#the bird’s more just. one last visitor from the rift shall we say

[theminecraftbee]

It’s late. Scar is already asleep, and distantly, Jimmy imagines he can hear that cat Tango found for him meowing to him. Elsewhere, Fwhip is—doing nothing Jimmy cares about, thank you—and the sky is clear tonight, so he supposes Joel must be content. Grian had gone to make base with more of the strangers and strangely familiar, and Jimmy is here to hang up his hat and go to bed.

When he turns around, there’s a small yellow bird perched on his hatstand.

“Oh, you—go away,” Jimmy says, irritated.

The bird doesn’t speak, but Jimmy hears what it’s trying to say: if they’re here, that means it was real. If Jimmy knows them, and they know Jimmy, that means it was real. If it was real, that means everything else is too.

Jimmy crosses the room to stick his hat on his other pillow instead of the hatstand. With a surprisingly lovely song, the yellow bird flies off the hatstand and lands on the hat.

“Shoo,” Jimmy says. “Even if it were all real. Even if he’s here, and Tango’s as good as all those memories say, and—you don’t gotta stick around me, you know. Shoo. Besides, this all still has time to be a stupid dream.”

The bird sings sadly.

“Ugh,” Jimmy says, flopping in bed. “Even if it is all real, it’s not time yet anyway.”

The bird hops over to where Jimmy is flopped in bed and rests its head against Jimmy’s cheek. Outside, there’s a ranch he’s building for someone he met in a dream, and there are poppies in a vase downstairs, and Grian said that Jimmy couldn’t escape him, and Jimmy’s not sure that Grian knows what he meant when he said it.

The bird chirps sadly again.

“…it’s not your fault anyhow. I shouldn’t yell,” Jimmy says. “It’s hardly your fault everyone else—well.”

The bird chirps one last time before flying out the window. In Jimmy’s head, it’s gone to find Tango, or maybe Scott. Jimmy watches it.

“If I’m going to have to check the water tower for cod, I’m not taking it to Joel,” he says, as though there’s any logic to that whatsoever. “Do you know how much fun I’ll get made of for doing that? Nu-uh, no way.”

He blows out the candle. The room is dark. He goes to sleep, and he dreams of past lives. They aren’t so bad as all that, but he’d prefer they stay there, if it’s all the same anyway.