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In some other dimension/universe, shortly before midnight…
Well, this beats that water world, but not by much muttered as she kept watch over the group for the night. She tapped her sword against the ground as she kept watch over Petra and Sunny as Lukas, Ivor and Axel went to get more firewood. Wouldn’t be too hard, but they were in a world of weird looking and nearly unclimbable mountains; sorta like the ones where emeralds were quite common. Reuben was sleeping in Petra’s arms, kicking his little legs as he dreamed of chasing Aiden if he and the Blaze Rods dared hurt his family again. After a warm chuckle from how cute her pig was, Jesse continued looking at the distance, determined to keep her friends safe.
As she started humming some song about ‘That’s What Someone Someone Hates’ (she had forgotten the name in the song) that she and the others had learned in a bar tavern in a dimension where quite a few villagers were scientists; half of them evil for some reason, she notices the way that Sunny was sleeping; which she recognized as lack of sleep. So she got up and got down by Sunny and gave her a warm look. “Sunny, is everything ok?”
The orange-haired explorer shrugged. “Just, emotionally tired and kinda scared.” They said softly in a tired tone.
“Is it about that one universe where we saw what seemed to be alternate versions of ourselves walking somewhere in the distance of the snowy bi- Oh no, I hope it wasn’t my campfire story about the time I saw an armored weirdo with a cape and glowing eyes in the woods.” Jesse worries. One time shortly before the Blaze Rods had basically flung them halfway across what Ivor called the ‘multiverse’, she was practicing the accordion per a dare by Axel, and when she passed by the woods she saw a weird man in the shadows; his glowing blue eyes illuminating him barely enough to show an outline of his armor. And then he presses a button on his wrist which opened (what Jesse recently realized was) a blue portal behind the tree which she couldn’t see, and glared at her before jumping through. “I know it scared me off the accordion for weeks, but you shouldn’t let it scare you.”
“I’m not talking about the Warrior in the Woods.” Sunny clarified. “I’m tired and scared of what life has for us next.” She says softly and somberly, making Jesse’s eyes widen with concern and empathy. So she sits with her legs crossed and her sword resting by her left food as she warmly ruffled her friend’s hair. “Tell me about it.” The scarred brunette said softly and warmly, making Sunny feel like pouring her heart out. “Well, with all the portal hopping we’ve been doing; Sky City, Cassie, the water one, that weird one where we were held hostage and forced to do a game show, it all took my mind off our friends betraying us to some extent. I don’t even remember if I’ve vented about it since Sky City.” She sulks as she sits up, Olivia slowly waking up from the commotion, trying to get back to sleep.
Sunny then lets out a disheartened breath. “I love adventure, but every problem I’ve had so far has bubbled up now that I’m having a really good night’s sleep for the first time in a while. But, going home means that everything that happened with Gil and Aiden, the results of that will be waiting for me back in Granite Town. I know that we humbled them, but it was so hard the first time. Makes me ticked at Lukas for running his big mouth.”
“Join the club.” Olivia mutters in frustration, prompting the two to look her way as she sat up and stretched her arms as she yawned. “When he told us that, he could’ve at least waited for when we weren’t being chased by Creepers with times their blast radius multiplied a hundred fold in that weird world with the Cookie Lord.”
Jesse nods softly, patting her leg so Olivia would come over; and she did, now sitting by Sunny. The red-and-brown haired brunette then takes a deep breath as she finds the words to comfort her friends. “I get it. As leader I push them aside until we’re safe, like really safe and cozy. That’s when I get more emotionally tired and when everything sets in.” She says warmly. “I was planning to have a nice long cry when Petra took over guard duty while I snuggled Reuben and probaly you guys too.” She warmly smiled, making her insomniac friends smile a bit from the feels. “And when we get home, a cuddlepile in our own base would be much more satisfying then wherever we’re ending up next.”
“Yeah, that’d be nice.” Olivia smiled as she didn’t really feel tired. Sunny smiled as well, also hoping that the groups’ travels didn’t lead them back to- No no Sunny. You’re too sleep deprived to go through this right now They told themselves. When you’re ready and when someone wasn’t literally standing guard to ensure the group wasn’t murdered in their sleep.
Jesse then takes out her clock to check it. “It’s almost Petra’s turn to stand guard.” She notes before stuffing it back into her pocket; right next to the cookie that she found in a river full of trash, which Ivor and the others insisted she DO NOT EAT IT. But she planned to anyway, as she’d eaten food from worse sources; such as a piece of meat that Lukas had found in a-
“Jesse, can I take the rest of your watch?” Sunny asks, surprising the brunette. “Please, it might help take my mind off things.”
Jesse thinks about if for a moment before warmly nodding. “Go ahead.” She smiled before kissing her friends’ cheek. “Love you.” She says before going beside Olivia as she put her sword back into her pocket and started drifting off. “Love you too, Jess.” The bandana-wearing explorer said before pulling up a block of wool and sitting on it with her sword out, keeping watch over their friends. As they looked around at the horizon, they reflected on the first cuddle pile they had with their friends after they had saved her from being left for dead in the woods; mostly some of the warmth as if they had reflected too much on how loving it was, they’d drift off.
However, Olivia had trouble with the opposite of that, which Sunny noticed, making her tired but big heart bleed. “Vi, would you like me to recite you a poem from my youth to help you fall alseep?”
“Really?” The redstone scientist asks with gleeful eyes, getting a warm nod in response. “I would love that, thanks.” She says before taking straightening her beanie and snuggling up against the ground as Sunny called the words to mind. “It’s called the End Poem, and it’s open to have anyone be in it; you’ll see.” She said sweetly before clearing her throat. “ ‘I see them.’ one of them said.”
“ ‘Olivia?’ their friend asked. ‘Yes. Take care. They have reached a higher level now. They can read our thoughts.” They read as Olivia smiles, enjoying the story as she slowly fell asleep. “ ‘That doesn’t matter. It thinks we are part of the game. I like this person. They played well. They did not give up.”
“They’re reading our thoughts as if they were words on a screen. That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when they are deep in the dream of a game. Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible.” Sunny warmly chuckled from how amusing it sounded, not noticing Olivia drift off as she fell asleep. “And less terrifying than staring at the reality behind the screen.”
“They used to hear voices. Before people could read.” Jesse warmly nuzzled her head against the ground as she cried a bit in her sleep, feeling safe enough to let the rest of her feelings out.
“Back in the days when those who did not play called the people witches and warlocks.” Lukas cuts a tree down and carries the wood as he goes to look for the others, seeing an ocelot walking by; which brings back guilt from the day he snapped at his friends with good intentions but horribly wrong reasons, making them go back on the path he had saved them from, making him feel a bit sad as he walked to check on Ivor and Axel.
“And players dreamed that they flew through the air on willpower and hope.”
“What did this person dream?”
Ivor was taking a fishing break, which is when he learned that fish over there could breath air; which became evident when the one he tried reeling in came out of the water, about 20 times bigger than the biggest tuna he saw, and then flopped around after him; prompting him to scream in terror. “They dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. They dreamed they were creating. And they dreamed that they were destroying. They dreamed they were hunters before dreaming they were being hunted. They dreamed of shelter, a place to call home.”
“Hah, the original interface.” Sunny chuckled along with the poem. “A million years old, and it still works.”
“But what true structure did this player create, in the reality behind the screen? They worked, with a million others to sculpt a true world in a fold of the unknown, and created something wonderful for their people in the world.” Axel fed a chicken some wheat, noting it looked hungry and smiling when it clucked happily to him. “They cannot read that thought.”
“No, not yet. They have yet to achieve the highest level. That, they must achieve in the long dream known as life, not the short dream of a game.” Back in the dimension where the sky city laid; Aiden wiped the sweat off his forehead as he, Maya and Gil helped build roads for the new city the Founder and Milo were building with the people, hoping to make up for all the harm they did; especially against their own friends. “Do they know that we love it? That the universe is kind?”
“Sometimes, through the noise of their thoughts they hear the universe, yes.” Back in the gang’s universe, Elenor was napping as Magnus pushed her in her wheelchair during their mid-day stroll, thinking she looked so cute and peaceful as she napped. “But there are times they are sad, in the long dream. They create worlds that have no summer,”
“And they shiver under a black sun, and they take their sad creation for reality rather than just a story. To cure them of sorrow would destroy them. The sorrow is part of their own private task, their own burden to bear. We cannot interfere, even when our hearts bleed for them so much.”
“Sometimes when they are deep in dreams, I want to tell them they are building true worlds in reality.” Reuben nuzzled against Petra’s chest for comfort, prompting the sleeping explorer to cuddle him more. “Sometimes I want to tell them of their importance to the universe. Sometimes, when they have not made a true connection in a while, I want to help them to speak the words they fear.”
“It reads our thoughts.” Sunny says as she takes out her iron sword she’d found on the ground and looks at her reflection in it to reflect on who she was. “Sometimes, I do not care. Sometimes I wish to tell them, this world you take for truth is merely just the tip of the iceberg, and that even though it is vast and wonderous, it doesn’t replace the warmth of having those in your life that love you,”
“I wish to tell them that they are so much more than they think of themselves in the long run.” Back in the gang’s dimension, Soren stepped on a newspaper from the day that the original Order announced that they were frauds, but he threw it away in a nearby trash-barrel; noting that his life was much happier now that he had loved ones back in his life again. “They see so little of reality, in their long dream; in life, and yet they play the game.”
“But, it would be SO easy to tell them….”
“Too strong for this dream, to tell them how to live is to prevent them living.” In his home, Gabriel looked at a frame on his wall, which was a note from Ivor saying that even with the Order’s use of the command block, Gabriel was a warrior to him. He always looked at it to remind himself that despite all the lies, one of his oldest friends saw him a hero the whole time. “I will not tell them how to live.”
“They are growing relentless, so I will tell them a story; but not the truth, not until the time is right, no. A story that contains the truth safely, in a cage of words. Not the naked truth that could burn over any distance.”
“Give them a body, again.”
“Yes, Olivia.” Sunny says as they check on their friend, who was fast asleep and snoring happily; warming their heart. They considered stopping reciting the poem, but it had been a while since they heard it, so they decided to finish it. “Use their name. ‘Player of Games’. Good. Take a breath now. Take another. Feel the air in your lungs, let your limbs return.”
“Yes, move your fingers, have a body again, under gravity, in air.” In self-defense, Axel and Lukas killed the giant fish hunting Ivor, and now the three were carrying its meat back to the campsite along with the firewood. “Respawn in the long dream. There you are. Your body touching the universe again at every point, as though you were separate things. Who are we?”
“Once we were called the spirit of the mountain, Father Sun, Mother Moon, spirits and creatures of kinds, the green man, even gods and angels, and even aliens. The words that people use to describe us may change; we don’t.”
“We are the universe. We are everything you think isn’t you.” Lukas sees the ocelot again kicking the air as it slept, leaving a piece of the giant fish for it by its head as he and the others walked back to the campsite. “You are looking at us right now, through your skin and your eyes. And why does the universe touch your skin and throw light on you? To see you, Olivia. To know you. And to be known. Now then, I shall tell you a story.”
“Once upon a time, there was a person. And that person was you, Olivia.” Sunny warmly snickered as she remembered Olivia and her working on a redstone hot tub in their youth, and how they’d joke about being scared that Axel or Petra would pee in the pool. “Sometimes they thought itself human, on the thin crust of a spinning globe of molten rock. That ball of molten rock circled a blazing gas that was three hundred and thirty thousand times more massive than it.” They then remembered the time they and Olivia swapped outfits for the day, finding the engineer’s outfit quite comfy; even the weirdly high boots. “They were so far apart that light took eight minutes to cross the gap between them. The light was the words of a star, and those words could burn your skin even from a hundred and fifty million kilometers away.”
“Though sometimes, they believed they were playing a game.” Sunny warmly chuckled as she looked at her friends sleeping so cutely and peacefully. “Sometimes they believe they were reading words on a screen. You are the player of that game; reading words-“
“Shush, sometimes they read lines of code on a screen. Decoded them into words, then into meaning, then feelings, emotions, theories ideas; they started to breath faster and deeper before realizing that they were alive. Those thousand deaths had not been real but the player was alive. You, Olivia, YOU are alive.” They lovingly ruffled Olivia’s hair as she slept. “Sometimes they had believed the universe had spoken to them thought the sunlight that came through the struggling leaves of the summer trees, and other times through the light that fell from the crips night sky of winter, where a speck of light in the corner of the person or player’s eye might be a star a million times as massive as the sun; boiling its planets to plasma in order to be visible for even just a moment to the player, even though they were walking to their home on the other side of the universe, smelling food as they arrived to their door, about to dream again.”
“And sometimes they believed that the universe had spoken to it through the ones and zeroes, through the electricity of the world. Through the scrolling words on the screen at the end of a dream.” Sunny then cries a few tears of joy and sadness, missing her home as the poem got more emotional. “And the universe said I love you. It said you have played the game well, said that everything you need is within you. And the universe said you are stronger than you know, Olivia. It said that you were the daylight and the night. That the darkness you fight is within your rather than around you, that the light you seek is there as well. It told you are not alone, it told you that you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code. And the universe said I love you, because you are love.” They gushed softly before kissing Olivia’s temple, noting that they’d be going to bed soon as it was almost Petra’s turn to stand guard.
“Then the game was over, and the player woke up from the dream. But, they then began a new dream. They dreamed again, and it was better than last time. They were the universe, and they were love. You are the player, Vi. Wake up.” They say warmly before getting up and walking over to Petra, carefully shaking her awake. “Petra, time for your turn standing guard.”
“Mmm, ok.” Her fellow redhead said as she got up, rubbing a sleeping Reuben’s belly once more before standing up and taking her sword out. “Rub him for me, he needs the sleep more than I do.” She smirks before going to the middle of the camp and sitting in the cobblestone placed there as she stood guard. “Love you.” Sunny says as she gets on the ground and hugs and cuddles Reuben as she drifted off, getting a warm ‘Love you too’ from Petra before she drifted off; her friends and the poem reminding her that no matter her problems and grief, she wasn’t alone. She had love in her life, and that made every adventure she had worth going, and any adventures she was yet to go feel more assuring and safe.