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safeturnip · 21 days ago

Text

acorn-cerning surprise

words: 1.8k

characters: the snails. GeminiTay, Grian, Joel Smallishbeans. (ish. Gem and Grian and Joel are here in spirit)

summary: snail shenanigans!! featuring acorns and Joel's cyberpunk city

AO3 link

***

It was a lovely day on Hermitcraft, and there was a pair of horrible snails.

The intricate machinery of the airship they had been left in rattled and clanked, the heat exuded from the engines warming the polished wood of the room the snails had taken over with their series of challenges. It had been weeks since their latest target had participated in their game, winning back some of his items with a confident promise to return for the rest. He’d never returned, and the snails were bored out of their limited number of brain cells. They weren’t meant for this feeling of idleness, of sitting in place and waiting. The blue snail twitched an eye at its pink companion, who responded by dropping down from the ceiling and making its slimy way towards the door. The snails abandoned their commandeered airship, dropping off the edge and tucking their bodies into their shells to bounce safely off the ground, setting out to find another source of entertainment.

The noontime sun was high in the sky and the snails were sluggish—or snailish, as the case may be—as they sloped their way across the terrain towards the cherry tree–covered plateau in the distance. The landscape unfolded before them, almost overwhelming to such small creatures: Waves of rippling grass, a river that wound its way toward the sea, a giant stone pyramid constructed from shades of black and grey and white. They passed through a small village with palm trees scattered here and there amidst the nondescript brown buildings, where, in the distance, a metal satellite dish on the top of a repurposed fortress caught and reflected the sun.

(They did not go near the ocean that skimmed this village’s edge. There was something about the hidden depths that caused an instinctive, primal dread, even in this pair of molluscs who never felt emotions like fear.)

It was at the area where cyan and red and brown buildings had been built into the side of the mountain behind them, where soil transitioned to salt-crusted wood beneath their feet, that the snails’ journey came to a stop.

Before them was a pile of acorns—not the sort made by squirrels storing food for the winter, more like the sort made by squirrels storing food for several winters, and also the apocalypse. Acorns of all shapes and sizes and colours were all stacked on top of each other: Golden acorns with a proud, glossy sheen; large, dark brown acorns with dull and scratched surfaces; small acorns that were an unripe green, their rough, bristly caps pulled low over their heads. They were piled so precariously atop each other that even the lightest gust of briney wind would cause a cascade of acorns to tumble down and roll across the wooden ground.

As the pair of mischief-seeking snails regarded this shifting pile of acorns, they experienced something truly remarkable: Their shared two brain cells drifting close enough to form a synapse of coherent thought, an extremely rare occurrence for these gastropods. They had a brilliant idea for what to do with this surprise gift they'd happened upon. In unison, two pairs of glassy black eyes rotated towards the nearby cyber-city, with its neon lights and bright colours and skyscrapers that strove determinedly upwards as if they wanted to touch the sun. Perfect.

These snails did not have the means or equipment to move the acorns, did not possess pockets or bags or even shulker boxes, never mind the sheer amount of acorns that had to be moved. And what an amount it was! The acorns must have numbered in the thousands. If the snails could do maths, they would've counted 10,758 precisely; unfortunately they did not have the brain convolutions needed to count that high. All they needed to know—and all that they did know—was that it was truly a staggering amount of acorns, perfect for the mischief they had planned. Yet despite this lack of any form of transport, somehow these clever snails managed to drag their soon-to-be prank all the way around the circumference of the hollowed out mountain to the base of the colourful, cramped city.

(If these snails had a working memory, they would have thought back wistfully to their getaway helicopter that they’d used to steal someone’s diamonds ages ago. Unfortunately, they had the memory of a river stone: nonexistent.)

Like the snails, the city was a nocturnal organism, slowly shaking itself to life as the sun dipped below the horizon. Lights blinked open and flickered on in the dark, heat emanated from buildings and caused the cool evening air to shimmer, electricity raced and tumbled over itself through the glass tubing of neon signs. The quiet of the night made the ceaseless sounds of the city even more apparent; the murmur of pipes that spanned both the height and width of buildings, the whisper of curtains being whisked shut in penthouses at the top of the tallest skyscrapers, the low creak of window shutters drifting open and shut. The city was built in a fashion where—because it had no space to expand outward—it was forced to instead extend upward like a tree whose roots had split open the rock face of a mountain after finding no more room to grow. Buildings were nestled so close together that they seemed to merge into one huge mass of concrete and metal, until you looked closer and spotted the narrow, winding alleyways that separated them.

Once the sun had fully set, the snails got to work.

They went about their task silently and wordlessly—there was no other way a snail could do a task, after all, owing to the absence of vocal cords or teeth or a palate. Knowing that its wormy companion was still very new, the blue snail took the lead, demonstrating where best to deposit acorns in places that would be the most annoying. Acorns scattered in the middle of footpaths to catch unsuspecting feet, stuffed between wooden planks of building walls directly at eye level so that they would be impossible to miss, handfuls placed precariously on narrow railings so that they would tumble to the ground in a cheerful clatter if someone brushed close by them. The pink snail caught on quickly.

The snails were in no rush. They knew the creator of this city was occupied by the game far away in the shopping district of water and ravagers, lily pads and the tranquil glow of froglights. It was highly likely that they would have the entire night to lay out this prank, and maybe even part of the morning too, if they needed.

Underneath the glow of neon lights, the snails glided over this ecosystem of concrete and metal and glass and stone, depositing acorns as they went. Trails of slime were left everywhere in their wake, less so incriminating evidence forgotten behind by an amateur and more of a calling card placed deliberately at the scene of a crime. Acorns were stuck in the canvas banners that hung along the sides of storefronts, tucked into the dress folds of a statue of an ancient ocean goddess, dropped into the pools of the bath house and the ponds in the gardens dotted around the city. Acorns were placed in the eye sockets and mouths of the horse heads that decorated a fountain built before a glowing purple portal, hidden in the many, many chests scattered in the streets and buildings. The blue snail even left an acorn in a beehive located in the honey farm, and was almost stung by a very angry bee in the process. The snails stayed away from the beehives after that.

Despite having no hands or fingers, the snails were still able to place acorns in the most dexterous of places, like between books placed tightly together in bookshelves and along the tops of door frames. What talented molluscs! Anyone watching them work would be impressed.

About halfway through the night, the blue snail began crawling up the gate that separated this cyber-city from its neighboring cyber-city, its pink friend following closely behind. The gate was a towering giant of deep red wood and dark stone, with ends that curved upwards toward the sky like the fingers of a cupped hand. At the top of the gate, the blue snail began to lay out a line of acorns—not the smartest idea, seeing as how a strong wind would immediately blow all the acorns off the gate. If snails could roll their eyes, that was what the pink snail would be doing right now. But, due to the lack of eye sockets and extraocular muscles, the most it could do was wiggle its eye stalks around. Its friend continued to deposit acorns along the topmost part of the gate, unbothered, moisturized, happy, in its lane, focused, and flourishing.

(As this liberal distribution of acorns went on, the wormy snail began to do the dastardly thing of wedging everything that could be wedged open with an acorn, sticking acorns into the hinges of doors and windows in a way that let them close only halfway. The blue snail was so proud.)

The pesky snails were beginning to run out of both acorns and places to hide said acorns. They crammed the mailbox full to the brim with acorns, popped acorns into the pockets of the workers in the industrial buildings, who merely side-eyed the snails and hummed in disgruntlement, and—oh no, they’d managed to get an acorn wedged in the mechanism of the glow berry farm. Oh well. No one ever bought glow berries anyways.

The moon continued its journey across the sky, and the stock of acorns continued to dwindle down into nothing, signaling the completion of this snail acorn prank. This snailcorn prank.

Finally, as the sun began to drift upwards and the sky lightened to shades of peach and lavender and pink, the job was done. Nestled in the hand of the giant gorilla armour stand perched at the top of a skyscraper, the two snails took a brief moment to admire their work: Hundreds and hundreds of acorns scattered and littered and tucked away in every imaginable nook and cranny of this towering electric city. Even with their limited intelligence, the snails knew that this prank didn’t seem especially impressive or aggravating right now. No, the fun will start when the owner of this city finds the acorns. When he will continue to find the acorns. And it seemed for a brief moment that they wished—well, not wished, exactly, they didn’t have the mental capacity for that—they had a flicker, beginning, suggestion of thought about having a set of lungs and a diaphragm like a human in order to laugh themselves to stitches over their job well done.

Through a bob of a pink head and an answering downward tilt of a blue shell, the two gastropods seemed to come to an understanding. It was time to return to their snaily airship for a well-deserved nap.

And in the distance, there and gone so fast that it could be dismissed as a trick of the light, was a flutter of wings and a flash of bright orange hair.

#ngl this was just an excuse for me to wax poetry abt joel smallishbeans' base. everyone subscribe to smallishbeans rn #geminitay #grian #smallishbeans #joel smallishbeans #hermitcraft #hermitcraft season 10 #hc10 #hermitblr #mywriting

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