking its time without hesitation. His head was full of stupid metaphors. Despondency sat heavy in his gut. He couldn't enjoy the water. For that required him to be someone that was now gone. 'Grian' was out of sight, out of mind, even to his own self.

He watched the creek in the only way he knew how. Nothing else came out of it. 

What do you want? 

He wanted help but didn’t want people.

He couldn’t handle hearing the hermits’ accents and lilts, their smooth and rough and comforting ways of speaking. Because eyes followed voices, and he despised being seen. Not as he was now—and forever will be. He resigned himself to being lonely. Truly a hermit now. He felt hysterical.

Grian was never lonely when happy. He shared his joy with the closest person at hand, and if no one was nearby, he raced around till he found someone so he could grab their hands and spin in circles. He set up pranks and kept his ears perked up to hear the eventual exclamations of surprise, the cue for him to dart over and tease his latest victim. He spent hours building bits and bobs just to give reason for a five-minute conversation. He laughed loud enough for people to hear.

When he was sad, scared, frozen, the distance he held between him and his hermits couldn’t be further. High pillars in his building was standard fare, providing a place to perch and watch the hermits work below; him being able to see all the details, taking solace in the fact that if the hermits were to look up, they would only see a silhouette in a red jumper. It was an old habit that persevered despite his disgust for it; to see without being seen.

He remembered the Boatem pole, the center hub of activity and excitement when the sun was awake, and how somber it became at night when the sky matched the void as if having a conversation.

How pretentious he was back then. A hole into absolute death. He had loved it. A wire net had been installed, dyed black so near invisible against the void, just in case someone really fell in. Scar had made many joking and utterly real falls into the net, treating it like a trampoline while Impulse assured everyone that the net was properly anchored to the bedrock. Grian had laughed at the antics but was afraid to join. He was afraid, and he believed that was enough to keep him safe. 

He had spent many nights down there, crisscross on bedrock, with calloused hands on his knees, staring, wondering if anything would crawl out of the void—his own imagination, it seemed—and cause havoc. He would lean over the edge to get a better peak at the nothingness, feeling so disjointed that if he slipped he was sure to be sieved into little pieces. After those nighttime visits he never could determine whether he felt better or worse. 

Maybe it was that same pretentiousness that made him get so close, skirting the bedrock edge, teasing luck in the same way he teased his friends.

Look how close I am. Look how steady my feet are. I’m safe. 

He wondered if he could survive the void now, live in a new space, with the world above his head and room to dissolve. That would be nice if the void accepted it. There was the possibility of refusal, that the void would screw up its nonexistent nose, huff, and file a formal complaint to the universe about the litter that someone carelessly dropped in.

Once he thought about it, it became true: not even the void would want him. He could barely withhold himself from screaming again, only really restraining himself because the forest was so quiet, and he wanted to not break it. Being in the void was sure to drive him insane. Then again, nowhere else seemed to be a better option and going insane appeared to be a predetermined conclusion.

He belonged nowhere. Nowhere was not a physical place, it was only in people’s heads, just like ghosts. Ghosts overstayed their welcome. They stayed forever. Even after dying they had long, full lives.

The expanse of time before him stretched towards the moon and released, striking him like a rubber band. Years and years of exhaustion he had yet to live through fell on his shoulders. He swore his feet sunk into the ground with the added weight.

His life was over. The realization brought a burnt hair smell to his nostrils. No more games. 

He wasn’t tired. He just wanted rest.

If the whole world was but a single room then he wanted to shove himself into the mousehole carved into the soft wood of the walls. Squirrel away and never be seen again by anything—and that included himself. He needed to remove himself from the room, where everything was constrained to length, width, and depth. He couldn’t let his emotions have volume.

All he needed was to rest. Stay in one place for a spell. And then…

And then he usually washed his face, put on a smile, and went to visit his friends. That was no longer an option.

How could he quantify what had been lost? Each hermit was larger than life itself, to Grian. He lost many lives in only a second.

Grian had loved Hermitcraft. Truly, they were the best years of his life. In every single one of the hermit's smiles, he found a love he had never experienced before. With his own creativity, he built mountainous bases that practically breathed with personality. Friendships were forged so strongly that he could reach out and touch them whenever he liked. He took in two stray cats and petted them with calloused hands, half-breathless in awe about how wonderful his life had turned out. It was not enough. Not enough bits of joy to last him and his new eternity as a Watcher.

He was a clock winding down. His limbs strained as they tried to move through the air that had turned into heavy sand. He reached a hand out to grope along the trees for balance. So many eyes and yet he didn’t trust a single one. None of them showed him what he needed to see. His palm met a tree with deep canyons carved into it. He looked up at the upwards-curving branches. A tall oak.

Years ago Pearl had swung upside down by her knees from a tree branch and taught Grian her strategies for identifying trees. The leaf pattern and bark layer were two ways to find out. She told him about the "swoopiness" of certain branches, and how that was also a great way to identify species. Grian had grinned wide and told her to elaborate, leading her to give a mockingly fancy lecture on the science of "swoopiness" and its importance in academia. The lecture quickly dissolved into unrestrained giggling. It had been not too long after they first met, and Pearl looked at him with a funny glint in her eyes and said that she knew they were going to be good friends. 

In the forest, the monster nearly collapsed into pieces. He couldn't. He couldn't have those memories anymore. They swarmed him like insects, creating a cloud of distress and danger. Recollecting the warm, comforting memories pierced him far deeper than any memory tinged with sadness or anxiety could ever achieve. They were going to kill him if he continued on. 

You've lost so much already. Why not lose a little more?

Underneath his hand was the bark of a tree he didn't recognize. The tree groaned when he leaned his back against it. He folded his bowed legs underneath him. The tree adjusted to the new burden. The forest was serene; a picturesque scenery that many never get to fully experience. It was intolerable.

There was nothing to do.

Except wait.

Wait for what?

Grian didn't care enough to answer his own question. A hiss of breath escaped from behind his teeth as he settled into place. Crisscross. Thin-boned hands on crooked knees. Chin raised just enough to not touch his chest. Head wings folded tight across his only identifying feature. Bit by bit, outside stimulus began to fade, leaving only the inner moving parts—which were sure to stall eventually—for company. His vision grew tunneled. 

He waited. 

In that moment of pause, the inevitable came. Grief and regret, a tandem pair, squirreled inside and began to work. An infection that targeted not the individual parts but the knots tying them together. He didn’t put up a fight. He helped the infection along as if it were a game. 

He plucked each nerve from its purchase in the muscle and knotted them into a tangle, using it to fill his stomach.

He smoothed down the knots in his tendons and made them loosen from their purchase of bone, so they laid flat and unused.

He formed a barrier over his mouth, leveling the flesh into a vacant surface, ensuring that no emotion could seep out.

He placed his hearts in a wooden chest and set a rock atop the lid.

And all these things he thought of doing. He remained silent and stagnant. He wondered if he made a pretty statue. It was the final thing he wanted to give to the world, something nice to look at.

As the thoughts passed through his mind, so too did the days.

He hoped his cats wouldn’t miss him.

Chapter Text

Psychopomp (n): An entity that guides souls to the place of the dead.

Mumbo folded his clothes. It wasn’t a tedious task since he didn’t have many, and yet it took much of his energy. At least it didn’t require too much thinking aside from remembering how each article needed to be treated. Simple, rhythmic motions were all it required, really. He had a designated area for folding laundry, a sparse corner of a room with a waist high table wide enough to fold bed sheets or towels. There was a window to his left letting in late afternoon sunlight. He liked having a base where the allotted space had a unique purpose. It was nice to be able to separate certain tasks into neat little squares of area. He wished he could do the same with his head. Whenever he heard comparisons that a brain was like a redstone computer, he never knew whether it was an insult towards redstone or the brain.

Only a few articles of clothing left. His brain gave simple commands to his hands on what to do with each.

A pair of black pants. Fold down the middle and set it aside.

A pink and yellow tropical shirt. Tuck the sleeves inside, fold it halfway, and set it aside.

A fancier, less used jacket, the outside a solid black and the inside dyed a vibrant purple. He held the jacket at arm’s length, observing how the sun caught the shine of the hue, then folded it and set it aside.

It wasn’t the same color, he told himself. A different hue, a different meaning. And yet the impression persisted, dragging him with ease back in time to when that all-encompassing purple invaded his home. When Grian died and a psychopomp came to retrieve him. That’s what Xisuma had reasoned, after Mumbo told them what had happened. And what else could be guessed? Everything had been normal, the average silly conversation over tea, Grian with a smile on his face asking for more tea…

Grian slumped forward, lifeless, gravity pulling him downwards to harshly smack against the tile, and Mumbo’s vision went weird. Trying to explain how he saw things was like trying to explain the geometry of a dream. It wasn’t a normal darkness that obscured his vision; it was a blurring, a removal of texture and depth, sort of like how the world turned fisheye when looking down the bridge of one’s nose, and before Mumbo could step forward, a creature unlike anything seen before stood over Grian, so out of place and yet Mumbo couldn’t exactly place in his memory how it got there. No puff of smoke or portal entryway announced its presence—It simply was, almost as if it had always been there and was just now noticed. It created chaos and then ran away, leaving everything in the room aside from Mumbo frighteningly inert. His mind caught up with the events long before his body stopped shaking Grian by the shoulders and telling him to please please please wake up.

Grian was supposed to have died in that sugarcane farm, and yet he came back. Everyone involved in the incident thought it was a miracle. A hermit with so much energy stored up inside needed a second chance. They all needed a second chance with him.

Grian had woken up in bed like it was all a bad dream that was slowly being forgotten. Grian said he didn’t remember anything in the in-between. Mumbo was happy to let the issue slide away. No one had an interest in prodding further. Xisuma had done an assortment of status checks and announced that Grian had no bits of code out of order and was fine. Hermitcraft wasn’t a community that invaded every aspect of a hermit’s life. There were many unspoken questions about various hermits that were happily left alone because what mattered the most was that the hermit could be here and now, away from whatever past they held deeper inside themselves.

What they never questioned was that Grian’s revival was just a silly mistake. It wasn’t supposed to have happened, and it wasn’t supposed to last. Coming back from the dead was inevitably supposed to end in tragedy. The Universe couldn’t ignore such a substantial mixup of state, so they sent a psychopomp, an angel of death, to correct the matter. Unique problems require unique solutions, Mumbo supposed. From the explanation and impromptu mythology lesson Xisuma had given him, Mumbo had the interpretation that being guided to the afterlife was a calm journey, with the soul quietly leaving while on a deathbed or in the arms if a loved one. Reality was more so akin to crashing a party, dragging a party member out by their heels, and never being seen again. Mumbo wished there could have at least been a sign in the air a minute or so before their unknown at the time last moment together was going to come crashing down. Instead it had been sudden, without fanfare, no parting words or goodbye.

The Universe loved its players, and it loved having balance and order it its home. Mumbo once thought he knew which dedication was deemed priority. Now he really understood.

The acknowledgement of a psychopomp was a confusing mess, full of unanswered questions, but it was the only explanation the community could come up with. Even two months later, the shock wave had yet to settle. To find physical proof of an afterlife wasn’t an easy pill to swallow. Nobody could have expected that the Universe’s valet would be feathered or that it would leave such a mess on its way out. Mumbo had yet to repair the broken shop entrance.

He folded the rest of his clothes.  

A white shirt with bold red text saying “MUMBO FOR MAYOR”. Small cracks where the screen-printed dye was were scattered around the letters. It was getting old, sometimes worn as a sleep shirt or when working with messier redstone contraptions. He would never get rid of it. Tuck the short sleeves in, fold it halfway, and set it aside, right atop the jacket he didn’t want to think about.

Unfortunately, Mumbo was just smart enough to have some object permeance so hiding a thing behind another thing did little to actually stop himself from thinking about the hidden thing.

Like a fishhook, the jacket with the purple inside snagged his attention with a sharp tug. The sickly purple impression that splayed across the back of his eyelids till Mumbo wanted to pour water and soap down his ears to clean his head of it.

The purple on the psychopomp wasn’t the royal or glorious kind used for coats or banners. The hue was old, already faded and lacking confidence. Such a small percentage of purple on the angle, only the tips of the wings obscuring its face and yet that was what stuck out to Mumbo the most. When in the corner of the eye it faded into grayness, indistinguishable, except when front and center, when it held the pupil captive, it practically pulsed. At least that was how Mumbo remembered it. Who knew how much his silly mind filled in the details of that evening. Understandably his attention was on other things.

The angel of death was otherworldly, as he supposed angels were designed to be. Its hulking form brushed the ceiling beams and multiple wings drowned out the furniture and lighting fixtures with dark scraggly feathers. Maybe psychopomps were more used to collecting souls out in the great wide expanse of nature and not in the cramped confines of people’s kitchens. Or maybe it wasn’t used to field work at all because in Mumbo's opinion, the angel had really mucked it all up.

Its sole purpose must have been for Grian and yet, it gave Grian only a second of acknowledgement, instead it took the brief time it had to stare right at Mumbo.

With a sort of desperate want.

He wondered what sort of face it was hiding, how it could still see behind the layers of wings and most importantly why it was so interested in him. It had started at Mumbo like it was trying to communicate. It tried to speak to him.

Garbled nonsense was all he heard, but Mumbo would have been lying if he didn’t detect an almost urgency in that uncanny voice. Like a rushed explanation. Or an apology? “Sorry, we made a mistake, no time to say goodbye to him. Goodbye.” At least psychopomps had the decency to try. Should he have felt honored? He felt hollow.

The last of the clothes were neat and folded. Usually this entailed picking them up and taking them to the closet.

Suddenly Mumbo felt dizzy, not the kind that threatened to make him fall but a vertigo that made him imagine that his limbs weren’t properly attached and were drifting away like runaway flying machines. Some essential requisite was running low. He went through his checks that was supposed to keep a body running. Water, food, sleep, ect. A part of him wished he had at least some redstone built in like a robot, maybe a little slot set in the back of his neck which printed out slips of paper with notices informing him about what he needed to get back in order.

ATTENTION! ATTENTION!

Get some water, you spoon

Or something like that.

A break to get something to drink sounded nice, so he went with it. After turning around a few corners he entered his properly decked out kitchen which had plenty of machines meant to speed along the cooking process.

He brewed a pot of tea and poured it into a mug. It had been the first time he had made tea for himself in two months. The process of making tea was so natural and practiced that he didn’t stop to think about it, but now that it was in his hands he remarked that, yes, it really had been that long. Exactly two months. He could now definitively say that he had been grieving for months. What an achievement.

He wondered if that was how he was going to go about life now, having life split into before and after.

Everything seemed to be a first now.

Hot tea went into his mouth and was truly bitter, likely oversteeped. He grimaced but didn't find himself reaching for the sugar jar as he normally did. The bitterness was easier to focus on than sweetness. The bitterness didn't detract from the warmth radiating from the mug to his two hands. It was nice to have that exchange, the heat radiation, with something physical. Aside from the laundry and the tea, he had not done much of anything progressive today.

With a decent amount of self-awareness, he could look outwards and then back to remark on how the reality of things differed from the expected outcome. Mumbo had expected that, facing a great loss, he would throw himself into work, as he did whenever he became impassioned with a project. Getting into the flow of an idea, he missed usual meals and lost track of the sun in the sky. To him, the sky at 10:00 pm was the same as the sky at 4:00 am, so who could blame him for losing track of time? Heavy eyes and a grumbling stomach were reminders that disappeared when he got into the swing of things. He worked for long stretches of time unless a red clad arm looped their way around his and quite literally dragged him away towards a new idea or simply threw him onto the nearest bed.

Despite the expectations, that was not the reality. Instead of being frantic with distracting work he had become stale with basic upkeep. There was nothing much to note between the passing days. Not a fraught machine hurtling forward, no, a rusted conglomeration of metal missing an oddly toothed gear that had no replacement.

“Mumbo,” a voice from the doorway said. It startled the hermit and caused some tea to spill over the mug and onto his hands. Luckily, in the undeterminable time Mumbo had been wandering without moving an inch, it had cooled down tremendously, so he didn’t even feel a burn. He turned to face the voice hanging in his doorway. It was Cleo.

“Oh, Cleo. Good to see you. Again.”

Her hair was limp and unadorned.

“Have you seen Pearl?” Cleo asked.

“Oh. Uh, no. Not recently.”

“Okay. Well, if you see her, tell me. And the same if you see Scar. He’s always out when I visit.”

The stitches on her face didn’t distract from the worn expression she wore. A hardened look, with eyes that didn’t roam around the room and a set clench to her jaw as if she had something trapped between her molars.

She looked tired.

There was no way Mumbo was going to mention it though. Recently, Cleo had taken it upon herself to check up on the hermits like clockwork, stubbornly refusing to stay still and trust that everything was fine unless she saw it in person. She was the hermit who checked on Mumbo two months ago, thinking that she was going to find a huffy redstoner covered in soot from a latest failed experiment, and ever since then if he wanted to know where Cleo was she was likely very far from her own bed, ping ponging around the server, leaning in other hermit’s doorways and never staying too long. She visited Mumbo almost every day.

If he was completely honest, the constant look-sees were starting to grate. It was her way of holding things together, so he couldn’t be truly irritated, although he wondered how long it was going to last. It couldn’t last forever, he reasoned, but then again, it was Cleo.

Recently, whenever Cleo visited him, Mumbo experienced a brief flash of panic as he tried to remember in an instant if anything in his surroundings was off in a way that could catch her attention. If he had left a furnace running unattended or set a cup to close to the edge of the counter. Maintaining a façade of put-togetherness meant that she never had to use her serious voice towards Mumbo again, the one that had asked him what had happened to Grian, listened silently, and told him to get a bedsheet, just like last time.

“How’s the tea?” Cleo jutted her chin slightly at the mug in his hands. It was a thinly veiled attempt at asking about a larger whole, but he did appreciate her not asking directly.

"Oh. It’s fine.” He raised the mug and took a sip as if trying to prove a point.

Cleo nodded, apparently convinced—for now—of his answer. The prospect of inviting her in and making her a cup visited him, briefly, ultimately disappearing silently when he understood that such an interaction would only leave behind a stilted conversation and two mugs of cold, barely drunk tea.

He wanted his friends back. He wanted the grief to pass on by just like how the seasons of nature did. When was the last time he had hung out with Scar? Or anyone, for that matter? He rarely saw people around and when they did they saw him with half crinkled eyes in cautious egg shelling walking fashion. Yes, he knew that he was an absolute mess, but so were his friends and he didn’t know why they all couldn’t be one big haphazard mess together. Being called a hermit was starting to fit the definition more and more. He hated it. if only he had the right words. 

The machine in his head finally creaked forward and slotted in an appropriate, albeit very late, response. “Oh—Wait, Cleo. I just remembered. Pearl’s out on one of her, uh, outings. I know that she’ll be back soon though.”

Pearl on occasion took little trips to the very edges of Hermitcraft. It wasn’t unheard of for hermits to take little trips alone. A break from the usual did everyone a bit of good from time to time. Hermitcraft was a home, but any hermit would laugh if an outsider called their home anything close to “tranquil”. Some went with friends, most went by themselves, free to be alone and away from not just the carnival lineup of people but from responsibilities and routine.

If Peal didn’t leave with a dog at her side she most certainly came back with a new furry companion in tow. She could never say no to a wolf curious enough to approach her. Because of this, she never traveled using an elytra, preferring to put her feet to good use instead. She never had a destination in mind or a set distance to travel, she simply listened to her head as she walked and when her head said it was time to go home, she pivoted and started walking back. Mumbo was quite amazed at how in tune she was with herself. He would always be second guessing himself, wondering if he should continue forward or travel on, because who knows, maybe there was another great sight just beyond the next hilltop. Pearl always came back completely satisfied, never giving a second though to the potentially missed and instead focused on what she had actually seen and loved.

Despite traveling on foot she packed fairly sparingly. This time she had repurposed her mailbag to do the job of a travel case. It carried all of the essentials that didn’t fit in an inventory, with space left over for any natural trinkets discovered along the way.

What made Pearl special was that she brought something that captured the lovely solitude perspective back home to share. Photographs. A small handheld camera was tucked carefully in the folds of her bag, full of fresh film.

Mumbo would hug her goodbye and go about his days with the anticipation that they would get together soon enough to talk about her travels. Days later, Mumbo would find himself sitting in her bedroom as Pearl told a story about each photograph as she pinned it to her wall next to her bed. She was a great storyteller. He had taught her a few tips and tricks on composition and lighting, which she listened to politely but usually laughed good-naturedly and said she just liked taking pictures of what was on her mind.

Taking pictures was a way to make the stuff in her mind reality, she explained. Photographs put things in a new perspective. A way of to make a physical reminder of what she loved and what she was living for.

After a few days she came back with renewed energy, raring to be with her friends once again. She had been gone for a long time.

“Yeah, um…I hope she’ll be back soon.”

“Good to know,” Cleo said.  “I best get going. Take care of yourself, Mumbo.”

He stammered out some form of agreement. And after an awkward pause, she turned to leave. 

“You too,” Mumbo added on.

Cleo had one hand on the doorway, halfway gone. She paused, not showing her face. “T-Take care of yourself, I mean,” he said lamely.

"Yeah. I guess." She said almost to just herself. When she left her footfalls crunched against the gravel pathway before slowly dissolving into silence. He sighed. Every single interaction recently left him feeling like he had just witnessed a redstone build tear itself apart after a first test. A malfunction, somehow. Only this time there was no going back to the mess and parsing through every component, double checking which blocks did their correct purposes, and which ones misfired.

He wished there was a better word to describe it. Both the hollowness, and the visitor that corrected a miracle that nobody wanted to acknowledge as a fluke.

Because it had to be a fluke. Two months and five days to date, they had buried a body, a headless one with its sweater stained a darker red, and only after wiping the sweat from their brows, did they get a message from Scar telling them to come, quick, he found someone everyone needed to meet again. There had been a corpse, and then there had been Grian, physical and real—and Mumbo did not entertain the fact that it could have been an illusion, that it wasn’t his best friend Grian. So it had to be an error. A celestial clerical error. Grian had died, slipped through the cracks and came into the world again, but he wasn’t supposed to. He wasn’t supposed to keep going, he was supposed to rest. All Mumbo could do was hope Grian had that now.

Mumbo didn’t understand how other people talked about how the death of a friend was stained with sorrow. It was horror, pure and simple, that coated the recurring memory. He was terrified, months later, standing around with nothing important to do in a quiet base. At least, he told himself –and what a very pitiful tool, “at least”— it was over. Things were surely going to improve from here on out.

He gathered up his folded clothes and put them in their respective places in his closet and drawers. The jacket with the purple interior was placed on a hanger and set in the back. He made a silent promise to wear it again one day, but not anytime soon.

The day that Grian died a second time truly ended when the moon was in the center of the sky. Midnight. Mumbo had watched the moon’s path at that exact moment, with a sore neck and a blanket around his shoulders, talking with Xisuma in order to avoid going to sleep. His hands worried the chain of an odd necklace he had found caught around Grian’s neck

They talked what it all meant. It was a long conversation.

“It could have been an angel,” Xisuma had said.

“It was horrifying.”

“Yeah, that sounds like one.”

Chapter Text

The sun was in his eyes.

A small puddle of water was to blame, a depression in the ground that had yet to soak up the recent rain that sat a stone’s throw away from him. Without wind the surface was a cool mirror, reflecting the overworld sun and turning it into a shaft of concentrated light. He didn’t flinch. The brightness didn’t hurt or wash out the shapes of his surroundings as it normally would with regular, soft, pliant, eyes. No squinting or tearing up for the intangibly flat planes Watchers called eyes, instead they absorbed the light, like how dark clothing appears to eat the sunlight cast upon it, though his eyes took none of the warmth associated with it. He regarded his world cooly. The tree he leaned against gave him shade. 

He had lost most of his many ethereal eyes. Purposefully he searched them out, which was hard enough since their exact locations shifted like motes of pollen, grabbed them tight with a mental will and pinned them to the bark of birch trees. Not long after he learned that trees were more powerful than previously realized, for the eyes that were pinned were subsumed in the bark  and were completely severed from his control. The wells carved in his face remained hidden, for he did not want to let the pinprick of light out. He kept one pair around, their edges a seashell shape. It was just as easily he could watch with only a single eye, though he held onto a pair, kept them close together, afraid that creating a greater distance between the two could create an uncanniness, that the eyes were too far apart than any creature should be. Those two eyes were the only things left of him that were not lonely.

The sun moved languidly across the sky. In the reflection, it glided, trapped under the water. The wind picked up when it grew darker, the air cooling nicely as the last rays of sun shone in the water orange and reddish. Eventually it disappeared, and he imagined that it fell underneath the dirt, traveling down past deepslate and bedrock to spend the nighttime in the void. Nighttime was simply a change of tone for him. He watched over everything. Nocturnal animals woke up from their sleep. Flowers closed their faces. In the darkness the trees swayed as if about to get up and travel.

Stars didn’t reflect in the puddle. They weren’t bright enough to be reflected. Since his head was bent low he had no view of the sky, and since he had been stuck there for so long he had no wish to actually see them.

Darkness came and went. The sun reappeared. It disappeared in the puddle. Darkness came and went. The sun reappeared. It disappeared in the puddle.  Darkness came and went. The sun reappeared. It disappeared in the puddle.  Darkness came and went. The sun reappeared.

This went on for some time.  

He wondered vaguely how he was able to do this; stay in the same place, a monument long forgotten. No pinch of hunger or thirst or sleep bothered him. Whatever had once tugged on those strings of basic upkeep were gone.

New skull, new brain, he supposed. New skull, new me!

He hated himself. There were still parts of his personality that wouldn’t quiet down, taunting in their flippantness. Unfortunately, he was his only company.  

While basic needs were ignorable, his memories remained, despite multiple attempts to get rid of them. Memories were stubborn; so was he. At least they gave him something to do.

It was the only thing he could do. Think. Thoughts didn’t power muscles or nerves, they just spun in tight circles endlessly.

Memories were placed on a small metal tray and scrutinized from every angle, weighed for the goods and the bads, went through checklists to deduce whether or not this was the turning point where everything truly went wrong. Was it this one? Or this one? Or this one? Or this one?

Soon enough he ran out of memories. Useful ones, anyhow. The less-than-useless ones were happy and full of achievement, remembered strongly—incredibly painful. He didn’t dare touch the happy ones.

Emotions lost their bite. Even regret, invasive and pungent regret had been reduced to a persistent tickle, a sore throat that prevented speech. Though they still trickled through him, hollowing out a cavern. He was soft, really, limestone or shale.

In his spare time, which he had more than anyone else in the world, he watched the forest. The forest knew he was there. Moss clung to him. He supposed moss did that along any inanimate thing. Did the moss sense a heartbeat? Did he have a heartbeat? No need to check. His feathers used to ruffle in the breeze and fill his ears with sound. Now they were wet after many rainy days and frayed by winds. His robes lay sodden and apathetic. His knees sunk into the ground, enough that he brushed against the forest root systems traversing the soil in crochet patterns.

The tree above him was dying, leaves littering him and the bark against his back growing weaker, quieter. He hoped he wasn’t the one killing it.

Nothing changed suddenly in a forest. Even a tree crashing to the dirt was predictable weeks in advance. From the tilt of the trunk and the subtle protruding of the dirt where the roots where being pulled upwards; he saw those details and wasn’t surprised at all when it inevitably came crashing down.

He looked inward, not with any special eyes, more so metaphorical investigations, picking apart the flesh and bones of his psyche, his decisions becoming physical animals that were dissected studiously. He was a slow learner. The time passed anyway.

This apathy was growing inside and around his skin. It hid him, that’s all he wanted, to be hidden, to linger faintly.

And what a condolence it was, to wallow in his own unwanted self-pity. He had no energy to crawl out from the mold he was stuck in.

Long ago, when he had two eyes and two hands and was free to sit on the steps on his base and stare out at his home, he fell into these sorts of ruts. Everyone did, from time to time, he supposed, but wondered if he was different in such a way since, whenever he was dragged out of these mental wanderings, usually by Scar who had an eye for spotting Hermits lost in thoughts and had no anxieties towards coming up and starting conversation, Grian had a sort of melancholy.

It was like having a extremely heavy blanket draped over your entire person ripped away suddenly: now you can breathe deeper but there was that amount of too much, where the air pricked in the lungs and made you worry it was going to pick you up and throw you off the bed. Of course, this melancholy faded, not before a brief stint of anxiety passed through, making him wonder if he was getting worse, if he was, Gods forbid, nostalgic for his time with the Watchers. Finally a dash of existentialism made his bones heavy, all while bantering with Scar and wearing a smile—Grian was good at multitasking; he never really felt only one emotion towards things. Always a medley.

It was different now. All he felt was grief. Singular, messy and complex, but at the end of the day, grief.

Grieving for the future that he would spend remembering the past. Waiting for all his senses to be sanded down by the weather.

This wasn’t horrific for him. This was familiar.

He was a Watcher, after all.

A wolf appeared, walking along a ridge a ways up from where he resided. A stocky young girl in a good mood, he immediately perceived, though not via the complex mechanisms of watcher eyes; he simply saw a wagging tail. She trotted along with her nose towards the ground until she spotted him. Cocking her head to one side, she put one paw towards him and crept forward.

How strange. Most wildlife stayed far away. A statue he may be, but animals were clever, or perhaps had better senses—a nose to smell his apathy and ears to hear the drip of thoughts. She must be very curious. The wolf crept nearer, filling up more space in his mind. Such wet and shining black eyes. Animal eyes didn’t sting in the same way that player eyes did. Some strange bit of code the Universe for whatever reason implemented made it so that being viewed by a player sent all his alarm bells ringing till they cracked.

A band of red circled her neck. A vibrant red. Red was poppies or roses or fresh blood.

The redness pulled at a loose string, the hue itself travelling through his senses and trickling slowly into a brain, trying to register. It reminded him of what he used to wear in any given situation, that iconic red jumper. When he was allowed back to the overworld, he had been dressed in a red jumper. The Watchers had given him a small bag of amenities and a simple choice of what he wanted to be dressed in. He could no longer wear the simplistic, yet insignia laden robes fit for a servant to the Watchers, and the Watchers, displaying a level of preparedness, knew that problems would arise if he rejoined the overworld looking like a half deity.

He had agonized over what to wear for hours, eventually landing on a decision that left no room for doubt. First priority was comfort. Something to wrap around his shoulders and hold on tightly, maybe a half size too large. Though his choice of dress was generated via his imagination, he choose a knitted texture since the weave could almost convince him that someone else had made it for him. A woolen jumper, he had said, and the name alone was half the reason he picked it. Next was the color. Unlike deciding on the cut of the cloth, he knew the color immediately. Red, as a splash of color. Against the grass, against the ocean, the snow, the sky, he needed to pop and let everyone know where he was.

The wolf held her ears back in that silly way wolves do as she stretched her face closer to sniff at a stray feather on his wings. He wondered what sort of scent she picked up, if wolf noses were strong enough to pick up emotions—or lack thereof. Or perhaps she was merely testing to see if he was a statue or a living being.

Whatever conclusion you come up with, wolf, I’ll be surprised. A statue, a decaying living being, either one worked and neither were preferable.  

Her black nose twitched strongly with every inhale, and the red around her throat jumped up and down with her panting chest.

Red around the throat. That meant something. Red around the throat…

A wolf with a red collar.

A wolf with a red collar and an owner.

A wolf with a red collar and an owner who is very likely nearby.

GET AWAY

The tree behind him cracked with the force of his head shooting up. The sudden shift from what the wolf had otherwise deemed a statue caused her to yelp and leap back. All at once he felt the gaze of a person, somehow once muted to near intelligibility that now screamed at him. There was someone looking at him. He traced the gaze like a bloodhound tracing a scent of blood. There, a dozen or so yards away, stood the source, mute with shock, wearing a traveling cloak dyed a shade of red that drummed a frenzy into his mind. Pearl.

Her hair had gotten longer.

That was the only thought he gave before he was gone. He was seen for a glimpse, a bare second of sight, before dashing away. Despite days and days of inaction, he was still quite fast, and panic made a wonderful fuel for burning muscles. He twisted around trees and shrubs, using dense foliage to fully hide his path.

His heart, still trapped in a metaphysical chest with a rock atop the lid, slammed against the sides of its prison, threatening to crack. Escape was a half run, half stumble, and a complete disruption of the peaceful scenery. Like a landslide incarnate, he fled downhill, downwind, and towards water, the promise of a river and its churning noise perfect to hide his movements under.

A familiar mantra of escape played with a gravitas that lasted for a good deal of time before finally fading and leaving him exhausted, half crumpled in a heap. His limbs were so stiff that urging them to move as fast as they did made him felt metal on metal. He wanted more than anything to keep going but if that were to happen he would surely break into pieces out in the open and be found. Being found, being seen was unacceptable, which meant his only option was to hide.  

Where to hide in a forest for a monster of such capacity? The forest was very green; he was not. 

The river bank ahead was steep and filled with boulders. He crouched under an overhang of stone. Small vines hung over the side and he was thankful for the foliage. It was the best he could do.

He was breathing. Loudly. The wolf would hear him. Pearl would find him. As much as he wanted to stop, his chest pumped furiously, snatching in air and expelling it far too quickly. Drawing blood, he scratched a long, shallow line down his sternum. The scratch made him inhale sharply with a hiss, and he trapped that breath inside his lungs, slamming a lock over his trachea. He had experience with controlling his inner moving parts. Maybe that was how he survived so long without food and water and sleep and now—his wings drooped, no longer puffed up and shaking with breathing—no need for air.

He didn’t need to panic, he didn’t need to breathe.

Hiding things weren’t supposed to panic, they sat there with wide shining attentions.

He cursed himself for getting rid of his extra eyes, but he dared not peek out to check his surroundings. Pearl was a persistent Hermit and had a wolf in tow. If she wanted to track him, she could. The best-case scenario was that he had made it frustrating enough for her to not bother, or that she was scared stiff enough to not look further. Hopefully she was already hurrying back home to relay her encounter with a strange monster. A cruel twist of irony curdled in his stomach that for once being viewed as a monster could work towards his advantage.

Even so, those were hopeful options. She could be close. Deciding to hide a bit longer was necessary. His nerves felt like frayed electrical wires, relentlessly sending the urge to run away and never stop. In order to focus, he tapped a single nail against the stone underneath him, every so often, absolutely silent, as a sort of metronome. He tapped whenever the suspense made him want to eat his own heart so it would stop panicking.

 Tap.

No sign of Pearl around.

Tap.

Still no Peal.

Tap.

No wolf either.

Tap.

The forest was quiet.

Tap.

No one was looking for him.

Tap.

He could probably leave now.

Tap.

Because no one was looking for him.

Tap.

Her hair had gotten longer.

Tap.

How long did it take for hair to grow?

Tap.

He wouldn’t know.

Tap.

His hand started to cramp after so many repeated motions, so he stopped. The rest of him fared no better. Throughout his whole stint of hiding he stayed crouched and aching, ready to spring off at the slightest hint of being close to spotted again.

Berating himself further for being spotted in the first place gave him something to do. How naïve of him to think that any patch of forest wouldn’t attract visitors. People were bound to explore. The more secluded an area, the more likely a player would stumble upon it and deem it a haven. And of course it had to be Pearl. Had to be a Hermit. He had thought he had traveled far enough away that Hermits would become only a memory, but he so apparently did not.  

He shouldn’t be surprised. When did he ever do enough? He was always falling behind. New skull, same old habits.

After the shadows grew a little longer, he extracted himself from his hiding place. A moment was spent figuring out how to actually stretch his muscles. His wings spasmed when he put force on them and they complained proudly at the exercise, eliciting a few loud pops and a slightly concerning splintering. The relief was small but palpable. At least now, if he were to be spotted again, he could run without worrying he would seize up completely. His wings continued to throb terribly though, no amount of stretching could make them relax. 

How did birds do it? Did they even stretch?

Hmmp. Get ready to never be able to answer a question again.

He always liked asking questions. He never understood how some people weren’t incredibly curious about the world. Whenever he was shown a never-seen before feature, he treated it like a buried chest, full of treasures and another map to further goodies. The Hermits knew good and well that showing Grian a new feature meant spending the next few hours answering his many, many questions. Grian couldn’t help it and thankfully the Hermits were without fail happy to test out his theories. 

Asking questions was a form of love, he supposed. And then there were times when his questions got his hands moving wildly, stirring up the emotions in his lungs as he asked Mumbo or Scar or Cub or Gem or any of the various absolute crazies he called family “How have you done what you’ve just done?!” and then they smiled, so proud of themselves and gave him another piece of conversation to hold close to his chest. Hermitcraft was nothing to be expected—if a Hermit went through an entire day without a new shock—it was a day half spent.

Right now, however, he didn’t think he could handle many surprises. A  couple of hours had passed since he had seen Pearl, and his insides had yet to calm down and quit making steam.  

Remember, bird brain. That life is…

Well I’m living with this one now. Focus on that.

It occurred to him that he had not a clue of what he was and could do. His life had become a blank map with yet a drop of ink on it. What was going to define him now? Where did he belong? Certainly not the forest. Everything in the forest had a place, everything was green—

Almost everything was green. A half rotted log abandoned on the riverbank sported a clump of red mushrooms. The brightness of the mushrooms made them easy for a pair of eyes to latch onto. Mushrooms were nice, he always liked them. Mushrooms belonged in the forest, as much as the trees and ferns did, but their coloration touched a special part of his heartstrings. A rebel, of sorts, these little red mushrooms, in a forest full of green.

Years ago he paid his compliments to the Terraformers who went about and replaced the mushroom isle’s mycelium with grass, decorating the shopping district with vibrant green. However, Grian being Grian, he couldn’t help but dream of ways to upset that peaceful monogamy. A single block of mycelium placed became a quite literally wide-spread joke, then a full-fledged resistance. This one was special since it required waiting, for reactions and responses, waiting to see how Scar and his HEP “workers” would respond. Waiting to see how his mycelium resistance friends added their touch to the base hidden underground. At the start Grian was somewhat icked out by the musty smell of mycelium. Only weeks later he found an odd comfort in the smell. Having a wonderful time apparently smelled of mushrooms and dirt.

The anticipation was palpable; it got him out of bed early in the morning despite Maui and Pearl’s complaints and it was what got him unable to sleep out of pure anticipation, picturing how people would respond and knowing that no matter what he imagined, the Hermits would always do something that defied his expectations. Mornings were spent with his cats on barstools as an audience as he brainstormed out loud his next steps, his eyes just as mischievous as theirs. He spun stories about the latest updates, how well the resistance was going and whatnot, bubbling with excitement at how this little resistance was becoming his favorite thing: a game.

Grian lived for games. He loved roping people in to join and seeing the creativity that inevitably got added to it. No matter how hard he tried it spiraled out of control within only weeks of implementation. Never in a million years would he expect that an inconspicuous name tag slapped onto the back of Doc’s lab coat would create towering structures only weeks later. That was when Hermitcraft truly became his home, when he realized that the Hermits didn’t just tolerate his antics—they wanted his antics.

He truly loved them. But the Watcher’s ‘games’…. Maybe he should find a better word for that type of experience. Experiment, trial, whatever you could call the act of poking a half dead bird on the ground with a stick.

Back then they used the word “game” a lot.

IT IS LIKE A GAME, XELQUA. YOU LOVE THOSE, REMEMBER?

He didn’t remember. Becoming a servant to the Watchers had scrubbed his slate clean.

And it didn’t feel like a game. It felt like watching from afar, sitting at the far end of the table with no view of the board. They once said that they’re way of life was higher than the ones on the overworld, and that they were winning in the game called “life”. Their ideology was that the best way to win a game was to not play in the first place. He never understood it.

He huffed, annoyed. Yes, he didn’t understand it, but look at him now, still recovering from his stint of non-play. Apparently one didn’t have to fully understand the definition in order to use the word.

Gods, he wished he could split into two so he could have another him to slap the idiocy out of himself. How could he have let this happen? How could he have ever thought he was safe in some random patch in the woods?

Okay. Which ever part of me made me do that—you’re no longer in charge.  

He leapt over the river and walked in rough circles. He braced his hands against trees for support because he still felt off kilter, his many conflicting wings arguing for space and balance.

What were his options? He couldn’t build or craft. Travel was doable though. He could go anywhere, really. Nothing to pack, after all. He just had to pick a direction. Treating it like a compass rose might help. He could go left, right, backwards, forwards.

Forwards was—he checked the position of the sun—away from Hermitcraft. Forwards was farther. No harm in doing that. The tie between him and Xisuma’s protection magic had been severed weeks(months?) ago. Unmarked territory was nothing new to him. After all, it was what happened every year or two when Xisuma needed to up and leave to explore.

He just had to do it alone, and stay alone. He ran through the various biomes,  judging each with only one crucial component: how likely guests would come accidentally visit him.

An ice spikes plain where the snowfall hid secrets and ice froze time in place.

A gutted cave, free from glowing ores and gems and therefore free of potential visitors.

Deep under the water on a gravel basin, where one could sit and imitate a shipwreck.

The burnt hair smell came back to him. He looked up. The tops of the trees were very pretty and very high up.

Gods surrounding; I am terrified.

He was terrified of having it happen again. Travel was something to do to whittle away his new eternity but if he was traveling to find another place to hide then wasn’t he just doing the same mistake over and over? If he did the same, the inevitable would come for him. Familiar it was, yes, but there was a heavy sickness coating his mouth when he truly considered going back to how things were. No, he couldn’t.

Hours ago his mindscape was a jumbled up mess, near impossible to travel through and track the passage of time. Now, he was…

A tree nearby had a shallow little crook where two branches split. The small crook held a fern, half a dozen meters above the ground, barely uncurled and pale green. Higher above that, the trees were sporting yellow green seashell shaped leaves. The number of leaves was dizzying. Spring was here. It had been here for a while. He had watched it go by right in front of him and yet he didn’t notice. And to think, he might have watched it passed fully on by if he weren’t scared straight out of his apathy. A life as a statue could have been his fate.  

He cursed himself thoroughly. The first thing he did in a new situation was doing exactly what they would have done.

Sound familiar?

Curling hands into tight fists, he crushed down a far too familiar flare up of guilt. After a moment, he curled his hands.

He couldn’t be stagnant anymore. As much as his mind wanted to refute it, he was still a living thing, and all living things moved somewhat. Even coral, which was classified as a block, pushed out feelers to capture bits of food floating by, photosynthesized, holding a whole factory inside of them while he had tried to create a barren dark cave carved out by watery grief. So much time had passed.

How much time passed? The days passed right in front of him yet when he tried to count them he came up with non-number answers. Details of what he had witnessed were murky. He was an embarrassing excuse for a Watcher who had a growing headache. He wanted to bury his face in the mud.

A headache. How lucky he was that the Watchers were conscientious enough to give him a handful of subtle reminders for what he once was. With a constricting pulse at his temple, he tried to have one clear thought.   

Large clumps of wool grew behind his face. He shook his head violently as if that could get rid of it. He just needed to think—of a plan. No more of this looking back on time. But the more he tried the worse it got because his very inner narration felt exposed to the open air, and the trees were judging him.

He didn’t know how to do this alone, he always had help or someone’s faux monologue running through his head as he built his latest creation. Cub taught him the mythology of vexes when he was building the permit office, Gem spoke of wildly fantastical fishing stories while he fruitlessly tried to find mending, Mumbo laughed at him while he tried to remake a storage sorting system by himself. Grian was protected in Hermitcraft, both by Xisuma’s admin magic and the warmth of community, and he wore that security like a second skin. Being so exposed made him feel at risk for infection. He wanted to build up walls out of sturdy concrete all the way to the clouds.

You can’t stupid. Not figurately, and not even literally.

His hands shook. Right. No access to inventory. Best he not forget that. It was weird not having it, not having something literally always in the spaces between his hands, not having the one thing that defined players from everything else.

No inventory. Hundreds of creatures went without it. So could he.

The first step was to stop treating his current predicament like a half-finished build. There was no foundation left, and no room to build a new one, so the mental habits of his old life had to go. Instead of building something new, he just needed to satisfy the current predicament, like a hungry belly. He wasn’t out of practice with that. More nights than he was proud to admit were spent realizing that he had run out of cat food. The solution was simple, he usually lived by water and free cat food swam around at his doorstep simply waiting to be caught.

And feeding the cats was non-negotiable. There was no way he could just lean down to eye level with Maui and Pearl and say “Sorry, Sir and Madam, no dinner tonight. You’ll have to figure it out yourself.” Sir and Madam were quite proud creatures who possessed no anxieties in voicing their complaints at his inadequacy to take care of his responsibilities.

Feeling half drunk, he groaned and clutched at his head. Why couldn’t his thoughts just end neatly instead of unraveling at the seams? All he had to do was step forward, not play with the pieces of his sanity like they were dolls. Perhaps during inertness his thoughts really did ferment and were only good to serve as a way of distraction.

Usually, when he felt like he was melting from the inside, he left his base for a change of scenery. Walking around someone else’s base or the shopping distract did wonders for his health. But himself at this moment was so out of sorts and he was tens of thousands from the nearest Hermit made build. Where was he supposed to go to resettle himself? Another oak and birch forest? Really?

What if…

What if he went back to Hermitcraft.

Like a burglar breaking into their old childhood home, what if he went back. Not to be seen, absolutely not to be seen. Never again. Going back may be the stupidest plan he would ever dream up, but that was exactly why he had to go back, because he couldn’t think where he was now. He had no admin magic protecting him now. Xisuma’s admin magic was a fan blowing on a sweltering day. Turn the fan off and basic motivation and cognition turn quickly to mush. Periods of time would go by where Xisuma’s admin magic was weaker, like when he took them to MCC, but those were brief visits, so he never noticed how off kilter it was to go without it.

Going back in a brief hop would give him a clear consciousness and or conscience, which was necessary if he actually wanted to figure out a potential future.

The plan grew and grew, making him more and more desperate for it to work. If he did everything right, then maybe things would turn out manageable. Going directly back was risky, since there was the chance of running into Pearl again. Traveling perpendicular for a day then turning west towards Hermitcraft was the best way to avoid encounters. Traveling only at night was crucial, since he blended in so well with the shade that it was camouflage; Hermits may not be able to even see him if it was dark enough. That was only in the worst-case scenarios, coming close enough to the Hermits. Ideally he would stay at the very edge of the border, where there was plenty of unconquered forest to hide in. Once there, his mind could quiet, and he could really start to plan out how to survive for the rest of his life.  

One thing was for certain: he couldn’t go back to being Grian. Grian was a dead thing. Wearing a red jumper in his mind was inappropriate. He was a Watcher. He was the "something else". Denying that fate meant letting his mind break down and becoming stagnant. That didn’t mean he had to like his fate though. He would never become “okay” again. The sooner he accepted that fate, the better.

You’re never going to be okay ever again. How does that make you feel?

He didn’t know how to feel about that.

Good. That’s a start.

Only a brief visit. He’d dip in and out.

After that, he would leave and never come back again.

Simple.

Chapter Text

Reliable (adj) : Consistently good in performance; able to be trusted.

Xisuma wished he had a second pair of arms. He would gladly endure the frustrations of getting suitable clothing tailored for extra limbs than to keep his paltry pair which had its “hands full” so to speak more times than he could count. Extra hands weren’t exactly needed to lessen the load, no, it was to lessen his distractions. Recently, whenever he did any sort of work he felt as if his own hands were rebelling against him, demanding to fidget instead of work. It took him twice as long to do anything nowadays due to the constant little breaks he felt uncontrollably compelled to do. He was very grateful for the helmet he wore or else his searching hands inevitably reached for his face and picked at the slightest purchase, and he was grateful for his gloves, the sole reason his fingernails were intact.

Fidgeting was coming up for air after diving down into murky waters. No matter what he did, he became short of breath, the need to hesitate growing stronger with each day. Building was peppered with these moments of worry. He’d finish constructing a corner. Pause. Hang up some paintings. Pause. Worry something between his hands, worry something between his mind. Pauses were spaces for second guesses—an anxiety that beratingly said: “Is that your final decision?”

He didn’t want anything to be final, to be set in stone and unretractable. Also knowing full well that, being an admin tied to the very code of the world, nothing in life was final; the code was constantly updating. Though, while the code for literally everything was always shifting, that didn’t mean things weren’t reliable. There was a standard way of doing things, general rules set in place that prevented mangroves spawning in snowy mountains and made creepers afraid of cats. Guidelines, restrictions, code was best compared to trees, a living entity that shifted and grew. Whenever you placed your hand against the bark you knew it was the same tree as before. The only difference being growth. That was what code was built to do: grow, so as to always keep the Universe’s players on their toes and have something new to explore.

Xisuma once believed that, come what may, he followed that same course in his role as an admin, someone that was reliable.

Now he wasn’t so sure.

Once again the quill he was using, tip still wet with ink, was set down and his hand reached up to scratch at the base of his neck—the tiny patch of exposed skin where helmet almost met body plate. With his palm pressed against the back of his neck, he stretched and heard a small pop. Only a single pop, he noticed, which meant he hadn’t been working too long. If it were two pops, then his body was soundly telling him to move. A single pop wasn’t all that bad. This “two pop system” he had once jokingly coined, had been consistent his whole life. He supposed that at least one part of him was considered reliable.

Xisuma sighed. He wanted to cross that word out from the dictionary.

He pushed himself out of his chair. Checked the clock across the room. Not quite midnight. He looked back at his desk, a page wet with ink resting atop. It had started out as a standard bullet point list, a way to accurately put down all he needed to do, which dangerously evolved into him adding arrows to organize them by priority, scratching entries out in place of new ones and writing an abundance of notes in the margins until the margins didn’t exist anymore. He probably shouldn’t have made the list in the first place. Just looking at that many items made him nervous.

The list had taken him a bit of time and left his plethora of questions on what to do next unanswered. In that same time, he had forgotten one very important task: feeding his axolotl.

He went to his storage system and retrieved a bucket of live tropical fish. Some axolotl owners dropped dead fish into their pet’s tank, poking at the poor deceased creature to make it appear as though alive, tricking their pet into eating it. Xisuma never stooped to that level. Without exception he used live tropical fish. It was a trip and a half to travel to the nearest coral reef when he needed to restock, but Xisuma found the time. And when he didn’t have the time, he did it anyway.

Not that he really minded much, his adoration for his axolotl was more than enough to quell the frustration of capturing live fish in a bucket. He found her a couple years ago, at the start of season eight, alone in a shallow pool of water with hardly any food or shelter. On top of that, she had two sets of gills, not three, and a greenish skin that made all the other axolotls stay far away from her. He scooped her up in a bucket, took her to his base, and named her Lucky.

Kneeling down at the edge of the pond, he upended the bucket and released the food. The fish, disoriented at first, quickly regained some semblance of bearings and explored its new home, entirely unaware of the apex predator in its midst. Xisuma smiled, over time he had gotten better at spotting Lucky even when she was camouflaged in the sea grass. There she was, beady eyes half hidden in the greenery, watching eagerly as the fish swam closer, closer. A bright orange clownfish against a hidden axolotl; it didn’t stand a chance. In a blink she sprang forward and snapped up the fish in one bite. Not a hint of struggle, it was child’s play for her.

Axolotls didn’t have much in the facial expression department. Despite this, Xisuma knew she was wholly satisfied with herself, as she should be. Swimming closer, she popped her green head out of the water, fixing her attention on him. Some joked that those eyes didn’t have a thought behind them, while Xisuma argued that they were so wide eyed because of all the unvarnished curiosity buzzing inside their heads. Axolotls were such strange creatures compared to other mobs, so how could they not be curious?

Aren’t you going to eat too? Lucky asked.

The axolotl didn’t really say that. It was just his imagination. His pets, sometimes his inanimate belongings too, talked to him in noiseless voices whenever he was alone. It was his way of avoiding boredom. They weren’t conversationalists, keeping to phrases such as It’s time for lunch, or Stretch your legs, or Have you visited the shopping district lately? Assigning reminders to something separate from himself made it easier for him to listen to the advice. Lately, he doubted any decision that was wholly made by himself.

“Yeah, I will. In a moment.” He trailed his hand in the water, hoping she was in the mood for a bit of play, but that wasn’t the case. She swam off and went back to her vigil among the sea grass, content to be by herself. The idea of having something to eat was enticing, it was a rare moment of him both needing to eat and being hungry. What prevented him from getting up right then and there was the predictable exhaustion of actually retrieving and preparing and eating food that he was simply not equipped to handle right now—So he remained kneeling at the pond, watching Lucky swim in circles.

Xisuma spent a few minutes breathing. The filters in his mask thankfully didn’t completely negate the subtle scents of the overworld. Lucky didn’t live in a water filled hole in the ground, Xisuma had designed the surrounding area to resemble a lush cave and make her feel more at home. The rock was specifically mined from deep half submerged caves and the plants were native too. The place smelled of water and rock. What he couldn’t capture was a scent of age. Caves were old, and they wore a unique scent, similar to very tall and enormous trees that had seen generations go by. Xisuma looked at these ancient monuments of nature and felt the centuries of design that went into making them. Perhaps it was an admin thing, to be able to look at a dried-up cave and still hear the water that carved it, or it was a universal perception that everyone agreed was there and could go unsaid and appreciated.

Admins did have special senses, it was especially important when working with code, and it led to some interesting conversations when Xisuma realized that describing the feeling of gravity as ‘fluffy’ made most people’s heads tilt in confusion. A handful of hermits knew their ways around pieces of basic code, but Xisuma was the only one on Hermitcraft considered an admin. Not unusual, he supposed, to have one admin in a community, and yet it still felt isolating at times. Not to mention that it also was a heavy responsibility. He had known what he was heading into when he took up the mantle of admin for Hermitcraft, back then a very young community. Until recently, he thought that it was a job that he could handle, even when hardships came barreling through. Because as long as he had the Hermits on his side, he made the right decisions.

Sighing, he got up from the cave rock floor and walked back to his study. He made the decision to walk back to his study, and his frazzled brain started to wonder if that was the right one. Maybe spending more time with Lucky and made-up conversations was the better choice. That sounded nice.

The next time Xisuma heard the phrase: “trust your gut” he would burst out in hysterical laughter. Why did people think that the gut was the best decision maker in the Universe? A gut wasn’t even a specific organ, it was a nondescriptive area of the body that had no business being related to good intuition. He trusted his gut when it said to keep Grian’s first death a secret, thinking that a simple status check made everything fine and that nothing would come bad of it. He trusted his gut right before the community meeting when it said that as long as he said his piece very clearly and honestly, the Hermits would understand. His gut didn’t know what the hell it was saying.

That community meeting left his entire body twist itself into knots. Intestines, blood vessels, nerves, every single part of him joined the weave, creating a labyrinth of crisscrossing thoughts. Two months later, he had yet to fully untangle himself.

It took place in a small circular building, similar to an amphitheater, with rows of seating that started out as basic chairs that were free for anyone to sit in. At the start of the season, the chairs were nondescript, which didn’t last too long for as soon as each Hermit decided on their story for the season, the backings and arm rests were decorated with stickers, various trinkets, and paint. A glance told exactly who sat where. Pearl was one of the first ones to arrive, taking her seat, briefly glancing at the empty seat next to her, Grian’s, before shrugging and getting comfortable. Xisuma paled when he saw this. He practically heard her thoughts, and it made him sick.

Hmm, Grian isn’t here yet. He’ll be here eventually.

Mumbo and Cleo were out of their usual seats. They sat near the entryway, leaning against each other, probably sending out silent prayers that they wouldn’t be asked to speak during the meeting. Everyone else sat in their usual seats.

The message sent out a dozen or so minutes before clearly set a tone of gravitas, so the Hermits arrived promptly. A couple of quick glances were thrown in Xisuma’s direction as they took their seats, trying to judge the emotion of the mask he wore. For the most part though, it was a calm before the storm.

His throat had trouble deciding if it wanted to be a barren dessert or a choked swamp. How he was supposed to talk was beyond him.

It didn’t matter how, he was going to do it anyway. As long as he trusted the Hermits, they would trust him and understand.

Once every Hermit had taken their seats, he started to speak. A quick start was crucial, because if someone interrupted, saying that Xisuma couldn’t start yet, not everyone was here, then there was nothing to stop things from falling apart too quickly. He needed to keep himself together.

“Right then,” he whispered under his breath. Get the words out now. Then, in a louder voice, “Thank you all for your promptness in coming here. As you are probably aware, this is not a typical meeting. It’s an announcement. I’m sorry…I’m so sorry to say that we have recently lost—”

A chair was pushed back, a harsh scraping sound, the product of a Hermit standing up suddenly. Pearl was standing, already having trouble breathing, scanning the hall frantically, hoping beyond hope that Grian was simply in a different chair than usual, that this time he decided to sit next to Joel or Ren or maybe Cleo.

She didn’t find him.

A broken sob came bubbling out. She clamped her hands over her mouth. Gem, sitting next to her, gently grabbed her elbow, pulling her back into her seat, whispering to Pearl as tears shined her eyes as well.

The wave traveled quickly, the Hermits putting the picture together.

There was a sick and twisted part of Xisuma that was almost relieved that he didn’t have to fully say it. That his work was already half over. Every surface was coated with what didn’t need to be said.

Grian is dead.

“It…was an accident. No one was to blame.” From where he stood he couldn’t see Etho’s chair, and the response from the Hermit. The exact manner of Grian’s death wasn’t something he needed to go into detail. He had the same reasons now as when Grian first died, to protect certain Hermits from scrutiny.

The Hermits were too absorbed in shock and quick acting grief to really venture further into what he meant by “accident”.

Tango was the first to speak up. He sounded so lost. “I thought this was about the chimera.”         

Some heads raised at this comment. “Chimera?” Xisuma heard in a whisper.

Pressured with all the eyes suddenly on him, Tango explained. “Just a bit ago Bdubs and I saw some weird creature. A four-legged bird thing. I thought that was what the meeting was going to be about. Not…this.” Suddenly, his gaze fixed on Xisuma. He wore a mask of uncertainty, as though he had come to a conclusion but terribly didn’t want to acknowledge it. “That isn’t unrelated to Grian, isn’t it?”

Xisuma paled. His body armor seemed to constrict around him. “Um-that is likely. I mean, yes, that is true and I do have a theory as to what it was though of course there are still uncertainties—” he stopped himself. Tried desperately to recenter himself and get rid of the dizzy feeling. “A psychopomp,” he said, the word still new on his lips. He had read it in books on mythology before. Never knew he would actually have to use it in such a way. “It’s a supernatural entity, sort of—no, is, an angel of death, something that helps lost souls to the afterlife if their situation is unusual.” There, he said his piece, almost verbatim to what the book had described. He understood the paragraph when he read it, so the Hermits must be able to understand it as well.   

The hall was quiet, save for a few bits of clothes rustling, chairs squeaking under adjusted weights, gears clicking into place.

“Why-“

Xisuma turned towards the new voice. Pearl. She always had such intense eyes. Sitting in her lap dejectedly was her hands, fingers splayed open, palm up, as if asking a question themselves. She cleared out her throat and tried again. “Why was there a psychopomp in the first place?”

Xisuma knew the answer. He didn’t want to tell them. But Pearl’s answer had weight, and soon everyone had their attention hooked on the question, they looked to Xisuma for an answer.

So he told them. About how Grian died twice. His throat closed up before he could properly tell them why he did the things he did. Maybe that was for the best, not even he knew of a proper response for that. Xisuma knew that he wasn’t a perfectly-on-top-of-things individual. He was still relatively new to adminship. Small mistakes and mishaps were not uncommon, though insubstantial enough to be laughed off as long as he promised to pick up the pieces again. This mistake, the force of gravity it held, was akin to dropping a glass and watching the shards burst into a thousand  pieces, the radius of damage spreading dozens of blocks, blocks now dangerous to step forward onto.

The Hermits were horrified. They didn’t say anything much after that, or perhaps they did and Xisuma didn’t hear them all that well. His mind was consumed with one thought. “I’ve failed him. I’ve lost them all.”

How reliable of him, to come face to face with an enormous problem, only to fix it ship-shoddily like everything was okay.

Pulling himself out of the memory, Xisuma sighed. No matter how many times he replayed that memory, it was always the same. The heavy anchor consistently pulled his gut down into a dark pit with each replay.

Xisuma walked through the doorway, mentally preparing himself for another round of sitting at his desk and fruitlessly solving problems. Instead, he had all ten of his hearts briefly experience a heart attack. In the gloom was an imposing figure, tall and stocky, with large curved horns and a glowing red eye.  

His shoulders dropped down with relief. The imposing figure was someone he knew very well.

“Geez Doc, what were you doing standing in the dark?” What he was most surprised by was how strong a shock he had gotten just by seeing Doc. Perhaps he was a bit high strung.

“You never remember to turn on your lights.” With that Doc flipped the light switch. The brightness stung for half a second until Xisuma turned the dial on the side of his head that controlled the tint of the visor to opaque so that Doc couldn’t see the bags under his eyes. He put on a smile, which was blocked from view by his helmet, but maybe it would come in use. Smiling by itself was known to trick the mind into actually being happy. Maybe it could trick others too.

Doc stuffed his hands into his lab coat pockets. “I came to check on you.”

Xisuma’s smile strained. So that’s what this was. And at such a late hour, too.

“I’m doing fine. You don’t need to worry about me. I know how to take care of myself.”

“Oh yeah?” Doc crossed his arms.

“You know I don’t lie. I’ve been eating regularly,” it was the same meal every time. “I go to bed at a reasonable hour” he spent more time studying his bedroom ceiling than living through dreams. “And I remember to stretch my legs every now and then.” When the issues in the code started to blur he found himself aimlessly wandering his base with a vague memory of why he got up in the first place. “I’m taking care of myself.”

“What about socializing?”

Xisuma grimaced. The last time he “socialized” with a group of people it went very badly.

It was enough of an answer for Doc. “You should contact Fwhip.”

“Oh, what makes you say that?” Xisuma said casually. Or tried to.

Doc gave his friend an unamused face. Sighing, he explained, “Because Fwhip is an admin. It will do you some good to actually talk about your problems with someone that sees and feels the world the same way.”

Fwhip was the admin for a community known as Empires. Since many of the members were good friends with a handful of Hermits, Empires was in a way Hermitcraft’s sister community. For a brief time, a portal bridged the physical gap between places, which was a period of both communities’ history that was characterized by slightly more chaos than usual. When the rift closed, that wasn’t the end of it. Xisuma and Fwhip worked hard to establish a steady connection, requiring many hours of diving deep into the code, creating a way to reliably communicate long distance. Both sides asked for calls every now and then, and they talked for hours on end, often forgoing sleep in order to spend more with each other’s voices.  

Two months ago, Xisuma told Fwhip about Grian’s death. Fwhip was silent for a moment, before responding, “Do you want to tell them or should I?”

“You, please.” It was much easier that way. Xisuma couldn’t express how thankful he was that Fwhip didn’t ask how Grian died, didn’t ask how Xisuma let this happen, didn’t ask about how he had failed. In the time intervening Fwhip likely sent more messages that Xisuma needed to go through. He wanted to go through those messages and respond, just so that he wouldn’t leave his friend anxious. However, Xisuma had yet to find the energy.  

He wished things didn’t require so much energy all the time. Looking over code, checking the border, doing status checks on hermits if they were feeling unwell, all actions that depleted his inner store. Magic was replenishable, yes, it only required time, so in some cases it was infinite, but in more cases, not enough.

“Even a quick call could help,” Doc added, bringing Xisuma back to the conversation.        

“I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.” Hard to explain, harder to understand. Admins were used to seeing the incredible, it came with the job description. Fwhip would hear Xisuma, but there was no telling how well he would understand it. Who would? Xisuma had yet to fully board the ship which proclaimed that a psychopomp was running around Hermitcraft.

“Hermitcraft is not the weirdest community out there, X. Don’t flatter yourself.” Quietly, he chewed on his next words before saying them. “It’s been a couple months and I…” he didn’t finish. Apparently Doc was also struggling. Xisuma didn’t know if he found that awkwardness strangely comforting or horrifying.  

“Never mind. Has the beast been fed yet?” He was referring to Lucky. The change of conversation was more than welcome.

“Yeah, I did. Gave her a clownfish, which is their favorite. Wanted to treat her right today.”

Doc nodded. “Good. Now do the same to yourself.”

“You want me to eat a clownfish?” Xisuma said incredulously.

“No do not eat—You know exactly what I meant, you fool. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight Doc,”

Before Doc left the room his eyes caught on the half pulled out chair next to Xisuma’s desk.

“Push your chair in.” He said curtly. He left.

Doc knew Xisuma quite well.

Xisuma felt dead on his feet, despite not moving much at all today. Working with code required two flat feet on the ground. Xisuma had it explained to him that it was like a ground wire, his hands doing various commands the source of energy, and that energy traveled through his body down to his feet, where the contact against the ground dispersed the command deep into the overworld earth. Pins and needles attacked his feet with an almost laziness to them, as if his nerves were getting bored. Are you really going to keep at it? his boots said.

He was tired.

So why not sit down?

The chair creaked under his weight as he got back into place. There was a decent amount of sense in telling Xisuma to take a break, however, there was no way he really could. A better part of an hour was wasted making a list (a distraction), so he had to make up for lost time. It needed his focus, the Hermits were relying on him. Various unrelated projects such as new builds or restocking shops were put on hold. The backburner was running out of space and was now considered a fire hazard.

The people he called family still kept being busy, which meant he had to be equally if not more busy to keep the ship running. There was a nervous pall over Hermitcraft, as of late, surrounding Grian’s death and how it was linked to the psychopomp. There wasn’t much talk regarding the psychopomp in public spaces but it was clear that everyone had spent a length of time mulling the topic over, turning it this way and that. So many questions unanswered. What it really was, what it had to do with Grian.

Why it was here. Why it came back.

Four-ish hours ago, around the time when the clock on the wall revealed the first pixels of nighttime, Xisuma had felt something slip in. Not anything concrete, not anything that sent every alarm bell ringing. More like feeling a prickle on your arm, not knowing if it was an itch or an insect. Xisuma dropped everything to look closer. Hope that it was just a fluke, a flare-up of paranoia, quickly dwindled as he probed further, then was abandoned completely when it became clearer to him, more than ever, that something was here. An unusual feeling, not quite a threat, or at least it was camouflaged enough to hide its true intentions. Xisuma was reminded of eye floaters, and how, when the eye tried to focus on them, the floaters disappear. This disturbance was a strange noise in an old house, indistinct enough that it was impossible to tell where it came from. Which room? Better check them all.

So that was what Xisuma was doing. Scanning and scanning until his fingers ached after putting command after command. His senses were frayed, ready to snap at any stimuli that may be what he was looking for.

All this was not induced by any anxiety for the psychopomp itself. In all honesty, the psychopomp and its well-being was the least of his concern. More than anything he wanted it to just bugger off and never bother Hermitcraft again.    An “Angel of Death” was certainly a flashy subject but Xisuma found himself less enraptured with it. First and foremost came his hermits. Grian was a hermit, he always would be, so Xisuma made it his top priority to figure out the tangled up ball of thread that was Grian’s story. And that meant diving into the code.

Xisuma didn’t know how to sew. Never picked up any skills associated with a physical needle. He did, however, know how to weave. Code was lines, simultaneously ethereal and unbreakable. Building blocks, nothing special on its own, able to create worlds if enough interlaced in a certain way. Code was how the Gods made the Overworld. The Nether and The End used similar techniques, just different material. Admins were special players that had access to a patch of the weave. Jobs required smoothing out kinks or unraveling the ends to allow secondary patches, updates, join the greater whole. The weave was constantly growing, while admins became more and more familiar with each thread. World code and player code were two sperate pieces, but stayed closer together, like blankets piled onto a bed in winter.

There were times when code was weak, thin enough that a suture was needed. A patch from another bit of code usually was able to mend it. Easier said than done. Weaving was natural, second nature to admins. Stitching was serious, only used on unnatural or broken code. Xisuma hoped he never had such a problem fall at his feet.

Broken code was a problem certainly but at least it had a solution. The problem before Xisuma now was unlike anything he had ever known. After all, how do you solve a problem when it refuses to be seen?

Grian was still in Hermitcraft. It was a feeling—not a gut feeling, he assured himself, but a nagging untied thread in his mind—that was persistent in telling him that there was a form of Grian still in Hermitcraft. Not altogether in one place and impossible to pinpoint, Grian’s code still tugged through the shifting weave of Hermitcraft, possibly the psychopomp holding onto a tangle of his code, and Xisuma needed to know why.

He leaned back in his chair. The front legs lifted off the ground. Took of his helmet and rubbed at the space between his eyes. It was ridiculous—both the situation and his behavior. Nearly four-ish hours of searching and coming up empty save for extra paranoia was not how he wanted to spend his time. He tried to reason with himself; Grian couldn’t be in Hermitcraft. There was no rhyme or reason to it.

A shadow, then. A water stain on the carpet that had yet to evaporate. Ripples on the pond after the stone had sank all the way to the bottom. That had to be it. This horrible “what if” had to fade eventually. A matter of when, not if. What was the point of ghosts if they stayed around indefinitely?

He leaned further back in his chair. A mistake, since the back legs slipped against the floor. Instinctively, he pinwheeled his arms trying to regain balance, a reaction too little and too late. With a half-bitten curse, he tipped fully back and fell solidly on his back, the shockwave rattling his lungs. For a good few seconds, he stayed where he was, regaining his breath, arms spread out on either side of him, starfished on the floor.

“Where are you?” he whispered to the empty air.

Admins couldn’t just pinpoint the location and status of every one of their wards. He wasn’t a radar. What made it easy to find someone was if that someone had a chance for Xisuma to really look at their code, a process that many didn’t need due to it being very personal and necessary in very specific contexts, like a glitch or abnormality. Status checks brushed the surface, the difference of a bandage vs a needle. Looking at code was a two-way street, which made it dangerous if there was a high enough chance for the player’s glitch to travel into the admin.            

Slowly, Xisuma got to his feet. Bulky armor was perfect for instances such as these, because the pain was already fading. He set his chair upright, half pushed in, half waiting for him to sit.

He regretted more than he thought was possible that he didn’t press Grian to take a closer look at his code when he came back to life. The most likely outcome was that it wouldn’t have done much, but there it was, the nagging voice that maybe, if he spotted the error early enough, maybe even corrected it, Grian could’ve continued living. Xisuma might have been able to save Grian’s life, and now he would never know.

The clock on the wall displayed the moon slowly dipping back into the gold covered bottom half.

What to do now, he wondered.

You should go to bed, his chair told him.

^^^^

That same night…

^^^^

The dirt smelled loamy, teeming with grass, and soft under his feet. Inches underneath the surface, cities populated by bugs and roots worked day and night. Dirt blocks held a unique mini society, a mini universe, where the larger folk on the surface could do nothing except dream of what life was like living where the earth smothered you kindly. Each block of dirt was different, and this square underneath his hand in particular was different from the dirt a dozen or so blocks behind him, since this block of dirt, slightly damp with rain, was Home.

He was back on Hermitcraft.

Scrunching his hand back and forth made the dirt squirm, although despite being wet it slid off his fingers like sand on glass. The smell of petrichor and moonlight was overwhelming. This was Hermitcraft. It felt like Hermitcraft. Comforting. The sky wasn’t attacking him anymore.

What does that even mean?

He shook his head. He couldn’t get caught up on obscure feelings. The point of being on Hermitcraft was to get a clearer head, so no more traveling down those sorts of undulating paths. Stay in the moment, but don’t think about it too much.

When he had first heard of the word ‘homesick’ he vastly misinterpreted its meaning. He thought it was a way to say, ‘Sick of home’. A word to describe how the unending paint on the unending walls clogged up one’s throat with phlegm and how the echoing patterns of entities roaming the halls beat a unwelcome tempo to his headache, a metronome out of synch.

Homesick was a lovely, warm word, a word that transformed in meaning when he learned the true definition of it. He also learned that homesickness did not just afflict those that were physically away from home. When Mumbo had left for a considerable length of time, it was weeks later that Grian truly believed he was coming down with something that possessed symptoms such as a heavy chest. At the time, homesickness had a silver lining to it, for at least—he held white knuckled onto that ‘at least’—awareness of having a home to go back to was enough to keep the fire burning. Right now, he was full of smoke with no fuel left in sight.

He really did come home sick. Over the past few days and nights, he didn’t slow his pace an inch, desperate to complete his one goal: Go back. Now that he was here, the exhaustion of traveling in such a way hit him with full force. A plethora of addled joints creaked like old boards in a musty home with all the furniture covered in tarps. Too hot blood ran through his grimy feathers. He couldn’t tell if he was slouching or if he was in a natural state. No matter what he did, it all felt wrong, dislocated from the rest. His feet hurt most of all.  

Now he stood in a meadow, the hills dipping down in front, the ground turning softer without a system of tree roots running through. If it were daytime, the trees in the distance behind him would cast tall shadows, a fence of darkness. There were shadows here, painted by the weak moonlight, fuzzy edged. His shadow rippled as the tall grass swayed. With such a two-dimensional picture, one couldn’t deduce what sort of creature was casting it, how many wings it had, or what the purpose of it was.

Aside from him, the meadow was the epitome of lovely, the nighttime adding its special effect: a solemness that begged for anyone witnessing it to be curious, to stop for a moment and take it all in.   

This was home ground. This was no man’s land. Suddenly he very much liked the idea of going back under the trees, so he could watch the scene and the invisible border of Hermitcraft move like the tide.

As soon as he had the thought, he was there, a hand leaning on bark as the tip of his head brushed leaves.

He was no longer on Hermitcraft.

And how strange a feeling it was, to dip in, dip out. That was his original plan, the reason he made the stupid risk of going back.

Okay, you’ve done it. You’ve figured out what’s wrong with you. It’s homesickness. Time to go now.

Now that he knew what the issue was he could leave and deal with his illness in a safer, not as known, place. Homesickness was never cured, one could be homesick even when sleeping in the same bed as always. Being on Hermitcraft was subjecting himself to more festering sickness, more chances to have emotions eat away at him. So, he should move further back.

He didn’t want to go.

When players recognize danger, they run away. It wasn’t even common knowledge, it was instinct. Like touching a hot stove, not only does the hand retract, but it also moved towards the sink to cool the injury with water. It doesn’t hover over the burner, not quite in enough pain to pull away, yet still singed with heat.

Here he was: hovering.

Where was the danger. It had to be here somewhere. There was something dangerous about the land in front of him. Being in the vicinity was painful.

Gods, please. I don’t want my home to hurt me. A small voice pleaded.

His wings drew in closer, hollow bones rubbing against one another where the feathers were patchy. Something was crawling out of his throat. It was scratchy, and it brought an ice-cold chill. His feet trembled as though balancing on a high beam, the kind of height where the tiniest slip meant spending the rest of his life regretting his past footing.

I don’t want my home to hurt me anymore.

Words or maybe just unintelligible sounds were trapped behind where his mouth used to be. Why did he still need to have a throat? Pointless, everything about him was pointless, designed to be pointless, and that design altered his every thought till he thought of pointless ideas like returning home when he didn’t have the right to call it home anymore.

This was dangerous, being here, he just had to find it, the source of the danger, the spot of land that it resided on so that he could get far far away.

He shrank further. The bark splintered under his talons, the sound making him want to cough. He stepped back. The danger followed him.

Oh come on now. Haven’t we been through this enough times? It’s you. Even when falling to pieces that voice was so matter of fact.

The danger was up against his hearts, suffocating them. He wanted to wait it out. He knew that waiting was futile. It wasn’t going to get bored of him and leave on its own.

His hands were buried in the dirt. Dirt was its own ecosystem, as complex as forests or oceans, constrained to a single block. Every block was different, didn’t he learn about that a long time ago? Someone was gardening, he believed, and they weren’t wearing gloves, preferring to have the soil coat their hands and they told him about all the strange bugs they found in the soil. No matter where one stepped it was a new world they were on, countless lives and countless deaths underneath. No one gave much thought to it, how fast they traveled through different worlds whenever they ran.

The overwhelming sense of so many worlds inside a single chunk overflowed the lip of his brain and the anxiety poured out, leaving him empty, but calmer. He moved him hand back and forth in the dirt. He wished he could eat soil.

Keep it together. I can do that, can’t I?    

Reluctantly, his hands eased out of the dirt. Like a mollusk cracking open, his layers of wings peeled off his body, the pressure lessened. There was no danger shackled around his hearts anymore. It tucked itself away somewhere deep within and went to sleep.

Move forward. I can do that, can’t I?

If I can, I will. He repeated this mantra ceaselessly. If he could, he would. That’s how Grian lived his life, seeing opportunities that dared him, straightening his posture and jumping right into it. A declaration that a vault was impenetrable was music to his ears, there was no question he would try and weasel through it. The bare sliver of a chance of messing with a Hermit was more than enough to convince him to spend hours gathering resources and designing a prank. He made bets with himself, the earnings bragging rights to use against his persistent self-doubts. Grian did that.

Maybe, he, the one hiding underneath the trees, could do a smidgen of that too.

So, cautiously, he dragged forward, the leaves rustling until, quiet, he was in the meadow, and the grass whispered instead. He crept over shallow hills. A little more, then Hermitcraft. His mantra faltered as the weight of the bare sky fell on him. Deeply hidden nerves were alight, bracing for the sky to crush him. In that chest with a rock atop the lid, his hearts beat furiously. The sky could kill him at this rate.

If it can, it will if it can, it will.

Mantra, now grotesquely evolved, was swiftly abandoned. Icy panic took the reins.

The promise of respite in going back sang to him.

Going back felt impossibly final. There was no amount of dares he could throw out that could make him return. He had to find something.

There, over a hill was an answer, a cave opening. A “disappointment” cave, where it looked at first as though it traveled for miles down into the earth but actually was more so an oversized burrow. It was a tight squeeze, long enough that he didn’t see the sky when he turned around. His hands gripped the stone flooring.

He was back on Hermitcraft, shaking with anxiety and crammed inside a disappointment cave. This was progress.

Yay me.  

It was quite a sight, a hole in the ground with a monster hiding inside, repeatedly telling itself that the sky was staying where it was and not hurting him. He was glad no one was around to see him for many reasons. Eventually, the residual poison the danger caused leeched away and shame crept in to take its place. He really thought that going back would end up making him better.

It wasn’t. He shouldn’t actually be surprised about that. Although, it did give him an opportunity to think. The past days consisted entirely of travel, and thoughts of travel. Now that he was here, it was like an open canvas, free of distractions. He could finally think about what to do with himself.

He was never one to sit there and do nothing while thinking. At first his fingers itched to do something. He wanted to fidget, but not with his current hands. Besides, that was a player thing, to want to mold the world around in one’s palms. Watchers had only one thing to use: their eyes.

There wasn’t much to see in the cave. Darkness was no issue, his eyes were equipped for that. The cave walls on either side were bare. Slowly, he inched his head out of the opening, enough to see a corner of the sky. Above him was crowds of stars, their light still visible despite the moon’s glow. Between the stars, countless constellations were drawn. At first it was straight and narrow lines, connecting each star with the least distance. As his mind wandered, the lines curved, wobbling back and forth between the pinpricks in the sky, occasionally spiraling like falling tree leaves, creating elaborate designs that he wished could be drawn on paper, but there was no way to capture the gravity of the sky.

He looked down. Stargazing was not conducive to any sort of progress. He felt more homesickness weighing him down. Though, as he berated himself on it, it led him down a certain path. Time and time again proved that he couldn’t rely on himself as his only resource. He was prone to stuttering and losing sight of what was sitting right next to his hearts. Perhaps finding something outside of himself was the key to ensuring he didn’t fall back on old unwanted habits.

In this fashion, a list formed. A new goal took shape: and the prospect of achieving it ignited a patch of kindling in his blood. If he wanted to survive, not become stagnant anymore, than he needed a few items to do it. Originally, getting items was seen as impossible, because a lack of inventory meant not only a lack of space to store them, but also crafting them. However, after spending the hours mulling it over, he came to a workaround he was embarrassed to not think of sooner.

He would steal them.

The excitement of forming an actual real plan diminished once he went about thinking on the how. It was not a sense of rigid morals that prevented him from going forward. When he was a Hermit, having other people’s items mysteriously fall into his inventory was not tinged with any sort of intense guilt, and if he was caught red handed, the affected Hermit responded with a roll of the eyes and at worse a hand darting to muss up his hair. The interaction didn’t last long; As soon as he found an opening, he was off, tossing a “I’ll pay you back later!” over his shoulder. Back then the worst that could happen was a bit of annoyance and smidgen of guilt. Now, if he was caught, it was certain death. He didn’t know if he could die by physical attacks, but that didn’t matter, because he was sure that being seen by Hermit for a second time would make his hearts give out.  

So, stealth was how he would do it. Nighttime was obviously the sole time he could be out in the open. He would find ways to whittle away the daylight hours later. Stealth was easier said than done. His frame was cumbersome, and he couldn’t be a graceful, cat-like walker even if he tried. If it was even obtainable, he could rely on the premise that during the night everyone slept. This was Hermitcraft, he could not rely on that at all. A lack of any predictable schedule of the Hermits’ movements changed his plans considerably. Every trip that went further into Hermitcraft had to be planned tip to tail.

Outside of his attention, his hand started to play with the pebbles scattered across the ground. He looked down at the two roundish pebbles in his palm with shock, unaware of how long he had been holding them. A stab of homesickness wrenched through his core.

A scratchy energy ran in tight loops around his limbs. This energy tugged at the muscles, creating an itch. Despite aching still, muscles seemed to move on their own, stretching and contracting as if a rusty machine that still wanted to keep going.

It hit him all at once how stiff he was. Both the journey and his rest curled in a cave aggravated  withered joints that begged for some sort of respite. Not rest, but movement. He shifted slightly. A painfully loud crack came from his backward facing knee. As the crack faded, new sounds, felt sounds, took its place, his muscles screaming in confusion for both rest and action. The energy was unbearable, its looping patten matching the tempo of the anxiety in his head, a discordant harmony, and he needed to move.

Pulling himself from the cave, his wings automatically shook themselves rigorously. The beating of the air brushed off some of the steam coming off from his warming skin, and he looked up at the sky.

No. He couldn’t fly. He knew that. He looked back down.

Besides, that wasn’t what he was here for. This was progress in motion. This was getting his limbs back in order, in the right places, to make himself into a machine that didn’t just barely work. Make himself reliable, that’s what this was.

The meadow became a playing field. He leapt forward. His joints crunched when he landed.

Try again.

Again, he leapt forward. The wind touched his neck and hands. This time, less creaking.

There was another thing to practice—not leaving a mark. Taller grass was off the table. Shorter grass, with patches of moss interlaced, were the perfect landing pads. He practiced tucking his wings in or holding them higher to avoid touching taller grass.

Not every place would have grass though. What wood made the loudest sound? He knew immediately: Spruce. A softer wood meant more creakiness, and he knew this well since he loved spruce flooring. With such a flooring, his cats comings and goings were clearly audible, and he could turn around and greet them as they entered the room. He probably wouldn’t encounter spruce flooring where he was going. It was stupid to even think about it.

He tried again, leaping forward, crossing the small dried up creek beds that shimmied though the hills.

Quiet. This time very quiet. He felt something slot into place. A trill went through his chest.

For a brief moment he was weightless.

What an even weirder sight; a monster frolicking. All done in an effort to put themself back together, yes, and at the same time, the nighttime air kept giving him silly thoughts.

I wonder if I can do a cartwheel.

Flinching, he paused his movements. Those kinds of thoughts were dangerous. He couldn’t forget what he was, couldn’t forget that this was no longer a game. No more frivolity, this was practice until he was too exhausted to practice further.

Just have to get better. Make it natural.

If everything went according to plan, the Hermits would never know he was there.

Look at you, leaving it all up to Luck once again. You and your track record can definitely rely on her.

Cursing that matter-of-fact voice in his head was slightly cathartic, lessened by the fact that it was right. All burglars had an exit strategy if things went south. His track record with running away was heavily influenced by luck.

Thinking back on it, he realized that if the Hermits had wanted to, when he first ran away, they could have easily tracked him. There was no doubt that he left a trail of disarray cleanly pointing in his direction. He didn’t know why they hadn’t, it wasn’t as though the distance he traveled was continents wide—traveling long distances was in a Hermit’s blood and any distance was but a short hop away when enough determination was involved. He was sure that even if a Hermit was spirited millions of blocks away, they would simply hop on a newly befriended horse and whistle a tune, fueled by food, water, and spite.

A misplaced foot or an unbalanced wingspan sent him crashing to the ground. Didn’t hurt too much, nothing that he wasn’t used to. In that breath of inaction, he realized how alight he was. A break in the pattern, a minute of inaction, and his core shook. He forced himself up and gave no time to shake the dirt off. He was off. Running.

To get this energy out of him. He wished it could be scooped out of him like a hand shovel severing the roots of an invasive weed. Faster, faster, he didn’t pay attention to the ground when he was in the air, his focus singular, locating the next place to land and spring off again. He tucked his wings in tight, felt the strain that only added to the coiled up spring tension curling round his lungs.

Oh if only he had this energy before. Instead of being apathetic and distracted in the sugarcane farm, he could have been taut, able to jerk his head down and duck once his sharp ears picked up the subtle click of piston ready to fire. Yes, he could have ducked. Wouldn’t that be nice?

It would—It would—It would have been so nice and look where I am now.

Maybe if he ran fast enough he could stop suddenly and use the inertia to rip himself out from this body. Once he did, all the breath that was trapped inside him would explode like a firework.

He just wanted to breathe out.

The grass underneath him wasn’t as soft now. It left footprints, and stray branches snapped in half underneath. A forest. A Hermitcraft forest, he could tell, since that energy remained.

The danger was right behind him, pressing hotly on the palm sized area of his back where his wings connected, and it bit at him, urging him forward like a spur in a horse’s flank.

The ground went by like a landslide. Underneath him was the dirt and now the tree roots and budding ferns and leaf litter and the fox kit—

Air whipped around him as he froze. He felt his bones bend with the inertia, and yet he froze, perfectly still, eyes watching the placement of his left hand, buried in the dirt.

Inches from his thin boned hand was a curled-up poof of orange and white fur. A fox kit shivering in fear. The kit’s entire body fit in the crook of his index finger. So very young and fragile. If he had slammed his hand down but a few inches to the left, then…

The second he lifted his hand, the kit sprang away, tumbling over their own feet until they found safety under a raised tree root. Their parents were nowhere to be found.

The only way to train a fox was to steal them young. Rip them from their old life and hold onto them until they forget they were stolen in the first place. And if one day they did remember, no matter, just attach a lead round their neck and grip it tight. Take them on a walk and convince them that being able to explore the woods makes them lucky.

He put a hand to the side of his neck. The small downy feathers felt stitched into his skin.

Turning, careful not to move too suddenly and scare the kit further, he wandered away, the sudden pins and needles in his hands and feet complimenting the haze occupying his head. The energy had left him, it was dead.

Calm down. Calm down. Please, let me calm down.

Sighing was supposedly a “reset” button for the player brain. The motion gave the player not just a full breath but a pause, a moment to recollect. Like heaving a great big rock up a small incline to let it fall off a cliff.

His mouth was sealed shut. The trapped air tasted stale. He wondered how long he could last without breathing in, if one day he would suffocate. He wondered how much time he had left. .  

Chapter Text

Mumbo checked the date. Placed a finger against his hanging calendar, pinning down the square that said what day it was. Drat—the full moon was yesterday, and he missed it. Typically, he made a habit of spending an hour or two past his “usual bedtime”—a phrase that had most hermits groaning in sympathy since, unless they were Bdubs, they possessed nothing close to a “usual bedtime”—when the full moon was out. On clear days, the moon was a light well, seemingly bending the sky fabric around it. Cloudy weather was a puffy blanket, the moon glow radiating, giving weak yet comforting light. No matter the weather Mumbo could tell when the full moon was out.

Scar joked once that Mumbo’s fascination towards the moon was another reason he believed Mumbo was a vampire, and then Mumbo told Scar that he was thinking of werewolves, not vampires. Scar countered that since vampires always come out at night, there must be some connection to the moon, and he wove a story about the “true mythology” of vampires, littered with as many creative liberties as possible. The full moon was out then, as were the fireflies. They sat on the roof of his newly finished base. That was what the moon did, what Mumbo loved so much about it, altering the tides, the night sky, and sleep tinged conversation.

There were more times than he could count where while staring up at the sky a stray Hermit came along and joined him, the chit chat flowing. Somehow, a great big rock in the sky was a great conversation starter, causing even the most introverted Hermits to suddenly become very spirited, or causing more rambunctious Hermits to mellow and show different facets of their personality. Grian was the latter. He was practically powered by sunlight, doing his best work when the sun was at its highest. Nighttime was a more reflective time. Occasionally Grian credited his best work to staying up late, the tiredness adding a certain spice that easily formed new prank ideas. Though, spending time with Mumbo and watching the moon, he was quieter. Once, he said that the moon made him feel small, and Mumbo agreed, especially when it took up half the sky. Though, even before that, the moon was hard to quantify. Whenever he tried to find a comparison, to either the size or the effect it had on him, his mind wandered into various rabbit holes.

Mumbo had a lot of enjoyable—and quite scary— memories attached to the moon, so he made a habit of checking up on its appearances every now and then, to make sure everything was alright. A recurring anxiety dream of his took place in Hermitcraft, with him busy as usual, but no one around to point out how big the moon was growing. The dream ended with the moon squishing him flat before he ever thought of looking up.

The moon had fallen to the ground before, and then it was fixed. People noticed it in time.  Mumbo took a lot of safety in that fact. The moon could fall, destroy what they’ve built, and they’d still be together, tethered .

Including this one, that made two missed dates with the moon. He would have to wait until next month. Next month, next month. These days he was struck by a mental picture of a banner flapping in the wind reading “some time later” far off in the distance, and he was stuck trying to pull his shoe out of some very persistent and sucking mud.

He turned away from the calendar and started walking away. After about five seconds, he pivoted on his heel and started walking back, finally remembering what had made him get up and go to the calendar in the first place. He counted the boxes with red Xs. Cleo asked about Pearl’s whereabouts three days ago, and Pearl left twelve days before that. Fifteen days of no Pearl.

Mumbo knit his brows together. Two weeks plus a day. That wasn’t that bad, was it? Pearl was unique for traveling without an elytra, he reasoned, that was why she was taking so long. Her comm was out of range, too. Twenty days, that was a reasonable enough time to warrant worrying. The “Some time later” banner fluttered tauntingly.

Just a little bit more. He felt like a conductor on a minecart train, shoveling coal into the furnace, irrationally checking behind him at the ghost town he left, as if the town would sprout legs and chase.

It was silly, he knew. Ghost towns didn’t move. There was no chance of him waking up tomorrow with a little playing card set atop his pillow reading in bold script: GO BACK TO START.

At least that’s how he hoped it worked. He was on track to it being three months soon.

Mumbo decided to think solely about what to do on this day which had plenty of metaphysical time distance from particular days.

A maintenance day sounded nice, where he busied himself with little tasks. The flooring needed replacement. Certain areas where foot traffic was higher were especially scuffed. As he mapped out the places that were most damaged, he thought about the word scuffed. Such a narrow use word, he only heard it used to describe objects like flooring or walls. Could it be used to describe emotions? He imagined how well a conversation like that would go, him going up to a friend and saying “Hey mate, I sure feel scuffed today. Do you feel scuffed too?”

They would probably ask him if he was feeling alright and needed to lie down.

Mumbo tightened his grip on the pickaxe that had yet to break a single block of the scuffed flooring. His motivation jumped out the window. A change of pace was preferable to staring at his flooring and getting pulled apart by thoughts of tearing it up or leaving it the same. Of course, he now had to think of something else to do, a task he didn’t know how to accomplish with such a scuffed-up brain. He didn’t want to think about what he usually would do because it wasn’t possible now.

It occurred to him that he had no clue where Scar was. The builder’s location was a complete mystery to him. Suddenly he felt that, if he opened his front door, he would meet a totally unseen landscape—a blank map at his feet, and the given knowledge that no one else was around. His stupid head kept thinking about going to Grian and talking about this.

Left on the table, his comm buzzed. Mumbo opened it immediately. The last three lines of messages were visible.

Tango: Z, got the shulkies of strgn pots, kelp, and redstone. I am heading over.

Zedaph: Did you remember the fishing rod as well?

Tango: I am heading back.

Mumbo let out the breath he didn’t know he was holding. He had no idea what they were talking about, and that was extremely comforting. Tango and Zedaph were who knows where doing who knows what, but Mumbo knew that if need be, he would find them. They weren’t up in the air, they were on sturdy ground.

Pearl was on steady ground. Unknown ground, but it had to be sturdy, that was the default. She was likely having the best time, that was why she was taking so long, walking slowly to absorb all the sights.

Yes, Pearl was on sturdy ground. He smiled to himself.

And Grian was in the ground.

Mumbo cleared his throat loudly as if he could startle his own brain out of his skull like a cat on a windowsill.

Blast it all, he just wanted a change of pace.

He wished he could flip a lever and have his minecart rails snap into a new path. Frustratingly, the real option was that he had to pry the minecart up with his bare hands and toss it onto a path, one that hadn’t been explored yet. All previous routes had bits missing, a chance for the wheels to get stuck again and spin aimlessly.

Mumbo always thought of himself as a full person. Losing Grian took a shockingly large portion out of his side. A couple ribs went missing, the ones that protected his hearts. He wondered how many bones the rest of the Hermits were missing, if they could collect them all and form a new skeleton. Bereft of certain support structures, Mumbo felt wary to do anything that might cause sheer stress, a chance for the rest of him to fracture. He avoided any minecart routes with elevated sections, particularly ones regarding the psychopomp, and affixed to that topic, Grian.

So that was how he spent most of his day: avoiding the paths that reminded him of the piece he lost, afraid to do damage control and realize how significant a blow it really was.

He turned away from the scuffed floors. Took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Made lunch. Ate it. Cleaned up the kitchen. Didn’t check the clock to see how much of the day was left.

He paused as he put the freshly cleaned plate away in the cupboard. Was that the clink of the porcelain or was that a voice? Far away, he heard it again. It registered: Pearl yelling his name.

“Mumbo! Mumbo! Mumbo, please be home!”

This was what he had been waiting for. Pearl returning was his “some time later” and now she was back. Instantly, his mind shifted gears towards her voice. He was ready to hear stories, look at photographs, give her a hug. Judging by her voice steadily making its way to his front door, Mumbo guessed she was excited. Maybe she had discovered something great on her adventure.

She burst through his doorway. Her hair was disheveled. 

Ah. Not excitement. Agitation. Her bag swung hard against her hip as she strode forward. A wolf with a red collar sniffed at the doorway before entering.

“Mumbo,” she said panting. “Gah. The one time I forget to charge my comm before leaving. Hah. Why do I do this to myself Mumbo?”

“I…don’t know? Pearl, take it easy. What’s got you so rushed? Please, sit.”

“No, I’m fine,” she waved away his attempt at pulling out a chair. “We’re just going to get up again and go to Xisuma’s anyway.”

“What? Pearl, what are you talking about? Are you hurt?” He started checking over her, hoping that whatever got her so agitated could be as easily fixed as a thorn stuck in her thumb. “Mumbo.” She grabbed his shoulders and stared him straight in the eye. “I need you to tell me everything about your encounter with the psychopomp.”

He saw the “Some time later” banner fall down and reveal the backside. Bright, thick letters: GO BACK TO START.

^^^^^

It kept going. Something he thought was over, something he thought only time had an interest in, kept going. Xisuma’s base was merely a background.  

A few blocks away, Pearl and Xisuma were wrapped in a lengthy conversation. The psychopomp. A new variation of dread cemented itself to his stomach lining the moment Pearl burst into his base and told him that she saw the psychopomp. He didn’t know how she was doing it, standing there and animated. By the looks of it, the past few days were nothing except travel for her, a draining process for anyone, but if anything, returning home gave her even more energy to talk about a topic that made Mumbo shrivel up just by thinking about it.

Pearl’s story was simple, not exaggerated, and its bluntness hooked his attention, tugged at it. Though, whenever a question was shot his way, usually a request for confirmation, he needed her to repeat herself. They were standing in Xisuma’s drawing room. Joel was there too. Both him and Xisuma were talking when Pearl and Mumbo burst in, and, understandably, the talk was put on hold in favor of the news. After catching wind of what was going on, he decided to stick around.

“I’m not keen on being left out of the loop again,” the new Hermit had said dryly.

So, there he sat off to the side, playing with the strings on his shirt, studying the ceiling and absorbing Pearl’s every word. There were stray bandages wrapped around his nails.

She gave her description of the Angel— black and purple wings, scaley skin, hidden face. She had gotten a much better look, and as she recounted the details Mumbo’s own mind started to fill in the gaps. Two legs and two arms, she said, and yes, Mumbo agreed, his mind finally shaving down the chaos that had previously been seen as a cacophony far too abstract to count. Head wings about the length of an arm and large hands, she said, and yes, Mumbo agreed again, he had gotten a good look as well, when it bent towards him, and reached out; quite large in every aspect, he wondered if its hand could wrap around his waist.

Xisuma scribbled notes down, a bullet list. Neither Mumbo nor Pearl could confidently say how many wings there were. Mumbo said too many and Pearl said maybe four, wilted like old spinach with feathers glued on.

“Did it try to speak with you, as it did with Mumbo?” Xisuma asked.

Pearl shook her head. “Not at all. It saw me and vamoosed. Real fast, too.”

“Well, it does have that in common.”

“I’m sure it’s the same entity. There’s no way it wasn’t the psychopomp.”

“I don’t doubt you at all Pearl. You saw what you saw. I’m just surprised you found it at all, and in such a state.”

 “Yeah, thank my dog. I would have never noticed without her.”

“You said your dog approached it calmly, yeah?”

“Mhm. She was curious. I thought it was a statue at first.” Pearl’s eyes suddenly started to water. She cleared her throat harshly and sniffed. “Sorry, just…tired from traveling.”

When a person went through a difficult patch in their life, they often took solace in finding others that went through the same story beat. Mumbo couldn’t find any comfort in sharing such an experience with Pearl. He saw how it had drained her to list out every detail of the encounter, to say that she saw something that never should have been seen in the first place. He would much rather be alone, the only player in the whole Overworld wearing a shirt that read “I saw a psychopomp. Please don’t ask me about it.”

He had to ask the question that was poking him in the side for the past hour. “Did you get a picture?”

Her hand drifted to the top of her bag.

“I didn’t want to. I thought, at first, that I did. Ha, I even daydreamed about it, still in the Overworld, just another mob. When I saw it, I…” She wet her lips. “It felt wrong to. Like taking a picture would hurt them. I’m sorry, I must sound bonkers.”

“No, it’s okay Pearl.” He put a hand on her shoulder, which didn’t feel remotely as comforting as he hoped.

She drew out her camera from her bag. “I couldn’t get a photo of the psychopomp, but I tried my best to get something.

Pearl’s camera was polaroid, the film already treated and ready to be seen seconds after clicking the shutter. Next to her camera was a wallet of sorts, a place to store photos and prevent bending.

She flicked through the photos like a deck of cards. Closeups of moss; a dozen or so photos of a frog posed; a ruined portal from a perspective Mumbo instantly knew she had to be laying down to get; a photo of her legs, half disappeared in a creek, the knees muddy. She went through them quickly, no comments for any of them.

The final two photos were much different. Very similar, both muddy ground. In the center of the mud patch was a footprint, the edges ragged as if made while running, bird like with too many digits. The next photo was similar, the difference being Pearl’s hand set in the center, incredibly tiny, swallowed by the print.

“For comparison,” she said.

“Hmm” Xisuma studied the photos. Mumbo and Pearl eagerly awaited his response. Maybe there was a secret admin thing that neither heard about before that could give them the answer.  Then, finally, “the footprint’s rather shallow.”

“It is?” Mumbo said. He took a closer look, “Oh yeah, I guess it is.” The depth of the footprint seemed to be more fitting for a player’s weight, not the behemoth they were talking about. Strange though, that was what Xisuma noticed first. “Is there, uh, anything else you can do with it?”

“It’s just a photo, Mumbo. Er—I don’t mean that it’s useless, Pearl, this is good to have…” He fidgeted with the polaroid edges. “I could tell you where the photo was taken if it was in the boundaries of Hermitcraft, but it wasn’t. Did you mark the coordinates?”

She nodded. “Yeah. It’s east of here. I can lead you there. We can nether travel.”

“No, you should rest first, please. The residual code trail is likely cold already, and it’s out of my range, so I wouldn’t be able to do much. I’m sorry, this might be all we can do.”

“How underwhelming,” Joel growled. Mumbo’s hearts jumped, he had completely forgotten the other Hermit was here. He grumbled something further under his breath, the tone begging for attention, and it worked, the trio turning their heads towards him.

“Anything else you’d like to add to the conversation, Joel?” Xisuma offered.

Joel sucked in air through his teeth. “It doesn’t make any sense,” He griped.

“We’re aware of that. This is uncharted territory for all of us. It’s hard to know the proper response.”

Joel finally turned around in his chair. “No, I mean, with how you’re explaining it, this doesn’t make any sense. Why are we talking about photos instead of the actual psychopomp? Look, I’ve been doing some research.”

“Research?” Mumbo was confused. How anyone could do research, clinical experiments and whatnot, on the current events was beyond him.

Joel waved his hand flippantly. “Okay, so, I’ve been reading a lot, that’s what. I have a big collection of mythology books at my base. All sorts of cultures there, and nearly everyone has some version of a psychopomp. There are plenty of versions out there, of which none match the physical description we have, they do have some, I guess you’d call them ‘behavioral’ similarities, such as, oh I don’t know: not directly murdering the person in need of reaping.”

Mumbo flinched. Murder. Such a harsh word, as if Grian was stolen.

“Wait,” Pearl said. “There’s no proof the Psychopomp killed Grian.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” He made a ‘how didn’t I think of that?’ gesture with a mock smile. Mumbo felt his stomach grow heavier. “When the Psychopomp arrived, Grian must have coincidentally gone through multiple organ failure in the span of three seconds.”

“Joel!” Xisuma chastised.

Joel ignored him. “You don’t find that weird?! Mumbo, you could see it. The thing physically trashed your place trying to escape. Across the entirety of Overworld history, no one has ever witnessed a psychopomp that could physically interact with us, but you happened to see one and now you’re telling me that it’s still here, just bloody hanging out?!”

Pearl became just as heated. “It was an unusual situation for Grian, so yeah, maybe the usual routine didn’t apply then.”

“Well, the psychopomp really mucked up the whole ‘routine’. What’s it still doing here then? Taking a vacation? I don’t buy it.”

“Are you calling Mumbo and I liars?” Pearl snapped.

The harshness in Pearl’s voice was like an icy bucket of water thrown on Joel’s fire. Instantly he dimmed, almost surprised by how angry she had become. He sighed heavily and sank further in his chair. “No. If that’s what you saw, I’ll believe you. Even if it doesn’t make any sense,” he grumbled.  

“Um,” Mumbo said. “Joel, I’m still a bit lost. Yeah, it doesn’t track completely with the books, but what other explanation can there be? I mean, it seems obvious.”

“Oh yeah? What about the timing?”

Xiusma lifted his head from where it was resting on his hand as he listened to Joel go on, intrigued.

“The timeline is this: Grian dies. He gets brought back to life perfectly fine. He stays perfectly fine for five whole days until the psychopomp decided to ruin everything.”

The rest of them blinked at him, waiting.

Joel shook his hands about, exasperated.  “You don’t find that weird?! Sure, I can accept supernatural forces making clerical errors, but it took five bloody days for them to notice. That’s not normal. I refuse to believe the Grim reaper operates on the Permit Office hours.”

“Then what are you implying?” Pearl questioned.

“Just a theory of mine, you know, something that makes actual sense. Grian was gone for a couple hours after dying. Why’d it take him so long to come back? Maybe in that span of time he talked with something, made a deal, and Grian didn’t hold up his end of the bargain. He ran out of time.”

“Hold it,” Mumbo said. “Grian said he didn’t remember anything before waking up in bed.”

“That’s what he told you.”

A flash of anger shot through Mumbo, to cover the fear welling up. He didn’t want to entertain that thought for a moment.  

“He would have told me about that—if-if that was actually true. It’s too farfetched. Besides, Grian wasn’t stupid enough to make a deal with some trickster.”

“He was dead, Mumbo, I think he had nothing left to lose.”

Xisuma broke in. “Alright, Joel, I think you’re getting ahead of yourself. I hear you, but you also have to admit that your theory has holes too. I understand that this is pretty tough to wrap our heads around. I don’t think there’s anything else we can do here.” He sighed and looked at Mumbo, then Pearl. “I’m sorry, I really am. It might be best to just leave this as a mystery.”

“A mystery that could have been easily solved with a code dive,” Joel muttered. Xisuma froze.

Pearl spoke slowly, a hidden anger in her voice. “Grian didn’t want a code dive. He wanted to protect his privacy.”

Joel got to his feet, the chair scraping against the floor, leaving marks. He spoke sardonically. “Oh, yeah, privacy, right. Thank goodness he kept that intact. Really served him well in the long run.”

His words were heavy stones falling into an already dangerous-to-cross river. Mumbo swore he heard a splash of air rushing to fill the empty space.

Pearl’s mouth was half open, shocked at what her good friend said. “Joel…”

All the vitriol brewing underneath the surface suddenly petered out. He finally heard what he just said.

“I…” Whatever Joel was about to say, he bit down, set his jaw and stalked out of the room. Mumbo briefly heard the front entrance swing open and slam close, the muffled sounds of an elytra being equipped and multiple fireworks launching soon after.

The Hermits didn’t say anything for a long time. It was that hushed stillness after watching a storm reluctantly pass by, the air electric and the sky gloomy.

Mumbo felt the anxiety permeating his skin, staining his clothing. He stole a glance at Xisuma. His visor was tinted and his hands were limp at his sides. Suddenly, like a robot coming to life, he turned to Pearl and spoke in a strained tone. “Thank you Pearl, for the update. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem like there is much else we can do. If you’ll excuse me, I have other things that need to be done.”

“Oh. Yeah, of course.” Pearl said. She didn’t make any protests at the admin’s sudden leaving, and Mumbo was not inclined to either.

They watched him leave out a different door, one that led deeper into his base.

“What the hell just happened?” Pearl whispered. Mumbo didn’t have an answer.

“Did you see what direction he went in?” she said, referring to Joel.

“Um, no, sorry, I didn’t. I would give him some time though.”

She huffed, and Mumbo couldn’t tell where her frustration was directed at.

“Mumbo, do you think this is how it’s going to be now? We just have to live our lives knowing the psychopomp is still out there?”

“I don’t see any other choice. Seems like it’s here to stay.”

She ran a hand through her hair, removing a few tangles, eyes flicking back and forth. “What if it’s trapped?”

“Trapped? Oh, like it can’t get back to where it needs to be?”

“Exactly. Something weird definitely happened to it when it came for Grian.” She snapped her fingers. “If it lost its ability to go home, then it’d make sense that I was able to find it and why it was in that state. Waiting for its…what would you call it? Family? Bosses? Regardless, it was waiting to go home.”           

“Do you think its kind could find it like that?”   

Her brow furrowed “I don’t know. Maybe that was all it could do. Just…wait.”

“Pearl, if you’re right, and I do believe you are right, then this whole situation became so much worse.”

“How so? If it’s just waiting, then it must be passive.”

“Well, yeah, it might be fine. But if it came to reap Grian’s soul, and it can’t go back…then what happened to him?”

The realization drew like curtains across Pearl’s face.

“Where is Grian?”

Chapter Text

Mumbo lay on his back in bed. The waning moon was up, and so was he. Tonight, he tried to pull a fast one on himself; He had a warm drink, read a book whose plot he already forgot, brought out clean sheets, the whole shebang. It did jack-all. The grief, usually staying pooled at his feet during the day dispersed itself across his entire body, his head and lungs soggy. The extra weight was like hosting extra people in his space, and he knew exactly who shared the space—Pearl, Xisuma, Joel. Scar was there too, out of sight, Mumbo couldn’t see what he was wearing. The lineup wasn’t surprising given the events of the day.

He didn’t know where to start. Right at the beginning sounded overdone, him on his own, in a time he now wished he could go back to; It was lonely diving back into his own thoughts repeatedly. On the other hand, the task of picking apart that short trip to Xisuma’s base was similarly overwhelming.

Pearl, Xisuma, and Joel stood frozen, the scene paused, him stupidly wishing that when it unpaused, they would say something different. Pearl saying she witnessed a shadow, Xisuma saying he had everything under control, and Joel saying nothing. Simple phrases, easy to unpack and then put back into storage.

One time a creeper snuck into his storage room while he was organizing and blew up a half dozen chests. Redstone, food, building blocks, and miscellaneous, a cacophonic rug of mess. For a good few minutes he stared at the mess, inundated with choices on what to clean up first. No one was around to help him laugh at the situation.

As if on cue, the people in his head burst open as well, spewing hundreds of items on his floor. Pearl fell apart in large stone chunks. Xisuma cracked open like thin ice. Joel went off with a bang. Scar said behind Mumbo that he was leaving to feed the cats.

Mumbo hadn’t seen Grian’s cats in ages. Often enough, with Grian as a constant neighbor, Maui and Pearl were spotted lazing outside. As roamers, they weren’t concerned one bit by the strange architecture, they treated it all as one big cat tree.  

Years ago, Maui, somehow, got himself atop a light post, far too high off the ground to jump down safely. Grian had fretted like a new mother, scared to pillar up in case Maui got scared and jumped. Eventually, with the help of banners knotted into a net, Maui landed safely, barely placing his paws on solid ground before Grian snatched him up and cooed into his fur. The danger having passed, Boatem got to work lightly teasing Grian over how flustered he got. Bashful, Grian had hid his face in Maui’s side.  

A strange warmth he hadn’t felt in ages welled up. That was years ago and yet Mumbo remembered it clear as day.

And it hurt, like a pain created right before a hand is burnt by residual heat. He tucked the source away, which became a magma block at the bottom of an ocean ravine, bubbling steadily but remaining where it was.

As a rule, Mumbo kept the area around his bed tidy, save for the overhead lamp switch and a journal to jot down late-night redstone ideas. Currently, there were many exceptions to that rule; his nightstand was cluttered, and he was sure that blindly reaching down over the side of the bed would yield similar results. The place really could use tidying up. For once, he was grateful for the clutter. Scrounging in the dark would surely reward him with something to worry between his hands. He found something in seconds. A light weight something, thin and metal.

He lifted the object to catch the weak moonlight. A tiny hourglass attached to a metal chain.

“Oh. You.”

Of course. Of course, when he tried his best to distract himself, he found the one thing that brought it all front and center.

He never liked sand timers. Redstone was his expertise so obviously he went with redstone clocks without fail. Having sand as a time keeper was like working against nature, gravity taunting and pulling harder at the sand—He kept it around solely because it was Grian’s.

He found it around Grian’s neck. After he checked Grian’s wrist for a pulse—and hated the answer he got—he put his hand to Grian’s neck, and there it was, a small chain looped tight. The clasp was nearly fused shut. A link was weak and had broken when he tugged on it.

Without thinking he pocketed it. Cleo arrived, and the rest of the day and days after became a haze. Later, while doing laundry, it was drawn out of his pocket, tossed onto the nightstand, where it had remained forgotten until now. There was no possibility of giving it away, though Mumbo had no clue what he wanted with it. The necklace wasn’t something he felt inclined to wear to remember his friend since Mumbo had never seen Grian wear such a thing before.             

Such an odd design for a necklace too. The chain was long and the hourglass on the end heavy. Hermits typically stayed away from jewelry. Rings dented while using tools and dangling necklaces were prone to catching on things at the worst time. A necklace like this would have to stay hidden under a shirt, so what was the point of wearing it? If it had a special emotional attachment, why did Mumbo never hear about it? The imaginary scene was so clear, Grian rushing up to Mumbo waist deep in a project to push the necklace an inch from the redstoner’s face and tell him exactly why he was proud of it.

Grian wasn’t one to keep secrets. He showed off his trinket collection with the same gravitas as a museum collector. If he wanted to, his pranks could go entirely blameless, but instead he basked in the reveal that it was indeed him, bowing with a cheeky grin. He liked to take credit for his ideas, to laugh loud enough for everyone to hear, boisterous, infectious, breathless, his laugh, so loud—

Mumbo squeezed his eyes tight. He lingered in place for a while. Eventually, his eyes opened, stinging in the weak bluish tint of his bedroom. His arm was sore but he didn’t dare lower it and bring the necklace closer to his chest.

There was nothing he could do to ever hear that laugh again.

He let the repeated phrases swirling in his head gain volume, drowning out older memories.   

“Mumbo, do you think this is how it’s going to be now?” Pearl said.

He didn’t see any other option.

“Unfortunately there doesn’t seem like there is much else we can do.” Xisuma said.

If that was how it had to be, then maybe he could manage.

“He ran out of time,” Joel said.  

Mumbo was holding an hourglass in his hand.

“OH!” He sat bolt upright in bed. Wide-eyed, hair mussed up, he threw himself out of bed, clutching the necklace in a shaking vise grip.

“Ha, there it is! I didn’t think it was possible anymore—I had an actual thought!”

The hourglass twirled innocently, starkly contrasting the new connotation Mumbo was following.

“I have the stupidest, thickest, smartest brain and I finally connected the dots!”

The sudden mania was dizzying, intoxicating. He swore the floorboards were humming with the same frequency as his hearts. The revelation knocked the wind out of him.

“What now?” He asked the thing in his hand.

Truth be told, Mumbo wasn’t happy with how the dots were connecting, since they led to a painful conclusion much different than the agreed upon interpretation.  

“Uh, could you disconnect, please?”

Standing in the dim of his bedroom, Mumbo was terrified. Joel’s theory wasn’t foolproof, and Mumbo still didn’t believe in most of the points. Joel thought the psychopomp a trickster, a murderer, but Mumbo was there with it. An incessant, horrifying experience that often replayed itself in nightmares and yet it wasn’t a monster to him. There was grief in the psychopomp’s every movement, not malice. It did what it had to, running away.

It did what it had to, giving Grian this timer.

The hairs on his arms stood up as the dots further cemented their connections, carved the story into stone signs.

Grian with a timer around his neck, Grian running out of time.

Grian knowing that he had a limited life.

Mumbo felt sick. His best friend spent his last moments alive with Mumbo, drinking tea and answering stupid questions.

Grian was given five days to say goodbye. He never did.

Not a single hint. Or, perhaps, he couldn’t at all—no matter the reason, Grian couldn’t say goodbye, but he still tried to scream out with his eyes, pleading silently as they clinked cups of tea for Mumbo to do…something; for Mumbo to say, “You know I love you, right?,” and break the curse. If only bad endings could be so easily avoided.

Mumbo clutched the hourglass to his chest and tears slipped down his cheeks.

He grasped at straws, searched his memories for something to contradict himself—a blurry recollection of seeing it in season nine, or as far back as season six, it on a shelf years prior, and only recently did the Hermit indulge in wearing it. Nothing came up, though Mumbo gave it his all, his imagination wasn’t strong enough to come up with false memories.

He watched the grains fall through the pinched waist, one by one. In the five or so minutes Mumbo spiraled, the hourglass filled the bottom half.

There was not enough sand for five days’ worth of time.

The palpable relief nearly knocked him over. His knees felt weak. Thank the Gods, the spiraling was halted by such a trivial factoid. It was impossible, no way of it being possible, no way for Grian to have suffered during his last five days alive.

And one less complication moved him further away from a fear that his stupid brain concocted: that Grian was trapped. Yes, the psychopomp was still here. Maybe that was their nature, hiding out in the world like statues, waiting to spirit away unique souls. He could believe that.

“That’s it.”

Now he could go back to sleep.

Uninvited, a cumbersome disappointment filled his chest.

“That’s it?”

He’d smothered the potential house fire with a simple blanket, tried to make it so that even the embers died out, but now he was left in the dark once again. When was the last time he got excited? That ‘click!’, as he came to call it, where the final piece of redstone was laid out and the machine that was a concept hours ago came to life, Gods he’d nearly forgotten how that felt.

There wasn’t a clear workaround regarding the hourglass’s time limit. Then again, a lack of a clear workaround usually didn’t deter him in the slightest. He was always dreaming of ways to do his work, not just his redstone, in an out-of-the-box way. Mumbo solved puzzles in the same fashion people rode roller coasters, ups and downs, the dread over his latest stupidest idea fueling his determination. Before he knew it, he had done it, his stupidest idea turning into one of his best yet.

“You make things complicated, Mumbo, it’s your best quality,” Grian had said before, in a tone filled with genuine warmth.

What in the Gods name was he doing? By keeping his emotions compact and “safe”, he kept himself from being Mumbo.

“Grian, I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

This was about Grian, who was scared when he left, who might still be lost, who could possibly—and Mumbo never wanted to let go of that ‘possibly’—be safe once Mumbo delved deeper into the thicket and found a piece of closure for them both.   

“Right then. I’m doing this, and that’s final.”

He didn’t know exactly what was to come of this—though, when did he ever? The first piece of evidence was literally in the palm of his hand, and if anything were to be gained from detective novels, the next clue lay inside the first.

Lighting a lantern, he examined each link on the chain for an inscribed insignia or phrase. He rubbed the glass repeatedly with his shirt, trying to rid it of smudged fingerprints that covered up potential near invisible etchings on the glass. No clues. The hourglass was frustratingly bare.

He growled. “What am I supposed to do with this? It’s a simplified clock!”

Mumbo stopped his restless pacing. He knew exactly who to go to.

^^^^

“This better be good,” Bdubs grumbled. Leaning on his half opened front door, he glared bleary daggers at Mumbo. Both were in their pajamas and Bdubs’ head was swallowed by a trailing stocking cap. In his hand was a comm, the screen filled with the two dozen or so messages whispered to him over the past twenty minutes.

Mumbo gave him the most placating smile he could muster.

Everyone knew tip to tail how much Bdubs revered sleep. Rousing the terraformer out of bed was not something to sneeze at. Sleep crust was in the corner of his squinting eyes and his frown stretched down to his chin. Mumbo had about thirty seconds before the door slammed in his face.

“It’s late—” Mumbo began.

“Correct.”

“—But I need your help. Your expertise, your wisdom,” He said, trying to appeal to Bdubs’ vocabulary. “I have a question about clocks.”

“If you need a clock, I’d be happy to give you one. Then you’ll finally know what time it is.”

“No, that’s not—I have this,” Mumbo held up the necklace. Bdubs’s attention was mildly piqued as the hourglass twirled on the end. “It has something to do with Grian.”         

The glare he shot Mumbo’s way let up for a moment. Twisting his mouth to one side, he drummed his fingers on the door jamb. With one clean motion he flicked the crust out of the corners of his eyes. “Alright alright. Come on in.” The door was left hanging open.

Mumbo stepped inside.

^^^^

With Mumbo sat at the drawing room table, Bdubs stood and scrutinized every detail of the necklace. He hemmed and hawed while examining it at various angles. Holding it to his ear he tapped the glass. Attentively, he watched the sand pour through the bottleneck. The light caught the glass and glowed when he held it near the lantern. Finally, he nodded once and turned to Mumbo, who had been anxiously awaiting a conclusion.

“Yep. This is an hourglass.”

Mumbo sighed and dragged his hand down his face. “I…figured. Uh, do you notice anything else? Anything strange?”

Bdubs shrugged. “Nothing. It’s basic. What, is there something wrong with it?”

Mumbo slumped forward, hands dangling over his head. The wooden countertop cooled his forehead. “No. I just hoped you’d be able to see,” he spun his hands in circles. “Anything. A clue.”

What was he expecting to hear? That Bdubs would say “Ah, yes, I see that the length is exactly 2.5 inches, a clear indication that this means such and such and such…”. He was chasing after a two month old trail, the redstone line stretching far away from its power source, unable to do anything. He was used to following trails, color coordinating his thoughts with dyed wool or stained glass, following them as easy as some people run a brush through their hair. With redstone he at least had an inkling of what needed to happen, the mechanisms needed to carry out a certain task already coming to mind before he even got to his redstone storage chests.

This was very far away from his usual haunts, further addled by the apprehension of receiving an uncomfortable answer.

“For Grian,” he whispered to himself. A reminder, of sorts.

Across from him, Bdubs raised his eyebrows in confusion.

“I doubt this is going to lead you to buried treasure.”

“I know.”

“It’s a necklace.”

“It belonged to him.”

Bdubs blinked slowly as he twirled the glass between his fingers. He cast a quick glance at the clock on the wall. Something in him relented, and he said, “Okay, there’s one more thing I can do. I won’t promise anything, though. Follow me.”

Mumbo sat up and ran a hand through his hair.

“What’s the plan?”

“Magnification!”

Bdubs led the way up a tight staircase, down a hallway and into his workshop. A lantern hanging from the ceiling lit the entire room, narrow and intimate. A large window rested above the desk flush with the far wall. The room was dedicated to clocks, either partially or fully completed. Sawdust and beeswax perfumed the air. Gold clocks with additions wired in, some acting as automatic calendars, shone on the wall, mini suns. They ticked as one.

“Wow,” Mumbo said in awe.

“Yeah,” Bdubs said, placing his hands on his hips, proud. “I tinker here and there when I can.”

Sitting down on a stool, he cleared the desk and brought out a leather bundle. Inside clacked an assortment of metal tools, fit for minute tinkering. A pair of needle nose pilers, an itty bitty screwdriver, a petite chisel that was no doubt sharpened to the same extent as a sword. Digging around in the bag, he drew out a pair of dark spectacles, with an attachment to flick mini-magnifying lenses over the frame.

Setting them atop the bridge of his nose, he leaned closer towards the hanging lantern and peered at the hourglass surface, using a small rag to clean off fingerprints. He worked methodically.

“So, Grian gave you this,” Bdubs said, breaking the silence.

“Uh, sort of. I found it…” Bdubs didn’t question further.

“Didn’t think he was a jewelry sort of guy.”

“Me neither. I’ve never seen him wear it.”

Mumbo wrung his hands. He felt watched with all the clock faces on either side.

“I didn’t know you had this many clocks. You’ve built up quite the collection over the years.”

“Oh this is just from this year.”

 “Wha—How? Wait, you don’t take your clocks with you when we move?”

“Nope, I leave em behind. If I held on to them there would be clutter.”

“Gods, you are superhuman. I mean, you even have a healthy sleep schedule! This must have taken hours.”

Bdubs shrugged. “Maybe it does. I don’t know, I kinda lose myself in the work. And it’s not always little ol me on his lonesome. I get plenty of nosybodies talking to me while I tinker.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Mhm. Tango talks to me about redstone jargon. Etho’s lived forever so he tells me...yeah he would tell me all sorts of stories.” Bdubs hands stilled for a moment. “And with Skizz here he comes over often. I swear, he talks about the most random stuff. He should compete in the long jump for how fast he can switch topics”

“I…I know what you mean.”

There were not enough slots in a chest to store how many times Mumbo worked bent over a redstone machine, Grian jumping around, babbling on about whatever he wanted to say. In earlier seasons, when Grian was relatively lean and lightweight, he would literally perch atop Mumbo, like a bird. Mumbo bore the weight and kept working, seemingly unfazed, since he didn’t want to break whatever sort of scene was taking place, and half his mind from then on was focused on the pose they made. How lucky he was.

Mumbo never had to wish for a friend like Grian. It happened anyway, their friendship, so naturally, despite Mumbo being utterly confused about the whole happenstance.

Because Mumbo was a spoon. His combat skills left a lot to be desired. He didn’t always understand people. When he heard briefly about the new Hermit, and how close he had decided to set up base next to Mumbo, there was an indulgent daydream about him coming up to the new member and wowing him with a grand first impression. That was not the case, not in the slightest, but after that fateful meeting, Mumbo had a very silly hope: that Grian was the same type of fool, that they shared traits that Mumbo had yet to fully explore. Grian exploded with confidence, a firework whose sparks lit other fuses. He tried anything and everything he thought of, using a stubbornness to succeed that worked perfectly within Hermitcraft. And yet, if Grian was somber, lackluster, he went to Mumbo, the spoon, the least likely person to be chosen for an apocalypse buddy, and he perched on Mumbo’s shoulders. Of all the people in Hermitcraft, he chose Mumbo to lean against.  

Watching his reflection on a shiny clock face, Mumbo’s throat squeezed tight.

“Mumbo.”

Mumbo startled. “Ah-wh-what?”

“Did you hear me?”

“Oh, uh, no, I was,” He looked at the clocks surrounding him. “Lost in time, I guess.”

“Well, I didn’t find squat. Just fingerprints. Except, I want to look at the sand, uh, closer.” He pulled the chisel out of the bundle. The flat edge glinted. “How important is this to you?”

It was clear what Bdubs was asking to do. Put the chisel point against the base, a pinhole scar, no more rubbing the pads of his fingers across the smooth glass, no more repetitive hush of sand falling. To find the next clue, the next potential clue, he had to break open the last connection to Grian’s death.

“Do what you need to do.”

With a curt nod, Bdubs used the chisel point to puncture a small hole near the base. The hole was neat, no stray spiderweb cracks at the edges. A pinch of sand grew into a mini mountain on the desktop. Using the tip of his index, he scooped up a pinch of sand, and examined it.

“So, what do you see off with it? Is there something mixed in with it or—”

Bdubs licked his finger.

“Why the hell did you do that.”

He grimaced at the taste. “Hm. It doesn’t have that saltiness from beach sand, nor the chalkiness from lake beds. I swear I know this…” He snapped his fingers. “End stone!”

“And you know what end stone tastes like, how?”

“Don’t ask stupid questions! Ask why this thing has ground up end stone instead of sand. It’s not that hard to get sand, so why bother going through the trouble?”

“Maybe Grian got the dust as a memento when he killed the Ender Dragon for the first time.”

“Yeah, but earlier you said that you’ve never seen him wear it. I’m skeptical that you didn’t notice it. You and him practically live in each other’s walls.” He winced. “Uh, poor metaphor, sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Mumbo said. His hands fell from his head to hang limply at his sides. The hourglass didn’t have regular sand in it—so what? Bdubs had a point, it simply being a memento was unlikely; Grian displayed the Dragon’s egg as if it was his own, he wouldn’t find much connection to a piece of jewelry. And still, Mumbo would have heard about it; they shared their lives, they knew each other.

Standing upright and bone tired, Mumbo sighed for exactly nine seconds; he counted, the ticking clocks were starting to bother him.

“I wish there was more I could do,” Bdubs dusted his hands off. “I’m more adept with clocks, not timers.”

“I’m…sorry, Bdubs, really. I woke you up for such a stupid thing. Gods, I’m an absolute fool, I thought that you’d know everything about clocks and that you’d know…like, clock mythology; Gods it sounds even dumber out loud.”

“Oh yeah yeah clock mythology. I have a book on that. Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

Mumbo lifted his face out of his hands and blinked. “You have—"

“Mumbo, if it can be named, there’s a book written about it. That is one of the fundamental rules of the Universe. C’mon, my library is this way.” He sprung out of his seat and wove past Mumbo.

The library was similar to the workshop: fitted for one and jam packed with books. More so a closet, in Mumbo’s opinion. Bdubs grabbed a golden tome off a high shelf and spread it open on the carpet. “There’s no seating, so get down here.” Bdubs grabbed the end of Mumbo’s sleep shirt sleeve and tugged him down. They laid on their stomachs, arms propping them up. Given they were still in their pajamas, it was impossible not to be reminded of Boatem sleepovers, where little sleeping took place.  His hearts cinched, strained after being tugged in so many directions over the past hour. It felt silly.

“This doesn’t feel very sleuth-y.”

“Oh hush.” The tome cracked open, the spine already broken after years of flipping through the pages. Colorful illustrations and vignettes or clockwork and adventures jumped out at them. He flipped to the section labeled “timers”. An hourglass drawing took up half the left page, blocks of curly script dotted here and there. Mumbo could hardly read the handwriting, so Bdubs summarized.

“It says here the end stone dust can be enchanted.”

His brow furrowed. “That’s impossible—you can only do it with tools or armor.” He thought of nonsensical scenarios of food items somehow getting thorns or bane of arthropods. “We would have seen an enchantment glow.”

Bdubs shrugged. “With this sort of magic, it doesn’t stick around long. And you can enchant anything, but most have never even heard of it since it needs stolen code to work.”

A chill went over Mumbo’s arms. “Stolen code?”

“Yeah, nasty stuff. No Admin worth their salt would do this. It’s a scumbag thing to do. The theft makes the source ‘dead’ and that means all sorts of glitches can get in and mess you up big time.”

“So, this definitely isn’t something Grian made.”

“Not a chance. No way he could. He must have found it. Maybe it’s a good thing he didn’t wear it much.”

He thought of how the necklace clasp was fused; how tight it was around Grian’s neck.

“Yeah,” he said shakily. He rubbed at his throat. “Ok. So, the sand likely got enchanted. With what though?”

Bdubs scanned the page. “With stolen code, you have a lot of options. You can even give it potions effects if you wanted to, like slowness. You can make a tiny timer hold lots of hours, even days.”

Suddenly, Mumbo really needed to get on his knees and not have the floor press up against his chest. He needed more air between his ribs. He clutched the front of his shirt into a tight fist.

Hours. Even days. Time contained in inches. The dots clicked like a lock sliding closed. He wondered how heavy it had felt around Grian’s neck.

It wasn’t an error that prompted the psychopomp to come for Grian. This was purposeful. The Universe knew he died and couldn’t go on, that was the order of things. Then, inexplicably, it gave him a sliver of life anyway, fully intending to rip it away again.

Rip it away like a pesky weed. Such a horrible mess. And the psychopomp itself, with that look of want, with that running away like Hell was on its heels, possibly a statue again, with Grian’s soul leeching fear into the stone.

Was it hurting just the same?

“…Why…?”

“Mumbo?” Bdubs sat up. “What’s going on?”

A hollow scream cut through. It came from outside, shrill enough to reach the moon.

“Oh my goodness—"

Bdubs got to his feet and yelled at the wall where the noise came from and shook his fist. “Quiet you! You’re interpreting things!” He turned to Mumbo, huffy. “I swear, I built them a beautiful stable and they show thanks by screaming like the dead.”

“Who screams like the dead?!”

“Skeleton horses.” He said, as if it was normal. He crossed his arms at Mumbo’s shock. “Look, after you take care of the riders they’re peaceful and I couldn’t abandon them! They’re easy to take care of and mostly quiet creatures. Something out there spooked them, I guess.” He opened the book up to the previous page.

“Ah…what could possibly scare a skeleton horse?”

Bdubs closed his book. “That’s a real good question, Mumbo. A real good question.”

Another blood curdling scream.

“Something’s up.” Bdubs was off like a shot, Mumbo stumbling after him, not used to the layout of his home.

Mumbo felt a bit hysterical over the turn of events. They were going to confront the cause of such a scream, and they were going to do it in their pajamas. His head was still foggy, as if full of sand.

Bdubs didn’t waste time by getting armor or a sword and shield. Instead, he grabbed the hilt of an iron shovel leaning against the back door and burst outside on the stoop, barefoot. Mumbo peeked over his shoulder.

The outside was dark, cut into pieces by the straight lines of the light spilling from the doorway. The grass shimmered, shadows darting through like field mice.

“Uh, hello?” Mumbo called out meekly. The darkness swallowed his voice.

“WHO GOES THERE?” Bdubs belted, wielding his shovel more threateningly than most wielded a sword.

The outside responded with silence.

“Oooh if it’s that horse murderer Joel…”

“Bdubs, mate, I highly doubt Joel is anywhere near here at this time of night.”

“You never know with that man,” Bdubs grumbled. “C’mon. I gotta go check on them.” He jumped off the stoop and darted towards the stable, not looking back.

“I—” he sighed. “I have to follow you, don’t I?” he said to himself since Bdubs was already gone. He grabbed a lantern nearby, so he didn’t have to charge forward in the dark.

One thing after another. He took a deep breath.

He and his silly pajamas stepped onto the grass and followed.

^^^^

Earlier that same night.

A stranger flying over Bdubs’ area might not notice the scattered buildings amid the stylized trees.  The buildings were drops on paint on a canvas, the negative space being the open fields, and the trees making up the whole. He stayed under the trees, swiftly making his way through and not sparing a moment to swivel his head and enjoy the many scenes Bdubs crafted. The terraforming was done with the same care as a painter. One could only imagine how Bdubs’ mind worked, how the pen strokes on his sketchpad translated to the placement of a branch or tree knot.

He had missed this, walking in other people’s imaginations.

I will miss this. I’m not staying long.

These elevated feelings, billowing like the trees, were only distractions.

The effort in getting this far was incredibly taxing on its own. Over the past hours he squashed and stretched himself to better hide in the darkest shadows and corners of various builds. His hands ached from gripping the rough cobblestone, the stress forcing them into half curled shapes. The wind was picking up as the world cooled, whistling through loose feathers. The shadows were his only aid, and he ducked into them like they were warm blankets.

The clouds were thickening, deepening the gloom. With a Watcher’s eyes he had no need of light to navigate. The world cast shadows but they could not obscure anything from him. Over time, he had learned the boundaries and limits of his sight. As he crouched near a wide trunk, the dark hollow of an animal den glimmered a pitch darker than the surroundings.

He kept his head steady, still, and let his eyes unspool. They probed the catacombic twists of the burrow, the roots breaking through the walls like half submerged people desperate to escape. It narrowed, the home ending but the hole continuing, the straw wide fissure created by running water, pointing true south, the easiest path, and then, the rhizome; where the tree roots tied knots with fellow trees, creating pathways more intricate than players could ever achieve. And he saw this all in the pixel wide gap between root and dirt, saw this all and how much further he could go, miles under the surface, stretching all the way to anyone’s base.

He pulled back. He looked at his hands; Thin hands, curled into fists with no spaces in between, the bones rubbing against each other with papery skin as cushion. As he calmed himself, his eyes wound back into place.

Getting horribly distracted when in a delicate stressful situation—it was old hat at this point. He dug his hands into his arms; he couldn’t throw them in the dirt, he would leave marks, and this was a silent mission.

We get it, you can look at things really good. Now how about using that to actually see what’s in front of you?

He crept in a wide perimeter of Bdubs’s base. While a strategy was not something physically visible, the best way to infiltrate while maintaining the most cover would present itself once he saw all the options. In the end, he chose to enter it in the standard fashion, the entrance. The path was rocky, with less chance of leaving footprints, and the trees were dense enough to give cover.

In the distance, he saw a waterfall. Strangely, he heard no waterfall. He waited for the plop of water to reach his ears. Nothing. Blood frothed in his veins, but that wasn’t the sound of the waterfall. The headwings stretched automatically, receiving cups, stilling the feathers and begging for sound to reach the divot in his head where his ears were. Nothing still. He scratched the divots, opening them wider. A waterfall needed to make sound, and he needed to hear it.

Why can’t I…? Something’s wrong—something’s growing inside of me and drowning it all.

Blindly, he sprang forward. The branches on the ground snapped like bones and they were silent to him, he just wanted to hear the water, the calming water.

He knelt at the edge. Thrust his hand in.

Clink.

Slowly, his eyes wound tighter, turning from a tangled mess to a neat spindle. The fuzzy details became sharper, became full of meaning, and he saw the ingenuity of the waterfall. A river of white and blue glass panes made up the body, with periodically puffing campfires creating the illusion of froth. From a distance, it was near perfect mimicry.

He stared for a long time.

Incredible. I convinced myself I went deaf in under five seconds. Oh dear. And I abandoned my quiet plan in less time, too. How am I not dead yet?

He sat back on his heels. The wind in the trees imitated waves. Did Bdubs know? Did he know that despite not giving the waterfall sound, the trees would provide it anyway? Was he content with the knowledge that some things didn’t need all the senses to be enjoyed? If so, he was very clever. Cleverer than most.

He went back to the path, extra care being given to complete stealth as if that could make up for his panic moments prior. Embarrassment was shrugged off to the best of his ability, which was to say, not that well. It was a hopelessly complicated emotion that clouded his judgement, and he needed everything he had, pitiful as it was, to do this. The waterfall was another piece of evidence supporting why he needed to take such a risk. He couldn’t rely on his senses anymore. Namely: his sense of time.

A clock gave time meaning. It resisted time slipping by as long as its owner kept a reliable eye on it. His biggest fear was getting stuck again, losing track of time. A physical reminder was crucial to avoid that fear.

Bdubs notably kept a clock in every room of his base. And he was known to tinker as well, designing beautiful hand-crafted clocks that had special functions, some as calendars were able to track the days without the input of someone check-marking boxes. Since he had such a collection, the tinkerer would likely not notice one missing.

And it would be easy to steal. His tinkering den was shown off in mini tours plenty of times, and a window looking it was large enough for a thin boned hand to slip in and grab a clock. There was very little chance of Bdubs being in said room at such an hour. Anything short of a house fire wouldn’t press the Hermit to get out of bed.

As he went from shadow to shadow, a bothersome daydream took root. A type of musing he hadn’t had in a long time, ideas for builds. His own waterfall, higher up, atop the rocky cliff of his fishing community, the mouth a delta for the river. He would make his bluer, made of vibrant blue materials, enough to line his callouses.

Look at your hands. What are they going to do?

They were going to steal and never return.

Best to move on before he thought more about it. He rubbed to fingers together. Perfectly smooth, no callouses, no fingerprints to leave behind. He wondered how well the clock would fit inside his palm. Something snug, preferably, not bulky. It didn’t need to look fancy, just needed to work.

Eating up the distance between trees rapidly, he came closer to Bdubs’ main home. Bdubs built his base scattered, his storage system spread out among the villas so that he always had a reason to visit. The clock room, if he remembered correctly, was in the main house, where Bdubs slept. He was getting far too close to a Hermit than comfort allowed, but then again, comfort was no longer a privilege he indulged in.

The windows shone faintly yellow. The Hermits were accustomed to never being in the full dark. Complete darkness meant mobs could spawn, so they all learned to strategically place glow lichen or other subtle light sources around their rooms. The outside was fair game, since no one wanted an array of smoky torches covering their entire base. The second story window leading into Bdubs workshop was left especially bright, like a beacon.

Everyone’s building lighthouses these days.

He imagined a silhouette perking their head up in the golden window. Anyone, it didn’t matter that it was Bdubs’ workshop, anyone could be there. They could pop their head up, tilt their head as they saw his Watcher hands dully reflecting light, and they would speak with the amicability reserved for strangers: “What are you doing here? Don’t you know what lighthouses are?”

He knew. He knew very well.

The tree cover did not press itself against Bdubs’ base. A stretch of painfully open land filled the distance. The lighthouse transformed; a searchlight, blaring and stunning. Maybe in his absence the redstoners found a way to make light send a redstone signal, and the moment he touched the beam an alarm would sound, a pit would open beneath him, a tiger trap. Bars would be thrown over the top, with spaces in between for the Hermits to stare down and look at the monster they caught. They would see him, and he would boil alive.

He dug his left hand into his right till the glassy covering cracked.

Blimey, this is exactly why you need a clock.

He folded his wings against him like a book. Calm, unassuming, everything in place; he had practiced for many hours, treating wings as puzzle pieces, finding the best way to adjust.

Dip in, dip out. Fast-like.

Ready to dash, his muscles tensed. No time to think.

He heard a scream. A scraping of stones together, as though the creature was forcing its lungs out its throat. A sound meant to scare the life out of anyone nearby.

The long pitch froze him solid. It seemed to ring around him like a rusty bell. Then it cut off, and, the spell having dropped, he bolted.

That was not a player scream. It was a warning, a hunt beginning, he was being hunted in open land.

Wings in. He needed his wings tucked in. There was sharp pain near where the appendages sprouted, and they wouldn’t fold properly, as if there were more than before. He couldn’t hide in the trees anymore, his wings would scrape the trunks and draw arrows pointing straight to him. He needed a burrow, a chimera sized burrow, where light didn’t invade.

There, a small, hutched building. A stable, with big doors that hid the horses inside. He sprinted to it, the latch nearly ripping off its hinges as he lifted it and stole inside.

The stall door was tall, and if he crouched, he was completely hidden. Strangely, the smell of manure was absent entirely. He shifted to see what sort of unfortunate horse shared the stall with him.

Empty sockets in a long bony face stared back. The ribs hung down like dripstone. A skeleton horse. The upset beast shook its head and screamed.

He had run right towards the source of the noise.

Maybe you really do need to get your ears checked.

Before he could change plans, the door to Bdubs home burst open.

“WHO GOES THERE?”

Bdubs was awake. In record time he had gotten out of bed and was battle ready. In minutes he would approach the stalls, and based on the direction of his voice, the stables were in easy sight the whole time. Escape meant being seen.

From the quick glance he got when approaching the stable, there were four stalls, his being the one furthest from the base. Bdubs was an efficient Hermit, he would check every stall.

That meant he should run. Now. Better to be seen as a dart of shadow and endure the fleeting burns than to be stuck in the stable with Bdubs staring wide eyed with his hand on the open door.

Bdubs was talking to himself. No, his senses corrected. Another voice.

“We should go back. You’re not even wearing shoes!”

Mumbo. Inexplicably, Mumbo.

He could stand to be seen by any other Hermit, but Mumbo. He remembered that fear, that total lack of recognition, that sword pointed towards his heart. He couldn’t open up that wound once more. He couldn’t be seen at all. Mumbo didn’t deserve to relive it.

Fear turned his bones into lead weights. Disappear, he just wanted to disappear. Turn his whole body into a spool and fall down the cracks, down to the very bedrock; There he would find another crack, near invisible in width, where he could slip though and go into the void, never to be seen by even himself again.

Useless. Useless. Do something you idiot!

Mumbo and Bdubs’ footsteps stopped. They stood in front of the first stall door. The hinges squealed as it opened.  The skeleton horse inside chuffed a curt hello. The light from a lantern carried on a hoop bleed through the cracks in the wood.

“Nothing,” Bdubs remarked.

They approached the second stall.

He heard tense muscles grip weapons that would easily pin his wings down and he heard the whites of their scared eyes. The door swung open.

“Not this one either.”

His feathers were breathing. The Gods themselves could hear him.

The latch to the third door flipped up, and the blade of a shovel rested against the door, ready to swing it open. “You ready?” Bdubs asked Mumbo.

“Y-yeah.”

“Just hold the lantern steady. This is giving me the creeps.”

His blood, sluggish before, surged with panic, running past his temple in screeching bursts, like how the wind sounds when on a swing.

Whush

Whush.

Whush.

This was unbearable. This was going to kill him. They, whether the put the effort in or not, were going to kill him.

The door to the third stall swung open, singing with creaks.

“Wha—Joel?!”

“I KNEW IT!”

“Get that light out of my face, you’re gonna blind me,” Joel said.

In the fourth stall, he froze in amber. A snapshot memory, unbidden rose up to greet him—Pearl watching eagerly as he taught her how to breathe near silently during games of hide and seek. “If your breathing is silent, you’re invisible.” Then, hiding; the same room, different hidey-holes. The seeker, Scar came into the room minutes later and found Grian’s spot. Helping his friend to his feet, he asked. “Pearl’s the only one left. Any idea where she might be?” Grian cocked his head and said “Well…” He listened intently for the soft curls of exhales, inhales. He heard nothing. She was invisible. “Not a clue.” The game continued.

No breathing. Not a single thing breathing.

The lantern in Mumbo’s hand creaked as it was lowered from Joel’s face. “What are you doing here, man?”

“Oh, well…you know…”

“…No! we don’t know!” Bdubs exclaimed. “Why are you hiding in here like a spook? You better not be messing with my horses!”

“Jeez, give me some depth here, maybe I just wanted to visit the horses, that’s all.”

“In the middle of the night?” Mumbo was incredulous.

“Why not?”

“You’re doing something devious, I just know it,” Bdubs accused.

Joel scoffed. “Wow. You’re seriously wounding me here. I’m great with horses.”

“There isn’t a horse loving bone in your body.”

“You don’t know that,” Joel retorted. “I could descend from a very long line of horse…farmers. You never know. I feel a real special connection to these horses.”

“You only like them because they’re already dead!”

“Exactly! This horse is dead.” He punctuated each word with a nail tapping against an exposed rib, a nail hammering a coffin lid. “Fine and dandy and dead. Apparently the Universe has no complaints here. Bit hypocritical if you ask me. If there is any rhyme or reason to this whole mess, I’m going to find it.” His voice was determined, almost scary

“I think it’s just here,” Mumbo said. “As a mob, no other reason.”

“Then why is it dead in the first place?” he snapped. “That doesn’t make any sense. What, is it supposed to be here to show that we’re alive? Because that’s a stupid reason, because this thing to me is alive, and it breaks a bunch of what we’ve assumed are pretty hard-set rules. It’s alive, and Grian isn’t. The Universe went out of its way to fix their little “mix-up”, and I don’t think it ever needed to in the first place! Why was it such a stickler for the rules—it’s not like the Universe got its hands tied behind it’s back.”

Don’t think that the Universe is the only thing out there.

The Universe was, for the most part, engaged in providing its players with a life full of adventure. The Universe cared about its players and their patronage certainly gave them power, but the main fuel was the spirit of adventure—the story. The Watchers were of a similar vein, albeit, they fed off a different genre: the tragedy.

The Watchers were doing exactly what they wanted with him, watching their puppet play tragedy.

It was in his design. To not remember anything except that he lost something—people, pets, a home, his life—and so he stuffed his few short years on Hermitcraft with as much wholeness as his soul could bear. And now, it was dead weight. It made him stupid, stupid enough to reanimate a broken hope that begged to join in on the conversation over in the next stall. They were right there, with voices that pumped heat into the air.

Just one more. Just this once.

The light seeping through the cracks in the wall started to blind him.

Mumbo cleared his throat. His monstrous hands shrank back. “Joel, I’m still confused. What are you suggesting we do?”

Bdubs interjected “I don’t want you doing anything weird to my horses.”

“Your horses are going to be fine, keep your hat on. Just want a closer look, that’s all. Here, check this out.” The faint noise of tapping on bone reached his ears, as if Joel was playing xylophone on the horse’s exposed ribs. The horse screamed.

“Ta-da.”

“Don’t do that—its going to bite your head off at this rate!”

“Come on. I bet Mumbo thinks it’s cool, eh?”

“You have no idea what you’re doing either.’ Mumbo said, half thought out.

The straw crinkled as Joel stiffened up. A silent conversation passed between the two. “You…whatever. I can’t think in these conditions, you’ve ruined it.”

Joel’s footsteps were leaving, and so was his voice.

That was probably the last time he would ever hear that voice. Same with Bdubs.

And Mumbo.

He wanted to hold onto it, search the knots in the wooden walls and see if their intonation had seeped in, collect those voices and thread them into his feathers. Yes, he wanted to stay there for a long time and drink up the voices of people he needed to grieve for.

“Oh and by the way,” Joel called over his shoulder, crisp, clear. “Have fun taking care of the raccoon or whatever I heard in the next stall.”

The fourth stall door burst open, and the skeleton horse’s scream chased at his heels.

^^^^

Mumbo watched the receding silhouette of Joel grow dimmer as he walked further from the lantern. The lack of sleep made his vision fuzzy at the edges. He didn’t know how to balance two terrifying conversations with Joel. Enough was on his plate already.

He wanted his friends back. Not this snarky grief wearing their skins. And not memories, something real, he pleaded. Joel lived so close to Mumbo, and Mumbo had no idea how to approach, seemingly worlds apart.

So lost in his discouragement, he barely took in what Joel tossed over his shoulder, his form of goodbye. He heard an upheave of something massive slam against the fourth stall door. Instinctively he crouched and ducked his head. Bdubs did the same. The wall of air from the thing running past was immense and layered. By the time he lifted his head there was nothing to be seen, only the sound of something scraping against the tree trunks.

Bdubs got to his feet in seconds, skidding to the open stall door and looking inside. Joel ran over to them, his detached persona abandoned.

“Bloody hell what was that!” Joel yelled, running over. “What happened?”

“The horse is still here.” Bdubs reported. “Did either of you see what ran?”

Joel shook his head.

“I didn’t” Mumbo said. “It was big, I think. Really fast…”

“The psychopomp,” Joel breathed.

“The death thing?” Bdubs asked.

“Yeah, sure, the death thing. It’s back on Hermitcraft.”

“It’s what?!”

“I-It was near the border of Hermitcraft,” Mumbo corrected. “There’s no way that was the psychopomp.”

“What else could it be?”

“No, it just can’t. There’s no way…”

Mumbo felt horribly off balance, and he grew frightened of—almost wanted—the possibility of something to rush at him, to give him reason to throw up his arms in defense and shut his eyes against clawing doubts.

He remembered it coming to take Grian so clearly. He remembered each facet of the chaos; the steel wool speech, the claw marks on the tile, the shadows rippling on the wall as its wings thrashed—that horrifying thought that it wanted to talk to him.

He didn’t know what it wanted anymore; if it was in control of the hurt it was causing him.

And now, to realize it had been so close, so quiet. Invisible, or maybe Mumbo was going completely blind inside his own head, unable to trust every sense including his own damn threat response. He wanted to pin its wings down—not to hurt it but to hold it in place and ask why.

Bdubs hand falling on his shoulder was a ground wire.

“The thing’s ginormous. No way could it fit in a tiny stall.”

Mumbo swallowed a glob of spit as scratchy as sand and pictured the hourglass, so much time in such a delicate encasement.

“No, it can’t be…” he murmured.

“A stray phantom maybe? I did hear wings.”

Joel, seeing Mumbo in such disarray, backed down. Clearly unsatisfied by the phantom explanation, he still bit his lips closed and didn’t make a snarky comment.

“So…the psychopomp’s still here.” Bdubs said.

“Yeah.” Joel crossed his arms. “Pretty sure we’ll all hear about it tomorrow in a Hermit meeting. Won’t that be fun. No one knows why it’s here.”

“I can’t believe it…” He shivered. “I’m going back inside.” With that, he left. The door to Bdubs house remained open, inviting.

A glint caught Mumbo’s eye. A chill went over him when he found the source. Joel held a netherite axe armed to the teeth with enchantments, and leaned the head of the weapon leisurely against his side. He seemed lost in thought, staring out at the trees.

“Have you been up all night?”

“I sleep fine, don’t worry yourself to death over me, jeez," he snapped. He stomped off, the glint of his axe the last thing visible before the night swallowed the details.

Mumbo didn't have the reaction time to call or follow after him. He was stunned stupid. Another opportunity dead around his feet. 

He felt like a ghost himself wandering back to Bdubs’ house. With just a lantern, the darkness surrounded him completely, providing the illusion he was not on Hermitcraft. 

Bdubs was waiting by the door. He accepted the lantern handed to him and hung it back on the chain it was taken from.              

“What’d you two talk about?”

“Nothing…” He scrolled through a list of ill-fitting adjectives. “…Nothing. He’s gone now, so you can get back to sleep.”

Bdubs yawned wide. “That sounds really nice. Oh, before I forget,” He pulled the hourglass from his nightshirt pocket and handed it over. “Figured you’d want to keep it.”

Without the sand it was near weightless in his palm. It was strange seeing a thing bereft of sound, having grown used to the hush of falling sand.

“Thank you, Bdubs. For everything. I wouldn’t be able to do it without you.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t.” He smiled.

“Those magnifying glasses are pretty neat.”

“Thanks, they’re actually my back up pair.”

“What happened to your first pair?”

“Lent them to Etho. And it’s been ages. The least he could do was tell me what for, but he’s been tight lipped about, well, everything.”

“When was this?”

Bdubs looked up, as if consulting an imaginary calendar. “Ohhh lets see… two months ago”

Click! He had no idea what clicked together but they sure did make a sound.

“Two months. You sure?”

“You know I don’t forget the days, Mumbo, I’m sharper than that. Yeah, it’s been that long and he hasn’t returned them. He has my favorite pair of pliers too.”

“Hey, I have an idea. I’ll get the tools for you as a way of showing thanks for going along with me so late at night.”

“That’d be awesome, Mumbo. Thanks! Oh, and um, see if you can talk to him. He’s been quiet lately, more than usual.”

“Of course. Thanks again for your help. Good night.”

“Heh, more like ‘good morning’, technically.” He waved goodbye and clicked the door shut.

The best course of action would be to light a torch and walk back to collapse in bed. He didn’t do that. Not quite yet. He looked up at the sky. The clouds were thinning. Despite being filled with millions of burning stars, his face was cool. Some partially forgotten space fact he heard from Scar was likely the reason. He needed that coolness, a way to gloss over the bubbling anxiety, but porous enough to get his thoughts out.

He pulled out a torch and lit it. The walk back was going to be a lot less exciting than the walk here. Every part of him was drained, even his moustache drooped lower than usual.

If this was what finding ‘solace’ was, then Mumbo was terrified beyond belief. He dug the heels of his hands against his sockets.

“For Grian, for Grian, I am doing this for Grian.”

Before he left he visited the stables again. He poked his head in the fourth stall. The resident stared back at him, visibly spooked, and that was all he could see. He would have no idea how injured it was, if at all, and no idea how to help.

The skeleton horse approached him, tilting its head, curious. He put out a hand and the horse pressed the flat, rough top of its skull against his palm. He didn’t know exactly what he was doing, not at all, but the horse seemed to appreciate the gesture.

Chapter Text

Panting without exhaling, his mouth was sealed. Running had left him shaking. His body lagged behind, and as he paced in circles, he formed spirals of many shapes and sizes. The air was going up and down, not out and in, a convection style breathing, gaining heat and speed as it looped endlessly.

He wanted tea. A comforting symbol of antiquity, the last thing he was able to enjoy before the end. Tea would teleport him back in time, where, in Mumbo’s kitchen, he would set the teacup down and say “Mumbo, I have something to tell you.”

His ribs doubled in number and squeezed as tight as a corset. Who was he kidding: that could never happen. He wanted tea, hot and aromatic, to melt away the wax face he had imposed upon himself.

The atmosphere was felt on the skin. A good type of air closed off and away from prying eyes. Contained by four sturdy walls and a ceiling above. It smelled like mushrooms. Breathing was allowing oneself to become a part of the room, to belong even in unfamiliar areas. Everywhere was hostile due to his selfish lungs.

Only a brief visit. That was what he promised.  Dip in, dip out, with Xisuma’s admin magic making him think better. Well, it sure made him think more. If he could laugh, everyone would hear it, a breathy, hysterical, keen. A clock, how simple was that?

It was supposed to be simple. Bdubs should have been asleep, so should have Joel and Mumbo been. Instead, they were awake and loosely tossed across Hermitcraft. Given how strange that interaction had been, a Hermit could be anywhere, loitering like a watchdog. They had been so close to him, a thin stable wall between him and a deluge of painful yearning. Their voices, yelling periodically, had sounded muted. What they had said was slowly being lost, but he remembered clearly how often Joel’s teeth clacked together.

He wondered if their hair had changed. Perhaps that skittering noise earlier that scraped against his heart with thick fingernails was just someone brushing dangling hair from their face. He was coated in hair and feathers, all of them out of place.

Reaching up, tentatively, he grabbed hold of a matted section of mosslike hair. Grease and stale rainwater left it bedraggled. He still could feel the length of it underneath the grime. The exact same length as it had been for the past seven years. The one bit of rock-solid security he was given, and he hated it with all his being.

He thought of ripping it out; it would grow back, but for a few blissful minutes he could pretend he was at home in front of the bathroom mirror being spontaneous. A bit shorter around the sides, maybe an undercut, what’s the harm? Tugging on his hair scratched an itch that permeated bone, he was about to tighten his grip and yank when he felt the blood vessels twitch too. Turning his eyes inward, he saw the firm fisherman like knots tying hair to arteries.

You want to change yourself; you hurt yourself. They thought of everything.     

He relented. The floor was white, and he didn’t want to get it dirty.  

There was a ceiling above him, but his inner ear told him he was dangling by puppet strings on a spire, set to fall if the wind so desired. The dizziness was overwhelming, made worse by how his eyes wouldn’t swim alongside the dizziness like regular eyes did. They retained their role as blunt objects.

He slid into Child’s pose. The floor was unaccommodating towards his knobby elbows and backwards knees; he had to press himself flush with the floor. The pressure applied to his forehead was cool. Bit by bit, the bones in his wings went to sleep. Child’s pose was a wonder; it was the pose Grian did on bad days when dragging himself out of bed was a monumental task.

C’mon, I just gotta drag myself out.  

Where was he? He backtracked. A clock started this whole mess. A single item screwed him over so badly he never wanted to look at a clock again. Grian wasn’t one to go back on his plans. Currently, he was not that strong. He liked to think he was stubborn, and he was, towards himself, but he lacked the persistence when it was him and only him.

If I could just get someone to listen…

He cracked upwards from Child’s pose.

No, really, where am I?   

Stark overhead lights buzzed in a large square room. Windowless, the only exit was a stairwell encased in an off-white pillar set in the dead center. A chair made of scaffolding sat in the center, looking like a photograph with a few crucial somethings missing.

The waiting room of the Permit office. Of all the places. This was not good. Its curated blandness was dangerous. The flat undecorated walls gave no purchase for a mind to latch onto; made it so easy to slip away.

Crouching, he unspooled his eyes and sent them up to the lobby. A lamp on the front desk was on, cutting through the full darkness. Still nighttime, then. The glass in the windows was spotless and firm, not shaking in wind which could be used to disguise the sound of travel. The clouds had cleared up earlier. Waning, the moon gave enough light to see by and touched the tops of trees and bases.

The picture he saw wasn’t ideal. A calm night like this was endless. People could be up. Pearl loved a wanning moon, saying that the Moon needed sleep just like them and that its waning phases were it meandering through its routine for bed. Any redstoner had a ready-fire argument that if the moon was giving off this much light, it was practically day, and they could work on their projects instead of sleeping. Some liked night walks, since the air smelled different and clean at night, as if the floating pollen decided to curl up in the flowers again and the stars seemed to lend their otherworldly perfume to the world below.

He slammed his head against the wall. Why did he ever think it was a good idea to travel at night? It didn’t matter if it was day or night, the Hermits were never ones to adhere to schedules. Didn’t he know his family at all?

Grian’s family, he corrected. It was hard to hold onto that connection when they didn’t recognize him at all. Not that he wanted them to, even. Regarding Grian as a dead thing, that was another one of his plans that he sure as hell was going to maintain better than the others.

The dread was waking up his wings, flapping nervously, and his tongue, riddled with fissures from lack of use and fresh air, twisted itself around his teeth, searching for a way out. He pitied it, and how it, like his wings grew more and more sentient each day. Soon enough that was all he was going to be, wasn’t he? Just a conglomeration of organs no longer working in sync, too focused on getting out.

His neck jerked his head up all on its own and he frantically cast out his eyes again towards the lobby. The scene was the same. While hours had passed in the basement it was just minutes for the rest of the world. He felt like shit, but he didn’t lose track of time, didn’t stagnate.

Hooray. Brills.

Keeping within reach of the walls, he trailed a talon across the spongy surface, cautious enough to not leave a scratch. Pacing helped. His cloak of feathers trailed behind like a gaggle of excited nosybodies, waiting for the sound of a bulb sputtering to life. How pitiful that he had so desperately wanted someone’s presence—not their vision, just their presence, their comfort—that he was imagining his own feathers coming to life and actually being interested in his affairs.

And then he flip-flopped, thought he knew with one hundred percent certainty that he never wanted to see another player’s soul again. What’s more, the basement changed too, a safe haven, a prison; sometimes he sped past the opening to the stairwell with each circuit and other times he dawdled, thinking about the world above.  

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He used to be very good at choosing promptly and staying loyal to his choice. Grian was stubborn, both a flaw and favorable trait considering his life. There didn’t seem to be more options than before present now, but they were murky and vague, he could hardly think of the consequences.

Why was nothing real anymore? Was he in control of his wings or not? Did he even want to be? He stared at the stupid blank walls and dreamt about shedding his three dimensions and becoming a painting, where from then on he would only consist of interpretations of people passing by.

Get away, please.

Stuttering to a halt, he ripped out a feather along his collarbone. He knew, intuitively, that it wouldn’t grow back.

The feather’s barb was poorly made. He didn’t have a pocket in his robe, nor could he leave it behind, so he buried it in his patchy skin like it was a wooden signpost in hard packed clay. The pain was calming. Not a good sign.

He couldn’t blink or sigh or laugh. His only vestiges of a living thing were a pain reaction and determined, albeit creaky, movement. Not much to work with. Then again, his plan, the one he loved to abandon apparently, was created because he knew a life such as this couldn’t rely solely on his sense. But a clock would have done little, considering how he was now. Keeping track of days was useless when there was nothing to make life distinct.

So, if keeping track of time was pointless, then perhaps adhering to a goal was the better route, provided that the goal was something more complex than “not fucking up again.” His usual aspirations of building mega bases or farms were impossible, nor were idyllic scenes of him raising animals that calmly rested their chin in his hands. Even if he could get his hands on a fishing rod it would prove too tiny and complex for his dexterity.

He had no inventory.

Inventory wasn’t just about the ability to hold items. Not quite an organ, it was considered an integral part of a player, for it gave them purpose. Or, some argued, inventory was an opportunity to find and fulfill that purpose. With inventory came a drive to create and the flow Grian had so often fallen into gladly, became a sort of background to it, instrumental song that didn’t crowd out his thoughts and harmonized with his current mood; an allegro beat as he ran or flew and a soothing lullaby as he drifted off to sleep. Inventory was music. Without it, life became anonymous. Once, he heard it described as knowing that if you were here, a home was there too.

Something he thought was fused to life itself was lost. It was clear to see the long-standing consequences. No inventory, no chance of making a home.

Best to keep traveling before his grief sent another wave barreling at him. Traveling where no player had before was the only route he saw as logical. Being seen made the shame so tangibly alive it burned. A never-ending trip, for however “long” the Watchers demanded. He had to find a way to pass the time. He was never going to do the Watcher’s job again, sitting on some secluded peak and watching over the same chunk of land forevermore. Being without inventory might have robbed him of a player purpose but he swore to the Gods he wasn’t going to adopt the Watcher’s “purpose” so readily. There was still a dull ember of mettle, maybe it was just fear, really, fear over stagnating and fully losing his mind, but he clung to it, for it seemed his only ounce of protection.

His pacing slowed as his mind adjusted to the idea of this new life. He would drift from place to place, long enough to admire, and nothing more. A life of skimming, not observing.

And then what?

Just travel. It sounded a lot like a clock.

His body didn’t allow calluses to form, so every step would feel brand new, disrupting any sense of familiarity. He couldn’t focus on travel if the travel remained the same, that made it all the easier for the brain to grow tired and demand rest. What to do then?

I…used to draw.

Set next to the windows where Maui and Pearl rested in the sunbeams was a slanted desk where he used to rest his sketchbooks and elbows on. Grian’s imagination came to life on those pages. The one near universal trait of the Hermits was sketching before building mega bases, and those books were often the first thing packed when getting ready to leave ship. They couldn’t take their builds with them, though they could bring the seed of it tucked under their arms. When having guests over, the books lining shelves were a common pitfall, a Hermit taking a sketchbook down and flipping through, slowly melting into a criss cross on the floor, the illustrator leaning over their shoulder, reminiscing together as the dinner remained half-made.

 “Oh, I remember this. It turned out way different.”

“Yeah, who would’ve guessed?”

The drawings never really came out in perfect coherence to the vision, but some took that in stride. Oftentimes, a complication with materials or a stray joke from someone else changed the whole aesthetic, till the builder sat back to admire their work and wondered how it could have ever turned out differently. The joy of being a player was that they never could guess where life was going. That alone kept most going. Right now, it threatened to choke him.

His hands were bent but sturdy enough to hold a stick of charcoal. Collecting charcoal would be his one chore, dragging fallen logs to still burning fires of ruined portals or chipping away at exposed coal on mountainsides and in ravines. With nothing else to do, he’d figure out a way to fashion it into usable sticks.

He limped along. If he were to draw, then it wouldn’t be from his imagination. Part of drawing from the imagination was that he could eventually build it, so anything done now would turn mocking and reminiscent. Besides, he had enough of catering to the whims of his own mind lately. The world was vast, plenty of serene biomes without player involvement. There were so many biomes to explore, he might not have visited them all yet. He could sketch them. Years passing as he searched for a tulip field or an old growth pine taiga, him relying on his sketchbook and stick of charcoal to keep him sane as he sketched the golden hours, moving on when either the trees or the clouds gave ample cover. As long as there were no players around, he would be safe.

It would take me far away from Hermitcraft.

He thought of the whites of Mumbo’s eyes. The length of Pearl’s hair. The bite in Joel’s voice.

There’s nothing holding you back.  

It was decided then. A new task was his new life. Time to get a book. Fate might have been genuinely pitying him, because there were empty books aplenty behind the front desk. A lot of them were for show.

Drifting languidly, he went up the stairs. Away, away, he was going away once he finished this simple errand and then he could finally put the grief outside himself, for he needed the space to inter this new goal. A book was so much easier to take care of than himself. While grimy, his feathers were thick enough to protect it from rain, and as he waited for golden hour he would clutch it to his chest like a stuffed animal, pretending it had a heartbeat. His one allotted memorabilia of a player. Something to keep him sane while also not dredging up his old life.

He crawled over the metal railings that everyone treated as hurdles and swept past the wide desk that Grian had on more than one occasion carved letters and faces into using the end of a paperclip. He was careful.

A floor to ceiling shelving unit, filled haphazardly with books, greeted him placidly. There was a tad of both care and disorder to the lot; they weren’t arranged by color or size, but their placement had an artistic quality to them, drawing the eye to each corner, no area overladen with one color or any bare spots. It took effort to make something look lived in.

He paused as he stared at the rainbow. Which color to take? What surprised him most was the unexpected presumption that he wanted a specific color. The dye was eventually going to fade through wear and tear. The only requirement was for it to be empty, so he trailed his gaze over the spines, looking for books whose pages remained slim.

On the spine of one, a fingerprint pressed itself deep into the leather. Must have been placed there just seconds after being crafted, when the item was still warm and pliable. An echo of a person. Inevitably, as the book aged, the leather would crack, the fingerprint shattering in half. He didn’t want to take that book. Besides, it triggered his sense of pareidolia, the fingerprint resembling a drooping crescent eye, as if whatever they touched, they saw.

Faces and eyes took him back. He was no longer in the Permit office. There was just the book and the eye.

One of his first lessons with the Watchers was how touch was linked to sight. It started out as simple mazes in pitch darkness, him having to use his outstretched hands to find the walls and secret passageways. Then, after they gave him their eyes, he was taught how to see the very limits of texture and volume, far beyond what a player was capable of. Watcher eyes were wells, deep and cavernous. They presented him with an assortment of items, stolen from the Overworld, and they told him to see.

The first object was a coral fan. Bright pink brain coral. He held it at arm’s length, tilting his head to try and trigger his eyes to show him something new. The Watcher grew impatient when nothing happened.

YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG. HERE. Grabbing his wrist, it encased his palm and guided the fan towards his wide blown pupil. PRESS IN.

He couldn’t refuse. The coral fan disturbed the water in his eye like a stone thrown in a pond. They held his elbows and wrists firmly. It dug inside, spreading through his limitless socket, combing the well to look at him. If he didn’t retaliate, it would consume him. So, he looked. The millions of cones at the base of his retina lined themselves up across the fan like metal toy soldiers. He swore his skull bent to better seal his eyes to the fan, and his pupil stretched with the same comfort as an open wound. He learned every pixel of that fan from all directions. Either tears of bits of sclera dribbled out when they finally released their grip and he pulled it out like a weed.

GOOD JOB, they had congratulated, and with his shoulders trembling, he had felt a glow of pride.

He pressed an index finger against the leather spine. The leather was full of veins full of dye. The color was #014421. His knees became weak, and he stumbled back. The walls of his sockets burned. The leather was green. Not a number. He may be trapped in a body designed in their image but Gods surrounding, he was not going to start thinking like them. The Watchers used numbers, never language, to create their worlds, and that was why they failed to recreate anything meaningful. Without a story to tell, their realm was lifeless, the only purpose being to surveil a world they envied beyond words or numbers.

It had been so natural, his brain providing the number before the name. The bookshelf swayed and all he could see were floating numbers, their patterns like lyrics. #7c0a02 #4169e1 #ffef00 #ff43a4

You’re getting worse.

He pleaded against reality. How could he be getting worse? He was trying, wasn’t he? He couldn’t draw like this. His form altered its function, and his mangled Watcher body was being taken over by a Watcher perspective.

No. No, please. The first one was blue. And then red…I think. Was the third yellow or pink?

If he couldn’t perceive reality correctly then surely the Overworld code would take notice and finally boot him off the dimension.

He had to stay in the Overworld. He would rather fade out of existence than return to the Watcher’s realm of emotionless language.

Bleeding back into focus, the Permit office returned. His teeth gnawed loosely on the side of his tongue. Accidentally, he bit down too hard; a scab was already forming as he swallowed the urge to spit. His whole body seemed covered in scabs, whereas instead of blood right underneath there were loose strings. Threads of code, he assumed, barely surprised or worried. He knew he wasn’t holding it together well already, no need to create a physical reminder.

The Permit office looked different. The glass doors were glowing with dawn light.

Hours had passed. They felt like minutes.

The green leather book, angled halfway off the shelf, clattered to the floor as he pulled away, dazed. The golden hour filtered through the glass doors made something so bland as a faux parking lot a graphic example of living. The lot was empty, no one built faux cars but they had spun in circles with their arms outstretched and walked across the white painted lines like they were balance beams hundreds of blocks in the air. That was so long ago but with the sunlight it looked the same. It would be nice to sketch.

The sound of a firework screamed across the roof, whistling as it dipped low and Cub, his elytra snapping shut, stuck the landing. He saw Cub’s lips form the words, right then, with an expression of tired reluctance, staring at his feet.

The syrupy morning air hindered him as he lurched over the desk and threw himself down the stairs. In a brief freefall, his wings snapped open, cracking the walls in a desperate bid to fly. He fell with no grace whatsoever. But his goal was to get out of sight, and he succeeded, for Cub opened the door nonchalantly. The Hermit audibly paused at the entrance, and Cub’s lack of sound failed to cover up the scrabbling of talons across the basement floor.

“Scar?”

His body felt leaden, clawing its way out of the stairwell mouth, each step a molar.

Go away. Get away.

The basement remained infuriatingly barren. There was nowhere to hide. The only spot was to hide directly behind the pillar, and that would only prolong the inevitable.

Cub’s sigh reverberated through a feathered chest. His neat, black shoes clicked; heel-toe, heel-toe—Cub was the only Hermit with decent posture and stride.

He was afraid to unspool his eyes. They felt loose, like the tight weave he had spent his whole life swaddled in before was fraying. Surely if he strained himself, even though ethereal, his eyes would plop to the ground, useless. Instead, he used his ears. It was hard since dread was causing an awful ringing sound right at the base of his eardrum. Cub’s footsteps behind the front desk. A small pop from his knee as he bent down and picked up the fallen book. The book slid back into place like inserting a key. A pause.

“Scar, am I really going to have to go down there?”

There was no answer. Cub was going to find him.

His back was pressed to the wall. He shivered, not from cold, but from heat. The ends of his threads were as frayed and electric as live wires. A normal player couldn’t see those. No player deserved contact with harsh and exposed Watcher code. In a horribly impulsive act, he pinched a thread wound across his knuckles and peeled. It was like scratching an itch. The hand underneath was different. Same thin bones, but the texture…

Days after the coral fan lesson, when he still rubbed at his eyes and told the Watchers he thought they were too big, they showed him a strange item in a checkerboard pattern. The colors were matte black and magenta he thought at first glance, but as the time went on he knew he was looking at brand new colors. To regular eyes, the checkerboard patten, and any block that wore it, was invisible to regular eyes. It was supposed to be a cactus. When the Watchers had stolen a bit of code from the Overworld to recreate it in their realm, the cactus lost its skin. Seeing it then, he had felt desolate, since the cactus was still alive, yet without its own identity to keep company with.

His hand carried that same checkerboard pattern.

“Scar, are you down there?”

I wonder…

He tugged harder. It came away in orange peel curls. Course grey skin fell away. A few shakes loosened the weave on each minute feather, and one good tug shucked it completely off. His wings remained, so did his eye wells, they were his skeleton. A steadfast component of his, unfortunately.

Cub was walking down the stairs. “You don’t need to hide, man,” he said to his brother. “It’s not like you really can, down there. What’s going on? Haven’t seen you in a while.”

Hurry. Hurry!

The code strings, having been stripped from their home, didn’t tremble like piano guts or guitar strings; they were lifeless. The air, which had a texture, albeit invisible, of its own, shied away from the removal as if it were contagious. There was a layer of nothing between him and the world. He felt deliriously solaced with that comfort the brain gives the body right after throwing up.

Now a structureless lump, the texture code was incomprehensible to look at. He bunched it up and slid it underneath a newly de-textured wing. Compact and neat.

He forced himself still. It was agonizing, for he realized he hadn’t been perfectly still in quite a while. The wind was always in his feathers or his hands idly flexed. The fear of stagnating left him jittery, to stop the unconscious preventions of that fear coming to life was excruciating.

A second later, Cub turned the corner.

The Hermit looked straight at him, and seemed disappointed, because there was nothing there. His wrists sank deeper into his coat pockets as he slumped, his good posture forgone. A bit of his cheek dimpled as he chewed on the inside of his mouth.

Hello Cub. Sorry you can’t say hello back. Please leave.

His head was buzzing. There were so many details on Cub’s face. He focused on the unable to replicate folds of a player’s identity, his eyes darting about like frantic insects. Cub was dawdling and it hurt to stay immobile. The removal left a full body ache.

Cub sighed again. Players did that a lot, apparently, not realizing what a luxury it was.

Achingly hesitant, Cub accepted what he saw. “Just check your comm, please,” he said, despite no one being there. Maybe he had been wanting to say that for a while.

He left.

That worked. I don’t believe it.

Firstly, he shook out his wings, the feathers gasping for movement, seemingly their form of oxygen. The lump of texture code fell out as well. Apparently they weren’t as lifeless as first thought, since they had coalesced into a sort of cloak. Ready to be worn if he ever desired, though he couldn’t think of a reason. He thought of just leaving it there.

It occurred to him that no one could see him in the slightest. No particles caused by invisibility could subtly give him away. The lights passed through him; he cast no shadow. The whole world opened up.

Being invisible was a conscious daydream of practically every person. The What if no one saw me? was as common as dreams of unaided flight or shapeshifting.  Being unobserved removed consequences, they thought. Spying, stealing, getting close to skittish wildlife, it was all possible and enjoyable.

What people never understood was how being invisible went both ways. He knew, with his servitude as a Watcher, how acknowledging that no one saw—no one cared—was inviting a little maggot to live deep within.

And spectators couldn’t draw.

Another lesson from the Watchers: that the world changed when it felt it wasn’t being observed. When he first was told this, he thought it meant that an object moved in some unquantifiable way, a static block suddenly coming to life. His imagination was still rampant back then. Now, himself, unobservable, he looked around the room he was in. The walls were made of mushrooms, in a state of alive and dead. The first perceived “cleanliness” of the waiting room was counteracted by the mildewy smell. It was unnerving. The intense overhead lights were a headache in a bottle to look at, while also spaced far enough apart that they decorated the walls with peaked shadows growing like pillars of mold. The chair’s back was not flush with the wall. Sitting in it was guaranteed to make the short hair on one’s arm stand up with that pervasive foreboding sense that something was waiting right behind their exposed neck. It looked uncomfortable, too.

Quirking his head to the left, the chair titled but revealed nothing else. An enigma, it was. A single chair became an entrancing monument to his old life. He made that chair and made the Hermits sit in it and wait.

Why? Why had he built this?

I don’t remember the point of it. I can’t see it.

The room really was barren of everything.

He thought about the parking lot. There was something important about it. All he could come up with was that it lacked cars, so it was a rather useless parking lot.

Things changed when not being observed, both outwards and inwards. Everything looked different now, his imagination no longer left notes in the margins about what he saw, it was all flat and unnoteworthy. This was a familiar feeling he hoped never to relive.

Taking off his skin took more away from him than realized. He could only remember nicknames and how purposefully each Hermit said “Him”.

Oh, please don’t be permanent. I didn’t mean to make a mistake.

Why was this so painful. Was it the grief?

A wave hit him solidly. It nearly capsized him. Nausea rose up swiftly.

Oh, why’d I have to bring that up?

He missed the Hermits. There was comfort in their spontaneous meetups, knowing that his presence wasn’t a bother and how they never flinched when he held their hand because it had become a natural fact that he was a part of their lives. That connection was gone forever. There was a reason he needed to leave and never return, why it had been a crucial component of his very first plan—dip in, dip out—the Hermits were grief stained and that grief hollowed him out. That hollowness encased him in amber for so long, and he promised he wouldn’t again, for it scared him.

He stared at his revolting checkerboard self.

I have to wait. Just until I get out of Hermitcraft.

He couldn’t bear taking it on now only to take it back off once off of Hermitcraft. This wasn’t a rain jacket. He would remain untextured till he was out. He picked up the old skin. Having tucked it snuggly under a wing, he shook slightly to prove it was secure enough.

For when you’re out of here. Then… you’ll just figure it out from there.

The warmth of the sun hitting the tarmac made the air smooth and round, perfect for a freshly woken up mind. He felt tired. There seemed to be more steps than usual; slippery too. Once above ground, his ears popped. He swayed. Cub worked in the side room.

Daringly, he peered in.

He could tell that the last thing Cub did before leaving his base was get dressed. His clothes hadn’t settled against him yet, so he ended up looking disheveled. He must have eaten breakfast and combed his hair before changing, like he was still debating over whether to get back in bed. He wasn’t changing into his Permit office clothes. Rather, he was packing them away.

Wooden hangers were dangling on a repurposed coat rack. Each hanger held either a pair of slacks or an official looking dress shirt. Ties as red as tongues hung loosely over the white shirts, a pair of sunglasses snagged on the collar of one.

Keeping the Permit office wardrobe at base made sense. That way no one forgot to wear their uniform. Walking through the Permit office doors and getting dressed was similar to putting on armor. It was comforting.

Cub’s comm lay face up on the counter. Two conversations were visible.

Cub whispered to Skizz: I’ll drop off the uniform today.

Skizz whispered to Cub: Wha?

Skizz whispered to Cub: Oh. Right. Thanks man.

Cub whispered to Scar: I’m coming over to drop off your Poe clothes. Be There.

Cub whispered to Scar: Do you want to keep Grian’s?

Cub whispered to Scar: just answer. Please.

Cub pulled off the final teal shirt. The black tie was snug under the collar. Across the embroidered name tag, the pad of his thumb traced the letters.

Slight tremors and a choking feeling caused his feathers to rasp like sheaves of damp paper. Cub looked up, confused.

Wrenching himself away, he wove past the front desk and narrowly missed colliding head on with the metal railing. Pausing in front of the doors, he realized how small the entrance was.

How did I get through before?

That doesn’t matter. Just go.

He was outside.

People were moving around. They moved around quite fast. Did he used to be that fast? It was ridiculous how large his home used to be. This was an ecosystem. For a long time his world consisted of the area that his feet occupied. He was a speck of dirt on an ever-changing embroidered blanket. There was nothing he could add.

Well, there was one thing to take. A bit of a ritual, he supposed. Something to finally cut the bond between him and Hermitcraft and Grian. He was finally going to wake up to reality.  

Not a Watcher, not a player. Something else entirely.

Chapter Text

Skeuomorph: a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were necessary in the original.

Mumbo sat up in bed, pinching the bridge of his nose. With a dusty mind that did not get enough sleep last night in the slightest, he counted to fifteen. The maximum output strength from a redstone torch was fifteen. That many lengths, that many opportunities, to power a redstone lamp. Stretching his thoughts out into a perfect line, he powered them one by one.

He was awake.

It was midmorning.

…

Okay, he didn’t have that many transcribable thoughts. The rest was too vague or just his consciousness’ equivalent of a big red arrow pointing at areas he’d rather avoid.

His comm rested on his nightstand. At the ripe hour of 3:28, he had sent Etho a message, a ramble about potentially visiting later at Etho’s base. The response back was at a more appropriate hour, and the alert was the reason Mumbo woke up in the first place. He kept forgetting to set his alarm clock.

Etho whispered to you: What for?

Neuroticism, Mumbo thought of replying, if he was being entirely truthful, but he didn’t know how to spell that correctly.

The events from last night/really early morning bled through as he tossed rumpled blankets askew. Last night, Bdubs mentioned leaving some tools for Etho, tools Etho supposedly used to work on something small. This all happened two months ago, roughly around the date of Grian’s first death. Sleep deprived and anxious, his brain soldered those two points together. Etho’s borrowing of tools were connected to Grian’s death. How, he didn’t know yet, but that didn’t stop him from sending a message in the dead of night with no real explanation.

Grasping at straws, barely able to make out the windows on the side of his runaway train of thought, he pinched the bridge of his nose because it was something to do. All the good thoughts must be stored at the bridge of his nose and pinching it would finally compress them into a useable phrase. An explanation for Etho.

Instead, he kept thinking about a classic prank. An initiation process of sorts, where new Hermits’ bases underwent certain renovations. Noise makers, hidden in empty spaces out of sight. The prank usually ended with the tortured Hermit peeling away walls and wrenching up floorboards just to quiet the subtle ‘click’ that drove anyone insane. He must be in one of those right now. Around him, a faint click of redstone ignited, a snap of two thoughts coming together. The noise moved nebulously, impossible to pin down. Undeniably, he heard it.

What was it that Etho found? How was it connected to Grian? His brain was a constantly powered dropper, sans items, clicking away without coughing up anything.

He stretched.

What for, indeed. Mumbo had no expectations. Plenty of anxieties though. The hourglass and the mystery veiling it was a bombshell. Something he’d rather not go through again. Conversely, an object entirely detached from Grian’s death would be equally dreadful.

Not that he could go back on what he said, either. This was for Grian. After the most confusing death(s), Grian deserved to have some threads tied off.

He decided to get dressed. Surely the motions of routine would drum up a reasonable response. He left his comm on the bed.

From his closet, a white shirt was tugged off its hanger and slipped on. A tad saggy around the edges, he wondered if he’d lost weight. Lately, his sweet tooth, the bane of his healthy eating habits, was entirely absent. Sweets just made his mouth fill with spit, and he often spat the candy out after a few seconds. The sleeves felt excessive. Should he roll them up?

He hesitated. Clothes held a language of their own. Taking good care of his clothes was ensuring that he communicated invariably how he felt. A three-piece suit was his main outfit, and if anyone asked why, he would say he enjoyed the idea that he was actually three machines working in tandem to create a player. Forgoing a jacket and rolling up the sleeves usually communicated he was deep in a project, a “Do Not Disturb” sign tattooed on his forearms.

He buttoned the cuffs and left the sleeves limp around his wrists. Changed into a pair of black pants. Did his tie in the mirror. The jacket was the final puzzle piece; once it was on, he was good to go. It shucked on easily. A section of his sleeve poked out. The washing must have stretched it. A pity, since it was a relatively new shirt. Had he been doing the washing more lately? Even the collar hung over more than usual. This didn’t look very trim.

He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.

He…looked like Grian.

The Grian that shivered in the cold, resolutely denying any extra cover to go over his jumper, so he wore an undershirt—probably one of his friend’s since it never fit properly. With the collar he played with so often it frayed asymmetrically. Always hanging out over the edges. His baggy shirt sticking to his sides after submerging himself halfway in the oncoming tide, his jumper left on the beach to dry, and the sun had come out at just the right moment to make him glow, giving him all the more energy to say “Mumbo. I have to build underwater. A ship in a bottle. How cool is that?”

Mumbo pulled off the shirt and threw it into the laundry bin. The pieces of lint stuck to the front were clumps of mold.

Gods surrounding, no one ever spoke about how every reaction became utterly despised and torn apart by the psyche. Why couldn’t he just wear a shirt that vaguely reminded him of Grian? Treating his loss of his best friend as an infection, he was doing all of this, going to see Bdubs and now Etho, for Grian, and yet his body rebelled, wanted to go back to the routine of stale upkeep. His grief was one part sorrow, two parts horror.

Because the fact of the matter was that Grian was dead.

And the psychopomp was back.            

And things could be way worse than they all thought.

Sorrow and horror. Why couldn’t those mix? On paper they acted similar enough, but in reality they were oil and water, those two, refusing to commit to one story that Mumbo, a Hermit, could follow. For sorrow was an unmade bed easy to lie down in and horror was a hot stove that begged for the  touch of his hand. He didn’t know how to feel them at the same time. He had no other place to put them, though. He was a worse version of his season eight persona, where his body’s chemistry changed to match the things he consumed. At least in season eight his new looks took turns.

He had worn a shirt that reminded him of Grian and felt dead.

The hourglass perched on the lip of his nightstand, created its own gravity. A mini black hole. Get too close and soon enough, the chance of leaving the pull was nonexistent. His hearts flipflopped whenever Pearl’s terrified expression glanced across his mind, when he shared that stupid, horrible, fear aloud.

“Where is Grian?”

No one should ever wonder if their lost loved one was safe or not. They would say “He’s at rest, peaceful, now”. They didn’t shrug their shoulders and say “Oh, I dunno, maybe he’s safe, maybe he’s not. Can’t say for certain.” Letting his discomposure show hurt his family.

So, he didn’t know how to respond to Etho. He tried anyway.

You whispered to Etho: just to talk.

You whispered to Etho: and Bdubs asked me

You whispered to Etho: it’s complicated

He growled and chucked the comm onto the bed. He hadn’t even brushed his teeth yet.

He put on a tighter shirt, one that made him aware of his ribs. This one barely showed itself past his jacket cuffs and collar. Tied his shoes with force.

Some days he couldn’t tell whether the daily catalyst for grief was outside or in. On some days, he glanced at the kettle, and it rooted him in place; on others he didn’t have such a luxurious intermission and woke up immediately knowing Grian was dead. Was time running backwards? His grief was spreading. He felt an error message pop up.

Attention Attention!

You are not at full capacity today.

He grit his teeth. Oh, he knew, but that couldn’t stop him from going to Etho. He had to figure this out, it didn’t matter if wasn’t in tip top shape today. If he waited for such a clear-headed perspective Etho would be waiting by the door for years.  

In the early days of grief, Mumbo didn’t know how to react because Grian wasn’t there to react alongside him. Everything was muted. The fuel and the heat and the oxygen of daily life were still there, but everything was missing the reaction. A catalyst. A rallying war cry. Grian’s laugh was worth its weight in days of planning and setup. The best kind was expiration-tinged laughter, where Grian was in disbelief at how far his mate went out of his way to mess with him.

Now, Grian was gone. Unfazed by anything Mumbo did. But, no, there was that nagging doubt, that stupid anxiety that Grian was conscious—not alive, just aware—and was trapped; that there was this mystery solvable when all the clues were gathered and understood, combining to form a painting of a Grian capable of stepping out of the frame for Mumbo to hold onto.

“No no no.” he bent over his partially laced shoes. “I can’t do this again.”

Again, fifteen. He tapped his shoe on the floor. Fully powered, he finished the laces and stood. In his absence, Etho had responded.

Etho whispered to You: How about you just come over and explain there.

You whispered to Etho: thank you

^^^^

Mumbo stood at the entrance to Etho’s base. He wiped his nose with a handkerchief and shooed away a feeling of Déjà vu. The base looked shorter, condensed.

On his way over, his comm buzzed with a community wide message, Xisuma asking for another meeting in the late afternoon. A flurry of responses came in shortly after, most not knowing why. The news of the psychopomp still present in the Overworld hadn’t reached everyone’s ears. Pearl was definitely going to speak. Joel and Bdubs might mention the strange occurrence in the stable. Even though it wasn’t conclusively proven, the mere speculation was enough to stir the pot. Mumbo was certain the one-hour meeting would take the rest of the day.

He approached and knocked on the door.

^^^^

Etho pulled down his mask and drank from a glass of water. His lips were pale and covered with healing scabs. He tipped his head back to get the last drop. Mumbo took a customary sip of the water Etho had given him. Not much had been said as they drank water, a way to lower the severity of pollen allergies. The water tasted like it had been strained right out of a cactus. Rare and clean.

Etho was standing and Mumbo was sitting at the kitchen table. They both appeared as guests. Etho was dressed as he always did. Expect, not really. The same clothes, although, dressed differently. Like those pranks where someone’s furniture is moved five cm to the left, leading to countless instances of hips banging against the edges of tables before the brain finally adjusted. The clothes hovered and did not make the man.

Patches of color were pell-mell across the cabinets and doors. Sticky notes. From a distance the words were illegible except the first two scrawled in a heavier hand. “Remember to:” or “To do:”. There were a lot of to-dos, very few checkmarks.

“So,” Etho began. The first distinct thing he had said, and his voice sounded waxy. “Why’d Bdubs send you over?”

“It was really more my idea.” He didn’t want Etho to think Bdubs was using Mumbo as a middleman to check up on Etho. He knew how grating it felt to be treated as an eggshell without a yolk, where people only knew how to check the surface.

“He mentioned you borrowing some tools of his. Apparently you’ve been working on a project for quite some time. I was interested. Thought I could kill two birds with one stone. And well, I have a theory. That the something you found is connected to Grian.”

He didn’t have to add on “death”. It was implied easily.

“Yeah,” Etho’s voice trailed. Mumbo’s hearts skipped a beat. A loud click echoed. “I forgot.”

“P-pardon?”

Etho shrugged. “Don’t remember what it was.” His mask barely moved when speaking.

“You don’t remember?” Mumbo parroted.

“I knew it was important, but then I set it down somewhere and I… I dunno. Why were you asking about it?”

“Because it had something to do with Grian.”

Etho nodded to himself. “Right, right. Sorry. Nothing’s coming to me.” He chewed at a scab on his bottom lip. “Why does Bdubs want his tools back so soon?”

“Uh, well, it has been two months.”

Mumbo watched as Etho drowned in something invisible. “Oh.”  

“You really don’t remember anything about it?”

“It’s…smashed. As soon as it enters it gets smashed. My thoughts are just kinda there. Sometimes? Sometimes they’re okay. Not the useful ones, though.”

“I’ll help you find it.” Mumbo got to his feet. “Please, Etho. I know this is odd but it’s really important. Maybe looking for it will help jog your memory.”

Etho agreed. Not hesitantly or enthusiastically; just agreed.  

They left their glasses on the table and set off.

The extent of Etho’s life over the past two months became apparent: plants. Every which way he looked, plants grew side by side, forming colliding labyrinths, their roots in one tangled ball. The glass of water he drank as a poor-man’s allergy relief did little against the onslaught of plant matter. The conflicting smells from the flowers were intoxicating, a floral perfume mixed with root rot. The walkways were neatly swept.

The storage area came first. Since it used a scant amount redstone, it was as quiet as a bedroom. A book resting atop a chair was left in one of the far corners. Mumbo thought that made sense; one could read without hearing the clicks of redstone that got any redstoner itching to create just by hearing them, though he supposed Etho sought out the quiet for a different reason.

The miscellaneous chests didn’t hold whatever they searched for, so it became an orderly look-see through each and every shulker box. Mumbo tossed out questions intermittently, hoping that a particular question could jumpstart recognition. Etho took a painfully long time to offer up even an unsure answer.

“Can you hold it in one hand?”

“Think so.”

Mumbo sifted through a bunch of chests filled with plants. “Is it alive?”           

Etho said he didn’t know.

They checked the bedroom next. Dusty shelves and an unmade bed. Nothing stood out except the window, where only one of the curtains had been drawn, dividing the room into two. There were a lot of pillows on the bed. Despite the window, the bedroom felt underground, a bunker fit for any size to sleep in, and that was about the extent of its purpose. A desk, where one could expect tools and smaller projects to be had on, was the only organized piece of furniture. Unused for a long time. Etho wandered around.

“Why did you need the tools?”

“It was broken.”

Mumbo paused with a chest lid ajar. “Broken? Do we need glue?”

“Yeah…” Etho trailed. “I mean, no. I wasn’t really looking to put it back together. I just wanted the tweezers.”

“What for?”

Etho stared for a long time in the distance. The hairs on Mumbo’s arms raised. It was Etho, but there was something else in the room that scared him, like an airborne infection. Finally, Etho said, “So I didn’t have to touch it.”

They went underground to the factory. Sticky notes tacked on the entrance—pink, green, and blue— all saying to do repairs on the farms and restock shops. The factory wheezed, its output less than what it should have been since no upkeep had taken place. Automatic farms weren’t perpetual motion machines. Redstoners had to stay atop of repairs and replacements of components to keep the machine in shipshape order. A persistent whine of a component grinding itself to dust made Mumbo’s skin crawl as Etho drifted about. His expression didn’t change much even when a loud noise made him flinch.

One common consequence that any redstoner had to accept was that their hearing might dampen over time. Pistons were loud and farms involving TNT weren’t any better. Of course, a sense of pride had welled up in Mumbo years ago when he realized he no longer flinched at the sound of pistons. A thing he thought was going to be the bane of his newfound passion mellowed out, his body adjusting to these new stimuli. Now, he could fall asleep to the sound of pistons, and loved working in the heart of complex machines, redstone clicking around him in fitful percussion.

An ache formed under the base of his ear. The factory was rather loud. The din felt fat and wriggly, stretching his ear canal open. Having rifled through all the chests, Etho said they could move on.

They checked other rooms. Other farms. Nothing.  

Etho pulled sticky notes down from the walls and crumpled them into pockets. He kept muttering apologies. Mumbo said it was okay. The pollen made him sneeze.

Hours passed. After making a full circuit of Etho’s base, they were back where they started in the kitchen. Neither was up for another go around.

“Sorry, Mumbo.”

“It’s okay, Etho.” He sank into his chair. Residual smoke from some long ago burnt meal collected on the windowpane, making the natural lighting woolen. He ran a hand through his hair. This was what he should have expected, to not make any progress, but it didn’t dampen the disappointment.  

Pulling out a sticky note, Etho tore it into neat quarters. The sharpie letters disassembled.

               Rem                  to                    y         sho

                          ember        re                  our              

                                                    stock                       p

After a long silence, Etho said, “Do you know what happened to the flower crown? Cleo’s flower crown. What happened to it after?”

Mumbo racked his memory, shook it out like an old rug. He was dumbfounded. “I haven’t the foggiest clue.”

Etho’s shoulders slumped, and Mumbo could just barely make out the whispered “Thank you” leaving bitten lips.

“Do the sticky notes help?”

“Not really.”

“So why—”

Etho shrugged and Mumbo took that as punctuation. He closed his mouth.

Mumbo hated how he had no idea what to say. The pistons controlling his jaw moved in ventriloquist dummy fashion, only producing fiddly phrases since the ones that held weight were too big to fit up his throat. An inadequate, clumsy, machine that knew how to locate what was wrong, not what to say. Had he always felt this way? It was hard to tell in a community such as Hermitcraft, where half of the interactions were bits, spaces to put aside their more insecure and fleshy personas in order to play along.

Reaching over, Etho collected the empty glasses. He walked over to the sink.

Mumbo assumed he would go back to his base after this. Etho looked worn. He knew that going back to base was not synonymous with rest. His feet already jumped with nerves to pace and pace, his shoes against the tile adding punctuation to his thoughts. He was disappointed with the circumstances, not Etho. Who could blame him for not remembering? Who could even be that surprised? Etho lost a friend via his outlet. The very thing he strived to master smashed someone irreplaceable to a pulp. Mumbo couldn’t expect himself to function in the slightest if it had been his own machine.

“I don’t blame you. No one should.” Mumbo said. The machine turning on with Grian inside had been a fluke. Same with him coming back to life. And Mumbo trying to play detective. Fluke after fluke. Add another fluke to his tab, since he didn’t speak up and Etho didn’t hear him.

“Oh. Found it.”

“What?”

Etho pointed at something out of view in the sink basin. “Thaaat’s right. I needed to wash it.”

Mumbo shot to his feet. A leather bundle was situated in a corner of the sink, the bottom damp. Twine sealed it closed. Also in the sink, was the pouch of Bdubs’ tools.

“It was in the dropper,” Etho continued. “Dragged it down,” he mimed.

A wave of nausea. There was no confusion on which dropper. The ones underneath the sand in the sugarcane farm.

“I was dismantling the farm, and there they were. I tried to collect as many as possible.” He lifted the bundle out. The contents clinked together like baby teeth. It sounded broken. “I didn’t look at them for long. Wanted to clean them first.” Swiping a dishrag from a hook, he laid it out on the kitchen table. Set the bundle next to it. “I still don’t know exactly what it is. It’s Grian’s though. I just know.” He set the bag of tools down roughly.

He put his palms down on the table, leaned over, bracing. “The sand was really heavy. With all the blood. And such. Xisuma helped, but it was a lot of sand.” Mumbo put a hand on Etho’s shoulder. Fifteen ticks, then Etho stepped away from the table. He exhaled, not exactly a sigh, just a removal of trapped air.

“Can you open it?” he asked Mumbo.

“Ok.”

The chair creaked as he sat down. Etho hovered over his shoulder.

Hoppers were designed to solely attract items in an inventory. In rare cases, they caught objects that had special code, such as enchantments. They never caught organic material. Not even a hair could pass through. That’s what he told himself, over and over. The feverish warmth emanating was purely psychosomatic.

Mumbo realized he kept mouthing the words “okay”, but wasn’t saying it aloud, for his chest was too tight to speak.

He undid the twine. It pressed impossibly deep into the pads of his fingers. He set the twine aside and teased open the bag. Upended, the contents fell out. With how they skittered across, they seemed like mechanical porcelain bugs. Then they went inert.

Nothing was recognizable. The entirety could fit inside a spoon’s curve. Several dozen pieces, none were larger than a pinky’s first knuckle. Most were dark brown, with a clean transition to an off white at the edges. A nonspherical curve. Very thin.

Mumbo broke out into a sweat. Not just broken. Shattered. When he and Cleo went down into the farm with a bedsheet, Grian’s fingernails were neatly cut with blood underneath. All his ribs remained sturdy and upright. His head was the one thing smashed, no white bone left, just coral red. For this thing to be shattered meant that it was in that general area.

“A trinket for necklace. Maybe?” Mumbo said. His nausea wanted it to be true.

“Doesn’t wear necklaces,” Etho mumbled. He was absolutely right. Mumbo’s stomach dropped to rest firmly in his pelvis. Grian was never one to wear jewelry. That hourglass necklace; an anomaly. It had to be, since it didn’t fit with Grian’s aesthetic and it frightened Mumbo, since he didn’t know where it came from and what it meant, so Mumbo didn’t know at all about a piece of Grian tied strongly to his ending. He hated it. Hated how Grian’s death was taking over Grian the person. Endings were so insignificant when considering the person, Mumbo believed. Or, used to believe—wanted to believe? —because he naively thought it was so much easier to think back on someone’s life than their untimely end. Life was marked by decades, and death happened in a day. Shouldn’t the accumulation of years tip the scale in their favor?  But death was as dense as a star, compressing a person into one sorry lump.

“Mumbo?”

He startled. A nick of pain right below his thumbnail. The cut bled, planting a red waving flag where he should direct his attention. When he had flinched, his thumbnail scraped against skin. He hadn’t cut his fingernails in quite some time. Which was unusual for him, and most redstoners. Shorter fingernails meant less redstone could build up underneath. His fingernails were long and clean. He pressed the cut to his lips.

Etho said his name again. His fingernails were clean, too. Selfishly, Mumbo wondered what on earth he was going to do for the rest of his life.

“What’s going on?” He liked that Etho asked it that way. No wasted time by asking if someone was okay.

“Sorry. Drifted off. Uh, do you recognize what this used to be?”

Etho shook his head slowly.  “It used to be Grian’s. That’s all I know. We might have to put it together.”              

Nodding weakly, Mumbo pried open the loaned bundle of tools. Two mini screwdrivers, a pair of tweezers, and a set of magnifying lenses to fit atop the face.

The tweezers were pinched between his index and thumb. He put the lenses on. The world shrank and funneled to a point. He didn’t feel like he was about to do the casual woodworking these tools were made for. More so an autopsy.

He flipped the first level of magnification on. Focus, he mouthed to himself.

In the milky edge of one shard there was a vein.

Mumbo cursed.

Etho’s sharp vision caught it as well. “It’s not real,” he said, probably before he even believed it. “Painted.”

With a tremble coating every vertebra he owned, Mumbo leaned back in. It was indeed painted. Now that he looked for them, he saw them growing in vine patterns. The brown coating didn’t hold any. He nudged one with the tweezers. Judging by the sound, a gentle ‘tink’, he guessed acrylic or layered glass as the material. Such minute detail on something handcrafted. And for what?

First thing’s first, he flipped the pieces until he thought they all faced up. Many pieces were so tiny that it was hopeless to add them to the already challenging puzzle. He was never that great at jigsaws, especially without the box lid.

The work was slow going, hindered by nerves shaking his fingers like branches on a windy day. He put together the rough shape of it, losing himself to the activity without being fully conscious of it.

Then suddenly, he was staring into Grian’s eye. His permanently wide blown iris, a deep rain-soaked soil brown, melded to the pupil. It lacked the crinkle around the corners, but it was his. Mumbo knew it better than he knew his own. This wasn’t a fake.

“Etho…”

“I see it too.”

“This is—wha—no this can’t. I don’t—” the words spilled out torrentially.

“A prosthesis” Etho said.

A shattered prosthesis. The curvature was to fit snuggly in a socket. This eye was inside Grian’s head when he died. It broke. They fell in the sand, covered in gore, and the hoppers dragged the inorganic material down. They were wicked free of blood, landing in the iron bottom with a dull ring. Days later, Etho had found them. He had collected every sliver and cleaned the sand off of them in the sink. Then he had forgotten them. It was amazing how many things needed to happen for Mumbo to be sitting at this table, horrified by what he just put together.

“Grian has a prosthetic eye? No, that’s. I would have known.”

Etho appeared just as lost. “It’s so lifelike.”

Slamming into the forefront of his mind was a word he had thought he’d never use: Skeuomorph. Something that retained old attributes no longer needed to honor the original design. Like the mini handles on syrup bottles or columns that don’t support the ceiling. Hermits built skeuomorphs without even knowing. The engine on Scar’s train was useless. Nevertheless, tracks were laid and smoke billowed out to complete the vignette. Life was full of skeuomorphs because people unconsciously layered nostalgia into their creations in order to love them right away.

This eye held bloodless veins and shone glossy with a sheen of tears. Its purpose being to fool. Any pranks Grian might have wanted to pull with these were disregarded. Unwanted? No story on how he got it or a complaint over the routine he must have undergone to care for it. Under the magnification, a hair thin scratch crossed the pupil, the divot meticulously refilled with dye and polish. Grian took great care of these, and never once said a word.

Mumbo didn’t understand. Why would he be so closed off? Hermits with prosthetics were no stranger. Doc was unrecognizable without his bionic arm and eye. Tango’s left pinky was replaced after an explosion. Cleo had a false knee and porcelain ribs where her zombification hit the hardest.

It would have taken more effort to keep it a secret than to just reveal it casually. Grian made the choice to keep this a secret.

Was every instance of him forming a brim out of his hand across his forehead to block out the sun a pantomime?

“Which socket is this for?”

Etho clicked his tongue, detached. “I can’t tell. You know him better than me.”

Mumbo wished that were true. Wished his mental projection could draw a big red circle around a side of Grian’s face and say “This one! This one was the prosthetic for sure! You can tell because he’s your friend, right?”

He couldn’t tell. Despite years of smiling and leaning in and silently communicating “Cmon, continue the bit” with that shiny glimmer in their eyes, Mumbo didn’t know. His level of detail had downgraded, drew an aphantasic smear across Grian’s face.

He jerked his head up to look at Etho. He looked concerned back, his left eye red. His left eye was red. That’s how it always was, wasn’t it? Mumbo couldn’t shake the fear that everything got switched around, trapped in a mirror universe.  

Etho mumbled something.

“What?”

“There are more pieces,” he said, pointing. Next to the main body of the eye, were slivers Mumbo couldn’t place yet. One long knife blade edge was dipped in black, a drop of pupil. Should have been easy to put together with the rest. It wasn’t. Minutes passed like falling pitch and the water in his empty stomach simmered. The piece had to fit, where else could it belong? Maybe he had put it together wrong, so he tried again. The tweezers grew heavier and then sometimes completely weightless. He could barely tell when he murmured his disbelief out loud or when it echoed in his brain.

It was a long while until Etho put his hand over Mumbo’s own, stopping him from hurting himself further scrabbling for an answer that didn’t exist.

His words cracked against his dry lips. “Mumbo. Look. So many more pieces. There’s another eye. A second one.”

Mumbo buried his face in his arms. He felt the pressure to cry but wasn’t able to. He didn’t like crying.

Two false eyes and yet perfect sight. It was impossible. Enchantments were powerful but they only affected things that already existed. To see beyond wedges of acrylic covering up an empty socket was otherworldly. No one could create that level of magic on their own and no one was gifted with such a thing without giving something back in return.

A whole new chapter, a prelude of sorts, right before Grian became a Hermit, must have been a whole other genre.

“H-He never really talked about his past. Or, I guess I never really asked? Gods, I never did ask him. I-I do know that in his previous community, there wasn’t an admin.”

Etho shook his head. “Even if there was, an admin couldn’t make these.  It’s too complex. To replicate the code of an organ that the Gods made…it’s impossible.”

“Grian wasn’t mixed up with the gods.”

Etho stared at him.

“No.” He put a hand to his chest. “He wasn’t. I know that. Etho, I know. Right?”

Being tethered to the Gods was never a good idea. It only led to heartache. To decay. For as much as the Gods loved its players, holding onto them too tight would break them. If the Gods were smart, they would have just watched. Instead, Grian paid the price. Mumbo wondered if it was ever worth it.

The psychopomp must have had something to do with these eyes as well. The first pair broke, and yet Grian spent the next five days with eyes. The psychopomp must have given him spares. It wasn’t totally outside of its behavior. Gave him some glass around the throat, some glass for his eyes. Made it so easy to pretend that everything was back on track. This cemented it.

Grian knew he was going to die a second time.

And he did nothing.

Nothing to stop it.

Nothing to say about it.

That wasn’t Grian. To roll over like that and accept his fate—any other fate than what he chose for himself. Grian started rebellions over the mere joke of monarchy, no way would he not fight back when the forces controlling life and death said he had five days and not a minute more. That hourglass should have been stomped under a fisherman’s boot and those gifted magical eyes should have been chucked out the window because Grian should have had trust with his friends. Why wouldn’t he? What went wrong?

Mumbo couldn’t rationalize it. What was the point of any of this?

For Grian. For a man he wished he knew better.

“I’ve already failed.”

^^^^^

He drank another glass of water, the only substance he could stomach.

He wanted to give up completely. What stopped him was the fact that he knew himself, just  enough, to know he couldn’t. Mumbo didn’t know how to finalize things. He was afraid of going in one direction for fear that he would never turn back and go home. A project was always in progress. He liked improving things, trimming away the fat, making it compact. Nothing was compact anymore. This had grown too cumbersome. He was lightly singed all over from his nerves giving up and going off with a bang. Entirely unmoored.

Etho had said he wasn’t feeling good, faint, and that he needed to lay down. Mumbo said he should eat something, and Etho said the same thing back, so neither actually ate anything. Mumbo took another sip of water then put the glass in the sink. He sat back down and craned his neck upwards.

Minutes earlier, after Etho left, the eye went grey. Finally realizing that no one wanted them to even exist, they self-corrupted. It was dangerous for Xisuma to even touch them, since code was a two-way street. Maybe that was for the best. Now Mumbo didn’t have to show them to Xisuma and explain to his admin how a man they had been living with for years had hidden an unknown number of somethings from them. Nothing strong enough to counteract the numbness urged him to show it to anybody. It made him sick to even think of scenarios of everyone gathered around, looking at the broken eye in his hand, him saying “Look! It’s so much worse than we thought!” They sure would appreciate that, accept that hurt with no further consequences to their routine or memory or ability to function.

He must be trapped in a different story. In a room that didn’t exist. Playing the part of an actor who was friends in the story, complete strangers off stage.

Resisting the urge to shove the bag retied with twine down the kitchen sink, he bit at his lips. He was friends with Grian. Best mates. Shared a soul. Was that now just a story?

It was horror. Through and through. Pure and simple. Nothing was happening and Mumbo had never been more afraid. And at the same time, so very apathetic.  He could probably shoo away the psychopomp with one dismissive wave of his hand now. He would say, “Go on. Get. I’m not at full capacity and never will be, so go.” He hadn’t known a hollowness could deepen far beyond the Euclidian geometry of a body. Now he knew.

What was most worrying, but Mumbo didn’t really worry, was that flicker of relief. Relief, at having something so neatly implode on itself. He slipped into the old clothes of previous grief, a bit tight. The gears finally rusted shut.

Who was he kidding, really, thinking he could investigate things far outside his imagination, thinking that he wouldn’t get hurt. Shame on him, daydreaming about putting this chapter behind him.

He counted to fifteen. He kept losing his place. His breathing and hair and eyelids wouldn’t work alongside the counting. They kept mucking it up.

An hour passed. Mumbo didn’t notice an hour passed.

 He checked that the twine was still secure around the bundle. The pieces were back inside. He was going to drive himself crazy, he knew this. No one else had to go through it with him, though. Everyone was already battered; he didn’t need to offload more grief. Mumbo had to bear it. Because he should have known.

With no clue what to do next, he stood there, vacant. So, maybe, it was his luck, just his luck, that his comm pinged, snapping him into some new story. He didn’t resist the pull as he read the message.

Xisuma: Can you come by the Permit office ASAP?