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Scar paced the length of the Swaggon three, four, perhaps even five times before he had the courage to take his communicator from the inside pocket of his velvet coat, and spent three minutes staring into the distance before he worked up the courage to send a simple enough message.
[Msg from ‘Me’ to ‘GeminiTay’] How do you feel about building some trees? Can you get to Boatem?
And void, the minutes after he’d sent the message while he’d waited for a reply were some of the longest and worst in his life. He began pacing once more, almost wearing through the hardwood flooring beneath his feet, until he felt the device vibrating.
[Msg from ‘GeminiTay’ to ‘Me’] I’d love to! Moose and I are on our way!
Now, Scar’s heart was in his throat, but it was the plan. It was the plan he and Grian had come up with, and he trusted Grian above anyone else to help him with this. He liked building custom trees, Gem liked building custom trees, and with the holiday’s just around the corner it was the perfect way to spend a little more time with her. It would be an excellent way to break the ice, and they would be able to bring some festive cheer to their fellow Hermits at the same time.
Scar bundled up ever so slightly more than normal, donning on a woolen scarf and a pair of thick gloves, and stepped outside to wait for Gem to arrive with an inventory full of shulkers. He had several trees planned and enough materials for them each, which meant the moment Gem arrived they could get to work without the need for painful small talk. It wasn’t something he was particularly good at doing, and he found that conversation flowed much more easily when he had something to do with his hands. Placing blocks was familiar, building trees was something he was good at. It was the perfect idea.
When Gem arrived and tied Moose to a post, he spent a second forgetting to breathe. This was why he’d spent so long planning, because he knew the moment he laid eyes on her any ability to think would leave him completely. Gem was, to put it simply, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her hair was the brightest of reds, her smile wide and infectious: everything from the freckles on her face to the antlers on her temple just made her, her. She was a goddess, and Scar would be kidding himself if he said he wasn’t willing to spend his life worshipping her.
But, Grian had told him, that sounded a little strong. So building trees. Building trees was an easier way to start. He raised a hand, catching Gem’s eye and gaining her attention, before waving for her to approach. Her lips curled up into a smile and he knew he was utterly done for.
“Scar! Hello!” She said happily, offering him a wave before quickly tucking her hands back into her pockets. “So, we’re building some trees?” She asked, and Scar nodded.
Trees, Scar. Think about the trees!
“I thought it might be nice. I know it’s still a little early but the server is lacking in decorations, and I thought a couple of trees in the shopping areas and at spawn might help kickstart everyone else’s plans.”
“Well, I think it’s a wonderful idea.” Gem told him eagerly. “Where are we starting?”
This was going well. Gem seemed excited, she was happy with the plan and he was sticking to it. Scar let himself smile - not so much that she might think he was insane, but enough that his face reflected the emotion in hers - and he let out a nervous breath.
“I thought if we start here and gradually work our way around the server. We could build something in the Big Eye shopping district, the Evil Emporium, Horsehead Farms, Octagon and - if you don’t have anything planned - in the swamp, before finishing with the spawn egg.”
“My goodness, that’s a lot of trees!” Gem exclaimed, and for a moment Scar panicked. Was it too much? Had he come on too strong, or was she busy and without that much time to dedicate to the decorating cause? Before he had time to interject and go back on himself, Gem continued, the same smile from before returning to her face in earnest to reinforce the meaning of her words. “I suppose we’d better get started then?”
It was posed as a question, and in answer Scar reached into his inventory to unveil the first shulker box, simply named Boatem. It was full to bursting with spruce leaves, with red wool and nether wart blocks, with lanterns, gold ingots on string, and sweet berries. Red and gold, a classic colour scheme, something that would blend into the background of the relatively chaotic world that Boatem had created.
“I suppose we’d better.”
With those final words spoken, the two moved almost seamlessly into the mindset of natural builders. Gem, at first, took the lead from Scar, allowing him to begin the base of the build where he thought it would look best in the village. After a couple of tweaks, and several elytra fly-bys, the dirt blocks that had been placed as an example of where they were going to build were removed and instead spruce wood was erected. When it came to the leafs, Scar watched in fascination as Gem’s fingers slowly knit them together in a pattern that looked almost more natural than the trees that grew themselves. He mimicked what she did on the opposite side of the tree, ensuring that it was balanced but not so symmetrical that it became unnerving.
Once they got into a rhythm, constructing the tree itself didn’t take long. What did take time and effort, however, was the process of decorating it.
Scar hung lanterns at first, though conceded that it didn’t work quickly. Gem suggested, and demonstrated, candles, though they quickly became too much of a fire hazard. The lighting was temporarily forgotten in place of hanging up the gold ingots like baubles and sweet berries, with a nether wart and wool skirt placed at the foot of the tree.
“I still think lanterns work better, they’ll emit more light.”
“Trust me when I say candles.” Gem replied, looking at Scar over her shoulder with a smile on his face that made his stomach churn. There was no one else here - Scar was certain Grian had evacuated everyone from Boatem the moment he saw the two of them together - and that smile was just for him.
“Alright, I trust you, but show me how you’ll make this work without setting the rest of the world on fire.” He chuckled.
Gem, to her credit, did exactly that.
She took glass panes and stacked them high, using the mechanics of the server to her advantage by breaking those lower to the ground than needed, and she placed a candle atop one and lit it.
If you weren’t paying too much attention, it almost looked as if it were floating.
Okay. So the candles looked infinitely better than the lanterns ever could. And he didn’t just think that because Gem had been the one to do it.
“Why not use yellow and red glass?” He asked. “Then it’ll fit better with the decorations.”
“That’s why you always get a second opinion.” Gem told him. “Grab some dye for the glass, then this tree is almost finished.”
Scar did exactly as he was told, staining the glass before using the same technique Gem had done before to create what appeared to be hovering red and yellow icicles. He imagined when frost clung to the surface, they’d look even more beautiful.
Only a short time later, the two were standing back and admiring their handiwork. It looked stunning, better than either of them could have come up with alone, and now that they had a found a way to decorate them that they both enjoyed it would be easy to replicate around the server.
“To the Big Eyes?” Scar asked Gem, picking up his shulker box as she nodded.
“To the Big Eyes! There’s room on Moose if you’d like to ride with me?”
The suggestion was enough for Scar’s brain to stumble over its thoughts and his heart to skip a beat. Building with Gem was one thing, making conversation with Gem was another, but riding horseback with her? Such close proximity, such movement, such--
“Scar?” Gem clicked her fingers, and he was pulled from his thoughts. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“No, no, it’s fine.” He said, inwardly cursing himself. “To the Big Eyes.”
The ride, thankfully, wasn’t a long one. Scar managed to mostly put the thoughts and feelings running through his body to one side, focusing instead on the decorations he had planned for this tree. Each tree was going to have its own colour scheme to keep things feeling personalised and tailored to each location, and so instead of the same red and gold the Big Eyes were going to have white and blue: lapis and lilies of the valley.
Scar spoke an awful lot less as they built the second tree, still fighting back the too strong thoughts of Gem and how wonderfully she had ridden Moose - how calmly she had spoken to the horse and how clearly she had instructed it. If Gem noticed, she didn’t mention anything, and within an hour they had gone from no tree at all to all the floating candles lit and flickering as warmth and light emanated from them.
The next stop was the Evil Emporium, and Scar’s ideas for that shopping district in particular meant that conversation once again came easily. Instead of building the same pine tree that they had built before, he used darker materials to create a petrified tree. It certainly suited the atmosphere of the district far better than a more traditional pine could have done, and the dark leaves were adorned with both regular and premium Derpcoins. Scar didn’t entirely understand the currency, but they made for pretty enough decorations.
Rather than travel all the way to Horsehead Farms on Moose they took the horse back to Gem’s home - allowing the woman to briefly stop inside and grab a pair of gloves - before travelling through the Nether to reach the far South of the continent. There it was back to a more traditional style, and their work became quiet once more.
It wasn’t until they were hanging miniature copper blocks at various stages of oxidation on the tree in the Octagon that Gem mentioned the quiet.
“Did I… Did I say something wrong?” She asked quietly, and Scar’s head quickly snapped up and away from the work he was doing.
“What in the world makes you think--”
“Because you’ve been quiet, and you were talking a lot before, and it just made me wonder if I’d done something wrong.”
Scar waited for a beat in case there was anything else Gem wanted to say, and he tried to ignore the awful feeling in his chest. He hadn’t wanted to make her feel like she’d done something wrong, he just hadn’t wanted to say the wrong thing himself and hadn’t been confident enough in his own conversational abilities to avoid that. Gem didn’t deserve to feel like she’d done something wrong when the only person to blame was himself, but as he opened his mouth to reply she continued to speak.
“I should probably just... Say it now, embarrass myself completely.” She laughed, though there was an edge of sadness to her voice that threatened to break him. “I like you Scar. I don’t know if I said something wrong, or if I came on too strong, but I really hope I haven’t. I know we don’t know each other all that well, but the last thing I’d want to do is make you uncomfortable.”
If the string of the ornament that Scar was holding hadn’t already been hovering over a branch, it would have clattered to the floor as his fingers came apart in shock. What was he meant to say to that? Gem, the Gem he thought the world of, liked him?
“I--” He let out a breathy, nervous laugh. “Gem, I like you. Of course you didn’t say anything wrong, you never could. I didn’t want to come on too strong, I thought I was going to make you feel uncomfortable and I panicked. I didn’t mean to go quiet, I just… I didn’t really know how to do this.”
“You like me too?” She asked, peering around from her side of the tree with a smile on her face that was so much softer, so much more genuine than any other he’d seen that day, and he nodded.
“Yes, so much.”
“Well…” Gem smiled, reaching for another decoration from the shulker box beside them. “Now that’s cleared up, what’s your favourite colour?”
It felt easier now. The questions and the talking. Instead of just making conversation about the trees they built he could ask her about herself, the things she liked and disliked, the projects she had constructed in the past and the places she’d seen.
From the Octagon, they went to the Swamp, and from the Swamp they went to Spawn.
The Egg that Pearl and Joe had built at the start of the season was one that Hermits saw less and less frequently, but the pair still took great joy in decorating it. A tree was constructed in the centred and decorated similarly to the others, with a brick chimney installed and stockings hung with the Hermits names embroidered on by hand. They hung mistletoe in the doorways, and decorated the exterior with wreaths and candles as the sun began to set and the moon began to rise.
As the day drew to a close, the pair stood inside and packed up the last of the unused supplies. As the shulker box closed for the final time and Scar slotted it back into his inventory, he was left looking at a rosy cheeked Gem who smiled up at him with eyes that silently, but adamantly, said that she wasn’t quite ready to part just yet.
“So…” She said slowly, and Scar smiled in return.
“So.”
“Today was lovely. You have taught me a thing or two about building trees.”
“As have you.” Scar added. For a moment, the two just stood in content silence, waiting to see who would be the first to break.
Of course, it was Scar.
“Would you like to come back to Boatem?” He asked. “I mean, we could have something to eat, it’s been a long day of building and I--”
“Come back to the forest, it’s closer.” Gem said. “We can have dinner in Boatem another time, but there’s a few more people there than I think I’d like. In the forest, it’ll just be us. No prying eyes.”
“Well, when you put it like that.” Scar laughed, and he slowly pulled one hand from his gloves before extending it and wiggling his fingers in Gem’s direction. “Shall we?”
Gem took his hand without question, and the two took several steps forward until they stood in the doorway of the Spawn Egg.
Until they stood beneath the mistletoe.
They both shared a knowing glance, and both their faces turned a deeper shade of red than the cold had already caused them to be. What happened next, however, neither would tell. That moment was for them, and them only.