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“You trust me?” Evbo asks, his eyes full of light and laughter and everything M’s come to love in several months. He’s floating just a few inches above the void, his new netherite boots glowing faintly with the runes etched into them. Around his head, a faint, dark purple halo glows around his head, power radiating from it. It suits him in a way that M doesn’t think could ever have suited the previous parkour god, which makes him wonder if that’s some sort of heresy. Probably is. But hey, if it’s heresy to feel a certain–
“M, I trust you. And I know you– I know you trusted me before. And now?” Evbo asks again. You trusted me before. You trusted me to come for you when you were trapped. You trusted me to save the world twice over. You trusted me to take every jump and save you from my enemies. And now?
M stands on the edge of the parkour temple, gazing down at his god with the shadow of two command blocks falling to either side of him.
“Duh,” M says. Of course he trusts Evbo. The thing M doesn’t trust so much, is himself, honestly. It’s Evbo’s reciprocated faith in him. Evbo had strapped on the diamond boots to his choice of champion himself, kneeling at M’s feet like he was born to be there. That had been before he’d fully explained it to M – he was the parkour god, and needed to choose his champion. “If anyone can rebuild parkour civilization, it’s you.” If this works – if M can truly find the imagination within to make what Evbo thinks he can – the world will change forever, for the better.
Was Evbo’s faith misplaced?
“Then – just try. One more time?” Evbo smiles again, and M feels his whole world shift into place again. If he can trust in anything, it’s Evbo. “It’s like – I could do it, but I want it to come from you. Please?”
But that– that’s the problem. M’s not very… good at this whole parkour champion thing. Three days since the world shifted, three days since Evbo became exactly what M always knew he’d be deep down. Evbo had taken him to the command blocks and shown him what to do, and M had tried, and tried, and tried. It had not gone smoothly. The houses he’d tried to bring into being, the new levels, the new foods, new ideas, everything… it’d all come in wrong, glitched out, useless stuff that Evbo waved away with a finger and a gentle encouragement to try again. For reasons beyond M’s understanding, Evbo had refused to create it himself, and so they stand here now, and M tries to think.
A parkour house is made of stone with a one block jump between the door and the bed. A parkour skyscraper should have parkour to get to the top, a floor, and a ceiling. The parkour levels should have chests with plenty of food in them. A parkour highway is made out of quartz and – and –
“Hey, hey,” Evbo’s voice breaks through. “You’re overthinking again – it doesn’t have to be that stuff. It can be what you want.” Something soft touches his arm, something M’s thought about so much he knows it’s the sleeves of Evbo’s striped sweater falling over the hand offering him comfort. It’s easy to fall into the touch, close his eyes and let his god be his world for a moment instead.
It’s that cool touch, that ever present promise that his god is there, that gives M the idea, the thought. Evbo’s touch is warm against his skin when he shakes his sleeve back up, fingers trailing up and down M’s arm in a pattern like – like –
“I’m ready,” M tells him. Evbo steps – floats – back and gestures to the command blocks with eyes that betray no gathering doubt in his decision to make M his champion, even though M can’t understand why he’s not given up on M yet.
He’s not given up on M yet… so maybe M can use that unwavering trust for something.
Heaving himself up, M takes his time gathering his balance, standing on the command block as the image filters into his mind. Evbo. Evbo is sunlight and moonlight and the hand in his own, the promise of a better life and the trust born between friends learning to be more. He’s comfort, and newness, and a promise, and M wants to immortalize something that’s already a god, bring that comfort down to the population below.
He kneels on the command blocks, and finally, the block seems to wake up under his touch. It’s raw code manipulated under his fingers, sparking up his arm and into his heart to find what it is he plans to create.
M rises, and steps, and jumps. It’s a four block jump, something that Evbo says is easy for the champion, and yet a chasm that feels too wide even with the ground underneath. And then – he lands with a jolt that goes through his bones. Silence falls over both of them, and M stands on the block, the code linking together and pushing out of the two blocks with his thought.
“Did it… did it work?” Evbo asks. His feet land on the ground, for once. Tilting his head upwards, Evbo offers a hand up to M to help him down. M doesn’t move, craning his head up at the sky. “What did you envision? A house? A new parkour jump?”
“Not quite…” M mumbles. He feels those same fingers brush over his own with uncertainty before hooking around his wrist, tugging him down from the blocks. At a glance back, M could almost swear he can see strings of code still flying out of it, editing the very fabric of their reality into something new. Evbo looks over the blocks too, and lights up in a way that has M’s whole heart melting.
“I– I can’t tell what that is, but it’s working! It’s working!” Evbo lets go of M to hop over to the edge of the temple again, leaning out and down to find the new creation that M’s successfully dreamed up. “Where is it?”
Something cool hits M’s shoulder, and the sky darkens. Evbo doesn’t notice at first, but M cranes his head up to see the sun blotted out by gray.
It hits his shoulder again. His head, his hands, his arms…
“M?” Evbo stands up and matches M’s look to the sky, and his arms raise up, meeting the droplets quickly thickening into a steady drizzle of… “What is this?”
You.
“I just… pictured it,” M holds his hands out, watching the water land on his skin. He pictured Evbo’s touch through something new, something other than the wind. Wind is known, wind is harsh. Wind is something that caresses and bites in an instant, ripping at his face as he falls level to level to prison and back up. This is something new, something to cool the heat blisters on him from the lava that surrounded him for so long while he waited for Evbo. This is what he pictured when he waited for Evbo on that chain – cooling touches on his face and running through his hair, washing away ash in the presence of the person he endured it for.
This is something M can only hope is as devoted as Evbo, as devoted as he is in return.
“What do you call it?” Evbo’s arms drop, wiping the water from his shoulder. His eyebrows are scrunched together while droplets roll off them and into his eyelashes, something precious in the sight of rivulets running down his face.
He can’t name such a thing when it was made to remind him of Evbo, can he?
“I don’t think that’s my job, is it?” M steps towards Evbo. “You’re my god, you should name it.” Evbo’s breath hitches at my god, something raw in his eyes. Fingers brush over M’s face, across his hair, behind his ears. Evbo’s touch is akin to the water, every sensation on his body lighting up into one. Evbo, Evbo, Evbo. He’s drowning in it, letting his head fall back so that the water falls across more of himself, breaking into a smile as free as the legends before him must have felt too.
“Rain?” Evbo says the word carefully, an unfamiliar syllable breaking the space between them while Evbo’s hands come to rest across M’s shoulders. “I call it… rain.”
“Rain,” M repeats back to him, letting his own hands come up to cradle his god’s face, wiping the newly-named rain back from his cheeks. Is that heresy? Devotion? What is it to touch a god in this way, to hold him as if he were the most fragile thing in the world when he’s anything but?
“I think it’s a good name,” Evbo’s eyes are half closed, pressing into M’s hands like a starving man on the first level of civilization. “I think it’s you.”
You.
Rain, to Evbo, is M. The thought cascades over him like a wave, overtakes his doubts and fears, leaves no room for the anxieties that he’s not the champion Evbo believed he could be.
“My god,” M whispers, and Evbo’s eyes gain a new sort of yearning, something M understands could only be fulfilled by–
“My champion,” Evbo murmurs. M leans forward, and forward, and a breath ghosts over his lips, and–
The rain keeps falling.