She hits the stone floor three stories below like a sack of potatoes, in a heavy whumph that echoes up and down the shaft. The impact smashes through her body as a heavy spike of pain —

"OW!"

Hyacinth calls up to her girlfriend, desperation in her voice. "There is a CREATURE, DON'T KEEP GOING —" 

Then she gingerly looks over her body. 

The pain's fallen away. Is she in shock...?

... There's no blood, and not even any bruises either. She feels fine. 

She levers herself to her feet again. 

"I think I'm okay! Are you okay?" 

Hailey hurries back down the stairs as fast as she safely can, mentally filing the distinctive "gworp" sound she heard to process later. She starts looking Sin over carefully. "Really? You're okay?"

Hyacinth experimentally pokes and prods herself a little, then does some careful stretches.

"Yeah, I think I'm genuinely okay. I don't feel any pain, and I have full range of motion with my whole body. I feel a bit — drained, somehow — but I don't seem to be injured." 

She shakes her head and scoffs. "Fucking Minecraft. Health bars for the win, I guess?"

"Yeah, health bars for the win. For once something to be happy about, physics-wise. It's sort of like in RWBY where they take hits but the Aura absorbs it."

She smiles at Sin and sighs a bit. "Yeah. Like that. That's good."

"Dunno what happens when we run out though. Critical Existence Failure, maybe? Or do we start taking actual physical damage at that point? Do we respawn? Dun wanna find out. Too risky."

"Yeah. I bumped into something real tall and gangly and pitch-black on the stairs, and, well, panicked. I think it was an Enderman. It's got to have been. We're just very lucky I didn't accidentally look it in the face. Those things are scary."

She nods. "Sounded like one, too. I think I remember that it's safe to bump into them in the games as long as you don't look, though, so we should be able to get up the stairs? I'll go first and try to edge past it, yeah?"

"I don't like it, but we've got to get up past it somehow. If we keep looking down at our feet we should be okay. I just... That stair is already treacherous enough without that thing on it."

She takes a slow breath. "I'll follow where you lead."

She smiles slightly and squeezes Sin's hand, then lets go and starts carefully climbing the spiral staircase, eyes never higher than the next couple steps in front of her.

After a good few circuits up the spiral, she sees a pair of black legs in the dark. "'Scuse me," she murmurs.

It gworp-gworbles at her.

She edges a little closer, looking pointedly down and scooting past it, hugging the central pillar of the staircase.

"S'working," she whispers back down to Sin, continuing to scoot around. Soon enough, she's past.

Hyacinth keeps her eyes firmly glued to the steps in front of her, and follows behind Hailey in the gap she's opened for her. 

She's past the enderman. Now she just needs to get up the rest of the stair. 

She climbs, following Hailey as quickly as she dares.

And then they're up and out and Hailey pulls Sin into her arms as they stand there in the morning sunshine. "Made it. Hopefully it finds somewhere else to be while we're out."

"Yeah, I hope so too."

Hyacinth firmly hugs Hailey.

"Okay. We've got places to be. I think we wanted to go see if we could find the locals?"

Hailey nods. "That and go check out the cherry grove, since it's so close."

"Yeah. There's a whole world out there to discover. Let's not waste daylight."

She gestures for Hailey to lead the way. "After you. I think you're less likely to panic if we bump into something we shouldn't."

She smiles, squeezes Sin's hand, and nods. They start walking toward the grove, heading up the sloping ground of the springs. 

Along the way, a large sheep walks up to them, cheerfully ambling past toward a patch of grass. "Whoa."

Hyacinth gives the sheep a look.

It looks back, entirely amiably. 

"I think the sheep here are... friendlier than Earth sheep. I'm not going to try and pet it, but, uh... It is kind of nice to see it being. Unconcerned." 

She steps past the sheep and heads into the cherry grove, and the book buzzes on her hip again. She reaches into the book and pulls out a slice of cherry pie, which she proceeds to eat.

"... Okay, I could maybe get used to this a little."

She eats her slice of pie. "Oh. That's tasty." She squeezes Sin's hand as they keep walking.

"Ooh, flowering azalea? Might be a lush cave below us?"