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Dying hurt.
Dream knew that better than most people. It didn’t matter if people believed you passed away peacefully in your sleep or if they promised you wouldn’t suffer before a sword sliced through your throat or when an arrow pierced through your lung. Pain was how he knew he was alive. Pain was how he knew that he was still here.
He was still here when far too many of them were gone.
He learned a long time ago that they used to be plentiful. They used to be everywhere! They used to be more than myths.
And then he learned why they were better off as myths.
His wings, bright and burning and pulsing with both heat and magic painted a target on his back. Phoenixes were myths, and people liked to sell the beasts of myth and legends to the highest bidder. He had seen one of them in a cage one time, their voice hoarse from screaming. Their feathers plucked to be sold as jewelry or quills or their magic siphoned away from them in an attempt to live forever.
Dream first learned how to hide his wings before he learned how much dying hurt. He learned that day what it was like to see a phoenix explode through several lives in succession. Nothing grew on that server anymore, not with the lingering residue of wrath that still burned there.
Dying hurt, but it was how he knew he was still here. Like all young phoenixes, he burned bright and hot, devouring several of his lives before he learned control. He lasted longer after that, but he still felt like a wildfire spreading across a field of dry grass. He knew the myths and the stories. He knew the colors of his feathers, of the ones he had seen. They were always fire-orange, maybe red, maybe even yellow.
The first time he saw someone like him, but with colors that extended even past that, it was long before L’Manburg first waved its flag. His server, the home he knew with his friends that he built with his own hands, brought in people of all kinds. He had traveled far, just to see how far the world extended, when he found a simple house in the woods. From it, a path had been carved into the dirt. It looked almost natural, but with a touch that was just off. Like the world, but just to the left. Dream followed the path over a hill, then saw at the bottom, a man with wings.
Dream froze at the top of the hill, looking down at the man and at his wings. From this distance, the feathers were black like char. Feathers crawled up the man’s throat and up along his face. The man’s cloak covered much of him, but Dream saw the tail feathers trailing across the ground as he turned and gazed up the hill. When their eyes met, Dream saw magic.
He saw the man below him glowing, his feathers burning as bright as Dream’s. But he saw the magic shift and flare from fire-orange to blue to white to purples and greens and ever-flickering magenta. It felt like staring at the sun, as jarring as a slap in the face. Dream stood frozen in shock as he realized that if he could see the man for what he was, then the man could see him too.
The man walked up the hill, his gaze interested as he considered him, and Dream knew that this one… This man was old. He was far older than Dream ever believed they could be. He extended his hand and Dream startled back into himself.
“Hi mate,” the man greeted as Dream shook his hand. “Philza Minecraft.”
“Dream,” he replied, his heart pounding in his chest. Philza tilted his head down at him, deep golden eyes studying that which most people couldn’t see. Dream felt exposed like this. His wings trembled in the middle of reality, the place between the planes where he knew he could hide them. Here, Philza had hidden them with magic of his own. An illusion, a trick of the light. Both of them hiding in plain sight.
"Nice to meet you, Dream," he replied, his voice accented with clicks and trills that left Dream's brow scrunching. He hadn't grown up around other phoenixes. He knew they had a language all of their own, but he had never learned it. He wondered if Philza could teach him. He nodded in agreement to Philza, still processing the fact that there was another phoenix on his server. Philza tilted his head, amusement crossing his features as Dream fell silent. He held a hand out, clawed talons at the end of his fingers. “Would you like to stop in for something to drink?”
Dream felt himself nodding before he even really processed the offer. He fell into step with Philza, his eyes far too focused on all the colors in the man’s feathers that he didn’t even see the root twisting up through the path. His foot caught in it, his ankle twisting as he cried out. His wings didn’t flare out to catch himself as he fell, but rather he went to tuck in his limbs so the impact would hurt less. But then strong arms wrapped around his midsection, steadying him before he crashed to the dirt. Dream’s feathers rose around his throat as he felt Philza close to his back, his mouth brought close to his ear in his haste to catch him. They froze like that, Dream’s muscles tensing instinctively at the closeness.
But instead of a blade sliding through his ribs, a taloned hand gently traced a path over the line of his jaw.
“Baby bird,” Philza crooned, his voice low and concerned. Something in Dream’s hindbrain softened as Philza’s wings surrounded them, protecting him from the outside. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice thick with a trill Dream couldn’t place the meaning of.
“Y-yeah,” Dream replied, surprised by the stutter in his voice. He turned back to Philza, startling back slightly at the bright fire in his eyes. The gold flickered into a deep shade of orange, his gaze intense until he seemed to come back to himself. Philza’s eyes closed and he shook his head.
“Okay,” he replied, slowly pulling back. Dream squinted in the light as his wings folded in tight to his back. “Okay,” he repeated, exhaling slowly before he opened his eyes again. Dream wasn’t surprised to see them in that soft, golden glow again. Sure, it was odd, but he was still trying to figure out if he should be indignant that this random guy called him a “baby bird”. Philza didn't pull his hands away right away, his talons hooked gently into his clothes. Slowly, he retracted, and pulled his hands in to stick them in the draping sleeves of his coat. "Shall we?" he asked with a lazy smile and a tilt of his head back up the hill.
Dream followed him back to his house, his own mind racing through all the things he had been made aware of in the last ten minutes. One, that there was another one of his kind on his server. Phoenixes were rare creatures, made ever rarer by the pillagers who hunted them down to siphon away their magic.
Two, that Philza was old. Philza was old in ways that Dream could barely imagine. The only phoenixes he had ever seen were only ever fire-orange or red. Maybe yellow, and once, green. Never blue. Never purple. Never white or magenta or a combination of all of them. Philza was old and Dream wanted to know just how the hell he'd survived for so long.
Three, and probably the most concerning thing: there was someone here, on his server, that he had simply stumbled on. Phoenixes were hybrids, and were player races. Philza wasn't whitelisted. He shouldn't be here. So why, of all things, was he here?
Dream and his thoughts settled into a chair at the small dining table inside Philza's house. The house wasn't terribly small, but it was cozy. Chests lined nearly every wall, none of them labeled. A myriad of trinkets and flower pots hung from the ceiling and in the windows. There was a cat nearby that Philza reached down to scratch between the ears as he passed. As Dream glanced around, his magic spread out along the floor. Careful and slow moving as he studied his surroundings, probing the lines of code embedded in the server. His magic twisted around the table, winding around Philza’s feet, when something heavy dropped on it. It was so sudden that Dream startled in his chair.
"It's a bit rude, mate," Philza started, his voice low and rolling like thunder. Dream’s eyes snapped to him, but he hadn't turned from where he was preparing some refreshments. Dream’s feathers rose slowly as Philza continued. "To go looking through another person's things." The man turned around slowly, his casual, lazy smile still pulling at his lips as he fixed Dream with a stare like daggers. "What'cha looking for?"
Dream pressed his lips together, slowly retracting his magic. He could feel Philza's building in the small room, the weight of it oppressive as it settled all around him. It didn't touch him, though. Hm. He fixed Philza with a stare of his own. He could challenge the best of them. Philza was just another obstacle in his way and, based on the context of this conversation, there was no doubt in his mind who would give first.
"Well," he started, leaning back in his chair. "I'm just curious how you ended up here." One of Philza's long, feathered ears twitched and he pushed up from where he leaned against the counter. He carried a tray of small scones and tea to the table, setting it down directly in the center. Dream waited until Philza stepped away and sat down. The man gestured at the scones, all politeness as his magic roiled around them.
"Go ahead. They don't bite." His smile (and magic) softened a touch as Dream took a scone and tore off a bite. Okay, look. It was delicious, and Dream couldn’t help but stare at it in awe and nearly shove the whole thing in his mouth. If it meant Dream didn’t feel like bolting away from this man, he was fine with the amusement that flickered across Philza's face. "I ended up here just as everyone else does," he replied simply.
"Uh-huh," Dream said around a mouthful of a second scone. He swallowed, then sipped the tea to help his throat work the food down. "So, what, server-invite? Got whitelisted and all that?"
"Yup," he replied, popping the 'p'.
Dream nodded, licking his fingers. "Yeah, okay, got it. Good scones by the way."
"Thanks," Philza beamed, almost as if he were surprised by the compliment.
"You definitely need to work on your story, though," Dream said, his mouth twisting up in a smug smile. Philza's, in return, fell flat. "It might've worked with the others, but with me, you're gonna have to try harder." This time, when Philza's magic rose up like a storm, Dream's rose up with it. Phoenix magic tended to have… explosive results when they touched other magic, unless the touch was freely allowed. Dream was no stranger to avoiding the worst of a detonation, but he didn’t think Philza would take kindly to his nice house turning into a crater.
"And what makes you so special?" Philza replied, his accent thickening with a hiss.
"Oh, because this is my server. And I didn't invite you."
The first thing Dream felt was surprise, even if Philza’s face didn’t show it. He felt the oppressive cloud of Phil’s magic shift, then hover, then settle around its master. It gave him some room to breathe, but it didn’t let him try to creep around again. The other man’s eyes were bright, sharp as they studied him. Dream sipped his tea again, then gestured at him. “So I’ll ask you again: how did you get here?”
“How many of us have you seen before?” Philza asked instead of answering.
“I don’t see how that’s relevant. Just answer–” Dream cut off when Phil’s magic brushed against his, freezing in place as he felt the touch ripple through the air. This was dangerous, but he could tell the man in front of him wasn’t stupid. Even if letting their magic brush like that was a stupid move. He swallowed against the interested trill rising in his throat, huffing the noise out in a breath. “Fine, if it means you’ll back off.”
Dream waited until Phil’s magic shifted away again before he started speaking. “A couple, here and there. They don’t last very long, the ones I’ve seen. I’m surprised you have.”
Philza hummed, then reached for the last scone on the plate. “I get that a lot. It’s what happens when your worlds are hardcore.”
Dream blinked. “Hardcore?”
Phil nodded, then lifted his fingers as he spoke. “One life. One death. One chance to make the most of it. For it to mean something. I survived five years in my last world before I lost it.”
That was… that was impossible for Dream to imagine. Literally impossible. He died just last week to some dumb shit George pulled. For Phil to have survived as long as he did… well… it made sense that his colors shifted as much as they did. It made something twinge dark and bitter in his chest at the thought that this man could let his feathers hang loose and bright without hiding them. Even now, in the quiet and relative safety of his home, his charcoal-black illusion faded into bright, flickering lights.
But it didn’t answer his question. “So, if you’re working on another world, why are you here in mine? Did you get bored or something?”
Phil frowned at his scone, swallowing his bite. He set it back down, then laced his fingers together and leaned forward on the table, his sharp gaze boring into Dream. “I have been around for a long time, and it’s been a while since I last saw one of us. I found traces of you in the code itself, followed your trail all the way to here. We’re not the last of our kind, but it is getting close. I found a… loophole of sorts, and slipped in.”
“For what? To meet me, or something?”
“Yeah.”
“... why? Why me?”
Philza didn’t answer. Instead, he reached for the empty plate of scones and took it back to the counter, setting it aside to be cleaned. Dream was left with his thoughts, left to think and think and think. And, oh, did he think. Philza was right. There weren’t many of them left, and any left were becoming fewer and fewer. But Dream was a survivor in his own right. His friends could attest to that. He learned how to survive the worst of the worst that the worlds he lived and breathed in could throw at him. He always came back from his deaths.
“If you think you’re here to protect me or something,” Dream said as he pushed up from the table. “You’re dead wrong. I don’t need protection. I don’t need saving. You’re a survivor? Well, I am too.”
Philza laughed quietly, his feathers shaking with his laughter. “Yes, I’m sure you are,” he said as he turned back to Dream, his smile holding for a moment before falling into something more somber. “I don’t know why I came looking for you, Dream. Maybe I wanted to confirm that I wasn’t the last one. Maybe I wanted to see you for myself. I see the gold in your feathers,” he pointed. “You know that dying isn’t the only thing we can do.”
There was weight in that sentence, in that phrase that Dream couldn’t really parse. Still, it made sense. Phoenixes were known for dying, only to come back to life. But beyond that? What else could a phoenix do? Many things, Dream knew. Many more things than just being a symbol for rebirth.
Dream left Philza and his small little house behind. He could stay, and Dream would whitelist him if he wanted to come back whenever he left. He was pretty sure there wasn’t much he could do to stop him anyways. And besides, if it meant that he had someone else like him, someone he didn’t need to hide his feathers from… then maybe he was fine if Phil stayed.