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I miss writing

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Me, every line or two: did u know joe hills is a puppet now. Joe hills is a puppet. Juppet, even.

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Accidentally hit enter twice and made this a lot more dramatic lol

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Writing mcyt fanfic feels so silly because the names are on a spectrum from "normal human name" to "semi-plausible" to "Sausage"

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We’re getting places 🙌🙌

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I finished Pearl’s Stray playthrough vods from like two years ago and-

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The End seemed safe. Cleo thought. Nothing was safe, therefore, the most dangerous place to be would probably be the safest. She knew it didn’t make any sense, but nothing did, with gravity losing its pull and blocks getting sucked up into the sky and the damn moon not so much setting anymore.

Cleo went to the End by herself, and she regretted it. Not just becasuse the endermen were agitated and began pulling her rotting corpse of a body apart, but because she was alone. But the endermen were annoying too. Cleo understood it, to some extent. The world was ending, and it was either pulling up the few blocks of endstone that made up the ground under their feet, or pull her apart. They tore at her, her skin and bones taken from her body with screams to echo her own. They stayed angry, even if she didn’t look at them.

Cleo stopped fighting after a while. As far as she knew, everyone in the overworld was probably dead or gone now, so what really was the point? She was alive, but in the hands of terrified endermen. Soon, surely, she would join her friends in the afterlife. At least, that’s what she hoped.

And when the end of the world came and went, what remained in its wake was everywhere. Cleo lay in pieces, watching the world around her fall apart in ways that didn’t even make sense. She tried to call out for death, but there was no sound. The very little bit of her undead consciousness that remained held on, watching in horror.

And then, there was silence. For a long, long time. And Cleo was alive. Well, she was dead, but she’d always been dead. Death, it seemed, didn’t want her.

Her body lay in pieces, unseeing, hurting, and she wondered, in thoughts that took eons of effort to construct, if she would remain in this vacuum of time and space forever- almost nothing, but painfully enough.

And then, something changed. It wasn’t obvious at first, as the pain consumed her constantly. But then something touched her cheek. Something smooth, soft, warm, so different from every feeling that had consumed her for so long. Cleo couldn’t see, couldn’t speak, was torn so far apart that she was hardly anything at all, and yet she felt the warm touch of a human being. And then, a touch on her eyelid. Then her bottom lip. Then her neck. Someone was putting Cleo back together.

The pain was still there, but lessened now, day after day, as her body was reconstructed. Nerves and muscle and tissue were woven into place, and Cleo became more and more aware. First it was touch, the tugging of string, the swipes on a hand. Then smell. The person smelled of flowers, of sun-soaked soil. Then she could hear, a gentle humming that soaked into her very skin.

And then, one day, Cleo could see. Hands pulled away from her eyes, and there was a face hovering over her own. Long brown hair curtained Cleo’s face from the outside world, wherever that might have been. Cleo blinked hard, and the face came into focus. A long, angular face and wide blue eyes. Familiar. Not here, not in the reality Cleo had been pulled apart in. But familiar.

“Hi Cleo,” Pearl said. “You can hear me, can’t you? Blink twice if you can- your voice box isn’t re-installed yet, sorry ‘bout that.”

Cleo blinked twice, and Pearl’s face lit up in a huge smile.

“Cleo! Oh, I’m so glad you can understand! Golly, I… I’ll keep plucking away at this- you! Just… stay with me, okay?”

Pearl sewed Cleo back together with strings of sunlight and moonlight, all intertwined together to make her skin whole again. Gentle touches as she moved muscle and bone back into place, somehow reforming Cleo like she was clay. Pearl talked as she worked, fingers flying with hesitant assurance over Cleo’s body.

“I just never expected my cousin to actually come to visit. Silly girl.”

“It was horrible, just horrible to fall into that hole and not know where we were going to come back out. My wonderful friends, each one of them popped out of existence, one after the other.”

“They’re safe now, though. I saw to that. You will be too, Cleo. We all will. I promise.”

“I knew I had to find the rest of you, bring us to our new home.”

And at some point, Cleo opened her mouth and spoke.

“Pearl.”

“Oh golly goo! Cleo! Oh my god! You scared the life out of me! Does it hurt at all, does everything seem right?” hands flew to Cleo’s throat, gently palpating and examining. Pearl had a huge smile on her face.

“It doesn’t hurt. Not at all,” Cleo answered.

Pearl laughed, a kind of choked up noise that was so painfully human, something Cleo thought she’d never hear again. For the first time in a very long time, Cleo felt hope.

“Oh, I’m so glad, Cleo. You don’t know how afraid I was. Still am, because you don’t exactly have all your bits back, now do you. There is still your legs, and more nerve endings…”

As Pearl went to put a hand to Cleo’s face, Cleo grabbed her wrist. “How are you doing this, Pearl? This shouldn’t be possible. What you’re doing is… I don’t know, magic?”

Pearl shook her head. “Cleo, please just let me work. It’s not… just trust me, okay?” She wrenched her hand out of Cleo’s grasp.

Cleo knew this was real. She could reach out, touch Pearl’s hair, her face, her hands. She could see Pearl work now, leaned against an obsidian tower, looking out over a vastness of endstone, and darkness beyond that. An end island she distinctly remembered watching fall apart into nothingness. But here it was. Whole. Here she was. Almost whole. And there was Pearl, finishing up the stitching on Cleo’s legs with golden string that seemed to shine with a light that came from within itself.

Cleo stood.

“Who are you?”

Pearl walked her, arm in arm, to the portal in the middle of the island.

“I’m Pearl.”

Cleo looked at her. Underlit from the swirling portal like this, she looked tired. Her sunflower crown was wilting. Her green dress was coated with endstone dust. She was Pearl, but Cleo knew she was someone else too.

“Are you coming with me?”

“No. I’ll meet you there. I have others to find,” Pearl reached forward and hugged Cleo tight before stepping backwards into the end portal and disappearing.

The End was quiet now. Endermen had reappeared at some point, strolling among the reconstructed pillars and paying her no mind. Cleo looked over the island in grim amazement, more questions in her mind then answers. She ran a hand down her arm, assuring herself once more that she was real, she was as whole as a rotting corpse could be, and all of this was real too. It was. She was. Despite it all, she was going to be okay. She was going to see her friends again.

Cleo jumped into the end portal and closed her eyes.

——

The first day on the Hermitcraft season nine server, Cleo found herself counquoring a woodland mansion (“who on earth does this first day?” Cleo asked herself multiple times) with Impulse, Gem, and Pearl.

Pearl and Cleo died to a creeper explosion at the same time, and ended up respawned in the bed they’d set just for that purpose.

“Hi.”

“Hi Cleo.”

Cleo looked at Pearl. She was dressed in a pair of shorts and a hoodie, hair thrown back messily. Cleo almost wouldn’t have believed that this was the same girl who had stood over her in a flowing green dress, with her magic needle and thread, if it wasn’t for the knowing smile Pearl gave her.

“I guess I owe you,” Cleo said.

“You don’t owe me a thing,” Pearl replied, shaking her head.

“But-”

“Cleo! Pearl! Impulse just found a library and I’m pretty sure he’s gonna get blown up by creepers! You gotta come watch this!” Gem interrupted, yelling at them from a broken window.

“Coming!” Pearl replied, and took Cleo’s hand. “Come on, Cleo. We’ve got much more fun ahead of us. The past can wait.”

Cleo followed Pearl, still with more questions then answers. But Pearl was right. They were all together again, and there was much fun to be had. Cleo pushed the memories of pain, of light, of hope, into a small corner of her mind, and went to watch Impulse climb a ladder. He did get blown up, as it turned out. And it was hilarious.

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2024 fic list!

It's been a quiet year on the fic front for me, but thank you to anyone who read anything of mine this year! Below is everything that I wrote this year!

Adventures To The Grave: Joe Hills set out with a shovel over his shoulder and a whistling song in his lungs. Walk with him as he meets a few friends along his journey.

Joe Hills Puppet Surgery: Joe Hills wants to be a puppet for Hermitcraft Season 10. ZombieCleo helps.

Grian the Self-Insert Fic Writer: Grian meets with the Watchers during Secret Life to pitch a few secret task ideas.

Those Sneaky Little Snails: Scar notices that something seems a little off about his friends Grian and Gem.

Rematch: xB and Etho spar on Gem's beach. It reminds them of another sparring match from back in the day.

Beetrayal: Mogswamp killed his bee Sweetpea. He feels sad.

My Precious (what happens when Ren gets head): King Ren had a really weird relationship with that decapitated Impulse head, huh?

My Friend, My Enemy, My Everything In-Between: Pearl may not have administered the final blow, but she still helped kill Gem in Secret Life. Gem, upset, talks to Cleo about it in the afterlife, as they watch the final two players fight for the Secret Life crown.

The Prophecy of xB: the Empires s1 Flower Huslands have lunch and exchange stories.

A Grave Chat: Cleo is spirling. The moon is big. Joe Hills digs a second grave.

Grumbot Saving Face: the Grumbot built on the Empires s2 server was trapped in a glass box, broken and alone. He breaks out, but there seems to be nothing left.

Clean Up: the watchers needed someone to clean up the mess that was 3rd life. Mop the sand. Reshape the landscape. Prepare for the next game.

Alliances Aren't All They're Cracked Up To Be: Impulse and Tango run into each other during Wild Life. They talk about their alliances.

Listening In: a re-imagining of Grian taking Martyn's listening power in Wild Life, and Martyn and him having a conversation only the two of them can hear in entirety.

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A quick re-imagining and dramatization of Wild Life! Martyn listening in to Grian while Grian also has the listening power

——

Grian was across the way. Looking at him. Talking to someone else. Looking at him.

Martyn tugged on his ear, and suddenly his hearing was all static.

“Is this what it’s like, Martyn?”

Every other voice Martyn had heard while using his super-hearing power had been muffled and tinny, like a badly-tuned radio in the other room. But this was something different. Grian was crystal clear, curiosity clear in his tone. Everything else was silent. Everyone else was silent.

“Listening in… kind of interesting. Does it feel vindictive to finally be a Listener?”

“I’m not a Listener. Not everyone got to be God’s special baby boy, Grian.”

Grian was staring right at him.

“Always thought that was weird. The Listeners were always soft to their loyal idiots. Seems the loyal idiots think the same about their own loyal idiots.” Grian’s black eyes, long and empty, glanced to Martyn’s right side.

“We’re not your enemy here, Grian.” Martyn said.

Grian hummed, chuckling. It echoed in shockwaves, taking up the otherwise quiet space.

“Well, my five minutes are almost up. Gonna go mimic a power a bit more interesting then snooping. Have fun with your listening, Martyn.”

“Martyn?”

There was a hand on his right arm. Ren. Martyn turned away from Grian, and everything was crystal clear again.

“What happened, man? You just zoned out for a minute there.”

“Ah, just listening in. Catching up with old friends.” Martyn said.

He could feel Grian’s gaze on him. It crawled over his body like ants, sunk into his eardrums and curled up in his brain. He looped his arm through Ren’s.

“Let’s go cause some mayhem while we still got the time, huh?”

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“Hey Impulse.”

“Oh, hi Tango!”

Tango cast a look around for any hostile mobs, but it seemed not dark enough yet for them to spawn. He sat down next to Impulse, who had his feet in the small brook. The sun was setting, hazy through the world boarder but still pretty. Impulse silently handed him a chunk of dripstone block, which Tango took with a snort.

“Watching the sunset? Didn’t take you as the type,” Tango joked.

“Been down underground for like an hour, felt like I needed to touch grass,” Impulse replied.

“Mining with your gang? Or what?”

“I… no, I was alone for most of today… just making… getting ahead of it, preparing for what comes next, really,” Impulse said evasively.

“Oh, so a creeper farm, then,” Tango guessed.

Impulse chuckled. “Can’t get anything past you, can I?”

“Nope, not a thing. Why wasn’t your team helping you out?”

“Oh, I was just kind of… wanted to be alone, you know? Cramped quarters, what with Scott and Cleo and Pearl and BigB somewhat.”

Tango turned to look at Impulse. Something was different in his friend’s face, like he’d sucked on a bad bit of dripstone and was trying to play it off. “Cramped quarters? Seems unlike you,” he paused. “How is… your team? Cleo and Scott and all of them? Pearl’s died twice, hasn’t she? And she’s going red early again.”

“Pearl’s great,” Impulse replied immediately. “And BigB’s been really nice. I’m not… everyone’s great,” he wasn’t looking at Tango at all.

“Impulse, buddy. I’m not gonna tell-”

“How’s your alliance? Bdubs and Etho treating you well?” Impulse interrupted, rushing to get the words out.

“I…” Tango paused. He thought of the cold stone tower and single bed he was going back to later, the leering face of Bdubs as he told them to act selfishly, only care when it’s convenient.

“Tango?” Impulse had turned in too, putting a hand on Tango’s knee. His face was lined with worry. “Are you-”

“Imagine someone so flippant about betrayal that they just decide that everyone should act in their own interest all the time, then boss us around.” Tango laughed bitterly. “Not even pretending like he’s going to care about us- well, me, really, Etho’s his precious little… thing. I don’t have an allyship, I have a neighborhood where you never know when it’s all gonna be over.”

Impulse laughed. It sounded kind of hollow. “Cleo hates me. I know she does. And Scott follows her lead, they just give me these looks… I’m not… one of them. I keep thinking well if I just work hard enough, save Cleo from mobs, build a creeper farm, maybe they’ll like me and maybe I won’t feel like a damn ghost in my own alliance. I’m not part of their little divorce gang, I’m just… Impulse,” Impulse threw a block of dripstone into the water in a sudden burst of anger. “I- I’m sorry, Tango, it isn’t fair for me to just unload like this on you,” his whole body sagged.

Tango smiled. “I asked, man. I didn’t think I’d say what I said either. Sorry. I know you like Bdubs a lot. It’s just… scars run deep, you know?”

“Scars run deep,” Impulse echoed, looking off over Tango’s shoulder.

Tango turned too, saw Cleo in the distance. “Maybe it’ll all be okay, you know? Maybe this time it’ll be different,” Tango said.

Impulse stood up, helped Tango up too. “Scars run deep, Tango, like you said. Thanks for talking to me. But I have a creeper farm to finish.”

Smiling grimly, Impulse walked back into the forest. Tango considered going after him, finding out the location of the creeper farm, but decided against it. There was no reward for it. And besides, he had a cold and lonely base to get back to, swallowing down the darkness that threatened to overrun him every time he looked Bdubs in the eye.

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Pearl somehow making two extra people out of the skeletons of 3rd life

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When everyone was finally dead, the final body slumped to the ground, the world went a bit funny. There was a pause as the world went silent for the first time in weeks. Blood ran, soaking the ground red, as everything lay in horrible, grizzly stillness.

And then, the glitches came out, first slinking in the shadows at night, and gradually getting more and more braver when there were no repercussions. Horrible things, scavengers that resembled wolves, dark and twitching, made from the static of the world boarder. They feasted on the bodies left behind, half rotted, pierced by arrows and swords and all numbers of other things.

And when the bones had been licked clean and scattered, that’s when the cleaning lady came to put the world back together.

Pearl hadn’t called herself the cleaning lady back when she’d started. She had been selected, invited, whatever you wanted to call it- they’d remembered her. You’re Grian’s sister, right? They weren’t related, but Pearl didn’t like to piss them off like Grian had, so she had just nodded. We have a job for you.

The job was simple, horrible. A game had been played, the watchers explained, a game of three lives. When the players go red on their third life, they become bloodthirsty animals, killing for the entertainment of the watchers, although the players hasn’t known there was an audience. The stage had been sullied now, and they needed someone to make it fresh. For the next time, the watchers said, and Pearl wondered what a next time would entail. But she had been plucked from her world and brought here, pat on the head and given brooms and buckets, and told to get to work. It wasn’t like she had another option, so she did.

She stood in a rather unremarkable grove, but gunpowder purfumed the air heavily. With her buckets and shovels in hand, she made her way through the world, and soon found evidence of the battles that had taken place and marred the landscape. Craters from explosions, a village torn apart. Bits of bone and cloth scattered. And blood, blood everywhere, a portrait of bitter ends. A desert so torn apart that the stone underneath bled through like the bones of some slain beast.

Pearl hiked up a sandy dune to an odd formation of cactus. They seemed to encircle the bloodiest part of the whole world. There was a skeleton’s head lodged right in the middle, and it looked like it was smirking at her. Other bones, bleached white by the sun, were scattered within that circle. And the blood, dried as it was, had dyed the sand a deep red.

Pearl stood beside one of the cacti for a moment, looking in on the scene like the watchful cacti were. The desert was so quiet, only the sigh of sand moved by the wind. This must have been one of those fights to the death the Watchers had told her about. A bad one too. She felt watched as she stepped into the circle, like this was the real stage.

Pearl picked up the skull, brushed off the sand that stuck to it. Its gaping grin unnerved her, but still, she felt bad. She smoothed the jaw of the skull unnecessarily, then set it to one side. In the pile went all the other bones too, teeth and ribs and pelvis. When she’d picked all she could find, she pulled out her bucket to wash the sand down with.

As she set the bucket spilling down the embankment, she saw another skeleton appear from under the cliff’s edge- had someone jumped? She watched it move about with the stream of water, and then caught sight of a bit of fabric stuck to some of the ribs. Red. Not like the dried blood, but bright red. A familiar red.

Heart in her mouth, Pearl slid down the sandy dune, clumsily making her way to the skeleton. She recognized the fabric, even frayed as it was.

“Gri?”

Her voice echoed, distorted, across the sand, and suddenly she was floating in the air, looking down onto two figures climbing their way to the cactus circle. She moved closer. Grian was there, his sweater frayed and damaged, with some other man with grey skin slick with sweat. They talked- it was muffled- Grian smiling so painfully. He looked so tired. And then, he struck the other man hard across the jaw. The two fought, Grian punching the other again and again, the other man not really fighting back. There was a bolt of lightning, and the other man was dead. Grian was laughing. Grian was crying. His mouth was open in some kind of horrible scream. And then, he turned and jumped off the side of the sandy embankment.

Pearl jolted back to the present, tears in her eyes. “Grian, no!” She pulled the skeleton towards her, and it fell apart in her arms. Her heart ached with a loss she hadn’t even realized she’d needed to have. She didn’t have the energy to cry, she just stared at the bones that had made up her friend.

“I thought he was one of you!” Pearl called to the sky. “It is him, isn’t it?”

He won.

“Won? Does this look like winning to you?” Pearl shrieked, grabbing Grian’s skull unceremoniously and thrusting it towards the sky. Sand trickled down her forearm, dislodged from Grian’s skull. Off in the distance, thunder rolled, suddenly and angrily. Pearl lowered the skull and put it gently down next to the pile of bones that had made up the winner. She almost smiled. If anyone had to win, it would have to be him, wouldn’t it.

Time blurred as Pearl hurried herself in her cleaning. The more she was here, walking this land, the more connected she felt, the more heartbreak she experienced. She talked to Grian to keep her sane, or, at least, the skull of Grian she attached to her belt with rope. She did smile at the idea of Grian seeing this somehow, complaining about being hip-height to her. Land was terraformed, sculpted into groves of trees, a huge, jutting mountain. The blood was washed clean with water and scrub brushes. The sand, what was left of it at least, was confined to river beds and shallow ponds.

And when it was done, she went back to that small grove, now a flat, grassy hill surrounded by trees, and called to the Watchers above.

“I’ve done it, no thanks to you lot. You can take me away now.”

Not finished.

“What? I’ve done what you asked!” Pearl was so tired. She could collapse here, and die like the rest, but she knew the Watchers would never allow that.

We need our players.

“What?”

Assemble the performers, and the game can start once again.

There was a stuttering, pained growl from behind her. Pearl turned around and froze in fright as a creature came slinking out of the woods, a dog-like thing that usually scavenged in packs at night. Made of the things of the world boarder, hardly keeping shape, Pearl had nicknamed them glitches. Pearl had seen them from the house she’d slept in at night. They were vicious with each other, fighting for the precious few resources left, but let her be usually. And now, one was here, slinking into the sunlight, holding a bone in its mouth. It dropped the bone, and scrambled away.

“Assemble the performers… no…” Pearl whispered, reaching down and taking the bone in her hand. Thunder rumbled, and Pearl sank to her knees. “That’s… horrible. You want me to make these skeletons… whole again? I don’t even know…”

She trailed off, because there was another growl. And another. Glitches were all around her, bringing thigh bones and ribs and skulls. Dropping them around her, retreating into thr forest, watching her. They were quiet, as quiet as glitches could be, almost as if they were sorry.

And so, Pearl began her final task. With help from the glitches, who came closer and closer each day, delivering bones, she assembled bodies. She fitted parts of the body together, hoped they were right. It was a complicated puzzle that she didn’t have the right answers to. She didn’t even know how many people there had been. She worked day and night, just wanting it to be over.

Sixteen skeletons lay before her, sixteen actors in the Watcher’s sick play. Pearl held the final puzzle peice in her hands, looking at all she had done. She kissed the top of Grian’s skull, and placed it gently on the top of the final body. The glitches stood around her, gazing up to the sky with her.

“I’m done now.”

You’ve set our stage well, cleaning lady. We can begin now.

There was a sizzle of pure power from all around her, and the glitches melted into the air, forming a translucent force field around the arena. Pearl hoped they’d be okay. A light shone down onto the bodies on the hill, so bright that Pearl was blinded. She closed her eyes, waiting to be taken away.

And when she opened her eyes again, sixteen people were standing around a square of bedrock. A single enchanting table sat right in the middle. Everyone was quiet, eyes closed, breathing softly.

“Wait, I’m still here! Why… I get to leave now, right?” Pearl asked, a shake in her voice.

Play well, Pearlescentmoon.

[dmwrites]

that grombobe story was fucking fantastic thats really grade a shit

Thank you so much lol, your tags were lovely to read. Grumbot holds like such a special spot in my heart, man, every iteration of him deserved better. And yet he still loves his dads (mostly mumbo).

[dmwrites]

Rebuilding was a painful process.

Grumbot was a destroyed face on a body of stuttering and broken farms. His insides were looted by outsiders, and he was, to all that looked at him, a dead, broken thing.

And yes, a lot of him was dead- broken redstone lines, machines clogged, and a face mangled by a bomb. But he kept living, only as a robot can- faintly, running on the fumes of machines that hitched and spat a second’s worth of energy at him. It was that energy that helped him rebuild himself. It was painfully slow work. His hands inched forward, wouldn’t move for days before getting the energy to stretch a finger minutely forward.

It got easier over time, as Grumbot began to build up his insides, connecting redstone lines and cleaning out farms. He picked his face back up, piece by piece, until one day he could see again. It was sunny, and fluffy white clouds went past lazily. He looked out onto a small fairground, still dotted with candy colored stands and shops. The ocean lapped at the sides of the earth and the legs of a huge bridge.

The world was quiet. Grumbot had been born to the clamboring of hermits, people building and creating and living within his body. There had been no quiet before the bomb. Grian had come and sat in his hand and talked for hours, telling him about his other father, the one who wasn’t here but was part of his very history. Other hermits came too, some to fix little things that broke, add on to his body. In and out and around, Grumbot had lived in the warmpth of living chaos, and now all was quiet and cold.

When Grumbot finished putting himself back together, he noticed the glass. All around him was a box almost invisible to the naked robot eye. He put his hand against it, felt the resistance keeping him in. He vaguely remembered, in painful flashes of time, a man building up the glass walls, chattering excitedly about “preserving history”. Grumbot had been too broken to do anything about it, but his anger had sat, simmering. Grumbot was not history, Grumbot was alive and remembered.

Grumbot put his hands to the glass and pushed. Every block in his arms protested, screamed and squealed after so long of just minute movements. But it felt good too, to finally be doing something destructive, after being damn near destroyed before. The glass fell away with an all-encompassing shattering sound, horrid even to Grumbot’s hearing system. But it fell all the same, shards of glass lodged into the grass that would be their forever grave.

Grumbot wasn’t created to have legs, but he stood nonetheless with cobbled-together ones made of the builds of others. And when he stood, it felt weird, but good. He could see for thousands of blocks, with his head level to the clouds. And with his great vantage, he saw buildings and animals. Signs of life.

The first scrap of paper that made up Grumbot’s voice was caught by the wind. No one would ever read it, but it said “where are you?”. It would land, although Grumbot would never see it, just out of reach of a glassy-looking portal, battle-weary and unused.

Grumbot took his first steps, wires snapping and dirt exploding around him. He used heat sensors to look for life, features that had been installed so long ago by gentle hands and laughing, happy faces. Grumbot had those faces stored, names of people he knew loved his dads. Impulse. Scar. Cleo. Joe. Pearl. False. Jevin. Grumbot took step after step, every one a labor, searching the land below him with increasing desperation.

If anyone had been around to read the scraps of paper that Grumbot typed out desperately to an empty, unseeing world, they would have read things like

“Dads? Where are you?”

“Mumbo. I want Mumbo.”

But the world was cruel, the kingdoms empty save for blank-eyed villagers that hummed at him. No one could read, no one could hear him. He was alone in a world that couldn’t understand him. And so Grumbot went on, the scraps of paper that held his voice becoming more desperate, more disjointed, until his legs, and then arms, gave out, and Grumbot lay still, faded into the landscape of the empires smp, once more abandoned and alone in an empty, unseeing world. And just like his ancestor before him, left alone in a facade of a sunny day, he lay there forever, praying for someone to have the heart to come save him.

[dmwrites]

There are two graves that sit side-by-side. It’s a lovely place to rest, in a quiet forest of trees at the edge of a spectacular set of rolling hills. The sun shines most of the time, with sweet winds bringing with it flowers from other hills.

There was only one grave at first, dug six feet down, with a gravestone on top. Cleo lay there, at the bottom of the hole, looking up at the sky. Perhaps it was no surprise when she heard digging next to her, the exhale of a living person doing physical exercise. She said nothing, and neither did they. She listened to the sharp sound of shovel in dirt, scratching against stone and root, the splat as it hit the ground somewhere above.

The noise finally stopped after a while, and there was a satisfied sigh. The scraping shifting of dirt and stone made it clear the person was sitting or laying down in the grave. There was silence for a few minutes, and Cleo began to close her eyes again, but then came the scraping of shovel against dirt again, but closer. Cleo turned her head just in time to see a small hole appear in the side of her grave.

“So what are we doing here, anyway?” Joe Hills asked, looking at her through the hole. His chroma green glasses were digging into the dirt below him. It looked funny.

“We aren’t doing anything. I, however, am just laying here,” Cleo replied, looking back up at the sky.

“Cleo, no offense, but people don’t just lay in an open grave for no reason. I mean, I appreciate the thematic approach to your problems, but I also care about you as a friend.”

Cleo sighed. “There’s just… a lot… going on… all the time,” Cleo said. “The moon is getting bigger, and gravity is getting really weird and I’m just… it’s a lot, you know? It’s a lot easier to just be dead and in a grave then be up there dealing with… all that.”

“Yeah,” Joe let the answer hang in the air, because sometimes that’s all a friend can do- be quiet. From Joe, it was a gift.

Despite it all, the sunlight still shone through the leaves of a nearby tree. There were sounds of animals and, further off in the distance, the flower farm going off. There was an earthquake, something quick and sharp, but no one was hurt. No one even commented about it in chat. And Joe was here, like he always was. Cleo took a deep breath, even though she didn’t need to.

“We’ll be okay,” Joe said it with such certainty that Cleo turned her head to look at him.

“How do you know?”

“I don’t. But it’s the only option we have, really. We’ve survived worse.”

“Have we?” Cleo asked.

“I don’t know. I’d like to think so.”

Cleo reached through the small hole in the dirt and took Joe’s hand. They held hands, warm and cold, fingers clasped tight.

“I think I’d like to think so too,” Cleo said. She held onto Joe’s hand as tight as she could.

[dmwrites]

The video is an ASMR video of a puppet who finds you in the void. Btw. If that helps.

Watching a video that is reminding me I need to get back to that one fic

[dmwrites]

Watching a video that is reminding me I need to get back to that one fic