Archive of Our Own

The day had been entirely ordinary, part of a comfortable routine Mumbo had fit himself into since joining Hermitcraft a couple years ago. He spent most days on the server, tinkering with his builds and redstone machines, with the occasional trip off-world to his private world – a flat, sandstone plain that stretched on infinitely, filled with a robust and unending selection of redstone builds and machines. Some of them were built so long ago that they don’t work anymore, while others were built recently enough that the redstone inside hasn’t broken down with new updates. Mumbo wasn’t sure yet if the new update – coming in a couple of months – would change that much about the way redstone worked. He hadn’t been keeping up with the news enough to know.

So, that day was entirely ordinary. Nothing strange. Mumbo woke up on Hermitcraft, realized that the redstone he was planning needed more testing than he could comfortably do inside of Hermitcraft, and logged into his testing world. Thinking back, he could barely remember what he was planning on doing.

While preparing the blocks he’d need, gathering observers and hoppers and redstone dust, his communicator buzzed with a message. Which was odd, to say the least. The first odd thing of the day. Not that he didn’t get messages regularly – he totally did, thank you very much – but it wasn’t the buzz of a message coming from off-world. No, it was the buzz of someone joining his world. To be fair, it could’ve been any of the hermits – they all had access to his world.

I’ll check that in a second, Mumbo thought as he dumped his items onto the ground. Who – who would be coming here? I didn’t announce that I was leaving. That’s odd.

In the same moment that Mumbo looked up from his pile of gathered materials, the world ruptured. His world was an amalgamation of hundreds of different redstone builds, and one of them was bound to blow up or react badly at some point – in fact, he’d had several of them blow up in his face before. But this? This was different. This went beyond an explosion, beyond a human error in his redstone skills. The world, in its infinite possibilities and expanse, stopped for just two seconds, but it was enough.

It was enough to change and to grow and to destroy and rebuild. Something fundamental to the very basis of the world shifted on that day, and Mumbo witnessed it. He looked to the sky and saw it flare with inky purple, a streak of bright, almost blinding, lavender flaring and coating the sandstone world in luminous, effervescent strangeness. The blinding lavender streak dropped, rushing towards the bottom of the world, to the miniscule layers of sandstone that separated Mumbo’s feet and the Void.

That day, the world broke.

Mumbo watched. A whisper of infinity brushed against him. He shuddered.

There was terror, sure, but there was also awe; a moment of, Is this really happening, in my world? To me? He covered his eyes, but the blinding light did not care for mortal shields, and it spread, slipping through his fingers and consuming him.

Mumbo felt the explosion before he heard it – the aftershock of that blinding light crashing into his world nearly knocked him off his feet. The explosion was a series of bursting screams, a crumbling of sandstone, and a shattering against bedrock. Something this intensely powerful surely broke through bedrock, right? It consumed Mumbo for a couple of seconds, ringing in his ears, echoing over and over and over again. The sound drifted to an end.

That day, the world went still.

Mumbo waited. There was no infinity. He opened his eyes.

The world looked normal – the sky had returned to a beautiful, serene blue; clouds dusted the sky in clumps, though not nearly enough to promise rain. The sun tore through the atmosphere, beating down in harsh, desert rays. The silence lingered – the world was almost too quiet. The redstone machines and piston doors constantly firing kept the world in a constant hum, something consistent that settled into a comfortable white noise. This silence? It was unnatural, born of an earth-shattering event, something that fundamentally rewrote and rewired the world and left everything different, everything changed.

With a shivering foot, Mumbo stepped forward. Smoke rose in billowing puffs in the distance. Something charred and burnt, like an overdone marshmallow caught on fire too quickly, lingered. He stepped, and he stepped, one foot after the other. The closer he got, the more he shivered, the more his fingers pulled at the edges of his suit jacket, in a carefully practiced, well known motion.

He felt it – the disturbance in the world, the utter wrongness and brokenness – before he witnessed it. An enveloping embrace of entropy. A brush of endless infinity. A touch of scouring destruction. Mumbo ducked around a piston door and saw a crater at the edge of his world, at least two chunks wide, all the way down to bedrock. Plumes of smoke drifted off of magma and obsidian blocks. With an arm over his mouth to hold in the coughs desperately trying to escape, Mumbo waved the smoke away, and peered.

In the center of the crater, where the streak of lavender falling from the sky must’ve dropped, there was a figure, curled into a ball, draped in deep, purple robes.

“Oh.” Mumbo coughed as the unnatural, heavy smoke slipped past his arm. “Oh – oh dear. I need to, ah, yes. Xisuma. Oh, Void, what on earth…”

With his free hand, Mumbo pulled out his communicator so that he could message his admin. Surely, Xisuma would know how to approach a situation like this. Surely, Xisuma would know what to do.

In the moments that the world broke, Mumbo had forgotten about the ping that happened just before. When he looked at his communicator, he saw the message, and squinted, trying to see past the corrupted, spiraling text.

Ģ̸̠̤̘͔̜̖̎͘ ŗ̶̨̤̬̲͓̗̙̟̞̫̩͈͎́̍̆́̏́̍̉̓̃̋͗̍̕ ĩ̶̢̧̢̹̞̝̜̖͙͚̗̥̩͈͆̀͑̆̾̎̍̏̍̌̃͑͌̎͝ a̴̢̢̜͔̦̟̱̯̗̻̜͇͔̐̆͌́̔̏̓̀̍̐̏̕͜͝ n̶̛̲͉̒̈́͂́̐͑̏͛̾͜ joined the game.

*~*~*

Xisuma arrived ten minutes later after Mumbo, who couldn’t tear his eyes away from the figure in the center of the crater, terrified that it would start moving, sent a series of increasingly frantic messages. The figure had stayed still apart from a couple of quiet, lethargic movements, almost like it was desperately trying to hold its breath, to not give away its presence. The world slowly regained sound – the extension and retraction of pistons, the clicking of hopper clocks, the firing of redstone lines – with the hum being a gentle reminder that Mumbo was, in fact, a human aware of sounds and sensations.

It took a minute for Xisuma to make his way over to the crater that Mumbo had only described over message; Mumbo, not wanting to leave the figure for even an instant, decided against going to fetch Xisuma himself. When Xisuma stepped next to him, Mumbo nearly jumped a foot in the air from the shock of seeing an actual person next to him.

“Oh, dear lord,” Xisuma muttered, looking at the crater through his purple visor. “That does not look right.”

“Hi, X.” Mumbo breathed. “Yeah, it just, sort of. Happened. Yeah.”

“I’d ask what type of cosmic sorcery you’re messin’ with, but…” Xisuma pulled something up on his communicator. “No way this is normal. Or within the bounds of creation law.”

There were a few minutes of silence as Xisuma typed something up on his communicator and Mumbo stared down at the unmoving, unnaturally still figure. Eventually, Xisuma put away his communicator, rolled his shoulders, and said, “Alright, Mumbo, you ready to go down?”

Mumbo could barely say, “What?” before Xisuma was sliding down into the crater. With a moment of awkward hesitation, Mumbo stumbled in the crater after him, tumbling over himself and tripping halfway down. For a moment, Mumbo’s eyes fell from the figure in the center of the crater; when he dragged his eyes back to the center, he half expected the figure to have disappeared in the second he wasn’t looking.

It was still there, unmoving. Xisuma was already making his way over to it.

Mumbo trailed behind, fidgeting with his hands. He watched, from a safe distance away, as Xisuma crouched by the figure, examining it closely. When Xisuma sharply sucked in a breath, anxiety crawled through Mumbo’s stomach, like a maggot festering and digging deep inside. He took a tentative step forward, and then another, until his shadow lingered just about the figure.

Up close, it looked almost human – purple robes draped, like curtains over a misshapen, broken window, over its entire body, a white mask with purple detailing covering up its face. Its arms were exposed from tears in the fabric; fresh burn wounds danced up pale arms. On the mask was a rectangle with the corners broken off, almost like a Nether Portal frame missing two opposite corners.

“Mumbo, mate.” Xisuma, an anxious tilt to his voice, glanced up, squinting at the sun directly behind Mumbo. “Have you ever heard of the Watchers?”

It’s familiar, Mumbo knew. It sounded like a word that Mumbo had heard a long time ago, maybe one or two years ago – a title that held significance at one point in his life, but now fluttered by him. He thought and thought and thought, desperately searching through the filing cabinet that was his brain, trying to remember what the Watchers could possibility be, until –

“I remember,” Mumbo said. “You – I told you about Gri… about my old friend, right?” A thousand memories and moments flooded Mumbo’s brain, and he choked them down. “He encountered them, a while ago. Yeah.”

“This is a Watcher,” Xisuma said, matter of fact.

The blood in his veins and arteries turned to ice. “What?” Mumbo whispered.

“Look at the mask.” Xisuma traced the outlines of the symbol. “This is Their symbol.”

“Why… why would a Watcher be in my world?” Mumbo crouched to the ground, looking at the figure.  Oh, he realized in a flurry of thoughts, that’s why the world stopped. Why the world broke. This nearly destroyed my world. “I don’t…”

A hand reached out to steady Mumbo. “We need to contain it, quarantine it. They’re insanely powerful. The mask – I’ll take the mask off. The mask is where They store power, I think. Let me – ” The hand steadying Mumbo left, and stretched to touch the edges of the mask. It popped off with a release of pressure.

Mumbo looked at the face, prepared to study the destruction and creation that it caused in his world, until his breath caught in his throat and a sob tore its way out, out, out – because he knew that face, he knew that nose and the playful arch of those eyebrows and the soft, brown fringe dusting over closed eyes; eyes that Mumbo knew were deep pits of endless, infinite night, twinkling with mischief and joy. Eyes that Mumbo hadn’t seen for a year and a half, not since he left to fight the Dragon and never returned. Eyes that were closed, in that moment, tightly shut in a grimace of pain, eyes that held stories and mischief and pain and grief.

In an instant, Mumbo looked outward. The figure was small. He hadn’t noticed that before, in all the destruction that it caused. So small, so tiny, so much power.

“X…” Mumbo gasped. “X, that’s – ” A sob tore through his throat.

“Breath, Mumbo.”

“X, that’s Grian.”

The world stopped, again, but it wasn’t from a celestial power plummeting into Mumbo’s world, this time.

*~*~*

Xisuma sprang into action after a few moments of comforting and calming Mumbo, bundling up the broken, tiny Watcher – Grian, Mumbo’s brain unhelpfully reminded him – in his arms. Working together, they got Grian out of the crater, and into the tiny, wooden house that Mumbo built a couple years ago – the house he only built so that he’d have a place to sleep on nights he spent over in the redstone world. The house that Grian would make fun of every time he came to visit the world. The house only had one massive, long room – a kitchen and storage area on one side, and a single, red bed on the other.

As carefully as they could, they got Grian into the bed. He laid in a lump, unmoving apart from occasional quick, light breaths; smaller than ever, his frame slight and jaunt and terribly thin. His eyes were still closed. He almost looked as though he were dreaming, lost in a world far, far away from Mumbo’s.

Looking at his old friend – his friend who had been missing for more than a year at this point, who disappeared without a trace and with no way to contact him – Mumbo noticed that something was off. Something about Grian, about the way the robes awkwardly bunched around his back, about the lack of mass around him, made Mumbo remember –

“His wings, X,” Mumbo whispered. “Oh, Void – how didn’t I notice before?”

“It’s alright, Mumbo,” Xisuma replied. Mumbo glanced over to him – he was digging through some of Mumbo’s chests, gathering some supplies. “Do you have a pair of scissors? It might be best to cut the robes off, see if there are any other injuries.”

“Right, right…”

He had some sewing supplies in a hidden chest, buried under mountains of other supplies and artifacts. He didn’t spend too much time on the redstone testing world outside of making redstone contraptions, so most of the things he kept here were old, things from before Hermitcraft, even. Sometimes he brought things from Hermitcraft he wanted to keep, that he didn’t want to get deleted or lost with a new season starting. As a result, the storage area was less than organized; chests on top of each other, items in them with no rhyme or reason. As such, it took a bit to find the scissors. By the time he did, Xisuma was already pouring a healing potion over the burns on Grian’s arms.

“I think they’re from the firewall,” Xisuma said as Mumbo started cutting away the sleeves. “It’s what makes the most sense to me. Wherever he came from… it probably hurt a bit. It probably wasn’t easy to get out.”

The excess fabric haphazardly fell to the floor as Mumbo cut away. Once the sleeves were gone, they could see that the sweltering, scabbing burns carried all the way up from his hands to his shoulders, covering his arms entirely in an angry red. Xisuma used both a healing potion and a fire resistance potion to sooth the wounds – a regeneration potion could come later, after Xisuma checked for any other injuries.

Mumbo looked to Grian’s back. He thought of long, sturdy wings, covered in beautiful, vibrant feathers; strong and healthy and flying around as they competed in silly building competitions or toured each other’s builds. As he brought the scissors closer to the back, terrified of what he’d see under the robes, his hands shook.

Fabric slicing, tearing apart, underneath scissors, as Xisuma softly hummed to himself while wrapping Grian’s arms with bandages. Mumbo pulled the fabric away from Grian’s back and sucked in a deep, strained breath when he saw a mass of dull, stringy feathers tightly bound to Grian’s back. A leather strapped held his wings down, digging in, leaving divots in Grian’s wings. Immediately, Mumbo tried to get the strap off, but it was bound so tightly to Grian’s wings that he couldn’t get the scissor underneath without hurting the already damaged feathers.

“X,” Mumbo whispered, staring at the broken, beaten body of his best friend, “what happened to him?”

Xisuma looked up from the carefully wrapped bandages he’d just finished tying off on Grian’s arms, his eyes darting around the mess of feathers that had to have wings hidden under there. “I don’t know, Mumbo,” Xisuma replied, in an attempt to be comforting. “But we’ll figure it out,” Xisuma took the pair of scissors away from Mumbo’s shaking hands, “I promise.”

It only took a few seconds for Xisuma to attack and defeat the strap holding Grian’s wings down. The strap fell away, edges jagged around where Xisuma sliced through it with the scissors, and Grian’s wings instinctively fluffed out, unfurling with instinct. The last time Mumbo had seen Grian, more than two years ago at this point, Grian had slept with his wings extended, one of them fully on top of Mumbo, even though their beds were a full meter apart. Grian never slept with his wings folded up like this. Despite being a bit more relaxed, there was still something keeping them pressed to Grian’s back.

Carding his fingers through feathers, Mumbo felt just how fragile they were – almost as though they hadn’t been taken care of in years, the way that the feathers nearly snapped under the light pressure of his thumb. Mumbo withdrew his hand, terrified of hurting Grian, of messing his wings up even more than before.

“We need to check for more injuries,” Xisuma gently said, his hand resting on Mumbo’s shoulder. “There aren’t any other visible ones, but I need to check. Can you help?”

Thus, the two of them methodically checked Grian’s body, using an x-ray machine Xisuma only ever uses for emergencies. Amazingly, even though he had fallen from however high (probably the build height), Grian had very few injuries apart from the burns. The only other apparent injury was a hairline fracture on his left ankle, which Xisuma splinted up quickly and efficiently. On Hermitcraft, Doc was normally the one to heal injuries, but Mumbo didn’t feel comfortable enough inviting him to the redstone testing world – not to see Grian, at least.

Apart from the burns and the hairline fracture, Grian was uninjured. Old, healed scars littered his body, though, each telling a hidden, unobtainable story; his wings, the feathers dull and lifeless and fragile, hung awkwardly around him after Xisuma and Mumbo worked to get them open to check for injuries. Apart from deep indents where the straps had been squeezed too tightly and patches of missing feathers, there were no permanent, pressing injuries.

As they were looking at the wings, Mumbo realized with horror that the flight feathers were clipped. Judging by the clean, consistent cut, it was done recently.

Grian took pride in his feathers, in his wings. He took pride in keeping them neat and organized, and rarely let anyone touch them. Most avians were the same way – their wings and feathers were a status symbol. Grian, with the red, yellow, and blue feathers of a macaw, knew how to show them off, knew the importance of keeping them neat and tidy. When Grian had asked Mumbo for help with his wings for the first time – what felt like a lifetime ago – Mumbo had been honored that Grian would trust him enough for such a delicate task.

Somehow, the mangled mess of feathers, so fragile he could snap them with a brush of pressure, didn’t get to Mumbo so much as the clipped feathers. The Grian he knew wouldn’t let anyone do this to him.

That Grian must be gone, Mumbo reasoned, horrified, mourning and grieving and accepting all at once, he’s gone, and he’s been replaced, and the Grian in front of me is someone entirely different. I don’t know him, but I do, and I still care about him – but how much is left?

“What’s happened to you, mate?” Mumbo asked, his voice barely above a whisper, his hand reaching out to brush a touch against Grian’s cheek. “What’s happened?”

*~*~*

Xisuma stayed in the world to set up further protections against foreign entities invading or looking into his private world. To be quite honest, Mumbo didn’t even know that there were ways to backdoor into a private world; he’d always assumed the connection was safe enough with a password and a whitelist, but, according to Xisuma, it was only enough to keep out basic players. It was not enough to keep out the Watchers, obviously, given that Grian made his way through.

While Xisuma walked around the private world to set up those commands and protections, Mumbo busied himself around his house, looking for any of Grian’s old clothes or belongings. When Grian first created and joined Evo, he’d left a lot of his old belongings at Mumbo’s place, things that couldn’t be taken into the older versions. That included spare clothes; Grian only ever wore some variation of a red jumper and some type of cargo pants or jeans. When Grian first disappeared, Mumbo had put all of his stuff in a very specific shulker box, and hidden it away in a faraway chest so that he wouldn’t have to think of Grian every time he went into his house.

That, of course, was coming back to bite him, since Mumbo, for the life of him, could not figure out where he put that shulker box. On his redstone testing world, his storage was unorganized and inefficient, unlike how neat and pristine he kept everything in Hermitcraft. Most of the things in his redstone world were personal objects or spare clothes – it was always difficult to bring objects from world to world, so he left them here.

It took Mumbo the better part of an hour before he found the shulker, but he eventually did. He laid out a couple of different jumpers, all red, and a few pairs of pants and shorts that Grian could put on later. He also looked at everything else in the shulker box: old photos from when they first met, from when Mumbo’s mustache was just starting to grow in; a carefully preserved canary yellow feather; a stolen black hoodie with white fur lining the inside; and a variety of other things, items with stories and adventures that Mumbo would never truly know about.

Mumbo figured that now would be a great time to organize his redstone testing world, all things considered – it would be nice to catalogue and organize all the different contraptions he’d made over the past five or six years, and to organize all of the items he had in storage. Glancing back over at the sleeping figure of Grian, his cheeks taut and his body thinner than he ever remembered, Mumbo knew that he wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. He was about to be very preoccupied with whatever was going on in Grian’s world.

He started with the house, pulling out stacks of items into his inventory so he could clear chests and organize them into the different item families. Wool blocks in one chest, basic redstone ingredients in another, dispensers and droppers along the back wall. His progress was slow and tedious, but Mumbo let himself relish in it, because he knew that Grian would eventually wake up from his sleep and he would eventually have to worry himself up all over again. He let himself relax in organization, the simple motion of moving items from one chest to another.

Xisuma returned to the house about half an hour later, talking about all the different ways that Mumbo’s private world would be protected from outside eyes. Mumbo grew deeply uncomfortable by the idea that these Watchers – beings far beyond his comprehension or understanding – could’ve been watching him, observing his movements in what was supposed to be a private world this entire time. Xisuma explained that Hermitcraft itself had those protections and safeguards, but he never thought about setting them up on the private worlds that the hermits regularly visited.

“Did you have a bad experience with the Watchers?” Mumbo asked. “I don’t… know too much about Them, to be quite honest.”

Xisuma grimaced. “There’s not a lot of information about Them. Something akin to gods or Developers, perhaps. Beings outside of our comprehension. They aren’t… evil, I don’t think. They just don’t understand what it means to be a player. Not a clue how your friend got mixed up with them, and why he was wearing their mask.” Xisuma signed. “And… about me… You could say that. My… brother and I were aware of them, too aware of them, for a long time. It’s been years, though. But, it is why I’m so cautious with Hermitcraft.”

Mumbo didn’t know much of the relationship between Xisuma and his brother, other than the fact that they shared similar names and that he had broken into Hermitcraft a couple of times to mess with the server. Doc affectionately called him Evil X. Mumbo also didn’t know much about Xisuma or his history – only that Xisuma had been on other servers before Hermitcraft, and that he had a rocky relationship with his brother.

Mumbo was like that with most hermits. He didn’t know much about their past or history other than what was easily apparent and visible. He knew that Cleo used to be a human, years and years ago. He knew that most of them who joined in season 4 came from a server together, but Mumbo didn’t know much of what happened there, other than the fact that a lot of its members joined Hermitcraft after it fell apart. He knew that Doc had lost his arm and his eye in a fight with a Developer, but only because Doc loved to brag about it every chance he got.

Mumbo spared a glance at Grian. He knew as much as he did about Grian – about where he used to live, about his brother and adopted sister and the servers he managed before Evo – because Grian offered up that information freely when they built together, when Mumbo tried teaching Grian how to make redstone work and when Grian tried to teach Mumbo how to build a house that didn’t look like a child’s coloring page. They’d known each other for years before Grian went missing, and Mumbo knew things about Grian. He knew. He knew.

He thought he knew, at least.

“I don’t know what to do about him,” Mumbo finally said. “It’s terrifying. He was gone for so long, Xisuma… I…”

Mumbo had done a fantastic job, holding back his tears thus far. He busied himself with organizing and fretting over Grian’s wounds and mangled wings. He didn’t dare touch the wings outside of what was absolutely necessary – Grian was so particular with them, after all, and hated anyone touching them when he wasn’t aware of it – but he couldn’t help but stare at them, his fingers itching to fix unaligned feathers and pluck out the numerous broken feathers. His feathers are stringy, dull, and weak – Mumbo can’t imagine how uncomfortable they are. Mumbo can’t imagine how long those wings must’ve been treated poorly, bound up like that, for them to look so awful, so unhealthy.

His heart aches, with all of the things that he did not know about what had happened to Grian in the past two years. Tears welled up. His eyes instinctively darted towards the cobblestone floors in his terrible house, the house that has no place belonging to someone on Hermitcraft.

“Hey, Mumbo,” Xisuma whispered, his hands reaching up to hold Mumbo’s arms. “It’ll be alright, eventually. Things are going to be hard for a while. But everyone on Hermitcraft – we’ll support you, help you, with whatever you need. What Grian needs. We still don’t know what happened, but we’ll figure it out, okay?”

Mumbo, his eyes still examining every pebble on his floor, nodded. He sucked in a breath and held it, just like he was supposed to do. After counting, he exhaled, and breathed, breathed, breathed. It was desperate, but Xisuma stood by him – the sounds of his light, struggling breathing, was the only sound in the otherwise quiet room, until…

The bed in the corner where Grian was sleeping creaked. Mumbo’s head shot up.

Slowly, Grian was rising. Pulling himself out of slumber. Awakening.

Mumbo thought about how the world broke just two hours before, about how Grian came crashing into his private server from Void knows where, about the way the world paused for a couple of seconds when Grian defied the laws of their world and found his way back to Mumbo, despite everything. Despite the year and a half it had been, Grian was back. Despite how much Mumbo had been missing Grian, he was back – he was here.

With a tentative, slow step, Mumbo wiped the tears from his cheeks and approached the bed. Grian, with eyes still glazed over from sleep, blinked. Those eyes, once filled with mischief and joy and humor, were sullen and somber, grieving something that Mumbo could not begin to imagine. Another blink as sleep drained from Grian’s face. Another blink as Grian looked up at the shadow looming overhead. Another blink. And another. Mumbo could imagine his face, red from crying, coming into Grian’s focus, judging from the slow recognition that dawned upon Grian, the way his eyes – dull and glazed and somber – brightened just a moment. Just an inch.

“Hi,” Mumbo whispered, his voice still strained and wet from crying. “I’ve missed you.”

Grian practically collapsed into Mumbo’s arms, pulling Mumbo down from where he stood over the bed. Mumbo stumbled down and, after a moment’s hesitation, wrapped his arms around Grian as well, careful to avoid crushing Grian’s wings under his pressure.

Memories of warmth and comfort bloomed across Mumbo as they hugged: Grian, younger and somehow smaller, wearing a cheeky grin as Mumbo looked on in horror at the exploding redstone sorter; Grian, pulling him down the street by the wrist as both of them were chased by some authority, because of course the first time they met would be filled with chaos; Grian, over a call, promising Mumbo they could hang out as soon as the Ender Dragon was defeated on Evo.

Mumbo, days later, messaging Grian about the fight and not receiving anything back; pacing around his base, still on season 4, trying to shake the nerves from his body. Mumbo, weeks later, frantically trying to log in Evo and being met with a corrupted spawn point and an empty world. Mumbo, months later, sobbing to Xisuma that maybe Grian really was gone, and that there was no world where he would miraculously come back, desperately wishing for some type of closure or confirmation or catharsis.

Mumbo, a year and a half later, holding his best friend so tightly and so carefully out of fear that he would vanish right before his eyes, yet again. Just as before, when Grian first crashed into the world. If Mumbo looked away for even an instant, would Grian disappear? Would Mumbo be subjected to another year and a half of wondering, of wishing for closure?

Grian pulled back, then, and looked up at Mumbo. His eyes were still dull and somber and grieving, with tears welling up and slipping down his face. Mumbo didn’t know what Grian was mourning in that moment, and Mumbo wasn’t sure if he’d ever find out, but, in that moment, he made a promise to himself. No matter what happened, no matter what Grian told him or admitted to him, Mumbo would be there. Mumbo would support him.

Mumbo thought of his own fears – the terror and awe of Grian crashing into his world, the horror of the state of his wings, the gripping anxiety in his gut that this Grian wasn’t really the one he used to know – and he thought of Grian. He thought of the past year and a half of Grian’s life, and everything that Mumbo couldn’t know. Wouldn’t know. He took his anxiety and tucked it away in a little box; he locked it with a rusty key and threw it somewhere in the recesses of his mind. He could come back to it later. Mumbo wasn’t important, right now. It was Grian. It was always Grian.

“Mumbo…” Grian sobbed.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Mumbo replied. Tears welled up in his own eyes.

Grian nodded before burying his face into Mumbo’s suit jacket again. There they stayed, for what felt like hours, just soaking in each other’s presence. It was the first time Mumbo had seen Grian in nearly two years – the first time he’d been able to hug him, hold him, feel his presence. Mumbo didn’t even notice when Xisuma left the world, leaving behind a message that he would come back to check on them later.

*~*~*

They eventually had to break away from the hug when Mumbo’s stomach growled. It was awkward, after that hug; Mumbo pulled away with the offer of fixing something for dinner, and Grian nodded. Grian still hadn’t said anything apart from Mumbo’s name, but that was okay. Mumbo could fill the silence with mindless chatter. He told Grian that he’d found some old clothes, and Grian, careful to keep pressure off his broken ankle, immediately hobbled over to them and got changed. Without the shredded purple robes, Grian looked much more like himself – with that familiar red jumper and gray cargo pants and scarlet macaw wings slightly unfolded, hanging below him. The bandages on Grian’s arms peeked out below the jumper.

As Mumbo chopped up some potatoes to roast, Grian loomed behind him like a shadow, matching his movements. Mumbo talked through his process of cooking, which he normally did when he was alone anyway, and talked about the ingredients and spices he was going to use. Grian still didn’t talk, but nodded along Mumbo’s explanations, hanging on to every word. To be quite honest, the fact that Grian was listening was a bit of a concern for Mumbo, but he didn’t think too hard about it. If anything, Mumbo was terrified to think too hard about Grian’s silence, given that everything he did was loud.

Everything he did before was loud, Mumbo corrected himself as he grabbed a steak from his icebox chest. He’s been gone. He’s changed.

Mumbo tried to let his nervous energy not be apparent, but it definitely was – the (metaphoric, since Mumbo was still mindlessly chattering away) silence between them was uncertain and awkward, with neither of them knowing what to really say or do. Well, Mumbo didn’t know what to say or do apart from talking about the dinner he was making. He still couldn’t tell what was going on inside of Grian’s mind.

When dinner was finally ready, they sat on the bed since Mumbo never had the foresight to build a table or chairs for his house. He rarely made full meals for himself in here, anyway. They ate and Mumbo kept talking as Grian pushed around the food on the plate, as though he were trying to make it look like he was eating. Mumbo, as unobservant as he was at the best of times, realized, mostly because his entire focus was on Grian, and Grian alone.

“You’ve gotta eat, bud,” Mumbo said. “You…” lost a lot of weight. Look like you haven’t eaten in months. Look like a twig, with your hollowed cheeks and spindly arms. It was hidden under those robes, but now I see how your jumper and pants hang awkwardly off your narrow frame. Those clothes fit you well years ago, and now they are large and awkward.

“You need those nutrients,” Mumbo eventually settled on.

His plate was cleared. Grian hadn’t taken a single bite.

Mumbo took to staring at him until, finally, Grian raised the fork to his mouth and ate a single bite of steak, chewing slowly and awkwardly. A couple more bites passed that way, until Grian put down the fork and shook his head, something apologetic on his face. His lips moved, but no words came out. Mumbo could swear, though, that he heard the faintest whisper of a Sorry.

“It’s okay, mate,” Mumbo said. “I, er, probably should’ve offered soup, or something. That might… have been easier to eat. I think I have some in the fridge, actually, if you’d like?”

Grian shook his head.

“Okay, okay,” Mumbo replied. He tried to bite down the faint hysteria and panic bubbling in the back of his throat. “That’s okay. Er. Maybe for breakfast tomorrow?” Grian shrugged. “I’ll heat up the soup for breakfast tomorrow. My friend, Impulse – on the Hermitcraft server, I’ve told you about him before, I think – makes really good soup. I think it’s a family recipe, or something. He’ll pass it out when the season is ending or starting and it stores really well for a long period of time, so I have a lot of it just hanging around. Not that I don’t eat his soup, or anything – no, it’s good soup, most of it is just here and I don’t really eat dinner here. Y’know. I’m not here that often. Well, that’s a lie, I just don’t eat here that often – ”

A quiet snicker broke Mumbo out of his rant (Oh dear, he thought, how long had I been rambling?) and Mumbo whipped his head around to look at Grian, who looked genuinely pleased with Mumbo’s ramblings. The laughing wasn’t forced; it was pure and good and hiding those eyes that had been grieving the entire time Mumbo had seen them. Mumbo laughed, too, a little bit, even though he couldn’t quite pick up what exactly Grian was laughing at.

Grian opened his mouth again, as if to speak, but no words came. His laughter petered out, and a look of frustration crossed his face. Furrowed eyebrows, a scowling lip, eyes that were open and mourning again. Mumbo reached out in some semblance of reassurance, but hesitated, not quite sure how to actually approach Grian.

“It’s okay,” Mumbo finally said. “You don’t have to talk. I… understand, I think. Erm. I think I can get you a book and quill?”

Mumbo hurried through looking at his chests that, despite his best effort, were even more unorganized than before when it came to everything except redstone components. While he was searching, Grian put both plates – one full, one empty – onto the kitchen counter. Mumbo eventually found a book and quill after a few minutes of searching, and passed it over to Grian. Grian took it with a wavering, unsure smile, and wrote a sentence with shaking hands. Grian never had the best handwriting before, but this was near unreadable. After a bit of squinting and turning his head, Mumbo was able to make out, I was just thinking that it’s nice to hear you ramble.

“Aw, gee, thanks, mate.” Mumbo beamed. “I, er, I can keep rambling, if you’d like. Actually, uh…”  Mumbo looked around Grian’s head, at the sagging, wiry wings that had also lost a significant amount of weight in the past year and a half. “Would you… mind if I did your wings? Honestly, I’m surprised you haven’t started yourself, yet. I can’t imagine they’re very comfortable. I can ramble, too, if you’d like, while I do them. It won’t be the best job, since I think they’re gonna need a lot more time to get fully better, but… yeah. I just thought I’d offer, y’know. If you’d like.”

Grian froze, and Mumbo spent a couple seconds regretting what he said in the silence. He tried to imagine the thoughts running through Grian’s head. But, then, Grian slowly moved his head up and down in an affirmative, reaching out to grab one of Mumbo’s hands. Mumbo tried to understand what Grian was trying to communicate, but he’d never been good at reading nonverbal cues of any type. So, he sat there, on the floor, holding his best friend’s hand, waiting as Grian scribbled out a couple more words on the book and quill.

I’m sorry I can’t talk right now, Grian wrote, it’s frustrating. I don’t know why.

“It’s alright,” Mumbo replied, fondness in his voice. “I can talk enough for the both of us. Er. Let me grab another bed out of storage. It might be easier if we have a double bed.”

Grian nodded. Mumbo went to stand, but realized that letting go of Grian’s hand was far more difficult that taking it in the first place. In that moment, he realized that, for most of the time since Grian woke up, they’d been touching in some way: obviously hugging, but also the way that their legs were pressed against each other when they ate, the way that Grian kept hovering over Mumbo when he cooked and pressing light touches to Mumbo’s back. The way their hands were tightly linked now.

Mumbo laughed awkwardly and pulled away. The spare bed was easy enough to find, and Mumbo placed it down next to his. Both were red, leftover from before the update that introduced a variety of colored beds into the world. Grian settled in by the foot of the bed, his wings stiff and unmoving on his back, as Mumbo climbed in near the back. He stared down at the wispy, stringy feathers, many broken or damaged beyond repair. Mumbo would eventually fix Grian a proper bath, probably tomorrow, that would help to clean off the feathers.

The scene was surprisingly domestic; it reminded Mumbo of them years ago, back when he preened Grian’s feathers for the first time. It was a last-ditch effort – Grian was going out the following day with some of his old friends from childhood, ones that he hadn’t seen in years, including his brother and adopted sister, and had stressed his feathers into a horrible mess.

They were living together at the time, two roommates in an unfamiliar city, and Grian spent a good couple hours pacing around, since he hadn’t seen them in years, apparently. He couldn’t sit still enough to do his own feathers. So, Mumbo suggesting that he preen Grian’s feathers was only natural. After that, it became a routine; Mumbo preened Grian’s feathers every couple weeks after that.

With a vague sort of hesitation, Mumbo reached out his fingers and brushed carefully against the feathers. He started with the roots of the wings, right where the wings met the back, where a massive hole was cut out of Grian’s jumper so that his wings could easily get through, and found a feather to start with. It was bent, so Mumbo tenderly pulled it back into place. He smoothed the feather out and found a piece of what looked like endstone stuck in it. He pulled it out and tossed it to the side.

The feather still didn’t look great, even when smoothed out tenderly – it was still lacking in color and it still looked greasy, almost. Mumbo figured that there was nothing more he could do for that feather, so he moved onto the next one. It was also bent out of place, so Mumbo shifted it back and smoothed out the barbs so that they were lying flat on his back. As he fixed up the second feather, Grian, who had been sitting so stiffly at the edge of the bed before, relaxed into Mumbo’s soft, careful touch.

The next feather was broken, snapped at the rachis, and needed to be taken out; there was no saving it. When Mumbo carefully plucked the feather and put it to the side, Grian sighed. Mumbo smiled and moved onto the next feather. As he worked, Mumbo started rambling about the redstone inventions he’d been working on in the past couple years. The types of automatic farms, the silly piston doors and elevators. How redstone had been revolutionized multiple times in the past couple of years with new additions. Mumbo talked and Grian listened as Mumbo slowly went down Grian’s left wing, starting with the top row and working his way down.

It was easy enough to fall into a routine with Grian’s feathers. For each feather, Mumbo would assess what he needed to do – was the feather fully broken, and needed to come out, or was it just bent out of shape? Did the barbs of the feather need to get smoothed out, so they were more comfortable? Was there any debris stuck in between the feathers, wedged in from how tightly Grian was keeping his wings bound? Some feathers only took a couple seconds to fix, while others took minutes.

It took Mumbo about thirty minutes to get through the first row of Grian’s feathers. Judging by how messed up the rest of Grian’s feathers were on both sides of both wings, he estimated that it would take a good six or seven hours to make his way through every single feather.

While working, he did notice that Grian wasn’t helping. It wasn’t the strangest thing in the whole world, for Grian to let Mumbo entirely take over, but, given how long this job would take, Mumbo expected Grian to put a little bit of help in.

Mumbo didn’t ask, though. He just moved on to the next row of feathers, going back to the root of Grian’s wings. Mumbo talked and Grian listened – every so often, Grian would nod or shake his head, almost to assure Mumbo that he was still paying attention. Sometimes he would scribble a comment down in the book and quill.

It was almost uncanny, just how alert Grian stayed throughout the entire process. In the before, as Mumbo was starting to refer to it as, Grian would normally melt into a ball of relaxation and calmness, becoming malleable and gooey, almost, every time that Mumbo preened his feathers. Grian had always described it as a really good massage, working out all the tension in his body. The wings were massive points of tension and unease; Grian claimed he felt a single feather out of place, at any given time, and that it would drive him crazy until he could fix it.

Just looking at the state of Grian’s wings, at how tense he was at even the faintest touch to his feathers, Mumbo could see a thousand injuries and scars hidden beneath. Damage done that went just beyond the physical appearance of the wings. The way they were wrapped up and bound, almost as though Grian were trying to hide them. Grian couldn’t let himself relax, Mumbo realized, even if he desperately wanted to. He was still on edge. Almost as though, at any minute, something would tear into Mumbo’s world and destroy the small moment of peace Mumbo so desperately wanted to create.

Seeing how tense Grian was, Mumbo mentioned, “Xisuma – my admin, I’ve probably mentioned him at one point or another – was here earlier. I just had to call him when you came crashing through my world, you know? It was a bit scary, you know, seeing that happen. He, er, put up protections. Against the Watchers – ”

Grian, who was tense but starting to relax a little, went bone straight, stiffening up with nearly perfect posture. Mumbo nearly jumped at how quickly Grian’s demeanor changed; from a little tautness still keeping his alert to an entirely different type of tense, to something entirely on edge and awake. Someone bracing for a strike. Someone bracing for pain.

Mumbo thought back to the grief and mourning in Grian’s eyes. He thought back to the muted joy on Grian’s face when Grian first saw Mumbo, how his eyes were still somber and sullen despite everything. He thought about how Grian couldn’t bring himself to talk.

Theories and speculations ran rampant through Mumbo’s brain as he wondered, What did They do to you? To the Grian I used to know?

“I’m sorry,” Mumbo whispered. His hands hovered above one of Grian’s feathers, halfway fixed. “I’m sorry – I won’t mention them again. But, Grian, you’re safe here. I promise. Well. I think I can promise. Xisuma was telling me about it before. He wouldn’t give me a false sense of security – he’d tell me the truth. I can promise that.”

Grian turned back to face Mumbo – instead of the grief in his dark, infinite eyes, there was fear. No, terror. Abject horror. Mumbo’s heart squeezed, guilt catching in his throat. He apologized again, and again, and again. Grian took a deep breath and brought an uncertain smile to his face, though it was nothing like what his smiles used to look like.

“I’m sorry,” Mumbo whispered again. He would keep saying it.

Grian shook his head. Opened his mouth. No words came out. Fear plagued his eyes.

“I don’t know what happened,” Mumbo continued, his hand still hovering by Grian’s wings. “Obviously. I don’t know… anything, really. I know that you’re my friend and you were gone and now you’re inexplicably back, and I desperately want to make sure you’re okay. I know that I’m not very strong or good at fighting, but there are a lot of strong people on Hermitcraft. I could get them to come here. Get them to protect you. False, Doc, Cub... Uh. But if you don’t want that, that’s okay, too. I’ll protect you no matter what happens.” Mumbo’s hand fell onto Grian’s wing again, his touch gentle and unsure and unaware of everything that had transpired ever since Grian disappeared from Evo.

“No one is going to hurt you without going through me, first,” Mumbo announced. “I’m your knight in shining armor. I can learn how to fight, I promise. I can fight and battle and protect you. I’ll learn how to be competent at fighting, just for you. Nothing is ever going to hurt you again, I promise. Well. I can’t make that promise, but I can try my hardest. I’ll do everything in my power.”

Mumbo finished straightening the feather he was working on before. Grian relaxed, ever so slightly, into the touch. After a few more feathers, Mumbo said, “And, erm, anything you need, I’ll get it for you. You just gotta ask.”

 It was quiet, but as Mumbo kept working on Grian’s wings, carding his hands through the stringy, greasy feathers and fixing nearly every single one, Mumbo could’ve sworn he heard Grian say, “Thank you.”

*~*~*

It took about two hours just to get through the back of Grian’s left wing. At that point, the sun had already set, and Mumbo’s hands were tired from the amount of preening he’d done. It had been nearly two years since the last time he preened Grian’s feathers. Even then, Grian had taken such good care of his wings that preening would normally only take thirty minutes, maybe an hour if Grian had a particularly stressful week. Two hours, and they were only a quarter of the way done.

Mumbo stretched out his hands and cracked his knuckles; the bones were growing tired, stiff, even as he tried to warm them up. Grian had stayed silent for most of the preening, occasionally relaxing before immediately tensing back up, as though he were unable to keep his guard down. Every time that Grian couldn’t relax in his presence, Mumbo’s heart broke a little more. At Mumbo’s extended break, however, Grian turned around and gave him a questioning look – eyebrows raised, mouth twisted into something close to a frown.

“Sorry, bud,” Mumbo said. “Hands are tired. It’s taking a while, you know. But, I got one wing done halfway!”

The completed wing certainly didn’t look that good. The feathers were still awkwardly clumped and greasy and the wings themselves were sagging under their own weight, with Grian unable to keep them up, but the feathers were in place and the broken feathers, of which there were a lot, were in a neat pile next to Mumbo. There were stripes and clumps of missing feathers, probably where the straps were the tightest.

Mumbo had struggled when it came to fixing up Grian’s primary feathers. They were clipped, and the job was precise enough to avoid clipping them too severely. Whoever did this was careful enough to not seriously injury Grian, but did not care about the freedom that flying offered. None of the feathers were broken, so Mumbo didn’t pluck them, but he did smooth them out and readjust them, so they were perfectly in place.

Brushing his hand against one of the primary feathers, feeling its softness, Mumbo said, “You normally molt twice a year, yeah? Er, I think I remember you telling me… August, right? That’s when it starts?”

Grian grabbed the book and quill from where it was off on the side of the bed. Every so often, while Mumbo was preening, Grian would write something down, and Mumbo would read it; most of the time, it was silly quips that Mumbo would laugh about, but there were also a few times where Grian had written something deeply concerning, but tried to play it off as a joke. The silence after those moments had been especially loud.

After a couple seconds, Grian passed the book and quill to Mumbo. It said, Might be sooner this year. I don’t know. I can already feel it. Probably be starting in a few weeks.

“Oh!” Mumbo exclaimed. “That’s good, then. We’ll get you some supplements or vitamins. Get you on a nutrient rich diet. Make sure you get sunlight – that helps feathers, right? I was thinking, after I finish your feathers, we can get you a shower to rinse them off some more – also, yourself, no offense, Grian – or,” Grian snatched the book and quill out of Mumbo’s hands and started scribbling furiously, though Mumbo kept talking, “maybe a bath if that’s more comfortable for you. Whatever you prefer! Oh, and…”

Grian cut Mumbo off by shoving the book back into his hands, a proper scowl on his face. Mumbo looked down at the newest text: Stop treating me like a pet bird!!

“Ah.” Mumbo gulped, a bit of guilt rising in the back of his throat, scratching and itching and burning. “Sorry.”

It was odd, really, how quickly they had fallen back into a routine. About five hours ago, Mumbo had logged into his redstone testing world to make some tweaks to a project he’d already forgotten about, and now he was sitting in bed with his best friend that had been missing for a year and a half. In the past year, Mumbo definitely had dreams and nightmares about reuniting with Grian, but he didn’t quite expect this – the simple banter, the wing preening, the mild concern when Grian refused to eat.

No, he expected more emotion, more drama – something powerful and emotional, maybe running across a bridge towards each other with the sun setting in the background. Catching each other in a hug, spinning around in a circle and collapsing on top of each other. Something cinematic, straight out of a movie.

Even when he realized it was Grian before, he didn’t expect that they would fall back into their old habits this quickly. At first, he was terrified of messing up, of saying the wrong thing – and he had done that when he mentioned the Watchers before. Maybe that fear was misplaced. Maybe he just needed to be himself, the Mumbo that Grian remembered. Grian couldn’t be the old Grian, right now, but Mumbo could more than make up for it. Yeah. Right!

Mumbo reached forward to ruffle Grian’s hair. Unlike his wings, that was surprisingly well taken care of. Grian shuffled forward to get out of Mumbo’s touch, and Mumbo smiled fondly. It wasn’t a flinch out of fear, Mumbo noted – it was playful in this moment.

Mumbo figured that he could let himself be emotional, right now. The air was quiet and still. The room was dark apart from a couple torches spreading candlelight on the walls. Mumbo cleared his throat. “I’m just so happy you’re here, mate.”

Grian froze up a little. Mumbo, possessed by some type of demon, continued, “I don’t know what happened. We don’t… have to talk about it. Not yet. I’ve missed you so much, and I’m so happy you’re alive and here. No matter what happened, no matter what’s changed… you’re my best friend, Grian, and,” Mumbo takes in a sharp, deep breath, feeling tears threatening to spill over, “I’ve missed you. I don’t think I’m gonna let you out of my sight for… for a week, at least. Maybe a month.”

Mumbo let the tears freely fall, not bothering to try and hide them. Tenderly, Grian turned back around and took the book from Mumbo. This time, his writing was slow, methodical. He still struggled to hold the quill properly, but his words were far more legible this time.

I missed you, too, the book said.

Mumbo held out a hand. Grian took it.

*~*~*

They stayed like that, for a while.

*~*~*