Work Text:
It is warm.
It is hot, even. Birthed in the deep, broiling lava, it wakes.
All it knows is heat. The heat that made it, the heat that it is made of. All it knows is light. The light that made it, and the light that it is made of.
Slowly, it pushes its way to the surface.
The lava is thick, is warm, is familiar. The lava is home. But it wants to know what else there is, what else there might be. It breaks the surface and gasps for air and it glows.
There are so many colours. Crimson, vermillion, gold, slate, so many it doesn’t even have the words for yet. Carefully, it hauls itself from the lava, dripping and drenched and dazzling. A whole world lies before it, full of things it did not know it had not known.
It learns the world. It learns of the two-legged creatures that stride across the lakes of lava, that chitter when it brings its warmth near. It learns of the sands that turn it blue, that dye its light cyan and its mind with melancholy. It learns of the people, too. The piglins that hunt, teaching it how to grip a spear, to watch its back, to fight with others. The ghasts that cry, teaching it how to feel, how to rest, how to dance with the thermals. The blazes that smoulder, teaching it how to burn bright, how to defend, how to build a home. The skeletons that wander, black and white alike, teaching it how to travel, how to learn the land, how to call this place its own.
It learns many things.
It learns who it is. Given a name, spoken by others. ‘He’, they call it. ‘He’ it answers to. ‘He’ it is. Given a purpose, to protect and to nurture, this land that is its home and this land that made it, this land that is not burned by its heat nor its flame. Given a place, a belonging, a family. It is of the Nether, forged from its fires and alight with its life.
And when it returns to its birth place, to the lava it swam through, the lava that cradles it, the lava that burns as it does, it finds it is not the only life birthed from such depths.
It reaches out, grasps the hand that reaches, and it pulls it closer.
It is just as it is. Burning bright, burning true. Licking at the air and glowing in the light, and it… kindles something inside of it. Something much warmer than it ever knew.
It is its other half, it thinks.
It is everything it is and more.
It takes its hand and it leads it through its home, it teaches it everything it knew and it teaches it things it did not in return, and they together are one whole. They together are twin flames.
It is better with a sword than it is. It is better at laughing, but worse at crying. It is better at following the ghasts, light on the winds, but it is worse at carving with the piglins, too impatient. It is everything it is not, filling spaces it did not know were ever empty, but that it never wants to be parted with again.
Its hand is a warm presence in its, a constant one. Where it goes, it follows, and where it is led, it goes.
They give it a name, too. ‘She’, hand in hand with ‘He’. It is as beautiful as it is, as melodic as its voice, as radiant as its eyes.
They are inseparable. He and She, a sword in one hand and a spear in the other, and joined in the middle. It is very good at protecting its back, they both are. It is very good at defending it, and in turn, it is very good at protecting it.
It cannot truly remember what it was like to life without it at its side. There is a wholeness to everything now, a completeness. The Nether was simply so empty without it, and now it is full, and it would not trade that fullness for anything, except maybe its own life, if it must.
And so when they are found, hand in hand, approached by one who can only be the Nether walking, the Nether alive, the Nether incarnate, it does not let go of its hand, and it protects it, just as it defends in turn.
And she is the Nether incarnate. She is the Nether alive, the nether walking. She cradles them both in her palms, an embrace as familiar as breathing, the depths of heat they both emerged from.
She asks their names and they give them to her, He and She. She likes them. She asks if they wish to see her home, wish to come with her and call it their home too.
It looks at it. It looks back. It squeezes its hand, and they answer in one voice.
She takes them through the Nether, does not separate them, and she introduces them to others just like them.
Not like them in what they are, it notices they are the only ones born of fire and lava here. It notices they are the only ones born of fire and lava anywhere, and it notices their hands are all but one.
Like them in that they are of the Nether, like them in that they are its protectors. They welcome them into their ranks, share stories and names and histories and futures. It talks alongside it, with it, as one with it. Two flames but one heart, beating with the Nether itself, stoked by her hands, and named by her people.
He and She, it and it, twin flames burning forever bright and forever bold.
It is not sure it could ever have imagined this when it was born. It is not sure it could ever have needed anything else.