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Grian didn’t need to check his calendar to know that today was full of activities.
He had memorized his entire plan for the week- he had things to catch up on, hangouts with the other hermits, games to play. Honestly, he was amazed that he could even manage to cram that much in, but he was glad for it. Being back on Hermitcraft was a great feeling, and the busy air and cheerful atmosphere he gladly welcomed. Grian planned to take advantage of it as much as possible.
First on his to-do list was playing Etho’s froglight game. He stretched out his arms and wings, picking himself up out of bed and throwing on his red sweater. Etho had said that items weren’t necessary and it would probably be better if he didn’t bring any, so that made his job a little bit easier.
His communicator gave a buzz and he glanced down at it, still rushing back and forth through his base, because for some godforsaken reason, he had misplaced his rockets.
GoodtimeswithScar: Hey G, you busy today?
Grian let out a sigh, thinking through his activities of the day. He had to play Etho’s game, go home and do some building, then see what those pesky snails were up to… He could probably fit in something else.
Grian: Probably, what’s up?
GoodtimeswithScar: Nothing! Come to Gem’s boat at the end of the day.
Grian: Sure
ImpulseSV: woooo
He only had a minute to think about why Impulse might be happy about him agreeing to plans with Scar, or why said plans would take place at Gem’s base. Then he found his rockets, stashed in an unorganized chest, and he was on his way to the shopping district.
*
“Wow, Etho,” Grian let out an impressed whistle. “You’ve outdone yourself, dude.”
Etho chuckled, watching Grian stare in awe. “Thanks, I was pretty proud of this one.”
He took in a deep breath, looking around. The ravagers had no specific pattern of movement, going at random, but he had watched Etho play his own game once a while ago. The street wasn’t meant to be too hard. He just had to follow the beasts and keep sprinting.
Grian lept onto the deepslate, planning to run across the entire area without many issues, but instead his feet stuck to the floor. When he looked back in confusion, Etho was chuckling.
Before he knew it, another ravager was coming his way. He forced his foot off the road, which he now realized was covered in honey. He narrowly avoided it, jumping out of its way and knocking himself into a roadblock. He pulled himself up and continued, eventually making it off of the sticky stone.
He put his hands on his knees, panting. His shoes were still sticky and made strange noises when he stepped. Grian was ready to fall to the ground after the near-death experience, but then he heard Etho call to him.
“Grian, don’t forget Snake!” He yelled, although Grian could hear the laughter in his voice.
“Snake?” Grian questioned, looking around him on the small line of grass. Then he saw the zombie walking towards him only a couple of blocks away. He jumped in surprise before looking back at the final section of the game. The frogs were close, but there were still more ravagers.
If he didn’t move now, Snake was going to take him out. He made a leap of faith towards a dripleaf, not allowing himself to stop before jumping to the next. Before he knew it, the frogs at the end of the game were right in his sight, less than a few feet away.
A ravager rammed into his side, and the next thing Grian knew, he was back in the bed from the start of the game.
“Awhh, so close,” Etho said when he made his way back to the entrance.
“I almost had it!” Grian spoke stubbornly, picking up his rockets. “Next time I’ll win, and that’s a promise. It’s a really great game, Etho. Amazing work.”
Under his mask, Grian assumed Etho was smiling based on his scrunched eyes. “Thanks, Grian. Uh, what’s next on your schedule?” He rocked on his heels, and Grian raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve got a bunch of building to do, gotta look for the snails, and then I’m going to Gem’s base with Scar, although I’m not quite sure what for,” Grian explained. “Why do you ask?”
“Huh? Oh, no reason. Nothing. Take your time with that build. Thanks for playing, G!” Etho said quickly before rushing out the door. Grian stood in the main shop, hands out in a confused gesture. Why would Etho be acting so weird about his schedule? He didn’t forget something, did he?
No, that can’t be it. Etho can be a nervous guy, Grian reasoned. He was probably just making conversation.
Grian didn’t want to dwell on it. He needed to get what building he could in before Scar wanted him at Gem’s place. He lit a rocket and shot into the air, looking over the messy shopping district. That was a problem for tomorrow, he decided.
Once he made it to his base, he looked through his chests for his building supplies. He knew he had gathered a bunch of materials and placed them somewhere around here. After a little while longer of looking, he realized his blueprints for the next attachment to his base were also gone.
“What?” He muttered to himself. Grian was forgetful, but not that forgetful, especially with such important documents.
“Whatcha lookin’ for?”
Grian turned around quickly, nearly hitting Tango with his wing.
“Tango?” After taking a breath, Grian realized he wasn’t alone. “Joel? What are you two doing here?”
Tango and Joel glanced at each other, and then Joel spoke. “We were in the area and saw you looking super helpless. We thought we’d see what the problem was.”
He shrugged. There was no use in lying. “My blueprints and materials are gone. I wanted to do some building, but it’s kind of hard when I don’t have any of what I need.”
The blazeborn gasped, a hand on his chest. It was a little dramatic for the situation, Grian noted, but Tango was just like that sometimes. “That’s horrible!”
“Any idea who might have taken it?” Joel asked.
Grian paused. “I didn’t think anyone took it. I just thought maybe it got misplaced. Do you think someone took it?”
Tango looked at Joel again, eyes narrowing. Joel rushed on, rambling something close to no-never-what-I-mean-I-was-just-saying-it-was-kind-of-weird. This time Tango nudged him in the side with his elbow, and Joel let out a noise of frustration. He whispered something to Tango and then continued as if nothing had happened.
“We can help you gather some new stuff if you want?” Joel suggested.
Grian thought for a moment. He would hate to take them away from whatever activities they were busy with for the day, but if they were offering, he might as well take it.
“Actually, that would be great, if you wouldn’t mind?”
“Of course not! Anything for a fellow hermit, right?” Tango smiled, checking his elytra wings. “So, whatcha need gathered?”
Grian gave the two of them a long list of the materials he needed. Most of it was easy stuff, mainly wood and copper, but there were a few harder things to get. When he told them he would handle the inconvenient things, Joel and Tango immediately stopped him.
“Nope. No, absolutely not,” Joel said, arms crossed. Tango was nodding emphatically.
“Why?” Grian asked, more than a little confused.
“Because- uh. We offered to help. Let us do that.”
“Yeah!” Joel agreed.
There was something in the air today. Everyone he was talking to was acting strange- first Etho, uptight and nervous, and now Tango and Joel were refusing to let him do things. He was just about to ask what was going on when Joel and Tango both took off, yelling about gathering the materials he needed.
He groaned, lighting another rocket and flying to gather more wood. He had a feeling that he had forgotten something and he wasn’t just imagining it. But he had memorized his entire schedule- playing Etho’s game, doing some building, checking on the snails, and meeting with Scar. He couldn’t have missed anything if it was really important, right?
Grian gathered three stacks of wood, arms aching, before going back to the lake he had made his home. Joel and Tango were already waiting for him, the sun at high noon over his base. Grian landed smoothly next to them, and they showed him the shulkers they had gathered.
“Wow, that was- fast. How did you guys do that?” He asked them, looking through the boxes.
“Magic, obviously.” Joel rolled his eyes.
“Do you want some help building? I know you like to do this type of thing on your own, but we’re pretty bored.” Tango asked, pushing up his red-tinted glasses.
He hesitated. The two of them had been so much help and he would feel bad rejecting something else, but building with other people on his own base was… difficult, to say the least. He would have to make a lot of corrections and they would probably get frustrated pretty quickly.
“Grian, imagine how much faster it would go,” Joel said, waving his hands around Grian’s base.
“I’m not sure how fast it would be-”
“So, yes?” Tango interrupted.
Grian shook his head in confusion. “Alright, I guess? It won’t be much fun, though.”
“Awesome! Where do we start?”
*
Finally, Grian managed to shoo Tango and Joel away from his base.
They had spent the better part of the afternoon building, and Grian had been right- he had corrected them what had to be hundreds of times, yet they never left. They never even put up a fight. Joel grumbled, but he just went to fix his mistakes. When Grian looked at the new build next to the water, he was actually pretty happy with it. Even if the process had been slower, he was able to laugh with his friends while doing it, so it wasn’t as much of an inconvenience as he might have thought.
Now he was on his way to find the snails. They had been at Big Ron’s for a while, but the last time he had checked, they had moved on. The two couldn’t have gone far, yet it was still a struggle to try and seek out the creatures.
He flew high above the server, scanning the ground for any sign of the snails or their strange gooey trails. Trees passed below him quickly, the wind in his wings and the sun on his face. Even if it was annoying to be looking for the snails, he was partially grateful. The day was beautiful, and-
Grian crashed into someone, hearing a loud oh, no! as they both fell to the ground. He regained his composure relatively quickly, managing to glide and land, stumbling a bit. The other person did the same, although she collapsed into a heap on the floor afterward.
“ Pearl? What are you doing?” He asked her, trying to catch his breath. His arm hurt from her knocking into him.
“Grian? Oh! Oh, uh,” Pearl looked around quickly. “I was… on my way to the, um, shopping district? Why are you all the way out here?”
He decided to ignore her strange stuttering for the moment. “I was looking for the snails before you crashed into me!”
“Hey, I didn’t crash into you, you crashed into me,” She said, her accent uplifting her words. “How long are you going to be out here for?”
“Another hour or so, I think?” He told her, watching her expression fall. “What?”
She jumped up, moth wings opening and closing nervously. “Huh? Nothing, what? Okay, nice seeing you, Grian, but I gotta get going, I’ll talk to you later, bye!” She shot up into the air before he could say anything else. He was tempted to let her go, to simply keep wondering what was happening.
Instead he flew after her, following her quietly. He had a suspicion that she wasn’t actually going to the shopping district, and he wanted to know why she had lied to him.
He watched Pearl soar through the sky quickly, checking her pockets every once in a while. They flew for what felt like hours, although it was probably only minutes before she swooped down to the side of the river.
Grian perched himself in a jungle tree, watching as Pearl swam beneath the water and reappeared at the top of Gem’s ship. She knocked on the door and it opened for her, Scar peeking his head out suspiciously. The two burst out giggling and Pearl rushed in, the door shutting quickly behind her.
He should probably approach this with reason and be mature about the situation. He should wait until Scar asked when he was showing up and find something else to do in the meantime. Grian had planned a lot of things for the day, and he hadn’t finished all of them- the snails were still nowhere in sight, after all.
Luckily for Grian, he didn’t like to approach situations with reason.
He glided down, skimming the river with his wings and landing on the deck of Gem’s ship. He could hear idle chatter in muffled whispers behind the door. How many people were hiding out in there? Grian had visited before and knew it wasn’t a huge place.
Grian strode up to the door, hesitating for a moment, before he knocked.
The whispering stopped immediately. He could hear Scar and Pearl going back and forth, barely making out any of their words. An eye showed up in the peephole of the door, seeing Grian and widening.
“Out of order! Do not- uh, do not enter!” Impulse’s voice said, forcefully deeper, as if he was pretending to be someone else.
Grian grabbed the doorhandle and barged in.
“What the hell is going- on?” He trailed off mid-sentence at the sight before him. Half of the hermits were crammed in the small housing part of the boat. Pearl and Gem were working together, standing on chairs, trying to hang up a garland. Scar was placing candles meticulously into a cake. Etho and Tango were trying to use redstone to make some kind of light, and everyone else was busying themselves with something similar.
They all froze when they saw Grian, and his heart sank. They had planned a surprise party and not included him?
Scar looked around before starting to cheer. “Happy birthday, Grian!”
Everyone else quickly followed, voices echoing against the tight walls. Grian looked between everyone in confusion.
“Sorry?”
Gem turned to him quickly, jumping down from her chair. “What do you mean, ‘sorry’? What about this is confusing to you?”
He blinked. “Isn’t my birthday next week?”
Joel shoved his shoulder. “No, it’s today, you dumb idiot. You forgot your own birthday?”
“Well, I’ve been pretty busy, so I just thought-”
“You thought wrong.” Gem said, causing Pearl to giggle. “Why do you think everyone’s been out distracting you?”
Suddenly everything made sense. Etho having him play Frogger and asking about his plans, Scar inviting him to Gem’s place, Tango and Joel helping him build, even Pearl bumping into him.
“Wait, so was my stuff really missing?” Grian asked, mock betrayal written on his face.
“Yep! Thought it might buy these guys some time,” Tango explained, a smile covering his face.
He laughed in disbelief. “Oh my god.”
The room laughed alongside him. His thoughts ran faster than he could keep up with. Grian couldn’t believe any of it, if he was being honest with himself. The fact that he had forgotten his own birthday, and the fact that everyone else had remembered for him?
It really was nice to be back on Hermitcraft.
“Come on, the cake is all done!” Scar shouted, waving his hands to gather everyone closer. The hermits crowded around the table, urging Grian to the center, facing the cake.
They sang the most off-tune, awful version of the Happy Birthday Song he had ever heard in his life, but Grian couldn’t help the laughter bubbling from his chest. He took a deep breath and blew out the candles, causing the hermits to erupt into more cheering. They let Grian slice his own piece, and once everyone had some, the group sat down on the ground and ate.
The sun was beginning to set, but the redstone Etho and Tango had put up gave them all the light they needed. Apparently some of them had planned ahead and brought games to play. Board games were sprawled out across the wooden boards, people packed shoulder to shoulder, shaking with laughter. When the night came to an end, everyone said their goodbyes and left to their bases.
“Thank you guys. I mean really, this means… a lot more to me than I can explain.” Grian said before he left.
Gem scoffed. “You don’t have to thank us. That’s what friends are for.”
“Still.”
Impulse chuckled. “No problem, G. Now go and get home, it’s late and you’ve been busy these past few days.”
Grian nodded, his social battery drained. As he made his way towards the door, he was stopped by a tap on the shoulder. When he turned around he saw Scar leaning on his cane, a plate outstretched towards him.
“Happy birthday, Grian! Enjoy the cake.” Scar grinned, and Grian took the plate thankfully.
As he flew back to his base, he realized he felt much lighter than he had only a few hours before.