Chapter Text
------ [OVERWORLD - MORNING, 6 HOURS UNTIL SUNSET] ------
[Plains - Verdant Steppe]
Pain, itching, and irritation: 3 sensations that overwhelmed Herba as she pressed herself against the wooden walls of Rynak's abode.
She had been so caught up in how pleasant being treated as her own person was that how she was going to approach self-care completely slipped her mind.
As it would turn out, itches can't exactly be scratched when you don't have the means to reach the majority of your body; her body is flexible, but even that had limits.
Herba's body had been in the process of shedding and had become a more solid shade of green as her new leaves grew in.
The process had run into a bit of a complication, unfortunately.
The leaves that cover Creepers serve as a form of insulation, allowing them to prowl around both frigid and arid environments.
As the leaves age, their color changes: starting from a rich and dark Green and slowly fading to a pale white over the course of three months, when new leaves fall from their body as it begins to replace the old ones with a surprising swiftness. During the process, the coloration Creepers can go from looking like a hodgepodge of greens and whites around the end to being mostly dark green after the process is complete.
The process isn't perfect, as there will be times where a Creeper's body is unable to properly shed parts of its old plumage without the involvement of another of its brethren.
If a Creeper neglects this, less and less of their plumage will get replaced as their bodies slowly become overwhelmed by the massive insulation provided and slowly overheat.
Herba, bearing the full brunt of her negligence, felt as if dozens of Cactus needles were embedded in her flesh just enough for her to cause irritation.
She was keenly aware of what parts of her grassy plumage needed plucking; the issue was who was going to stand in for one of her own?
The only other available would be her clanmate Rynak, but the thought of him doing something so intimate and personal felt weird, iffy, even embarrassing for her.
Despite her qualms, it didn't seem like she had any choice in the matter at this point.
There was a problem, though: she didn't know where he was at the moment.
She wished she could bite herself, finding annoyance in her negligence in confiding her conundrum to Rynak.
Before he left, he had taken notice of her regrowing plumage and asked her about it and since the process was natural, she felt no reason to confide in him about it.
("If Creeper just told clanmate, Rye-nack would help. Reliable, appreciated.") She internally berated herself.
The irritation across her body persists, much to her annoyance.
She desperately presses her head against the wall, then her body, both attempts to scratch her bodily irritation in the only way she could.
With out a whimpering huff, her mind raced to find a way to sate the incredibly displeasing sensation.
------ [2 HOURS LATER] ------
The ever so familiar sight of his abode greeted Rynak, returning after running some errands for the Villagers in Sepioid Village; finding a particular material, investigating the nearby area for something, the things the Villagers needed assistance with weren't always all that complicated. It was nice to be of use.
As Rynak made his way inside, he was greeted to a shrill, pained whining unlike anything he'd heard before.
With a flash of green, he found himself on the ground with an ever-so familiar jet-black visage staring at him dead in the eyes.
"Woah! What's got into you all of a sudden, Herba?" Her mouth moved, attempting to verbally beg for assistance, "Oh, you... uh... look..." She looked awful, her usual shrub-y texture was considerably more disheveled and unkept in comparison to how it looked before he left, "...like you've seen better days, yeah. Let's go with that." he said with a wince.
She vigorously nodded, nuzzling herself against the Human, letting out another whine. "Are you okay?" She shook her head.
Rynak gently pushed the Creeper off of him. She slowly, almost mechanically, got up and made her way over her writing utensils before collapsing to the ground midway, whimpering in discomfort.
He shot over to her side, kneeling down to offer tactile support to the distressed creature.
Herba screeches upon the sensation of his touch. He pulls away, ("Her body is more sensitive than usual, hm...") Rynak analyzed as Herba occasionally twitched on the ground, "Herba, I need you to work with me here." She turns her head to try and look at him. "I need to narrow down what the problem is, okay?" She nods.
Rynak began analyzing Herba, noting her fruitless efforts to reach her upper body.
"Is the sensation coming from within?" She shakes her head, "Good. That... simplifies things," he raises a hand to his chin as the cogs began turning in his head, "Then, it has to do with something external?" she nods again. "Great, that narrows the causes down considerably."
He raises a hand to his chin; he had gathered an acceptable amount of data regarding Herba's problem, but a little more wouldn't hurt. "Do Creepers shed?" She hesitates before nodding; the process itself was similar enough to qualify as shedding that a 'yes' would still be accurate.
"Then by going off of what you've told me, I can only presume you're undergoing a process similar to molting, then," Herba lets out an annoyed, impatient hiss. "I'm working as fast as I can here, Herba! My first guess was something completely..." he paused, parsing his next words carefully, "different, increased body sensitivity could mean your body could be preparing for something... intimate, and that could've compromised your judgement when the desperation for relief kicks in." He cocked an unamused eyebrow, "Going by how you pounced on me the moment I got back, I can only assume at least that much had happened, thus my concern."
Rynak gestured in an exaggerated manner "But sure, skip the guesswork and just go with the first conclusion I think of! Like that'll end well," he dryly postulated, "It's not like I've had countless opportunities to investigate whatever it is that Creepers do when they want to reproduce, so I definitely know what to-" He stops himself, letting out a sigh.
Guilty, Herba's expression falls and Rynak shakes his head, his expression softening. It begins to set in that he might have come off a bit too harshly.
"Look," he explained calmly, "the point is: when it comes to deducing the biological cause for something like this, utmost certainty is required. Mixing one thing up for another would not end well - after all, not every antidote can remedy every kind of ailment alone."
He places a hand gently onto her renewed leafy form, "Now that I know it's a case of your body working to replace old parts of your foliage with new ones, I can help relieve you of the discomfort," He paused, tapping fingers against Herba's torso. "You'll... uh... have to sit up first, though."
She slowly did as she was requested. "I'm sorry," he shook his head, "I should've known this would've been an issue that would come up eventually, I could've-" Herba placed one of her hooves on him, silencing his verbal worrying in its tracks. "I- You're right. I couldn't have known, right?" she nodded, reassuring him that his willingness to help someone like her is valued.
Rynak reached up and unclipped Herba's collar, his hands then finding their way onto the various small leaves that provided her a form of camouflage in more forested locales. The short, aged leaves that coated her body from head down to her hooves resembled that of Palm Grass, being more along the line of grassy leaves rather than just one or the other.
However, he stops himself before he can take ahold of one of them. "You're absolutely certain that you're fine me with doing this?" he asked. She nodded repetitively, declaring an utmost degree of certainty in her judgement. "O-okay. J-just being sure."
Grabbing onto the first leaf, Rynak gave it a gentle tug, waiting for a response before going any further.
Silence.
He tugged a little harder, freeing the leaf from her body.
Herba visibly flinched, then turned her head to look back at him.
He smiled, and the sight of this made her heart flutter - the funny feeling from before having returned, bringing with it something for her to ponder:
Did she like this?
Moreover, should she like this?
It gave her considerable pause.
Herba felt Rynak pluck another, then another.
A burst of pain made her hiss loudly. Rynak's hands practically flew away from her body in one swift motion. "Sorry! Sorry, guess that one hasn't worn down enough. Still learning!"
Her brows furrowed, a look of annoyance gripping her features as she pouted, lightly clenching her teeth together.
Plucking another leaf yielded no response.
Slowly but surely, he found a sort of rhythm to his task: find leaf, give it a light tug, wait for response, pluck if no response.
With this tempo achieved, minutes turned to hours as he worked through other parts of her body as Herba's eyes began to drift closed.
Each plucked leaf brought her just a bit more of a wonderful sense of bliss, one step closer to being freed from the irritation.
"Herba?" Rynak called out to her, "Herba?"
Her eyes shot open, she looked back at him once more, "I've done just about every part of your body, barring... uh..." awkwardness laced his voice, "one, one part."
("How do I put this in a way that is tactful?") his mind nervously raced.
Finding herself now facing the direction opposite to how she started, she quickly shakes her head.
Now she had more questions for herself: when did she roll over? Did she zone out for a moment?
And what part of her was he referring to?
It doesn't take long for the realization to hit her.
Suddenly, his hesitation made sense to her - she would've been the same way if another asked her to assist them in their shedding.
It never got any less strange, relating to a Human of all things.
Then again, none of what she and him have built could be normal by her brethren's standards.
Her breathing got heavier than she would've liked, though Rynak seeming to be just as flustered about it does offer Herba some reassurance.
"I just want to know if it'd be fine. So I don't... uh..."
His brows furrowed, his eyes travelling around the room in a rare display of him hesitating to find the words, let alone say the ones he needs in order to get what he means across.
For Herba, however, it only took her a moment to deduce what words he struggled to get out, what he meant to say in his gesture of modesty and bashfulness.
So I don't make you feel uncomfortable.
So I don't violate the trust you have in me.
So I don't hurt you.
Such consideration made her heart melt. (["Rye-nack..."])
Herba nodded gently. "Are you sure? It- it's a rather personal-" She nodded again, insisting that him proceeding would be okay.
Rynak swallowed the lump in his throat.
"I understand. C-could you, uh...?"
She moved her hooves out of the way as best as she could.
There were a handful of aged leaves on her lower, usually hoof-obscured region.
Rynak's hands shook as he very carefully tugged, and then plucked one after another, not paying any mind whatever else was present.
Herba, on the other hand, was on edge, feeling like her face was on fire. Her permitting him to view such an intimate part of herself was proving equal parts embarrassing and flustering for her.
It was simply up to him not to breach her trust; she placed her faith in him.
After a couple more minutes, Rynak finally let out a sigh of relief.
"Phew, I-I think I got them all! For now, anyway."
She quickly sits up on her hind hooves, finally relieved of her incessant itching as Rynak clips her collar back on.
Herba curled herself around Rynak in a hug, an attempt to show her gratitude.
A strange, deep chirping sound akin to that of a Katydid reverberates from the back of her throat.
The silence that followed was unexpectedly heavy.
"Uh, Herba? That noise: what was that?" he asked, a look of concern now present on his feature.
She froze, processing what had just happened.
It took a moment for her to realize what the problem was as she played everything back in her head. Heat pooled into her face as it all dawned on her at once.
She had let her emotions speak for her, hadn't she?
Panicking, she let out an unexpectedly sharp screech as the Creeper was overwhelmed by several strong emotions at once before finally settling on a crushing sense of embarrassment.
Without a second thought, Herba ran.
"HERBA, WAIT!" He called out.
His words didn't register to her as she barreled through the Doors.
He ran after her, though by the time he got outside she was nowhere to be seen.
"Damn it, where did she go?" He took off into the distance, his thoughts racing. "It doesn't make sense! She was only out of my sight for a moment, how did she get so far so fast!"
Something clicks into place in his head; he skids to a halt.
"...Unless she didn't!" He smirks.
With a turn of his heels, he bolts back to the proximity of his home.
Stopping in front of the wooden structure, he brought a hand to his chin, "If she got out of sight so fast, then she must've pulled a fast one on me and used the environment to her advantage," he chuckles, "Clever; I'll need to encourage more of that kind of thing while in combat."
Changing his approach, he searched the area around his home.
It didn't take long to find Herba staring into the nearby river, lost in the sight of her reflection and her thoughts.
Her head briefly turned to acknowledge a new shape now appearing on the water's surface: Rynak's.
"You okay, Herba?"
No head movement, no response.
Rynak sits on the river's edge, next to Herba.
She doesn't even look at him once he arrives.
The air around them felt tense.
Rynak couldn't bring himself to look at her either.
"Was it something I did or said?
After a moment more, she shook her head.
"Is it something you want to talk about?"
She shook her head again.
He sighed, "Alright. If that ever changes, remember that I'm here for you."
Her maw moves, mouthing an unintelligible "Thanks," to the Human.
The sound of the shifting waters of the river becomes louder as the two sit quietly
"Question," Rynak breaks the tension, "You and your brethren are a kind of living plant, right? Does that mean you like exposure to water?"
Such a suggestion was enough to disrupt the funk the Creeper was in, with Herba turning to look at him.
She nods, interested in indulging in his curiosity for once.
Herba stepped down into the river's waters, its middling temperature helping soothe her nerves.
Rynak followed in behind her, pulling out a sponge, soaking it in the water and bringing it to her body.
What followed was indescribable on Herba's part, too wonderful for words to suffice. Each brush of the sponge against her body, each stroke dampened the leaves on her body.
It felt strange, yet also right in the strangest of ways.
"You feeling okay?" Herba heard her clanmate ask. She nodded repeatedly and energetically. One thing was for certain though: she certainly didn't hate this feeling.
Herba let out a strange warble of a hiss, causing Rynak to pause.
"Was that a good hiss or a bad hiss?" She treaded water in place with her hooves for a moment, looking back to her clanmate with a saddened expression on her face. ("I guess she's urging me to continue?")
He went back to scrubbing Herba with the sponge.
Herba, meanwhile, was drowning in a flood of ecstasy.
(["Love this, need more."])
(["Clanmate good at care for Ur-buh, appreciate."])
Yet somewhere deep within bothered her, something that prodded at her. With all that Rynak had done for her, would it be wrong for her to want to be partners with Rynak?
It felt right, yet there was something that kept her from embracing the idea.
She already trusted him so much, wasn't that enough?
Her face flushed a rosy red as Herba found herself actively second guessing her judgement, worried that she was perhaps getting too hasty or getting ahead of herself.
("Would Ur-buh be asking too much of first creature to-?")
"Herba?" Once again, Herba is ripped out of her current line of thinking by her Clanmate's words of concern. "You seem uneasy... tense even; you still okay?" She nodded desperately, trying her best to keep her cool and not worry her clanmate.
Rynak shrugged, "If you say so."
Herba needed a distraction to get her mind off of such a topic. She began to focus her hardest on the sensations she was experiencing.
The wetness of the Porifera-like object that her clanmate was washing her with is making her leafy-body glisten in the sun an elegant verdant, and deep within her core she could feel the replacements for the currently absent grassy leaves begin to ever so slowly emerge from her body.
Across the river, she could see a group of Pigs trotting about the small, lightly hilly landscape surrounding her, occasionally crossing paths with another animal, interacting with them with an assortment of oinks and snorts.
They seemed without a care in the world, a sensation that Herba found a strange sense of kinship with.
Peace, quiet, tranquility.
It was all so heavenly.
"I meant what I said earlier, Herba." She looked back to Rynak, a look of uncertainty on his face, "Getting data on how creatures reproduce isn't a convenient process, and even less so for ones that are outright hostile to Humans like yours tend to be, so I just... don't." He gestured in a defeated manner, "Phantoms? They only come out when they're actively praying on an insomniac. Endermans?" - he lets out a brief laugh, - "good luck with that when they can warp away at a moment's notice." He sighs, "Even with that in mind, there are some I don't really need to worry about for one reason or another, Zombies and Skeletons being animated and sustained by magic, for one, so they can't really do that."
Herba lets out a soft hiss, Rynak shakes his head. "O-oh but don't worry, I'm not exactly in any hurry to solve those mysteries. I've been trying my best to stick to more... ethical avenues, so that kind of information comes down to when you're comfortable sharing it." Heat gathers in her face as she looks away from Rynak as he continues bathing her.
As a result of only being sustained by a form of magic, the physical forms of undead monsters such as Zombies and Skeletons are very much real; remains of Humans and Piglins who get careless and pay the price, ones whose forms do not give away like they should've.
Over time, their bodies decayed into the varying forms of Skeletons and Zombies that roam both the Overworld and the Nether.
The culprit behind the continued existence of Zombies and Skeletons remains under investigation even to the present day, with some pointing towards it being a result of ambient Vis while others suspect a connection to the Twilight Lich - a formidable Skeleton native to the mythical Twilight Forest who possesses considerable magic proficiency. Neither argument was watertight, however, and as such the air of mystery behind the matter has remained a thick fog blotting out the truth of the matter for eons, for better or for worse.
"Y'know, it's kind of funny," Rynak spoke with a sense of mirth, "When this started you were supposed to be my 'pet'. Funny, as it sure doesn't feel like I treat you like that. It feels like I treat you... uh..." he pauses to think, "like a roommate, friend, that kind of thing," he shrugs, "I suppose being a 'pet' kind of goes out the window when you have a high enough degree of sapience."
Herba lets out a brief growl, a slight annoyance sparked by the implication of his words.
"O-oh, sorry!" he pulls back, stopping to explain himself, "I mean no offense! I just... unlike Wolves, Cats and Parrots, Creepers aren't as..." he trails off as he scrambles to find the right words, "Compatible with our lifestyle, I guess? With all the items and materials that get lost in caves thanks to us getting blindsided, it wouldn't surprise me if the concept wouldn't exactly seem all that appealing to others," He shrugs, "I suppose that being a 'pet' doesn't exactly entail the same thing in all cases, would it?"
Herba's eyes widened, nodded as an understanding coming over her, something about that made sense. Rynak felt warmth pool in his face as self-consciousness crept into his mind, "S-sorry, I'm blabbering on again, aren't I?"
She huffs and shakes her head as she gently pressed her body onto the sponge, wordlessly encouraging him to turn his focus back to cleaning her.
"Right. I suppose I should get back on track, huh?"
With another brush of the sponge against her body, Rynak returned to bathing Herba.
Alongside it came more of the blissful sensation that she just could not get enough of.
------ [11 MINUTES LATER] ------
"Come on now, Herba! I really don't want to find out what happens when you soak up too much water at once; last I checked, that can have consequences for plants." Rynak tugs on Herba, pulling her out of the water.
She tried using her hooves to keep herself in the water, but it did little to slow her extraction from the river.
Once Herba was back on land, anger found its way onto her features as she pouted
about what Rynak had done.
"Oh yeah, sure. Get mad at me for making sure you stay healthy," he spoke dryly as he raised his hands in the air, exasperated, "I'm just trying to help, Herba."
Rynak made his way to the front of his house before turning back to the Creeper. "What I said before still stands, y'know," he smiled, "I'm always here for you. If you ever need to talk, you know where your stuff is. I'm always willing to listen."
With all said and done, he headed out of Herba's view.
She turned and looked back at her reflection on the river's surface.
At her side were three figures, one right next to her that she knew all too well, while the others were hazy, blurry, unrecognizable yet still carried an uncanny sense of familiarity to her in the hints of green that she could make out.
Her gaze locked on the reflections; Herba began to reminisce.
["Wish things ended differently. Better."]
The past was a strange thing, something she'd rather forget about yet...
There was something missing, something that prevented her from completely moving on.
["Creeper need return to Clan territory, numbers low."]
1090's words from nearly a month ago echoed in her head. Even now, she was unsure if he was being truthful with his words. Surely, he wouldn't go that far to pull her back in, would he?
She needed answers.
Herba brows furrowed, certain in her wordless resolve as she looked back at Rynak as he headed back inside.
To her, Rynak was a consistent form of intrigue. Time and time again she had been told that Humans were a constantly evolving, cruel, self-serving infection that needed expunged by any means necessary.
If that was true, then why was this one acting to the contrary: selfless and compassionate? Was he the exception, or were there others like him out there?
She shook her head. Such thoughts would be considered foreign, even heretical in her former clan - yet without their strict like-mindedness clouding her vision, such perplexing possibilities instead brought her a sense of excitement.
For the time being, however, she pondered, considering that maybe what she left behind could be worth revisiting. Not to return to the life she remembered, but to instead find closure.
In all the uncertainty floating about her mind, there was one thing Herba was certain of:
This matter was one that Rynak could not get involved with.