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"Be calm and breathe," he tells me in the lonely dark. It is cold, colder than I ever dreamed it could be.
The warped forests, corrupted as they are, are cold sometimes. Colder than the places that surround them. Colder than lava, than the netherrack my hooves find familiarity in. I was not born here, in this burning place. I wandered in through a door that gleamed and whispered to me. I wandered in and I found myself here.
I was young then, and the people who looked like me thought me lost. Lonely. Afraid. I was afraid at first, but I learned. I learned of this place and the familiarity grew on me, until I no longer remembered what it was like on the other side of the door.
Until the day that a man stepped through. I was one of the first to see him. He was young then, younger than he is now. But yet I was still younger, and I didn’t understand who he was. He found me, older than I was when I first wandered in, and he told me in a voice quiet enough that the popping lava nearly swallowed it,
"You do not belong here."
He did not stay long, but upon seeing him that first time, I had to know what he meant. The netherrack was familiar on my feet, but it never quite felt like home.
His hands settle on my shoulders, firm as they ground me to the grass beneath my hooves. I cannot breathe in enough air; it is so cold that the very sky steals it away from me.
His eyes are old when I look at his face, even with his face still so young. I understand now who he is, and what he saw in me that first time. And to him I say, in the cold and lonely dark,
"You do not belong here."
He laughs, bright and cheerful and loud, and he lifts his hands away. "I do not," he agrees. "I have no home that I call mine. The whole world is mine, and I'm surprised to find someone else here. I thought I was alone."
And I look at him, and I see the age in his eyes, and I find myself reflected back in them. I see what he cannot, and I feel my breath be stolen from me again.
"I do not have a home of my own," I tell him as I reach for his hand. "This world is new to me, and I don't remember where I came from."
"Do you know where you're going next?" he asks as he pulls me to my feet. I can't help the grin that fills my face, and I say,
"Wherever you're going, Phil."