Work Text:
An important tenet of GeminyTay’s was to never be confined to a single thing.
She wanted to experience the world, ever since she had formed, and realized the fundamental aspect of players that made them players was their freedom.
Freedom is something players take for granted. The ability to treat the world like their own personal sandbox, to exist in such a manner that all their dreams have the possibility of coming true, if they only work for it.
Some beings don’t have that luxury.
Gem was not a proper player. She didn’t come from a recognized planet, wasn’t a human or a hybrid or some sort of Netherborn.
Instead, she simply appeared one day in a forest, seemingly formed out of the very bark and leaves and vines that sprung up from the ground. They had roots, and those roots were her, sometimes.
But she did something she wasn’t supposed to. She felt, and she wanted, and she built. She broke down the old forest, creating her own, one of freshness and beauty and pure ingenuity. A manifestation of her mind, built of the same materials as her.
And one day, they found her. Stumbled upon her world, beings much like her, who built and dreamed and shaped the world to what they wanted.
Players, who invited her in to join them. She adopted their aspects, making a form they could see and touch and relate to, a young player-presenting girl with short antlers, taken from the mobs that roamed her forest (mobs that, when discovered by the players, were proclaimed as modded, whatever that meant).
She left her forest, traveled the solar system. There were endless opportunities, endless builds to make, endless dreams to explore.
And yet, for years, she struggled with an aspect of herself, that missing piece that disconnected her from the others.
She was created to be the forest, or maybe to simply be, with no emotions or dreams or freedom to follow her heart. For what can she follow, is she lacks a heart, lacks the coding that makes a player a player.
For, if she wasn’t a player, then what was she?
This question plagued her, deep inside, until she met the hermits.
A group of beings, who, much like her, dreamed big, bigger than any other players, and built just as big as they dreamed.
Being a hermit lessened her insecurities, somewhat. Your friends being several humans from another solar system, an imp from Below, and the physical manifestation of the void, among numerous other oddities, definitely made her more comfortable to share her story, and her lack.
They embraced her, made her happy to be herself, missing piece or not.
And so, she changed. She shed her antlers, the pieces holding her back in time, tying her back to her old insecurities.
She became something else, something beyond what she was. A player, perhaps, or just herself.
She could be a scientist, a dragon tamer, a tavern keeper, something more than the cute cottage-core forest spirit she had embraced.
Gem was more than that, more than a hermit, more than a friend, more than just herself. She was truly free.