Chapter Text
The void is a wasteland, suffocating in her gluttonous nature which takes and breaks anything that gives. Many travellers are claimed by her ink-colored infinity, a cemetery of bodies recycled and reused, energy constantly battling with itself. It’s this volatile cycle of code being recycled which makes her so dangerous but, also, that which gives her the womb to bear her children.
The voidlings, the only children of the void, are rare, fickle things, sheltered by the destructive tear of their mother as she nourishes them and confuses them as an extension for herself, and then, forced out by her mindless chaos when they grow into their autonomous forms, abandoned with nothing by the only company they have ever known.
Some believe them to be wraiths, possessing the bodies of the void’s damned and haunting the world. Others swear they are omens of misfortune, small pieces of void sent to wreak destruction across the dimensions. A rare few consider them miracles; millenniums of energy and code condensed into a sentient creature.
Wemmbu is a tiny, weak thing, young: a small purple creature with budding horns that have not yet matured into the elegant shape the slight twist to them suggests. His wings and tail drag along the dusty ground behind him. His body is too weak after years of malnourishment to support either being lifted too far off the pavement.
He used to be less than this, or more than this, when he was still nothing more than a ball of energy cradled by the mother void that created him. His memories of this time aren’t vivid, blurred by the edge of sentience, but he remembers them well enough to link himself to the code that flickers behind people’s eyes and the moments when his body shifts out of reality. His lineage is painted along his neckline in star-like patterns of code.
He’s clever and old enough to understand that a creature like him is destined to be alone, left behind with only the faint murmurings of a name burned into his mind and vibrant, shifting skin so unlike any creature he has interacted with before.
His body is a cheap imitation of the imps that pass by him everyday, but even they are not his own, with their stocky builds and red skin as compared to his lean body and purple features.
A mother side-steps him on the busy sidewalk, holding her child tighter and angling the babe away from him. As they pass, warmth echoes into his strikingly cold skin. His heart urges him to chase after them, after the warmth and comfort and love, but he knows he cannot. He’s tried to follow it before, but his yearning has only ever been rewarded with a slap across the face and insults.
The Nether, he has learned, is a naturally unpleasant place, fit only for the strongest. In the corners of a dark alleyway, he’s watched life flood out of a man’s body as his belongings are looted by a group of skinny teenagers. Every night, as he curls into the smallest nook he can find, he has to find new ways to block his ears from the onslaught of screams and panic outside.
Citizens should be concerned enough by all of the violence plaguing the streets to ignore him, yet he always somehow manages to wager disgust from strangers.
The purple child tugs the oversized collar of his ratty shirt further up his neckline, hiding in the fabric as he plays with the strap of his decaying messenger bag with his other hand.
He finally breaks out of the suffocating crowd as he approaches the edge of Netheria’s park. Now, only a few people are meandering about, mostly a group of teens who are currently occupying the playset and a couple walking under a row of freshly bloomed crimson trees. The squash of nylium is comforting on his barefeet, cooler than the searing heat of the nether brick sidewalks.
Weak legs bring him to the base of an old warped tree. The roots stretch around his body, cushioning his legs in a way that makes it seem like the tree had grown to fit his body. With how much he sits here, there’s a chance it might have. He collapses to his butt, throwing his legs over themselves in a criss-cross shape. He hisses when his sweeping tail is cut by the remnants of an old bottle, smashed against the wood. With a sigh, he begins picking at the small pile of broken glass, pushing the shards further away from him. Wemmbu swallows a sudden influx of bile that rises at the sight of his obsidian-tipped talons.
He wishes he still had those gloves he had stolen a while back, but some older kid had pried them away from him.
Once the broken glass is sufficiently removed from his vicinity, he brushes his bruised hands gently over his shirt to remove the dust away from any new cuts before he moves his bag into his lap.
The first thing he does is pull out a stale, half-eaten loaf of bread. Wemmbu rolls the food around in his hands, checking for any mold or other spores that might’ve stuck to the bread. There’s a small patch of green spots on one end of the bread. He scrunches his nose in disgust, but picks away the visibly infected part anyway. Then, he rolls a small piece from the opposite side into a ball and pops the chunk into his mouth. It is disgusting, well past its prime and bathed in the dust of ash, but he doesn’t have the luxury of throwing out more than he needs.
He’s lucky enough that he no longer has to resort to eating the molded pieces, as well.
As he struggles to chew through the nasty bread, he thoroughly wipes the inside of the pouch he stores the bread in. It's not entirely thought through, but he hopes it will at least bide time for the food he has.
He slips the bread back in before opening the main compartment of the bag, where he stores most of his slipped goods. He sorts through the top: a bundle of potion ingredients which he can sell to the shady witch on the corner and a couple of watches and fancy-looking, golden necklaces. Usually, bigger stores that would pay the most for these accessories aren’t willing to buy from a dirt-covered, starving street-kid, but there are plenty of smaller jewelry stores that are willing to buy. If he can find one run by a piglin, then he has a chance of making the same profit on the gold pieces anyway.
His haul should give him a decent three stacks of gold, enough to buy him a new loaf of bread, some new clothes, and a roll of gauze for his feet. If he’s lucky, he’ll be able to afford that fancy redstone-building where people go to shower. He’s beginning to really smell again.
Sitting at the bottom of the bag is a small purple gem, scratched from years of miscellaneous objects being thrown on top of it, and a lilac-colored ribbon gifted to him by a kind older woman who used to work the deli on the main-street and fed him left-over slabs of meat, like he is some sort of feral cat.
He gently packs his bag back up as he plans his next steps. A quick glance towards the city reveals shop owners tidying up their stores as they begin to close for the night. He pricks his ears and listens as the sounds of bustling people gradually lower into the quieter murmur of night.
He’ll have to sleep, then, and wake up early enough to catch the witch as she begins prepping the day’s potions. From experience, she’s more willing to pay a hefty hand for the ingredients while she preps for the brew. Though, if he stops by in the middle of the day, she usually hands him a cookie and golden carrot. Maybe he can stop by the marketplace while he searches for a piglin-owned jewelry shop. It is easy to find a tourist soft enough to pity him enough to buy him a small meal.
One of his ears twitches at the sounds of hooves shuffling over nylium. Wemmbu shoots his head up and watches a group of piglin hybrids approach. The same three teens that have been hanging around the swings for the past thirty minutes.
Two of them are pretty average, if a little scrawny for piglins; though, being piglins means that they’re still packed with rippling muscles. Behind them lingers a third, larger piglin. A brute. Thankfully, the brute hybrid seems to be more civilized than his friends, surprisingly. He stands a couple of steps away and works his hands together nervously.
One wrong move, though, and that could change very fast. Brutes are notorious for being lethal in their protection over their droves.
He looks around for escape routes, noting the alleyway that leads towards the marketplace, which should still have a large crowd of people that he can slip through, and the small peaks of fancy mansions.
No street kid brings a fight into the rich neighborhoods unless they want to go to jail, making them great for escaping. It’s not as if Netheria’s police force cares too much for kids like him anyway. As long as they stay away from the pockets of influential, usually meaning unhealthily rich, figures, then the cops are more than content to watch the starving squabble.
A part of him is convinced they find it amusing.
But getting ratted out by a cranky moneybag could also lead to him getting chased by the police, and, given his age, they’ll either let him out with a slap on the wrist and a “warning,” or they’ll send him to the orphanage. He’s not willing to risk the orphanage, not again.
If he’s smart about this, then he should be able to escape the teens. Though, outsmarting piglins isn’t too impressive of a feat; they’re renowned for being dumber than rocks. But they make up for their intelligence deficit with their bone-snapping strength.
He’s jolted out of his thoughts by a sharp pain from his tail. One of the piglins has stepped on his flicking tail, close enough to the still sluggishly bleeding cut to cause the healing skin to tear. He bites his tongue to stop any pitiful sounds from rushing out of his lips and lets the familiar anger-fueled adrenaline drive him.
“What do you want?” Wemmbu spits, clenching his fist until blackened talons bite at his palm.
“Woah, calm down there, kid,” The teenage girl who’s currently grinding her dirty foot on his tail snorts. “We just wanna talk to you.”
“I don’t have anything for you.”
The shorter piglin at his friend’s side snorts. He points a cloven hand accusingly at the purple devil, namely, towards his bag of loot. “No one’s believing you, bud. You might wear shitty clothes, but you’ve got some shiny shit hidden in that bag of yours.”
Wemmbu huffs. He knows he is easy pickings, compared to most other street-kids, who prefer to stick in groups to avoid getting jumped. This dimension is a hell-hole that produces the strongest wills through its notorious dog-eat-dog environment. The scathing heat pools violence in the stomachs of anyone who bathes in it long enough. Strength in numbers at least guarantees immunity for dumb muggings like this one, but Wemmbu finds all the other street-kids to be insufferable. He’s never found a group willing to accept him, and, in turn, he’s never been able to accept others as his own.
“I don’t have anything for you,” He repeats as he slowly stands, supporting his weight against the blue-wood trunk. He moves both of his hands towards the base of his tail, ripping the writhing limb out from underneath the girl’s foot. She raises an eyebrow in response.
“I’ve gotta’ steal like the rest of you,” He hisses as he moves one hand to rest against the sheath attached to an oversized belt. “Why don’t you three go pick on someone else who might actually have something to share with you?”
“Stop being so difficult, just give us some money, and we’ll leave you alone. Swear,” The girl grumbles, fixing a strand behind her ears as she squares her shoulders.
He could feel bad, maybe even sympathetic, for these three, if they weren’t obviously middle-class “rebels.”
Actually, he lied. He doesn’t feel bad even for the other street-rats. They’re all out here doing the same stuff to get by.
He tenses as the girl raises her hand and plants it on her hip, noticing the white-knuckled grip. He probably has fighting experience over the three of them, but he can’t take three of them at once. One of them is at least double his weight. The brute might even triple him.
“No,” He grinds out through sharp teeth.
It is, evidently, the wrong thing to say. Both the aggressor piglins tense like they're ready to throw a punch; behind, the brute cringes. Wemmbu’s heart drops as he shifts into a lowered stance, ready to run. At the first movement, he lunges.
For a second, it looks as if he might’ve gotten out. Then, he’s pulled back by the strap around his body. Looking back reveals that the boy has managed to catch a grip on his bag.
Wemmbu whips his trusty netherite dagger, which he looted from another kid after a fight, out of its fraying sheath. He hisses as he brings the unenchanted dagger down on the piglin’s arm. His sensitive ears catch the tear of thick skin under the sharpened blade as he pulls it back out, slightly sideways.
The piglins all shriek in tandem, a hivemind, which means that the brute is likely about to be overtaken by his instincts to protect his drove. He doesn’t stick around to see it hit.
With a muttered curse, he turns tail and bolts. The adrenaline is sickly familiar, a shock of energy that leaves his limbs shaky and forces his heart to beat dangerously at his ribcage. He can feel the blood collect at the tip of the dagger almost as if the weapon is an extension of himself.
He’s out of the park in seconds, sprinting past the walls of the alleyway that would spit him out into the heart of the marketplace. The wind cools him as he rushes through the stale air, forcing him to think rationally. In the alley, he sticks to the shadows.
He’s always been unnaturally agile, but he’s found that, when he hides in the shadows, people lose him easier, despite his shocking color difference from the inky void of darkness.
Finally, the claustrophobic alleyway gives way to the still moderately bustling market. He bolts and weaves through the people. He bumps into a couple of people and considers throwing out apologies, but he doesn’t have the time to do so, not when it could jeopardize his position, hidden beneath the heads of adults.
He spots a relatively dark alleyway, highlighted only by the faint gleam of an open window shining lamplight onto an industrial garbage bin, and shifts course towards it, throwing most of his weight into someone tall in order to make the tight turn.
He’s nearing the end of the alleyway. Grime collects at the bottom of his feet; he can feel it slip into the cuts littering them. Then, two adult piglins, entirely separate from the teenagers earlier round one of the bends. He doesn’t have enough time to stop or change direction. He collides with one of them, who’s surprisingly solid, which bounces him back onto the hard brick ground, scraping his palms raw as he lands on one of his wings. The joint pulls painfully and entices a small, pained grunt from him.
He sits on the floor for a couple of seconds in shock, listening to the snorts of the piglins in front of him. Then, the sting of his palms kicks in and spurs him into action. Fuck his luck because, of course, there’s more to their drone, or maybe, he just got unlucky and ran into one of many who like to see street-kids get beat on.
He’s almost up when an arm wraps around his middle from behind, yanking him off his feet and caging him against a wide chest. The arm cages his injured wing, shooting sharp pains down his back and through the rest of his body. He kicks wildly, with irritated whines, but he’s too weak to break out of the hold.
Then, he is thrown into the large garbage bin. His side connects with the steel; the sound of him hitting the bin permeates the alleyway with a dull thud.
Wemmbu rolls over to see that his aggressor is one of the piglins he ran into. He can smell the aftertaste of weed on the man’s breath, likely not affiliated with the teenagers, then. The fact is all the more apparent when the heavy footfall of hooves echoes from the entrance of the alleyway. Outside piglins respect other droves and prefer to stay out of their fights.
He jeers at the intoxicated asshole as he pants and struggles to catch his footing. It is too late for him to run now; the footsteps have slowed in a small, entrapping circle around him.
He finally stands upright, pressed against the bin as he raises his dagger between him and his aggressors. This time, the brute stands in the center.
He clenches the dagger as his body temperature dips with a shock of fear.
He makes the first move this time, thrusting his dagger in the direction of the piglin he had stabbed earlier. The teenager is too busy cradling their injured arm to react; the tip of the dagger imbeds into the soft of his stomach. Both child and piglin jolt away from each other. He doesn’t get the chance to revel in the squealing of the pig when an arm wraps around his neck. He chokes at the sudden pressure, gasping as he throws one hand up to grasp at the offending arm while the other clutched straight over his head, at the piglin’s snout.
When the piglin doesn’t give, he curls his hand further into her snout. His talons curl into contact with a deep pocket of tissue; he can feel the muscle break away under his talons. The piglin shouts, shoving him away from her. With his hand comes a chunk of skin; he can’t see the damage from where she stands, hunched over and hiding. He knows that it is bound to leave a nasty scar, especially with the dirt packed under his talons.
He’s too busy trying to shake the gunk off his hand to realize that the boy that he stabbed earlier has removed the dagger from his stomach, stupid. His stumbling is cut off by a sharp pain blooming from his left shoulder. He cries in pain and stumbles away from the attacker. In his pain-blinded frenzy, he bumps straight into the brute, who grips the back of his head and smashes his skull against the nether brick wall. His skin splits against the rough edges.
His vision collapses into the sharp, white hum of pain before it blacks out completely.
The heat of the Nether is overbearing, especially for someone so attuned to the chill of the endless void of the End. His bright idea to wear a cotton shirt doesn’t help with the sweat that beads on his skin, specifically around the loops of rope that hang full bundles from his arms and the points where his hair hangs along his naps.
Still, Minute is here on a mission which has not yet been completed. Shopping for potion ingredients can be a pain, the treaty that keeps the Nether open decrees that all nether-originating items are to be sold exclusively in-dimension.
To holster the End in the best light he can, Minute has stuck strictly to that rule. He knows the ruling party of the Nether has kept a close eye on him, waiting for the dragon’s little mentee to slip up. He refuses to ruin the two dimensions’ relationship before he even officially steps up as guardian.
He really doesn’t mind the trips too much. It is a pain to bolster all of his ingredients in bulk, but he enjoys watching the Netherians interact, their mannerisms so different from the usual mellowness of the End.
As of now, he’s only missing the blaze powder he needs to power his brewing stand. Unfortunately, the weight of his bundles already strain his arms.
He sighs and moves to place his shulker down. He fumbles slightly, scrambling to catch the shells before they can clatter to the ground. He sighs when he finally gets the thing placed, tapping the lid lightly and depositing all of his filled bundles into the light purple box.
He’ll need to find a vendor selling blaze powder soon. The crowd of the market has deplenished, meaning that the shops will likely close soon.
He hums as he picks up the shulker, sliding it into one of his inventory slots.
He rounds the corner to another row of the market only to see a large crowd congregating around one of the alleys. At the far edge, an older woman pushes a young girl closer to her side, as if blocking the child’s view, but she doesn’t move to distance themselves from whatever commotion has drawn them in. In fact, she leans forward to get a better view.
Minute huffs, but decides to let his curiosity win him over. He slowly makes his way over, pushing past a couple of stragglers with polite apologies.
He only falters when he finally approaches the cusp of the alleyway. He easily towers over all of the citizens.
At the other end of the alley is a fight. It’s a brutal sight. Closest to him, a teenaged piglin is holding his side. Minute can see crimson staining through his hooves. On his other side, another teenager, this time a female piglin, who is hunched over and clutching her bleeding face, occasionally letting out long whines and sobs. In between the both of them, on the floor, is a brute, and in his clutches is a smaller child, limp in his hold. The brute beats on the kid; Minute can hear the harsh, meaty sound of punches landing on the kid’s face. He can only hope the child is unconscious and not dead; though, they are startlingly unmoving beneath the brute.
It looks as if none of them have noticed the large crowd that’s built around them.
Minute blinks into action, letting out a horrified yelp as he pushes through the large crowd. He doesn’t excuse himself this time; instead, he lets the anger at the crowd for standing by and doing nothing-- watching like this was their form of entertainment-- power him through the mass of people.
Both male piglins snap their heads up, and the brute scrambles up and off the smaller child. The brute blinks in shock as his instincts settle. He watches the clarity wash over, the fear that dances behind the piglin’s eyes.
The brute snaps his head towards Minute, opening his mouth like he intends to apologize. Something in the voidling’s face must deter any noise because the piglin only snaps away, rushing to support both of his friends and drag them away, down the right fork of the alleyway.
He’s grateful that he didn’t have to threaten any children today.
As he crouches beside the slouched child left in the alleyway, he hears one of the onlookers groaning as they turn to leave. He scowls as he slowly turns to inspect the child. They look to be no older than ten, and he can’t discern their gender. Their long, violet hair, a few shades darker than his, surprisingly, vibrant purple skin, drapes over their small face. That small face, which is covered in grime and attached to a malnourished body, but still, somehow, manages to cling to a baby-ish look. From their hair, two small, obsidian horns poke through, slightly twisted in their budding shape.
Laying limp on the ground is a pair of similarly colored wings. They’re similar enough to a dragon’s wings that he has to double take. Though, upon closer inspection, they look more similar to an imp’s wings, leather in place of scales.
The oddest part of the child is their long, thin tail. While most other traits of the child could point to an imp-lineage, the tail is unlike anything he’s ever seen, whip-like and disproportionate to their small size. Imps tend to have short, stubby tails, barely long enough to reach their knees. The only trait that this child’s tail shares with an imp’s is the sharp spade at the tip.
Off-handed, he wonders if they will ever grow into their tail, or if it will continue to dwarf them as they age.
The childish look is disrupted by their injuries: the head wound, a dagger sticking out from their left shoulder, busted-up lips, and a broken nose. Thankfully, the blood on the kid’s hands look to not be his own as a quick inspection reveals no large cuts.
As he inspects the kid, he debates what he should do with them. Obviously, he’s going to patch them up, but then, after that, what? He can’t just throw them back in the Nether, not when it is obvious they have nobody looking out for them. If they’re not in the local orphanage, he can’t imagine that place is any good. Maybe he can find a trustworthy adult willing to look after them.
He frowns and turns the boy over to inspect the stab wound. The cut bleeds steadily, and he can’t tell if the dagger has hit the shoulder blade or if it's simply embedded into the muscles without irritating the injury further. Still, to bandage the wound, he has to take off the kid’s shirt.
Minute delicately takes their messenger bag; then, he cuts away the fabric of the shirt pinned down by the dagger. He cuts off the rest of the shirt as well, too scared of dislodging the dagger to remove it any other way. He doubts the kid would miss the dust-covered shirt if he promises to replace it with something nicer.
He wraps the dagger tightly to the skin. He’ll have to wait until he can find someplace sanitary to properly treat the wound, but for now, the bandages should prevent the blade from moving around too much.
He turns the kid back over to finish wrapping the cross-body bandage he’s in the process of applying when his eyes catch on a line of light purple, almost white, spots that spread along the kid’s collarbone, so similar to the constellation that climbs up Minute’s own right arm.
Suddenly everything clicks: the limbs that look as if they were dipped in ink, the chill to the boy that rivals his own body temperature, and the unnatural appearance, unlike any other species.
They’re a voidling; he’s managed to stumble upon another voidling stranded in the backstreets of Netheria.
He feels a pang of sympathy for the void child; he knows intimately how lonely those first couple of years of consciousness are. He remembers the confusion well: of waking up alone and completely different from any other organism he met.
The void still whispers to him somedays, when he’s meditating at the edge of his home-island. She hums and claws at the edge of his consciousness, like she wishes to drag him back down into her cold depths.
He wonders if this young, nether-trapped voidling has felt her call through the layers of netherrack, lava, and bedrock that separate them.
He finishes wrapping the gauze tight then allows himself a moment of indulgence. He passes his fingers gently over the freckles on the child’s right shoulder, feeling the hum of pure void packed beneath the skin. The energy isn’t the same void that swirls under his skin; where the End’s void is the soothing lap of ocean waves along the shore, the Nether’s void is a storm trapped in a bottle, violent after endless years of battling with the bedrock that keeps her contained.
The child beneath him jolts awake with a quiet hiss. Minute backs up so as to not force the kid to move with their injured arm.
He makes hesitant eye-contact with the purple child. Their eyes are all black, minus their moon-sized white pupils which are hazy with delirium and wet with pain. Their small face scrunches up in fear, hidden by a mouth of sharp teeth sneering back at him.
The kid shouldn’t be creepy in their condition, but their appearance is unsettling, unreal. He smiles at them anyway, which only manages to draw a growl out of the young, but it is good to know that they are conscious enough to register the shift in his face.
There’s a tense moment of silence as they both look each other up-and-down. There’s still the nasty-looking head injury that Minute wants to check on. The sluggish way the kid moves tells him that they definitely have a concussion.
Minute sighs softly through his smile and raises one hand to push a loose strand of hair out of his face.
The kid tenses and pushes back against the wall with their right shoulder. Thankfully, they are avoiding moving their left arm; though, Minute can tell it is bothering them by their grimace.
He’s impressed they haven’t hurled yet, with how pale their purple skin has turned.
Minute throws his hands up in surrender, staying firmly rooted to his spot opposite the child. Awkwardly, he looks around the alley, anywhere but the child who is still pressed against the wall, panting in pain.
After a couple of seconds spent chewing on his cheek, he turns back to the other voidling with a low hum.
“Hello,” he greets for the first time, “...kid. Can I take a look at that wound on your forehead?”
He taps at the center of his own forehead slowly.
It takes a second for the words to register with the purple voidling, but when they do, the child recoils inward. Their form blurs into the shadows surrounding them, and for a second, Minute worries he is going to have to grapple with a noncorporeal voidling soon. But the kid makes no move to dig themself deeper into the shadows, as if they never realised they were doing it in the first place.
Their whip-like tail flicks weakly against the brick wall as they hiss at him. Their right hand flies up to cover the wound.
Minute holds in a sigh and looks to the roof of the Nether as he thinks of a solution to the child’s rightful hesitance. Minute sneaks a calculating glance at the younger’s face, at the distrust in their feline-like eyes; then, deeper, the confusion and loneliness burrowed beneath their aggressive front.
Reading emotions has always come easy to him, almost as if second nature-- a by-product of his own nature, but deducing the loneliness in the little one curled up across from him could be done by even the most apathetic of people.
And he knows no better way to comfort someone than to show them that they’re no longer alone.
He carefully raises his arm, mapping every movement out for the scared child. He carefully peels away his sleeve, pulling it away until the fabric has bunched at his shoulder. The dark skin of his right arm is lit up by constellations of white dots, some smaller than others. All of them glow faintly in pulsating rhythms in the dim of the alley.
The child’s eyes catch on the little stars instantly; their jaw drops and their eyes widen. The devil-like voidling leans forward in curiosity, and Minute entertains them by slowly shuffling forward into their range. A small hand darts up to grip his offered arm. They both still at the sudden clash of their energies, but then the kid does something that Minute will forever deny that he audibly “awe’d” at. They tilt their head, pointy ears flopping with the movement as their white pupils dilate and swallow their eyes whole. He lets them inspect his hand to their little heart’s content, moving his limb with every small twist of their wrist.
He can feel the void beyond the pads of their fingers. His own constitution swirls against him, like it wants to tear him apart and realign with the small, bright energy sitting across from him. It’s sweet how the void within both of them recognizes one another, even if they’re from vastly different dimensions.
He intends to use their fascination to inspect their still sluggishly bleeding injury. But the moment he raises his hand to open his inventory, the child is thrown back into their survival-driven instincts, puffing up and rearing away from Minute with a long hiss.
Minute holds still as bandages drop from his inventory and into his open hotbar. He squishes the fabric slightly, just hard enough to leave his thumb-sized imprint on it before tilting the roll of gauze towards the voidling. When that doesn’t stop their feral spitting, he resorts to charading the motion of wrapping his head.
The purple kid goes silent, blinking up at him like he’s stupid. And he, admittedly, does feel a little silly, but he must’ve looked sincere enough because he is rewarded by a small nod. Even though the kid doesn’t recoil from his hand, they still track every motion. They growl when Minute cups the back of their head so that he can tightly wrap the gash.
Their hair is caked together in nasty knots by years of built up dirt and crusted blood, some of it flakes off when he withdraws his hand.
Once he’s secured the last of the gauze, he moves to check over the kid once again; the process is easier now that the kid, begrudgingly, allows the older man to move him around slightly. Though they seem more frozen in place than compliant, ears pinned to their skull and tail wrapped tightly around their thigh.
He’s in the middle of gently turning the kid’s uninjured arm in his palm, trying to find any hidden wounds, when he decides to fill the heavy silence.
“My name is MinuteTech- or… just call me Minute, okay?” He murmurs quietly, like the space between them is sacred. In his peripherals, he watches their ears perk forward, so he continues. “I’m a voidling, just like you, but, unlike you, I’m from the End.”
The kid is less still now, inspecting him with a heavy, tired gaze. Minute raises one pristine eyebrow in response, watching the kid’s face scrunch in response before he returns to his task at hand.
“I’m training to become the End’s guardian… not that I expect you to know anything about the affairs of the End,” He rambles to fill the silence and because it obviously helps the kid feel more comfortable. “Well, actually, I’m not far from finishing my training, and it’s more of a tradition thing, anyway.”
The kid stares at them, and, for a while, there is silence. Then, the other voidling opens their mouth like a fish, struggling to push the words out. Minute waits patiently.
“Why are you doing this?” They finally ask, looking up at him with big, beady, empty eyes. When they speak, their voice is slurred and scratchy.
Minute hums in response, setting down the child’s leg that he had been gently prodding at, patting their knee gently. Their feet are covered in small lacerations and raw scrapes that he’ll have to keep an eye on once they are cleaned and bandaged.
“What do you mean?” The ink-colored voidling asks; though he knows exactly what the child was asking.
“I don’t have anything to give you if that’s what you want,” Spitfire-child hisses. Their shoulders tense and roll in towards their ears. “I didn’t ask for your-”
“You don’t need to ask for my help,” Minute interrupts with a raised hand. “I gave it all to you myself. And I don’t expect anything in return; that’s not how this works.”
They stare at each other for a breath, or, more accurately, Minute stares while the child glares up at him. A pout works away at their hollowed cheeks as they consider what the elder voidling might gain by lying.
“...Wemmbu,” The kid mutters, barely audible.
“Huh?”
“Wemmbu, my name, Wemmbu,” They declare, louder and more confident. “So you can’t say that I never gave you anything!”
Minute smiles. It’s a nice name, native to the depths of the Nether.
“Nice to meet you, Wemmbu.” Then, “Are you a boy or girl or something else?”
The question takes Wemmbu aback, and they simply stutter a squeaky, “What?”
The endborne sighs. He hopes Wemmbu understands the concept of gender. Voidlings are inherently genderless creatures, so taking up a gender is completely up to a voidling’s personal preference.
A deep maroon blush crawls from their cheeks to the tips of their ears.
“Are you a male or fe-“
”I know what you mean!” The kid cuts him off with a yelp, pushing forward to shove a grimy little hand over the older voidling’s face, “I’m a- I’m a boy. What?”
Minute grimaces at the dirt he can taste smeared across his lips. He needs to get this kid a bath soon.
Minute breathes a quiet sigh of relief, standing slowly and brushing dust off of his shirt. He is halfway through placing an enderchest when he hears Wemmbu stumble over his own legs from behind. A glimpse over his shoulder reveals that the purple voidling is leaning heavily on the wall, but still standing, which is more than he had believed the child could bear.
“Wait,” Wemmbu barks, then quiets as if his own shouting hurts and as if Minute had any intentions of leaving him behind, “you- you said you’re like me. So…”
The kid trails off; his courage faltering as his gaze drops from the white eyes of Minute to the ground at his feet. It was cute, like a kitten taking its first brave steps into a new environment.
The darker voidling turns back to his enderchest, sifting through shulkers with a quiet hum to let the kid know that he’s still listening.
“Can you train me?” Wemmbu blurts. “I mean, you’re obviously strong if you’ve really been training for so long, and I need to be strong so that no one can ever walk all over me like that.”
The ender voidling pauses in his search, chewing his lips as he considers the child. He sighs gently, tilting his head to face the boy once again. His black hair is getting long once again, tickling the nape of his neck irritatingly in slight waves. Taking in a child is a life-altering change, and he is too busy with his own training to commit to mentoring someone so dependent upon him.
Plus, he is still running from his past: running from the Mafia, who are bound to come for him.
On the other hand, the child standing stubbornly across from him is homeless, and likely has never known any guidance besides the harsh palm of life on the streets.
Existence is difficult for beings that were born to be isolated.
“Sure, I’ll train you.”
And maybe Minute has been lonely as well, despite all of the connections he has made.
He finally finds the shulker which should have what he needs. He hurriedly pops the lid open and pulls out exactly what he was looking for: a large, deep red, fluffy blanket. He presents it to Wemmbu proudly.
The kid regards it with slightly glazed, judgemental eyes. Wemmbu points, unimpressed, at the blanket, “What is that?”
“It’s a blanket for you,” Minute supplies, “just until I can grab a new shirt for you.”
“I am not wearing a blanket out in the city.”
He ends up wearing the blanket. He also ends up carried out by Minute as well, his good arm raised to wrap around the tall voidling’s neck while his tail wraps multiple times around Minute’s long legs. Wemmbu is tense, back straight and wings quivering from their nervous, rigid position. The little devil keeps his head shot back to glare at Minute, letting the other know just how unfair he thinks this arrangement is with a childish pout.
Minute almost caved and let the child walk on his own, but the chance of him upsetting those wounds on his feet or collapsing from his concussion stressed him out too much.