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Mumbo stands tall under Grian’s base, confident. He fixes his hair one last time, adjusts the cuffs of his suit jacket and takes a deep breath in. He can do this.
“Grian! This is an intervention!” he declares, uncharacteristically serious.
The Grian in question doesn’t hear him. He’s buried elbows deep in the mess of shulker boxes and double chests plonked about everywhere willy-nilly. It’s a terrible sight, really, but Mumbo can’t really say much when his own chest monster is just a few chunks away. He cannot wait for that item sorter to actually start working because it’s been quite miserable living like this.
Nevermind all that! He has a mission. No losing track of the objective, no matter the hypocritically awful things he witnesses. “Grian!” he tries again, louder this time but to no avail. Is he too far away, or something? It’s not like his surroundings are very loud. Mumbo shuffles forwards, mildly embarrassed at losing his strong, intimidating but gracious demeanour. He sighs. “Come on, I’m not even that far away—Grian!”
Mumbo sees one of his wings twitch before Grian himself does, an instinctual thing. He sees him turn around at the speed of light with a hand clutched to his chest.
“AAGH!” Upon realising who it is in front of him, Grian promptly half collapses on the double chest nearby. “Goodness, Mumbo, you can’t scare me like that, I could’ve died!”
“Grian,” he says again, because although he’s confused by that statement, if he goes off script he’s never going back to his original point. “This is an intervention! I’m—I’m intervening! You! I’m intervening you!”
“What?”
“Uhm.” Mumbo has only just realised that he has, in fact, only planned the first sentence of his script and nothing else. “You’ve… You require my help, immediately!”
“I… Okay?” Grian says, hesitant. He doesn’t look scared anymore, which is probably a good thing? Mumbo doesn’t know if interventions like this are supposed to be scary or not. Mumbo gives a small cough as Grian gets up from the floor, slowly, like that time a sheep found its way into his bedroom and he didn’t want to scare it into jumping out a window. “I didn’t know I needed an intervention, but I guess that’s the point? How do interventions even work?”
“I don’t know either,” Mumbo confesses, deflating slightly. “But! You do need one! According to Skizz, at least.”
“Skizz? What on earth would Skizz snitch about that could cause a poorly planned intervention?”
“Rude! Rude, but true, I’ll let that one slide. But, okay, when did—have you had a meal recently?”
“I had some food like an hour ago!” Grian sounds equal parts defensive and indignant, not a very good sign.
“No, no, like—I know in Season 8 we all had the weekly Boatem potluck, and I know in Season 9 Scar was handing you Scarland food cart snacks like your life depended on it. Which it sort of did! But have you had, you know, an actual meal recently?” Before Grian can give an answer, Mumbo adds on, “And if you say you had stale pork chops from the shopping district, or fish that you just throw unseasoned on a campfire, I’m going to drag you to the top of Magic Mountain and— and throw you off of it!”
Grian stops spluttering, face turning red in a silent confession. “Look, I’m busy! I’m a busy, busy man, Mumbo, you know me! I run the permit office every day, that’s very tiring work.”
Mumbo lets himself laugh a little at that and plays along. “I suppose that’s fair, that is a job for a whole fifteen minutes a day.”
“Exactly! So I can be excused for slacking a little.”
Mumbo nods and almost agrees before he realises Grian’s schemes. The cheek of that man, the charmer he is!
“Hang on! No! No, you can’t be, we’ve been in this season for ages now!” Mumbo pales as his brain brings up a very good point. “Oh my word. Grian. Do you even own bowls? When did you last have a vegetable? A nutrient? You’re going to—you’ll shrink—"
Grian bursts into laughter. “I’ll shrink-?"
"—You’re going to shrink into a little ball because you haven’t had any vitamins and you’re going to be tiny, Gri, I could—I could end up stepping on you by accident because you haven’t had good food. Or worse! Oh my goodness.”
"What on earth do you mean, I’ll shrink? That’s not how people—that’s not how anything works! Mumbo,” he starts, until he breaks out into giggles again and takes a few seconds to calm down. “Mumbo, I’ll be fine. I’m not going to die or, or shrink because I haven’t cooked anything recently.”
“But what if you did?” Mumbo asks, a little petulant to hide his humiliation. “You should be getting some real food in you, not just the bare minimum version of food. That’s how pirates got scurvy, back in the day, and you don’t want that.”
He doesn’t bring up how he almost did get scurvy during his first year on Hermitcraft, when he was young and therefore thought he was invincible, and no one really explained why getting appropriate nutrition was a good thing until Joe stepped in. He isn’t bringing it up, but he’s definitely thinking about it and he has to admit, he has no clue what he's currently talking about.
“Well, I don’t have scurvy!”
“Good! Continue to not have scurvy by having dinner with me later!”
That stops Grian’s protests immediately, eyebrows raised in delighted surprise. “I mean, I can’t ever say no to Mumbo Jumbo’s cooking. Would it be just us two?”
Mumbo’s throat suddenly goes a little dry at the prospect. The two of them haven’t had a good opportunity to hang out with each other much, this season. It’s a good thing in a lot of ways—it wouldn’t be the first time confessing that they’re a little codependent at times. Seeing Grian get stuck in with the other hermits for the long-term is wonderful, and Mumbo’s been able to really discover himself and what he enjoys doing creatively. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt, though, but they’re getting better, even if it means Grian forgets to have a vegetable every once in a while.
At the very least Mumbo can make him some food. He isn’t quite sure if it would be an apology or a celebration; he hopes it’s the second one, and that the food will be good enough for it to count.
“Just us two. We could call it a dinner date?” Mumbo suggests, voice small.
Grian’s eyes soften as he smiles at him. “It’s a date.”
When Mumbo turns and leaves after a little more conversation, and then turns back around because he was going the wrong way, Grian calls out to him with his wings flared out, like he’s louder if he takes up more space. “Thank you for making sure I don’t get scurvy! Or turn really tiny!”
Mumbo laughs.
In the evening, Mumbo stands around in his base’s kitchen in the warm light that comes from his windows, a little frantic. The sun hasn’t set yet because while there are Seasons, there aren’t seasons, which means that it stays pleasantly bright until pretty late in the evening, not that it matters. Mumbo has always been a tea and supper kind of boy, anyway.
He stands there, basking in the sun until he hears the upset burbling of his stew pot on its way to boiling over. Whenever he cooks, he always switches between vigilantly watching over everything going on in the kitchen to forgetting any of it exists in the first place.
“Ohh no, no you don’t,” he mutters to the pot, vigorously stirring it and moving it further from the heat. “I’ve spent too long on this to burn or waste any of it.”
Mumbo enjoys cooking. He took part in the little things when he was younger with his first family, washing and peeling the vegetables and mixing anything that was put in front of him. He slowly learnt how to cook on Hermitcraft over the years, through trial and error and remembering the bits and pieces of advice from his mother that stuck with him after so long. He’s been missing her recently, so he’s been craving to have his childhood dishes and to go back to his old roots.
He knocks the remaining broth off his spoon and is about to place it on the pot lid, until he feels two hands covering his eyes and he’s yanked backwards out of nowhere.
“REVENGE!” Grian yells directly into his ear. Mumbo leaps about a metre in the air and shrieks in a definitely very cool and tasteful manner before turning around, spoon poised like a weapon. Grian definitely does not laugh about it.
“Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness, Grian, that was mean! I’m in the middle of cooking, you can’t scare a man like that while he’s cooking!”
“In my defence, I let you finish before I did anything! I don’t want the pot to spill over and burn anyone.” He has his hands up in surrender, a cheeky grin on his face the whole time. “It smells like good cooking, though, I keep forgetting that you cook.”
Mumbo chidingly waves the spoon at him before he checks on the bread in his stone oven. “Don’t think you can have my forgiveness by complimenting my cooking skills! You forget I cook because you’re always the one who begs to cook a big fancy meal every time we want to cook food together. And then you nearly explode from the stress of making that big fancy meal!”
“I told you, it’s enrichment,” Grian whines. “And you can’t say anything, you literally have conversations with the things you’re cooking, that’s serial killer behaviour.” This same song and dance has been done countless times; they both know there isn't anything to forgive.
Mumbo sniffs, exaggerating the drama of it all. “Perhaps I can forgive you if you cut up those potatoes you brought.”
Grian, obedient with the idea of good food, does as he’s told and puts them into the pot along with some carrots. Mumbo grabs his wool rag to take his bread out of the oven, the warm baked smell flooding the area. Frankly, as convenient as crafted bread is, nothing could ever beat this. He lets it sit so it can let some steam out, as tempting as it is to eat some right now and as big and as pleading Grian’s eyes get when he looks over to him. Mumbo can have some self restraint if it means even better bread. There’s some kind of moral in there.
Instead of thinking about it more, he places a new pot on the heat and automatically starts putting the ingredients in: flour, butter, a small amount of the beer he was given from Doc last week, cheese, and since they don’t have much in the way of spices here, a tiny pinch of blaze powder that sizzles loudly on contact—he learnt that substitution from Zedaph a while ago. For his own sake he doesn’t let anyone learn more about that particular story.
Grian leans over from where he was standing, wings rustling like they tend to do when he’s curious. He rests his head on Mumbo’s shoulder and watches him. “Whatcha doing?”
“This goes on top of the bread when it’s sliced,” Mumbo explains, “I’ve been feeling a little patriotic, so I’m making some classic Welsh stuff. This is for rarebit, which is gonna go with the cawl, and hopefully we get to make some picau ar y maen afterwards with the dough I’ve got chilled—”
“Woah woah woah, hold on a second!” Grian, eyes wide, grabs him and turns him around. “Mumbo K Jumbo, you’re Welsh?!”
“I—yeah? I’m half Welsh, brought up in England, my mother… Dude, we’ve known each other for nearly a decade, how did you not know this?”
“I genuinely don’t know, but it’s not like it’s turned up in conversation!”
“Surely...” Mumbo starts, until he tries to think back to any time he’s mentioned his heritage. “Huh. I guess it hasn’t. Goodness.”
“The most English-y Englishman I’ve ever met,” Grian mutters to himself, “Has been half Welsh this whole time.”
“Oi! This half Welshman is about to start slicing the bread so we can eat, get two sets of plates and bowls out.” On the word ‘eat,’ Grian immediately starts beelining to the barrel where his tableware is.
“On it!”
Mumbo extinguishes the fire for the pots with a whoosh and gets half of the bread ready for a second round of the stone oven, sliced and covered in the cheese sauce. He’s not as happy as he wants to be about the cawl, because he never gets the broth quite right and, most importantly, he doesn't have any leeks. He had to go with allium stems instead. It’s a tragedy, honestly, that most survival servers don’t have them. He can hear his mother in his head now, tutting as he plates the freshly grilled rarebit, it’s just not cawl without leeks!
Despite ragging on Grian earlier for his lack of kitchenware, Mumbo doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on; the two of them are setting up on a picnic blanket outside Big Ron’s, since there isn’t a dining table and chairs anywhere. Not having a real living quarters has become so common on the server that it’s almost a rule, with all their massive build projects and lack of desire to work on anything that isn’t immediately visible.
He tries to think of hermits with livable interiors and can only think of one or two of them. He wouldn’t trade this life for anything, but he does miss reliable furniture and a real hob with an extractor fan.
“This looks so good,” Grian says as Mumbo approaches, making grabby hands at one of the plates and diving in straight away. “This was, what? Cow-el and rarebit?”
“The bread’s Welsh rarebit, and this is cawl, one syllable. Closer to the ‘ca’ in ‘cat’ than ‘cow?'”
“Cawl. Well, even if I can’t pronounce it right, it’s bloody good stew.”
“Thank you! I’m glad you like it, even if it isn’t really cawl without leeks.”
It is good food. Mumbo forgot how good it is, for being so simple. If he closes his eyes he can be Mumbo Jumbo, eleven years old, coming home from school and asking for bara brith for pudding. Food was the closest he’d ever been to feeling Welsh, for all his life. He’s still grateful he got to learn, and be proud of that, even if he somehow hasn’t mentioned it in years.
Grian looks up when he’s three quarters of the way through his bowl and his toast’s been devoured entirely, and Mumbo thinks he looks like he’s just remembered that the world exists outside of his food. “So… Our dear Mumbo, secretly Welsh through his mum?”
“Yep. My mother was very patriotic when I was growing up, so I learnt a lot about Wales and the culture and stuff like that. I think it’s because I was growing up in England, she didn’t want me to lose my Welsh heritage to the English again. Understandably! I mean, I’m not getting any gold stars for my Welshness, no awards or prizes for me there. I don’t even remember much of the history anymore, and my Welsh is a couple of words at most.”
He nibbles at his rarebit as he talks, occasionally watching Grian as he listens on and poorly sneaks in spoons of stew between nods to make sure he looks like he’s paying as much attention as he actually is. Mumbo already knows he is, the way his wings move about in their own kind of nod.
“Well, you know infinitely more than I do. And more than the others, probably, unless you’ve somehow told all the other hermits before you told me, in which case I’d be the one throwing you off Magic Mountain.”
When their bowls are empty, Mumbo gets up and moves towards the kitchen to start on dessert. He drags Grian along with him, which leads to a lot of unhappy noises of protest. He ignores it though, because Welsh cakes are one of his favourite sweet treats, which says a lot when he’s a massive sweet tooth. He even managed to dry out some berries to add into the dough. Picau ar y maen are a joy he doesn’t have often, so he’s going all out this time. Hopefully he has enough that he can make and share some with his neighbours, later.
For now, though, he tasks Grian to cut out a few circles for the two of them as Mumbo sets up the griddle. Grian complains about free labour in their current economic climate until he smells the Welsh cakes cooking on the griddle, to which he becomes single-mindedly focused on making as many rounds as possible with his remaining scraps. It’s very amusing watching him calculate how to maximise his output in real time, but in doing so Mumbo overcooks one, which is practically a crime that he should be put in jail for.
It takes a while for all of them to be cooked, but it’s definitely worth it. They manage to make an impressive amount of palm-sized ones with less than half of the dough made earlier.
Despite Mumbo telling him to wait for the tea to be ready before having any, Grian has one anyway and his eyes sparkle so brightly upon eating it that Mumbo thinks those eyes might be breaking the laws of physics and emitting light. He gets it though. They really are special when fresh off the griddle and topped with sugar.
“Mumbo,” Grian says, possibly near tears or just very squeaky with joy, “You being Welsh is one of the best things the universe has ever done.”
Mumbo laughs so hard he nearly spills the tea everywhere. He grabs a pice ar y maen from Grian and tries one, and he’s also extremely glad he grew up with these things and learnt his mother’s recipe. They’re comforting and just sweet enough, still warm and the texture just right. He gives himself a mental pat on the back.
They go back outside with their cups of tea and a plate between them, and they keep talking. Welsh cakes are wonderful, and even better with a cup of tea. Grian learns a few words in Welsh, good morning and how are you and thank you very much, both of them clumsy around the vowels, and they talk about anything and everything that’s been going on, the first time they’ve had a proper conversation in weeks.
Absence really does make the heart grow fonder, if you do it right—Mumbo doesn’t realise how much he has to say until the words start flowing out, almost desperately. It’s strange to say he misses Grian, because Grian has always been right there, but he does. He likes to think that Grian misses Mumbo, too.
The sun sets and their plate of dessert had been cold and empty for a long time before that, letting the ants have their fill as they both move to sit along the edge. Grian compliments the new view with the added tree line and it feels like approval that could sit in his heart forever; gold stars and awards and prizes are suddenly worth it if they come from him.
“Grian?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m–” Glad I could see you like this again, he doesn’t say. I’m grateful for everything you do, I’m hoping we get to do this again sooner rather than later. He knows Grian will pick up on it.
He starts again. “I’m glad you’re normal-Grian sized and not really small right now because I've fed you a vegetable.”
Grian laughs so loudly he can hear mobs startle from above them, but Mumbo can’t bring himself to care as he joins in.