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Gem knew her ceilings and flooring left for lots of crawl spaces, especially because internal construction was still on-going. Despite this, she was relatively certain that they were well lit and blocked off from the outside to stop mobs from spawning. She’d even flown around the outside of her base a good few times to ensure that there weren’t any holes.
This then begs the question, why did it sound like something was living in her walls?
She could hear something scrabbling around in her walls at odd hours of the day and night (granted she slept through most of the nights). While Gem admittedly didn’t keep an excellent count of her items, she had noticed a depletion in her food, via the need to go out and buy more Gigapies more often. Thankfully, due to the high demand of prismarine and bones, her pockets were far from hurting for it. Besides, the taiga biome outside her castle cultivated mushrooms with ease, so she often had a pot of mushroom stew simmering on her stove.
Fun fact about mushroom stew, so long as it didn’t get cold, it could be continued to cook for days or weeks at a time. It just needed to be covered and set to at minimum a low heat. She would add more mushrooms and the occasional other vegetable to it depending on taste, just to ensure it didn’t go low. Stew was her staple food, but it was also nice to have for impromptu Soup Group meetings.
Now, Gem had not touched her stew in a day or so, as it was fine to just simmer by itself for a while. Instead, she was focusing on slowly but steadily growing the massive cherry tree on her roof and sustaining herself on Gigapies. Because of this, it was rather odd that the lid of her stew pot was slightly askew, allowing some steam to escape. Not a terrible thing, the stew was still hot. It was strange, however. True, Impulse and Pearl would often pop over to steal some of her stew when they were too lazy to make their own, but they always popped in to startle, tease, or otherwise announce their presence when they did so. Even a small text on her communicator. This time there was nothing, and when asked, both claimed they hadn’t been over.
Gem hummed, glancing around as she adjusted the lid of her stew pot and rinsed off the recently-used ladle. Then she took a bite of her Gigapie, filled up her water bottle in the sink, and returned to the roof to coax the branches of the tree to grow.
She hoped whoever swiped some stew enjoyed it. She added more mushrooms to the stew that night, bringing the level of stew back up, before she went to bed.
Tommy didn’t know how he’d gotten in this position. One minute he was cowering- hiding in his house from the prison sirens, and the next he woke up in the gnarled roots of a massive spruce tree. Towering over him was a sleek-designed castle with pale yellow walls and blue and white roofs. Plant life sprouted around the castle, some seeming strangely alien in comparison to the taiga biome they were in. The roar of a waterfall was soft and birdsong wound through the trees.
The sun was going down. There was a soft hiss of a rocket being set off that had him tensing, but there was no bone-rattling bang that followed. Instead he saw someone soaring towards the other side of the castle. Tommy heard the rattle of a skeleton and made a snap decision.
So now here he was. Curled in the surprisingly spacious rafters and crawl spaces of the builder’s castle. They weren’t hauntingly massive or anything, but they were spacious enough that in most of them he could stand straight without banging his head on the ceiling. And since, obviously, no one hung out in their own rafters, Tommy made himself a small burrow in them. He snagged some wool— mostly pink since that was what the woman who built the castle had— and made himself a little bed. He originally squirreled away a few apples, but then he noticed something a little odd.
The woman constantly had a pot of stew on the stove.
Like, constantly .
She would add more mushrooms to it when it got low, and then would cover it and not touch it for a few hours. She would eat from it occasionally, of course, but she just. Never stopped making it. Well, since she was going to add to it eventually, he figured a few mouthfuls wouldn’t be missed. And he wasn’t wrong. She never paused when adding more to her stew.
So, he got bolder. He grabbed full bowls. Tommy didn’t eat much after prison and his de-
Tommy shuddered.
Since prison. Potatoes were easy for people to get and make, so they were shockingly common. The sight of them made him sick. But despite the commonality of potatoes being used as a staple food source in his own server, this server seemed different. Or at least, the elf-lady who lived in this castle seemed different. She had a small farm for subsistence farming, but that was just carrots, wheat, pumpkins, and beetroots. She foraged for mushrooms for her stews and ate pumpkin pies that she seemed to buy in bulk. She also ate cookies and popcorn to smack on while she built. When she ate stew she often took it to go, ladling up a bowl, rinsing off the ladle, and then leaving while she sipped on the stew.
Because she often left right after giving herself a bowl, Tommy got a bit careless. Scarfing down stew and then scurrying back into the walls tended to make him sick as he ate too fast. He began to slow down his time, tick by tick, until after a week of sneaking soup, he simply ladled a bowl and sat at her counter.
Unfortunately, the elf wasn’t as predictable as he thought. He could hear her land with a thud in the other room, using the mechanical wings she had to glide with the help of an empty rocket. He scrambled back into the wall, hastily patching it back up before peaking through the small crack left between the walls and the barrels. He watched her walk in and stop, staring at the pot that he’d accidentally left askew. The elf stared for a while, checked her communicator, and then looked back at the pot.
“Hm.” It was a noise of confusion that had a small sweat breakout on Tommy’s neck.
Then, then , Tommy watched incredulously as she shrugged, set the lid on right, rinsed the ladle before returning it to its spot, took a bite out of an apple, and left. Like nothing was amiss.
This elf was strange, Tommy decided. She was lucky that her neighbors seemed nice. She’d have been torn up otherwise for her lack of concern.
The next morning, a sandwich was resting on a plate next to the stew pot. It had apple slices on it as well. There was a note.
‘Hope you don’t mind veggie sandwiches! :3 -Gem’
What the fuck.
Gem was satisfied to see that her sandwich had been eaten by lunch. She left a Gigapie on the counter this time. It was gone by dinner. Gem was so pleased that she started up a new stew, ladling in the mushroom stew as the broth, watering it down a bit, of course, before adding in carrots and some cooked rabbit. Gem made enough for two bowls. She ladled one for herself and set the table for a person across from her with an empty bowl. She sat at the dining table and ate her stew. No one showed.
She left him a dinner bun anyway as she cleaned up her stew.
She woke the next morning to the smell of freshly baked bread and returned to growing her cherry tree and terraforming her gardens with a smile and a fresh loaf of bread.
‘You’re weird’ the near chicken scratch informed her in the form of a note next to a batch of apple cinnamon muffins. She hummed happily as she ate one, scribbling her own note below the two words.
‘Thank you!’
As she was tending to her garden, she listened to the flowers whisper happily about someone who came from her castle and spread around a few more potted flowers she’d been planning on planting. Apparently, the person had been singing to them while they planted. Gem was very pleased that her new roommate cared for plants like she did. In fact, her cherry tree had blossomed some new flowers overnight, also claiming to be sung to.
‘You have a nice garden’ the next note said by a few mini apple pies.
‘Thanks! They like that you sing to them so thank you for that’
There was a note missing for a day.
‘How did you know I did that?’ said the next note. It did not have a pastry by it, but Gem didn’t mind. She just made her roommate another sandwich.
‘The plants told me when I worked with them. I’m a druid!’
‘I thought you were an elf’ said the one at dinner.
‘I’m an elven druid. The cherry tree and poppies like you a lot. Btw, my pronouns are she/her and I prefer to be called Gem. How about you?’
The next morning; ‘Tommy. He/him.’
Gem smiled giddily for the rest of the day.
‘I can make you a room if you want! It would be better than sleeping in the walls.’
‘I think I’m good in here.’
‘Okay! Just let me know if you ever change your mind! :3’
Yep. Gem was very happy with her roommate.
Tommy stared at the elf who was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. It was one in the morning. She was half asleep. He was elbow-deep in kneading bread.
“‘Ow do?” he said in a raspy voice.
“I forgot a water for my nightstand,” Gem mumbled, voice thick with sleep. She shuffled over to her cabinets, rattling through the cups behind him. Tommy slowly got back to kneading the dough. Gem sat down on a different counter, sipping at her water. She didn’t say anything, just nearly fell asleep on the counter as Tommy baked.
“Whatcha makin’?” she mumbled after a few minutes.
“Cinnamon rolls.”
“Mmmm. I don’t think I’ve had a cinnamon roll in literal years. They smell good,” she complimented. Tommy’s ears burned red as he slid the tray into the oven before twisting a timer.
“Thanks,” he grumbled. Gem smiled sleepily. She yawned.
“Interiors’ done unless you want me to build you a room opposed to the rafters,” Gem told him. “Tomorrow’s a lazy day. Pearl might break in, I might bug Impulse. You can join if you want.”
She refilled her water and wandered out of the kitchen, narrowly avoiding running straight into the doorframe. Tommy watched her go with pure bafflement. He slowly spread the cinnamon filling across the dough.
The next morning, Gem was happily surprised to see her mystery roommate scowling across the counter at her, cinnamon rolls sitting on a plate between them.
“... were… were you serious? Last night?” Tommy asked hesitantly, soft voice not matching his scowl. She could now see the nervous light in his eyes. She had to think very hard to peruse through her sleep-muddled memories of the night before.
“Oh, about you coming with me to bug Impulse? Yeah! I just sit on a ledge that leads into his base and watch him do redstone until he notices me. It’s pretty cool to watch.”
Tommy shifted his weight from foot to foot, but gave a sharp nod. Gem grinned, before quickly covering her mouth with a sheepish look as she’d just taken a massive bite of a cinnamon roll and the frosting was probably filling her teeth.
“We should take these with us!” Gem said after swallowing. She grabbed herself a glass of milk. “I bet Impulse would like them. They’re really good! You’re so talented!”
Tommy’s face got progressively redder the longer Gem talked, until he spun around, harshly shuffling through the cabinets without actually breaking anything.
“F**kin sure!” he grumbled. Tommy paused.
“Swear jar,” Gem said immediately. Tommy turned to her with an odd look.
“What the h***? What the f**k! Why can’t I swear?” he shrieked. Gem giggled.
“X doesn’t like swearing since this is a ‘family friendly server’,” she mocked with air quotes before breaking into snickers. She’d seen the many innuendos her fellow Hermits made— whether it be on purpose or on accident (Scar). Tommy got an odd look in his eyes as he helped her pack the cinnamon rolls into a shulker box (which he was briefly fascinated by).
“X is… the admin?”
“Yep!” Gem said cheerfully. “He’s really cool. He has this awesome suit since the Overworld pressure is different from where he came from or something— I don’t ask— and he changes it every season! I think this season it’s some cool green and gray ensemble, but last Season it was an axolotl and the Season before that was a bee— though I wasn’t there for that.”
Gem babbled on about Xisuma’s amazing builds and about the multiple times he fell off of them. She talked about how funny he was and how he absolutely sucked at PVP. She watched as Tommy first shrank into himself, but slowly regained his confidence again.
“Your admin is bad at PVP?” Tommy practically whispered as he slowly unfurled himself again. They were walking to Gem and Impulse’s material lift. Gem snorts loudly.
“Remind me to show you my head dungeon,” she says with clear amusement. “I had one-on-one fights with some of the other Hermits as a fun way to collect heads and I don’t think X won once to me. It was really funny. He quit pretty early though so I only have a few copies of his head, as opposed to the near stack I have of Etho’s.”
Tommy looked at her with an interesting combination of shock, wariness, and awe.
“Nearly a stack?” he said. “How hasn’t he lost all his lives?”
Gem nearly choked with shocked laughter. She simply said, “There’s infinite lives, silly!” and continued her way down the path. Tommy halted for a moment, so she let herself drift ten steps so he could gather himself. She hadn’t seen her roommate much, but the evidence of just him living in her walls and that she didn’t recognize his Player Tag lent solid evidence to a poor Server prior to Hermitcraft.
She waited for another minute before calling out to him.
“Tommy? Are you okay?”
Tommy shook himself out of his stupor and caught up quick.
“Fine,” he said gruffly. “Jus’... a little shocked, I guess. I thought everywhere had limited lives.”
Gem hummed, swinging her arms as she half-skipped down her pretty path. “I actually think infinite respawns is the default.”
Tommy was quiet for a beat. “Oh…” he whispered. Gem let the conversation fall.