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Hermitcraft was quiet for the first time in years. Well, Grian didn’t really know how much time had passed since he started living there but he liked to imagine it had been a fair few years. The stars didn’t really tell him much about how time passed there, even if some small part of himself screamed that they certainly should.
Grian revelled in the moments of silence he could snag in his day - as few and far between as they were. Now, you’d think an astronomer would be able to hide away in his secluded tower, high away from the world for a few hours a day to get some him-time but Hermitcraft was never that simple.
He had just returned after a very strange visit to Joel where he had run into what was probably the strangest basement he had ever seen - and that said a lot - before he got distracted by a request from Mumbo about one of his geese that had apparently developed an affinity to the stars - how Mumbo had gained the ability to speak geese evaded him - and apparently needed his help with fixing said goose.
Which was especially difficult because, unless you somehow couldn’t tell from his occupation and his dirt-free star studded robes, Grian didn’t work with geese. Like, at all.
It didn’t deter Mumbo of course and eventually the pair - with the occasional visit from a very confused Doc - managed to somehow convince the goose to stop staring at the sky - and also Grian’s cloak which it had also taken to staring at at one point - and get back to being a normal goose, well, as normal of a goose one could be on Hermitcraft and under the ownership of a Mr Mumbo Jumbo.
Wrangling a hyperfixated goose wasn’t really something Grian had any intention of doing again.
So, to put it short, finally reaching the top of his tower and hearing nothing but the gentle hum of fireflies and the occasional click of redstone from the surrounding bases fused with the soft howl of the breeze was a welcome relief. Grian hadn’t even realised how much he had missed the silence until it was right in front of him.
Now wasn’t that a poetic line, maybe in another life he could become an author. Or maybe a bard, yes, a bard suited him much better, he mused.
It was unfortunate how in this life the future was so set before him. Even when he worked in his greenhouse he couldn’t ignore the call of the stars. Them and their beauty evaded him and he couldn’t resist their pull that had seemed so intangible. Grian couldn’t remember a life before their sickly sweet hum rang in his ears, asleep or waking and he wondered if there ever was such a time.
Devoting his life to the cosmos was probably a bit of a stretch. Grian had other things he enjoyed doing but it seemed, no matter where he went, what circles he spun in, it always led to his tower and those damn balls of light.
Perhaps Grian needed a new hobby, but for now the stars would do.
His first night at Hermitcraft was one he remembered well. The group that Grian was unsure if he actually ever knew before then, had finally escaped the Nether and as soon as his feet had stepped out of the portal made from obsidian and what one could only describe as magic, Grian knew there would be no escape.
The first thing he saw wasn’t the grass, a tree, even water, it was the stars. They sung to him, serenaded him and entranced his mind. Grian couldn’t even breathe before his heart was taken from the foreign entities that hung over his head as he slept.
He had begun to build in a cave - a damn cave of all things - to find shelter from their hymns yet they still crooned at him, begged him. Grian didn’t even realise when he made the skylight, nor when he made the ball of crystals that reminded him so dearly of the stars.
After so long of them clinging to his shoulders, his mind, and his heart, Grian gave in. The observatory took him far too long to make. But he listened to their calls and hums of pleasure. He listened to them beg for more beauty, more shine, windows, whatever they wished for he gave them.
Grian listened until they finally quietened down and left him to - for the first time since he stepped onto the soil of Hermitcraft - hear the sound of his own breath. The world felt dull after their death, that’s what he assumed it was at least. They wouldn’t leave him, he was their favourite, they couldn’t leave him. Grian knew stars died and for some strange reason, the thought of whatever was speaking to him dying rather than leaving, settled something in Grian.
Maybe it was cruel for him to think of his constant companions in such a way, but he’d be a liar if he said he’d be more pained from their abandonment rather than their death.
The quiet was nice at least. Grian wasn’t really sure if he knew what silence felt like before the stars went away. Even in the Nether you couldn’t escape the screams and laughs of his friends and even if you ever managed to separate yourself from them long enough, the crackling of the lava or the snort of whatever undead pig-creature you’d run into would smother any chance of silence.
Grian flopped lazily onto his bed and gazed up at the stars the same way he did every night since the silence. It was strange, how attached he had become to them in their short - long? Again, time was a weird concept on Hermitcraft - time together.
The stars were something he had despised, ordering him around, singing in his ear like one of those off-key music boxes. He hated every single ounce of their existence. But that was when he had them.
The silence was easy to appreciate. The loneliness? Not so much.
The stars he could see through the glass roof of the observatory winked at him, dancing amongst a sea of black where the rest of their brothers and sisters lay. None of them were Grian’s stars.
He sighed, a deep, dramatic sigh that did his lungs absolutely no favours, and slowly rose from the warm comfort of his bed. Seasons were strange in Hermitcraft, one day it would be the most biting cold that no person should experience but the next you’d be begging for the sweat to stop sliding down your shirt. During his time there, Grian had learnt to stop questioning it.
Grian winced as the cold began to bite at his feet and he was quick to shove his feet into the slippers under his bed. XB had given them to him after his first chilly night. They were made of the softest green wool Grian could have imagined for a pair of quickly made slippers, and XB had employed the help of Gem to put little flower patterns along the edges.
Every night he reminded himself to pay XB back for them but once the moon set, the thought was quick to follow it beyond the boundaries of the horizon.
The quiet tap of his feet on the floor echoed throughout the room as Grian approached his bookshelf. Unlike Joel who - for some unknown, likely insane reason - kept a nightmare basement that could only be unlocked from his bookshelf, Grian’s was much more normal.
Well, normal in a sense. Many of the books couldn’t be unlocked lest you had a key and even a few of them had spells - courtesy of Ren - placed on them that would allow Grian and only Grian, to open the books that he treasured most.
He didn’t need to scan the shelf when he already knew exactly where the book he was looking for was. The spell hummed as his fingers wrapped around the worn leather of its spine. Unconsciously Grian began to shush the book as the quiet song within its pages started up.
Grian winced as it did anything but listen and instead chose to rise in volume. He rolled his eyes but did nothing more to attempt to quieten its melody. Asking Ren to spell it with the song was one of his most impulsive decisions. Really, the book's creation itself was beyond impulsive.
Ren had called for a break after mercilessly enchanting a good quarter of Grian’s books and had called for a drink at Gem’s tavern. Usually Grian avoided indulging in alcohol but it was shortly after his stars had abandoned him and he was notably not in the greatest headspace.
Having to go over every single page of his books that he dedicated to his stars had most certainly not helped his mental state in the slightest.
Gem had tried her best to limit his drink intake that night but with the bustling crowd of Hermits there to celebrate another failed attempt to guess Etho’s birthday, it was incredibly easy for Grian to sneak another few glasses from behind her back.
In his inebriated state, Grian had the stupid idea to tell Ren about his stars. He didn’t doubt the man thought him insane but the wizard was glad to find a solution for Grian’s loss and when Grian woke up the next day, stupid cloak still on and with a pounding headache, he had forgotten all about what he had discussed with Ren the night before.
It was only when he opened the book to test the locking spell, that the music had filled the room for the first time in far too long.
Grian couldn’t even bring himself to avoid the book.
Over time Grian had found it easier to accept the casual comforts of its hymns as he reread pages he had long since memorised. It would never be the same out of tune hums he had grown so used to, but Grian made do.
Grian shuffled quietly over to the telescope and threw the cloak he had forgotten to take off earlier onto the workbench beside the telescope. It wasn’t the most comfortable thing to wear every day but his stars had asked him to wear it and to avoid incurring their wrath Grian complied.
Even what must have been months after their death Grian couldn’t bring himself to disobey their wishes. Though he was more than happy to take it off outside of the observatory and stick to his regular red jumper instead.
His wings shifted behind him as he sat down, breaking the quiet silence of the room as his wings fluttered behind him. Grian scowled at the awful noise. They had always been his biggest bother, getting in the way, toppling over books and other things Grian had so painstakingly placed, even in the greenhouse they were only useful when Grian needed to find more flowers or for building in hard to reach places.
Back when Grian had first begun to listen to the stars he had tried to fly as high as he could in an attempt to ask the stars why they needed to bother him and not anyone else in Hermitcraft. It, of course, was a futile attempt and he had quickly fallen out of the sky.
Even the stars seemed displeased with Grian’s wings, though it was probably more of an issue of the fact that it was one of the only parts of Grian they couldn’t brand. Unlike most of his outfits which had splatterings of orange and blue stars - at the request of his stars, of course - Grian’s wings were brown with splotches of green and were, notably, not made of the colours his stars were fond of.
Most people in Hermitcraft had wings of their own, but those were weird mystical creations they had found in the End. Only a small handful of them had actual wings, and only Grian had the displeasure of the most uncool ones the world had ever seen.
Who in their right mind would choose to be a moth?
At least they were useful, he supposed.
Grian looked up at the sky as the melody continued. He wondered where his stars once sat, whether they were always above his head watching or if they liked to sit on the opposite side of the world.
Maybe they couldn’t ever see him and just assumed whatever Grian was doing was stupid and deserved correction. Honestly, if it were the truth he wouldn’t have been surprised, the stars always seemed far too brash.
The constellations glimmered overhead and Grian knew if he looked through the telescope their beauty would be unparalleled. But he did not possess such energy, rather he contented himself to sit upon the stairs leading to the telescope and admire them from afar as he listened to the tune of their kin.
He wondered how long he sat there, craning his neck to stare at each and every ball of light that winked down at him from overhead. Grian watched as the moon found its place high in the sky and wondered briefly if Bdubs could somehow sense the lack of sleep his fellow Hermit was getting that night.
Grian decided to keep a close eye on his communicator just in case.
Mumbo’s geese had settled for the night and even the copper golems who wandered Hermitcraft had quietened down for once. The gentle hum of the book settled Grian far more than it once did and he felt his eyes slowly drift shut.
It was only when the sound came to a halt did he lazily force them open again. It wasn’t uncommon for the book to go quiet, sometimes the magic needed a second, or on the rare occasion Grian had been listening for so long that sometimes the prerecorded song needed to start up again.
This was neither of those times. Grian had only recently gotten the magic recharged from Ren - which was as awkward a conversation as the previous times had been - and Grian was familiar enough with every single hum of the song to notice when it was coming to an end.
Confused, he lifted it up close to his face and opened and closed it slowly. Nothing happened. Even more confused, Grian began flipping pages in hopes of the spell activating again to no avail.
Just as Grian was about to rush over to Ren’s, uncaring if his friend was asleep or not, a loud boom came from outside.
In shock, Grian quickly brushed off his exhaustion and rushed to the window overlooking the hill that sat atop his greenhouse. The smoke was what caught his eye first. Large billows of it overtook the river valley.
Unthinkingly, Grian rushed to grab a coat - not his usual star studded cloak, but rather the brown raggedy old coat he once used to wear when working at the greenhouse - and quickly leapt down the stairs, taking two at a time without a second thought.
It was only halfway down the stairs when the second boom came and he found himself almost toppling over his own feet from the shock of the noise. To his surprise, he didn’t hesitate to continue.
Grian was no coward, obviously! But the man usually had some sense about him.
Explosions in Hermitcraft were far from being a rare occurrence, but what Grian had just heard was nothing like the casual TNT explosion.
By the time he reached the bottom of the tower, he was already sweaty and out of breath. He briefly remembered the fact that he had wings he could have used but ignored the fact for the sake of his own sanity.
He didn’t give himself much more time to breathe, already smelling the sickening smell of smoke permeating through the air and flew himself into the sky.
The land above Grian’s greenhouse was usually empty save for the occasional pieces of junk or his skylight. But today was different. He watched in awe as the smoke wisped through the sky but thickened as it got closer to a certain point on top of the hill.
Grian quickly rushed down from the sky, terrified that one of his friends stupid pranks or inventions had gone terribly wrong - for all he knew, Etho’s new launching machine had had a malfunction and shoved the man so deep into the hill, so quickly, that smoke had started to pour out!
He managed a quick glance towards his tower and winced at the glassless windows that were a new addition to the building. He would have to smelt some more sand later if he wanted any hope of sleeping without the creeping chill stealing his toes.
It was only when his feet touched the ground that Grian finally got the chance to see what had caused the smoke. On the ground in front of him, sat an unfamiliar craft of white and orange metal.
Grian coughed through the smoke as he made his way towards the steaming contraption. He couldn’t recall any of the Hermits planning to make such an odd build but there were so many of them with their own new plans that it wouldn’t have surprised him if one of them did create it.
Trudging through the smoke was difficult for Grian’s poor lungs and he continued to sputter and cough until he finally reached the side of the creation. He hadn’t the chance to peer inside before a figure, laying so flat on the ground that he reminded Grian a bit like a lily-pad, caught his eye.
Quickly, he rushed towards them and knelt at their side.
As carefully as he could, Grian shook the man. Some part of him warned him, reminded him to be careful, told him that this man was as unfamiliar as the craft he had crash landed with.
Grian couldn’t bring himself to care when the head of brown hair finally shifted. Nor could he care when he finally managed to look at the stranger’s face.
The stranger blinked at him with the widest eyes he had ever seen that were the colour of something one could only find in the most beautiful parts of a universe Grian never thought he would get to see outside of his little observatory.
Questions rolled through his head, each taking their turn to graze the tip of his tongue but never brave enough to leave.
“Who are you?” He wanted to ask, “Where did you come from?”, “Why are you here?” but most importantly, “Why are you so familiar?”
It wasn’t like he would have had the chance to ask anything anyway, for the stranger only stared at him for a few seconds before his head hit the grass with a dull thunk.