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beyondborderlands · 2 months ago

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Stars Below

My piece for @pearlescentzine! I always enjoy writing silly Boatem shenanigans, and for this escapade in particular, I teamed up with the lovely artist @maggymations to bring the latest Boatem meeting to life. Check out Maggy’s illustration here, and the rest of the wonderful zine here!

— ☾ —

A sea of faux-stars twinkles gently above Pearl, and the lanterns at her back cast a golden glow against the half-filled sketchpad balanced on her knee. She taps her pencil against the page’s edge. The sound flows uninterrupted through the night, stopped only by the faint rattling of the chains Grian’s fiddling with further down the alley.

The rattling stops. “Is this sign too high?”

Pearl leans back against the curb and tilts her head. Across the street, the cyan plate of a sign-to-be creaks slightly from where it hangs above an empty shop front. She shrugs. “Looks good from this angle. You could move it down one.”

Grian makes a vague noise of acknowledgment and goes back to his rearranging. “I’m not sure what this one’s going to sell yet, honestly. The space just looked empty without it.”

“It fills out the row nicely,” Pearl agrees. “What color are you doing the roof in?”

They’re swapping ideas for a window display when an elytra snapping shut for a landing joins them: “I thought I heard voices over here.”

“Heya, Impulse!” Pearl greets. “Rather late for you to be awake, isn’t it?”

“Ah, well, I was having trouble sleeping,” Impulse says. His robe, the same bright yellow as his daytime overcoat, is rumpled beneath the straps of his elytra, and his left shoe’s laces are steadily unraveling. “What are you guys doing up?”

“Late-night buddies, you know how it is.” Grian waves the trapdoor in his hand.

“We tend to find each other if neither of us are asleep,” Pearl says. Teasing, she adds, “the rest of your lot’s snoring can be heard from a thousand blocks away.”

“I don’t snore!” Impulse protests. “Mumbo definitely does, though.”

“Oh, he does,” Grian says. “Has for as long as I’ve known him.”

“I guess it’s just not something you notice when you’re mega-bases apart.” Impulse shrugs. “How long have you two been working?”

“A couple hours?” Pearl mentally runs the numbers. “A few, maybe?”

“Something like that.” Grian silently counts on his fingers and gives up when he reaches his pinkie.

Impulse tuts. “As the official Head of Happiness—”

“I’m pretty sure we blew you up for that one,” Grian comments.

“You definitely did,” Pearl says.

“—I can’t let two Boatem members work the entire night away,” Impulse finishes. “Think about how you’ll feel in the morning!”

“Mornings are when I sleep best,” Grian says, and Pearl nods in solidarity.

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t suggesting going to bed just yet.” Impulse motions towards the cave’s entrance. “I was actually going to invite you on a walk?”

Pearl hums. “A walk could be a refreshing change of pace.” She turns to squint at Grian.

“I wasn’t going to argue!” he defends. At Pearl’s raised eyebrow, he admits, “Well, maybe just a little.”

After Pearl has set aside her sketchpad and—much to Pearl’s dismay—Grian’s shoved his building materials into a random barrel, they join Impulse beyond the mouth of the Midnight Alley. The cave’s ceiling gives way to the real night sky and a crisp breeze tousles Pearl’s hair. Summer’s insects have bowed to autumn’s stillness; somewhere in the distance, a lone owl calls out.

Pearl tries to focus on the world immediately around her as they slowly circle Boatem. Something tips her gaze upwards anyways—call it morbid fascination. The moon is a milky, cratered expanse far too close for comfort. Its silver edge brushes the horizon behind her lighthouse palace, a feat that would’ve happened hours later had the moon been its normal size. It’s discomforting. Pearl can’t look away.

Impulse breaks the hush that’s settled over them: “I was going to fly over to Tango’s, but I didn’t really want to make the trip. This is much nicer.”

“It’s a decent night for it.” Pearl’s next step bounces twice as high and takes twice as long to connect with the ground again. She frowns at her feet. Her wings twitch. “D’you often go to Tango if you can’t sleep?”

“A couple times, maybe, but you know me, sometimes I’m in bed before the sun is fully set!”

“Old man.” Grian playfully bumps Impulse’s arm, which does little to jostle his path of travel.

“Laugh all you want, but you see this face?” Impulse gestures. “Fresh as a daisy!”

“Looking a little weary around the edges there, mate,” Pearl says, “but you’re usually as lovely as the springtime, I agree.”

They’ve stopped beside the G-train tracks, next to the empty, most recently built car. Pearl idly paces a few steps across the wooden ties.

“Aw, well, thank you,” Impulse says, and sighs. “Tonight my worries got a little ahead of me, with the moon and all. I mean, when has something like this ever happened before? What do we even do?”

“We’ll think of something, I’m sure,” Grian says sincerely. “If there’s anyone that could, it’d be this group.”

Pearl pauses in her pacing. “The Hermits are some of the smartest, craziest people I know. We’ll figure it out.”

“You’re right,” Impulse says. “I believe in us! It’d just be nice to be able to do something about it in the meantime.”

“Blow up the moon?” Grian suggests.

“Have a sleepover?” Pearl proposes.

“More void sacrifices?” Impulse offers.

“Have a sleepover above the void,” Pearl says. Grian and Impulse turn to look at her in near-unison. “In hammocks. Right at the bottom of the world.”

“Does anyone even have any hammocks laying around?” Grian wonders.

“Oh, I have a few,” Impulse absently comments. Paling slightly, he quickly adds, “You’re not really planning on doing this, right?”

“It would make for a good next Boatem meeting,” Grian says.

“We could have everyone in their jammies and decorate the Boatem hole!” Pearl says.

“This is a terrible idea,” Impulse says, but even he can’t fully shake the allure from the edges of his smile.

“Oh, it is.” Grian claps once. “It’s settled! I’ll arrange the meeting. Impulse, you get beds taken care of. Pearl, you’re on decorating duty. How’s tomorrow evening sound?”

Pearl grins. “Sounds like our best plan yet.”

— ☾ —

The night has long darkened by the time they’re assembled around the void. From a broken farm to escaped cats to a suddenly lost hat that Scar insisted is essential to the sleepover, the delays piled higher and higher; finally, they’ve made it.

“Are we sure about this? Like, how do we know sleeping over the void will actually do anything?” Mumbo shifts his weight nervously between the bits of bedrock he’s standing on.

“We don’t!” Grian says gleefully. “But the moon’s obviously not going to just stop growing, so we might as well find someplace safe from it, yeah?” He spreads his arms. “Where safer than the furthest we can get from it?”

The bedrock layer isn’t looking half-bad for such a last-minute job, in Pearl’s humble opinion. Strung with lights, the little cavern is as inviting as it could be with a pit to an unnerving nothingness at its center. The uneven floor around said pit could’ve used a patch job, Pearl supposes, but for authenticity’s sake, she’d left it alone, save for a few pops of colorful carpet.

“Okay, yeah, I see your point,” Mumbo concedes. “But did you have to set up the most rickety-looking hammocks you could find?”

“They’ve been in my closet for a while, okay?” Impulse tentatively reaches over and gives the closest fencepost a pat. The posts had been left over from the llama incident; each one connects the corners of two hammocks. With only enough space for four in the hole itself, the fifth hammock hangs next to the void, over the bedrock. They are a little rough for wear.

“They do add a sense of danger most sleepovers are lacking,” Pearl says.

“I, for one, think this is a fantastic idea.” Scar strikes a pose that emphasizes the cat pattern adorning his bottoms. “I’ve been meaning to show off my patented Jellie PJs!”

“Says the person with the one hammock not dangling precariously over the void,” Mumbo says. “Scar, you’re just plain crazy.”

“I’m Pearlescent Moon! I’m more protected than the rest of you already; you all need the extra step more than I do,” Pearl says. “And besides, I got first dibs on bed choice and I’m not wasting it.”

“Arguably, this is the safest of our meetings,” Impulse says. “No end crystals, no live animals, no strange minecart contraptions. There’s only a slight risk of death!”

“Exactly! Thank you, Impulse,” Grian says. “If there are no further objections, let’s crack on with it, shall we?”

After everyone empties their pockets into the ender chest placed conveniently nearby, Pearl crouches next to the hole as the others attempt to climb into their beds with varying levels of success.

Impulse’s is the closest to Pearl’s own, and he pulls it towards himself to quickly clamber into. They all hold their breath as the hammock swings, ropes creaking against their posts; Impulse’s relieved exhale is the loudest of the bunch when his momentum comes to a halt.

Mumbo, for as tall as he is, stretches across the space between bedrock and hammock in one long, tentative line. He gingerly shifts his weight onto his extended foot but moves too slowly—had it not been for Grian’s shove that pitches Mumbo headfirst into the hammock in a crumpled heap, he wouldn’t have made it at all.

“How are you even folded like that?” Pearl marvels. In Mumbo’s scramble to right himself, his left foot has ended up above his head, and his right arm is pinned awkwardly beneath him.

“Dude, you look like a crushed soda can,” Scar says. “One that got caught under, like, a dozen ravagers that were all really mad at you.”

“I’d like to see you try!” Mumbo grumps.

“As a matter of fact, I will!”

Pearl blinks, and Scar’s tripping void-bound—he manages to save himself on a fencepost as Grian lunges for a fistful of the back of Scar’s shirt. Just as Grian’s about to pull him up, Scar’s hat starts to dip and he makes a grab for its brim, leaving Grian with the near-entirety of Scar’s weight, which he frantically flaps his wings to leverage against. Impulse clasps one of Scar’s shoulders while Pearl grabs Impulse’s hammock to steady him, and Mumbo detangles himself just in time to assist in pushing Scar the rest of the way.

Half-hunched and breathless, Scar turns to Pearl. “Say, Pearl, you wouldn’t be interested in swapping arrangements, would you? This here is a fine hammock if I do say so myself—it’d be wasted on little old me, who can’t even get into the thing!”

“C’mon mate, that’s quitter talk!” Pearl says cheerfully. “You can do it; you’ve already gone halfway!”

“Try aiming for the hammock instead of the void, this time,” Impulse says, shocking a laugh out of Grian at Scar’s side.

“Betrayed,” Scar mutters as he reaches for the post, “betrayed by them all, I tell you.” With far more success than the last attempt, Scar lands in the center of the canvas with a muffled oof.

With a flutter of his wings, Grian hovers slightly above the hole and drops into his bed. “Now, that’s just unfair,” Mumbo comments, to which Grian sticks out a mocking tongue.

“Well!” Pearl says. “Now that we’ve all made it in nice and secure, anyone up for a game?”

Most of what she had planned by way of activities had operated under the assumption that the sleepover would be starting earlier in the evening. So close to the end of it, after the sun has set and everyone’s sure to have eaten dinner already, Pearl only has one real trick to pull from her sleeve:

“Oh, I love cards!” From seemingly out of nowhere, Scar produces his own deck, bound together with a thick green ribbon.

“Did you just… have those on you?” Mumbo asks incredulously.

Scar slides the ribbon down to reveal the top card’s back; in the center of its maroon base is a pair of lovingly illustrated grey cat ears that could belong to no one but Jellie herself, and the edges of the card are outlined in shining gold.

Pearl splays her hands in mock-offense. “Oi, you can’t go outdoing me!” Her own plain pack hardly holds a candle against Jellie’s lovely likeness.

“No, no,” Scar assures, “no outdoing here! The more the merrier!”

“I can’t believe you have themed cards of your cat.” After a moment, Grian seems to reconsider this, and follows it up with: “Actually, no, I can.”

They decide to deal in both decks, and it goes about as well as expected.

What’s actually being played is at no point clear. Mumbo keeps trying to explain blackjack while Grian’s geared for poker. Impulse appears to be operating under a set of rules that could only have been conceived by Zedaph, and after Pearl’s head starts to spin trying to follow along, she goes to sit next to Scar for a game of Go Fish.

The extra cards are precariously piled on top of Mumbo and Impulse’s shared fencepost. They last an admirably long time before a stray elbow knocks them into the void. Scar assuages them all that he has several more packs of the Jellie cards back in his base.

By the time even Grian’s stifling yawns, Pearl reckons it’s about time to close out the night. Mumbo gathers the remaining cards and passes them to Pearl; she tucks them into the ender chest on her way to extinguishing most of the lanterns. Two of them, as they unanimously agree, remain lit.

The murmured goodnights settle over Pearl as she sinks into her bedding. She’d brought her second-favorite blanket down for the sleepover, a green throw she’d amateurishly knitted herself towards the beginning of the season, and its weight is comforting upon her scrunched shoulders.

“Anyone still awake?” Impulse whispers, a touch above inaudible.

“Problems sleeping again?” Pearl whispers back. The other three’s only responses are the hushed sighs of their sleep-slow breathing.

“Not as bad tonight, I don’t think.” Impulse’s hammock creaks with his shifting and Pearl turns to look at him, but his face, softened by darkness, is tilted upwards. “It just feels weird, you know? The void, I mean. I don’t know if I’ve ever spent this much time right next to it before.”

Pearl does know. She can feel it even without being suspended directly over its onyx expanse, now that the festivities have quieted: a chill that cuts straight through Pearl’s blanket without really being cold.

“It’s a weird one.” Pearl pulls her knees to her chest as best as she can. “Who knows, maybe Grian’s right. It could save us from the moon.”

“It could.” Impulse is quiet for long enough that Pearl assumes he’s fallen asleep. Sincerity weaves between every word when he eventually says, “Thanks for setting this up, Pearl. It’s been fun—there’s no one else I’d rather hang precariously over the void with than this group.”

“Those are high honors there, mate,” Pearl says, and she can’t help her smile. “I agree. You all could keep anything interesting.”

“Never a dull moment!” Softer, Impulse says, “Goodnight, Pearl.”

“Goodnight, Impulse.”

The humming eeriness beneath Pearl finds a competitor in the warmth that spreads over her entirely. Pearl holds on to it as her consciousness fades.

— ☾ —

When Pearl wakes, the light level is about the same as it was previously; she’s left to assume it’s morning based on her own biological clock. She rubs the final few wisps of sleep from her eyes. She’s sure she dreamt but can’t quite recall of what; all that remains is the faintest impression of spilled ink.

Grian’s scratchy voice is close enough to confirmation of morning’s arrival. “Where’s Mumbo?”

The crick in Pearl’s neck announces itself with an ache that throbs down her back as she quickly rises. Indeed: bracketed by Impulse’s widened eyes and Scar’s still-comatose state, Mumbo’s hammock flutters slightly from where it’s secured to a single post, and Mumbo himself is nowhere to be seen.

“Oh gosh, he’s probably on his way back from spawn right now.” Pearl presses a fist to her lips against the giggles that threaten to spill from them.

Grian has no such reservations. His laughter echoes as he pulls himself onto the bedrock. “I can’t believe no one heard him.”

“There couldn’t have been much to hear, right?” Impulse rolls his shoulders with a crackling pop. “Ender chest, please.”

“Going to try to fly straight out?” Pearl slides the chest within reach. “Gutsy.”

“Grian got in on wings; might as well try getting out with them.” Impulse shrugs on his elytra.

“I believe in you.” Crouching next to Scar’s hammock with a firm hold on its edge, Grian says, louder, “Scar! Up and at ‘em, we’ve got to go save Mumbo.”

Pearl folds her blanket as Impulse readies his rockets and Grian helps Scar onto the bedrock. With a final determined exhale, Impulse leaps; in a shower of sparks, he shoots towards the faint sliver of sky. Pearl cheers after him.

Further clean-up, Pearl decides as she watches Grian and Scar ascend together, can wait. Tucking her blanket away, Pearl gives her wings a shake and a stretch. They’re a little rumpled from a night spent pressed against the hammock’s side, but they’ll do well enough.

Before she goes, Pearl spares the void a final glance. Its strange static dances across her skin. The stars below seem to wink.

Of two things, she is certain: the void is a strange place to spend so much time near, and the company she shared made every second of the ordeal worth it. Her thoughts turn to the night sky eclipsed in white and the strangeness of its cast light. She ponders the inevitable end of the world and what lies beneath it.

Laughter echoes in her ears and tickles the back of her throat. Pearl reaches towards the growing light above her as she soars to meet her friends.

#AAAAAAAA BOATEM MY BELOVED #this whole story is TOO SWEET #the little pearlo + impulse interactions give me EXTREME joy as well as everyone helping each other pile into the hammocks #ugh the descriptions of pearl looking/feeling the void and night sky are gorgeous #the ending!! i got goosebumps reading it ngl #of course mumbo would fall into the void #maggy's companion illustration is also adorable!!#hermitcraft #pearlescentmoon #impulsesv #mumbo jumbo #grian #goodtimeswithscar

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beyondborderlands · 3 months ago

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“Roll that wheelbarrow over here, would you?”

Hovering in the edge of Scar’s peripheral vision, Lizzie pushes off the Secret Keeper’s stony shoulder and disappears from his sight. “You’ll have to get it yourself. Grip’s not working,” she announces a moment later. “Blame the weather, or my missing lanterns, or anything else in this stinking world.”

“Hey now, I returned your lanterns fair and square,” Scar comments as he pauses in his shoveling to retrieve and park the wheelbarrow along the edge of the sunflower patch. He dumps the first bundle of tangled roots still clumped with dirt, stems bent in half, and lopped heads into its bucket, and barely remembers to remove his glove before passing his hand across his brow. Autumn has just begun to rustle the boughs of the highest cherry blossom trees; it has yet to reach Scar’s sweaty palms.

“Yet, somehow, my pumpkin patch—which was once very spawn-proof, I’ll have you know—hosts a zombie rave every night.” Lizzie comes just short of brushing her fingertips against the petals of a still-standing sunflower. The ink streaked beneath her skin and petal’s darkened veins are near-identical. They stain one and the same beneath the clear blue sky.

Scar shrugs, spade in hand. His shoulders ache. He much prefers tending to the sunflowers he cultivates for oil or company than he does the ones he uses to coax wither residue from out of and around the leftover craters. “So, maybe I kept that one for the porch. In my defense, I didn’t think you’d be needing it anytime soon. Do mobs even go after you anymore?”

It’s been a couple months since he’d first embarked on his task to tidy up the terrain—the bases are all as spick as Scar could get them, and the surrounding area’s creeper holes, wither dents, and general disrepair were all becoming increasingly glaring eyesores. Starting to the west of the Secret Keeper, Scar’s progress winds around his outpost, brushes up against the Mounders’ buckled walls, and stops at the foot of Lizzie’s front door. He’d been quick to learn that, however long gone the wither may be, its poison continues to seep through the ground and strengthens with inattention, burning through even the thick soles of his boots. Lizzie, of course, is unaffected.

��They don’t,” Lizzie admits, “but now the atmosphere’s all off. Surely you understand the importance of aesthetics.” She leans over Scar. “You missed some of the root.”

The discovery that sunflowers draw the withering up and out the soil they’re planted in had been accidental; Scar made martyrs out of scattered seeds, and the greyed, listless flowers that followed informed him where not to step. The sunflowers’ rejuvenated soil was unexpected. The hope that bloomed between Scar’s own ribs caught him blind and set him upon the task with an inspired vigor he can only hazily recall from a time before this empty world.

“That’s part of its neighbor.” Nonetheless, Scar tugs the exposed root free and tosses it into the wheelbarrow. “I’ve got a spare sickle, you know.”

“We’re not done discussing this,” Lizzie says. “Let me try it.”

Scar unhooks the sickle from his belt and drops it into Lizzie’s outstretched hand. The grass at their feet catches and cradles the blade as if Lizzie wasn’t there at all.

She frowns. “I can usually hold small things.”

“Blame the weather. It’s a’changing fast!” Scar turns back to the sunflowers. He’s reached the center of the crater, but the wheelbarrow’s bucket is full; he’ll have to empty it. “Once we’ve got this patch cleared, I was thinking we could prune the Heart. Shears might be kinder on the ol’ ghostly hands. Speaking of, it’s been a while since I’ve witnessed a murder. Have you seen our friends around?”

The other shadows are far ghostlier than Lizzie’s mostly solid form and far less present than her generally reliable state of mind. Scar supposes there can’t be a whole lot to do when one’s existence is reduced to a smudgy silhouette, but the hobby the shadows all share isn’t one he’d choose for himself: re-enacting their final deaths in silent blow-by-blows until their flickering forms shutter and dissipate. Scar’s watched them enough to know each performance by heart.

“Not for about a week now,” Lizzie says, bored. She cares even less for the macabe productions than Scar does. “Anyway, all of this deflection is giving me a headache.”

“Me? Deflect? I would never.” Scar leans his shovel against a boulder. “Completely unrelated to reflections: it’s high time we go dump this junk in the trash chute.”

“You’re going to go dump that junk. I am going to reclaim my lantern.” When Lizzie’s foot phases straight through the pebble she tries to kick, she settles for crossing her arms across her chest. “I’m not going anywhere near that wretched portal ever again.”

“Worth a shot.” Scar angles his hat against the sun as he surveys the land. The terrain smooths further out by the day, but pathing is a nagging task Scar tunes out further each time it rears its head. The downside is that he manages to forget in which direction the End portal lays every other time he marks it on his itinerary. “Say, Lizzie—”

“Oi—!”

Scar turns towards Lizzie just in time to catch her flicker and vanish between one blink and the next. A noise just as startled as Lizzie’s cut-off exclamation escapes Scar as he jumps back. “Lizzie?” he cups a hand around his mouth and shouts. “You there?”

It takes his thoughts a second to fully herd back to him. He waits for one minute, then another. Lizzie does not reappear.

For all the other shadows come and go, Lizzie has stubbornly remained as corporal as she can since Scar first brought her back to the Overworld, in spite of the days when solid objects ignore her and the void pitches its keening call. Lizzie, if given the choice, would remain right where she was.

It’s been all too easy to pretend otherwise: Lizzie is dead, dead, dead, and now gone someplace Scar cannot follow. He has never been more alone.

His limbs are wooden; his heart is pounding. He’s been standing here for too long. There are wheelbarrows to empty and sunflowers to harvest—no, not harvest; Scar does not collect the poison he pulls—and he remains rooted where he stands.

The silence presses in from every direction. The birdsong is not enough to shatter it. How had Scar ever grown used to this?

His breath hitches. He cannot call the air in his lungs a relief; the breeze feels wrong between his teeth. The movement forced through his chest shoves the rest of his body into action, and Scar nearly yanks the wheelbarrow towards himself; he is suddenly struck with the frantic need to do something.

Empty the wheelbarrow, haul it back. Do not think about Lizzie. Chop the head, slice the stem, shovel the roots. Do not think about the ghosts. Pack the hole left behind with fresh dirt and pat it down. Do not think about the silence. Repeat, repeat, repeat, until the numbness is all that’s left.

It’s beneath the evening sun and after the fifth trip back from the End portal that Scar collapses against the base of a tree and remembers to pull his water flask out. He drinks until it’s empty. He doesn’t know how he’ll manage to fill it again.

Suddenly: “I’ve never been so relieved to see those stupid towers.”

Scar leaps up and whirls around. Lizzie, shrouded in the canopy’s shadow, is ghastly, but no more than she does when she accompanies Scar on the occasional mining trip. He swallows back rocks and presses a hand to his throat. “Why, you scared me half to death there, Liz! Where in the world did you go?”

There’s an odd sort of expression on her face that Scar can’t fully parce out. Whatever it is, it curdles as she shudders. “I don’t know. One moment I was next to you, and the next, I was… well, somewhere.” She glances at Scar, bewildered. “I saw the ghosts.”

“Are they coming back?” Scar asks. They have to. He uncomfortably itches for his gloves, and the patch of sunflowers twenty blocks away.

Lizzie slowly shakes her head. “Something changed. It’s like it’s trying to pull me away. It’s worse, now that I’m here again. Can’t you feel it?”

Yes. Now that she’s put it into words, the weight of it becomes crushing, bearing down upon Scar’s ribs and nipping at his heels. “Of course not!”

“Really? ‘Cause—”

Scar cuts her off with a broad gesture that sweeps across the plains. “I had quite the afternoon while you were away! I didn’t quite get to the Heart, how sad. Why don’t you go sleep on it, and we’ll test your luck with some shears tomorrow, hm?”

“You’re just going to carry on like nothing happened?” Lizzie sounds dubious. “We could really stand to investigate whatever that was.”

“I’ve got better things to do.” Scar has been here for a long, long time. There are paths to make and flowers to tend. “Lots to cut before fall really gets to us!”

Lizzie squints at him, then sighs. “Fine. Just don’t come crying to me when it comes back to bite, because I warned you. I’m going to try to keep myself from poofing again.” She lifts her gaze to the horizon, and her pointed finger follows suit. “There’s a storm coming.”

He knows. It’s impossible to ignore the anticipatory hum simmering in the air. “So there is.” He remains unmoving.

“Shouldn’t you go, I don’t know, batten down the hatches? Bring any valubles inside? Oh, forget it, I’ve just remembered that I’m talking to a fool.”

Scar glances up. Dark, rolling clouds steadily creep closer to the setting sun. The slowly dimming light dances across the river’s surface and flits through the jungle across the way. He can envision clearly how it falls upon each abandoned base, whose only occupants are the torches Scar keeps lit in the windows. There are fleets of withered flowers and legions that have hoarded the poison for themselves. The wheelbarrow is empty, poised, waiting.

“I will,” Scar answers, steadily measured and slow, “after I harvest the sunflowers.”

#kaya holy SHIT your writing never fails to take me by the throat and shake me for all i'm worth #the characterization of scar and lizzie here are so deeply perfect and the little bits of lore are delicious #ms shadowlady indeed!!!#also LOVE LOVE LOVE how you incorporated sunflowers' real-life ability to leach toxins from the ground and applied it to wither effect???#secret life smp #ldshadowlady #goodtimeswithscar

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