She turns to her right, where her pheripheral vison suggests the wall opens out.

Oh. I'm up a fucking mountain. 

I had better get down from the mountain, then. This looks like a nice death by exposure within a half hour. 

She looks down, then immediately regrets that life choice. 

Yeah. No problem. I got this. Just don't fall on the giant ice spikes. Simple. Straightforward. Refreshing. 

One minor miracle later, Evenstar gets down the slope without breaking her neck.

The pools below are, at least, very pretty. I wonder where I am. Terraria? Minecraft? Some other tile-based game? I don't think Minecraft usually comes with hot springs...

The rest of the terrain looks relatively straightforward as long as I don't fall into a snowdrift or break my neck slipping on ice. Well, I am Canadian; I have practice. 

The rest of the crossing is indeed more straightforward. 

Okay, I made it to the pools. Now what? There are wild sheep here, but I'd better not approach them; the last thing I want is to be gored by a ram as the permanent end to my very weird day. 

A glimpse of stonework catches her eye.

Wait, what's that over there?

Some sort of abandoned shelter...? A sign of inhabitation is good, at least.

In the center of the "shelter" there's a long, perilous-looking staircase that descends into the darkness. But she has little to lose and much to gain - there might even be people in there who can explain what's going on.

She screws her courage to the sticking point and carefully edges down the handrail-less spiral staircase, inches from a several-story drop. It is NOT A FUN EXPERIENCE. She sticks as close to the central pillar as she can.

Who designed this place?

Her courage is rewarded with a short hallway at the bottom with a fallen-open door. It looks like whoever was here could have just stepped out for a few minutes.

No sense in coming all this way to chicken out now. She goes to see what's through the door.

Behind the open door...

A small room with four beds, two on each side, each of which has a small chest next to them for holding gear. There is an entirely too literal lava lamp, which somehow isn't frying her. 

Okay. This is totally normal. Shelter. This is shelter. I should be relieved. I'm relieved, right?

Something buzzes gently against her hip, but she's so caught up in the find that she barely notices. She's going through the chests for anything left behind by the former occupants.

The chests are both better and worse than she expected. Potatoes, stale biscuits, and a small scattering of green gems. Which could mean anything. 

Evenstar closes the door firmly behind herself, presses her back to it, and proceeds to have an intense anxiety attack for the next... while. A while. She doesn't want to risk the stairs back up and she doesn't want to go wandering around the country alone. Her best hope is to eat stale biscuits, stay put, and wait. Someone will come by eventually... right? Right. 

I'm going to be okay. Probably. Maybe. I think. I really really hope. 

Right about then, a black-haired girl appears on the same mountainside. She's wearing a lightweight, ankle-length, blue skirt, and a deeply v-necked purple t-shirt. 

I don't remember heading toward the mountains, Sable thinks. Why are we in a cold-looking mountain?

A kinda square looking mountain, Ruby adds. All blocky and cubic.

Hailey cuts them off. Memory discontinuity or spatial discontinuity. We weren't in the mountains. Now we are. Next actions?

She looks down at their feet. They're standing on a snowy ledge.

Before we freeze or fall?

The obvious next step is down, Maya notes. We climb moderately well. She looks out at their surroundings.

And we appear to be near a hot spring, judging by the lack of snow surrounding those pools and what might be steam wafting up.

They start hiking down the side of the mountain, carefully finding the shallower parts of the slope as they go. It's a little tricky in a few spots, and they slip a few times, but they regain their footing easily enough.

Eventually, they reach the pools. Steam is visibly wafting up. 

This was a hell of a hike. We deserve a rest to warm up our feet before we continue.

Sable pops her shoes off and hikes her skirt up and soaks her legs in the warm water.

Ahhhhhhhhhh...

While she soaks, she investigates the weird, almost phone-like vibrating feeling she had earlier. It almost felt like it came from her pocket, except she doesn't have pockets in this skirt. She reaches in and pulls... a book? From the pockets she still doesn't have?

She has an inventory. That's fucking cool. So what's up with this book and why was it vibrating?

It opens to a chapter titled "First Steps", and a diagram. She pokes the bed icon on a whim, because wow she'd sure love to be back in her cozy bed right now. The pages of the book flip of their own accord, turning to a set of instructions.

Y'know, Hailey interjects, Maybe the author's onto something? This hot spring feels great, but we're burning daylight, and it would be really smart to find shelter before it gets dark. Let's fuckin' go, dork.

Sable shakes her head sheepishly and gets out of the water. Hailey's right.

She dries herself off, puts her socks and shoes back on, and heads down further, looking for anything that would make a good shelter.

Well. That sure looks like it could be shelter. She steps inside the weathered-looking stone structure and makes her way down the spiral staircase with its conspicuous lack of safety features.

Wait, are those footsteps coming down the stairs? 

They are.

She is either saved or doomed so she'd better go find out which. 

Someone with black hair is coming down the staircase. 

Wait, is that...?

"Sable?"

If Evenstar were in a less anxious frame of mind, she might remember to do master-stranger protocols. As it is, she practically throws herself into Sable's arms.

"Eva!?"

She did not expect to run into their long-distance girlfriend in what's increasingly looking like an isekai. Isekai is usually a solo experience. She will not argue, however, and instead scoops Evenstar into her arms and squeezes her so so tightly.

"Seriously?"

Evenstar squeezes her long-distance girlfriend for a long moment and then exhales shakily. 

"I'm just as confused as you. I'm really, really glad to see you though, I — you know how anxious I get." 

She gulps in another breath. "Where did you come from? This doesn't feel like a dream to me, it's too crisp and whole to me. Usually I have sensory issues in dreams and I'm not having anything like that at all, unless you count everything being kind of blocky which is not usual." 

She looks around at the stone walls around her. "This little area seems to be abandoned and safe, as far as it goes. There's a room with beds and some old biscuits..." 

Evenstar takes a deep breath. "Sorry, I'm rambling. Just, you know, real jolt to the system to wake up here like this. I was pacing and worrying and now you're here and — it feels a lot safer, now, I have to say." 

She shakes her head and runs her hands through her hair, rubbing them across her face. 

Abruptly, she realizes she's not wearing glasses. 

"... Huh. I can see. I can see you and I'm not wearing glasses. Okay, the dream hypothesis is starting to feel a little more likely." 

She shakes her head and hugs herself, crossing her arms over her body. 

"Sorry, it's just so surreal. What happened for you?"

Sable sighs fondly and squeezes her tighter. "Valid to ramble, love. We woke up on the side of that icy mountain up there, standing in the snow. Hiked down, soaked our legs in the hot spring for a minute — highly recommended, by the way — and then found this place."

"Oh, speaking of," she pulls out the book. "Any idea what's up with the weird book? It had advice for finding shelter and seems to have other stuff in it too. We found it on us on our way down. And yeah, I can see without glasses too, but everything is much more vivid than dreams usually are for me. I'm leaning isekai at this point."

"Seems hard to believe, but it fits more observations than being kidnapped and dropped in the middle of suspiciously blocky wilderness so let's go with it for now."

Evenstar takes a slow breath. 

"Book? What book?"

She checks her body for one.

There's a strange sensation, like she's pulling from somewhere, and suddenly a book appears in her hands.

"Okay, more evidence to the tune of magic," she reports. "I don't feel like I'm hallucinating but if I am, uh, do your best." 

She opens the book. Inside...

... What on Earth...?

Okay, text is blurry, that's more evidence for dream... 

But most of the characters are totally stable, it's just a few that she can't read...

"Okay, yeah, this definitely looks like an isekai situation." 

Sable's looking at her own and nodding along. "Yeah, it really does. And I don't have a history with hallucination, so if we're seeing the same things..."

She shakes her head. "At least the ROBs seem to like us? Or at least claim to? I wonder if it's a world we'd recognize, given the reference to our expectations. Only world I can think of with an 'Overworld' is Minecraft."

"Certainly the only block game I can think of with an overworld. Well, uh, come on in and I'll show you the room, it seems to be fit for habitation."

Evenstar slips down the hallway and back through the open door, a slight blush on her face the whole way. It's weird to be sharing physical space with this girl she's known for years. She's seen photographs, of course, but she's so wiggly. It's different being in her presence.

"Lucky find." Sable blushes a bit too, as she follows. Is she really going to be rooming together with her girlfriend after all this long-distance time? "The fact that it's taking an isekai to make us move in together is objectively hilarious, though."

"Yeah, I have to say that's kind of funny. I know you didn't exactly choose it, but thank you for being here. It — really helps."

Evenstar moves across the room and sits on one of the beds. "Okay, so we've got shelter and a short-term supply of food, that's a start. Water I think is next? Though maybe we should go through the book, it might help orient us..." 

She offers Sable an uncertain smile. 

Sable blushes softly and takes Evenstar's hand in her own, pulling out her own book.

"Oh," she asks before opening it, a thought occurring to her, "Who's fronting?"

"Oh, yeah, you wouldn't be able to tell necessarily. Honestly I'm not sure I knew myself with all the running about. Um. Hyacinth. It's a little vulnerable, the only time I've fronted visibly to someone else in my own body before was when I was in hospital..." 

She gently squeezes Sable's hand and risks a small smile.

"I've got you here though, so. I think everything will be okay. I don't know how or why but I think it will be." 

She bows her head and kisses Sable's hand.

"Now we just hope that whatever fixed my eyes also fixed the rest of the things that were wrong with me. I — even if it gets bad, I've survived that experience with someone I love by my side, and I'll manage again with you here to catch me." 

She gently tugs Sable down onto the bed beside her. "Come sit?"

She squeezes Sin's hand and sits down, nestling close and holding her warmly as they look at their books together.

"We'll handle whatever comes, together. I've got you, Sin. No matter what." She smiles and kisses her cheek. "This has been the weirdest day of my life so far, though."

Hyacinth blushes a little at the kiss and smiles uncertainly again. 

"Weirdest of mine too, and I've had more than a few super weird days in my life."

She flips through her book a little more. From a casual look at it, it seems to be a list of tasks and advice, though she's having trouble focusing on the words themselves at the moment with her head in such a tizzy. 

"So, starting hypothesis, we're in Minecraft. Minecraft doesn't usually have hot springs though, does it?" 

She frowns a little and taps her chin. "There is that massive cherry blossom forest outside though, and the freezing weather of the mountains seems to stop sharply at its edge — it being a cherry blossom biome would make sense to explain that. So... Modded Minecraft? Someone's modded pack? What mods, though..."

She starts counting on her fingers. "We're in an underground construction that seems to be abandoned but safe — that's, uh, stone-homes maybe? And the hot springs outside mean there's a terrain generation mod too. The cherry blossoms were in... what patch again? I know they're recent in vanilla, but I know we've played packs that had them earlier than that..." 

"Stoneholm, yeah. I remember the other mod I used for cherry trees had thinner logs than other trees, though? Here they seem to match, which suggests vanilla. Cherry trees were added in 1.20, so it's at least that late."

"That it's recognizable at all is probably good. I would have no idea what to do if there was some kind of total conversion mod in play like, I don't know, one of those huge factory development packs. Or Better Than Wolves. I am pretty sure we are not on Better Than Wolves." 

She flicks through the book and examines the page where it says to take shelter. It has a section for "Rewards" — what happens if she bonks the symbol of a cake? 

Apparently it makes a whole cake appear in her inventory!

It feels weird, like there's a part of her kinesthetic sense that wasn't plugged into anything before that now keeps track of what she has on her. There's a sense of weight, shape and density, almost like an imprint against her skin. 

"Okay, uh, I have a cake now. This day just doesn't stop getting weirder, does it?"

She flips through the quests a little more. It seems that finishing the quest to take shelter has unlocked more of them. There's a lot to read. Most of the tasks are fairly simple - collecting stone tools, gathering coal or charcoal, starting a basic farm, making some armor to protect themselves - but there are a few oddballs as well. 

Cherry pie as a reward for viewing cherry blossoms. Of course. 

There's a quest about gathering fresh water. Apparently there's a well somewhere in the vicinity?

There's a quest to meet the locals, as well, which seems to offer everything they could need in the way of food and seeds for a farm.

And last, but not least: 

It seems whoever isekaied her ships her and Sable.

"It certainly seems that the quest-book's author wants us to believe we're in Minecraft on 1.20. Whether I trust them on that is a different matter."

"Yeah, I'm glad we're not on Better Than Wolves too. That would be a lot."

She shakes her head and looks through the book as well.

"Wait, a cake? Okay, I have to try this."

She pokes the cake symbol.

And receives cake.

"Wow. I guess we're having cake for supper? Or lunch? Or whichever meal this is?"

She looks over Sin's shoulder. "Oh huh. Yeah, the ROBs are definitely definitely implying hard that this is Minecraft. Time will tell, I guess?"

"Brupper. Definitely brupper. And honestly, I'd definitely prefer it to the stale biscuits that's the alternative."

She sets down the cake atop one of the chests, and takes her best attempt at a slice. It tastes pretty good, even if it is a bit of a messy handful. 

"You know, this actually isn't half bad."

She places down her cake as well. "Huh, yeah! Surprisingly tasty!"

She blushes, smiles, and hums thoughtfully, looking back and forth at the two beds on the north wall.

Then she leans down and lifts up one of the beds, bracing herself for the expected weight of a whole bed.

Instead, the whole thing just pops politely into her inventory, and she's able to set it tidily down next to the other, where the two sort of merge a bit into one larger bed.

And the book buzzes in Hyacinth's hands. 

"- you just completed the Togetherness quest. Give me a second here -" 

Hyacinth picks up the two beds, and a moment later places two significantly fancier beds down, then follows them with sheets and pillows that come from her book. 

"I recognize that pattern on the sheets," Hyacinth says. "I think that's from Handcrafted." 

She is not entirely succeeding at hiding her blush when she looks back over at Sable.

"So, um. Yeah." 

Distractedly, she tries to pick up the cake on the chest again and put it into her inventory.

It vanishes completely, with nothing remaining in her inventory afterward.

"Wait, what?"

"... Of course. Fucking Minecraft Physics. Once you serve a dish it can't go back into your inventory again. I just destroyed that cake for no good reason."

Sable's blushing too. She squeezes Sin's hand. "It'll be okay. We have the bread, and we can go find more food to plant some crops later today or tomorrow."

"Hey what time even is it, anyway?"

"I think it's getting late, by now, and I don't really want to go check up that twisting dangerous stair when there might be actual real zombies lurking at the top of it. Let's barricade the door for now and try to get some sleep — if we're in Minecraft we'll wake up at the start of the day, right? So we'll be able to try the stair in the morning, when it's safer." 

Sable nods. "They clearly don't have OSHA here, whether here is Minecraft or not. That staircase is absurd."

She looks over at the other beds. "Want a hand moving them?"

"It's alright, I can just drop them out of my inventory covering the door." 

Hyacinth drops the beds in her inventory in front of the door, blocking the way out completely, then flops into her pink-sheeted, heart-covered side of the bed and kicks off her shoes.

She looks over at Sable and hesitates. 

"Um. If you wanted to snuggle, we could. I just — I don't know if it'd be cozy or weird or — you know. It's been a stressful day. But if you want to, I mean..." 

She presses her hand to her mouth and visibly stops herself from continuing to ramble.

She nods. "Yeah, I'd like to try that. If it's uncomfy for you or something we can stop. But I wanna try."

She kicks her shoes off as well, scoots into bed, and pulls her skirt off once she's already under the covers, setting it atop one of the chests.

Then she shyly scoots closer and holds her arms open.

Sin blushes hard when she sees the skirt come off, but she follows suit gamely, slipping off her one-piece dress to be in just her bra and underwear. 

She puts her back to Sable, and squirms backward until her back presses into Sable's chest. 

Sable can feel her breath, too rapid at first, then gradually settling as she gets used to the press of Sable against her.

Sable wraps her arms warmly and gently around Hyacinth, softly stroking her hair. She presses a soft kiss to the back of her head and gives her a gentle squeeze.

"I love you," she murmurs. "It's going to be okay."

"Yeah." 

Hyacinth closes her eyes and listens to Sable's heartbeat. 

Sable smiles softly, still blushing, and runs her fingers through Sin's hair a few more times, before wrapping both arms snug around Sin and closing her eyes as well. They've had a hard day, but they're together. They'll figure it out.

She sends a last burst of love to her headmates as a goodnight, then tries to sleep.

There's a sense of time passing, warm and close and pressed close together, a distant feeling of comfort and rest. 

Then Hyacinth opens her eyes and discovers that she is standing at the foot of her bed, fully clothed in her dress and shoes, and apparently has not fallen over from sleeping standing up. 

"Yeep." 

She takes a slow breath. 

"Thaaaaaat was not a good awakening." She looks over to her side, and discovers Sable standing right next to her, also fully clothed. 

She hugs her. Having Sable near fixes a lot.

This very gamified awakening process produces very jumbled Pirates for the first few moments of being awake. "What. Huh. Glrbl."

And then they process Evenstar's presence and someone manages to cohere enough to hug her.

They take a few slow breaths, holding their girlfriend tightly.

"Morning, sleepyheads."

Hyacinth squeezes the Pirates gently while they figure out who they are this morning. 

She sighs out a breath.

"We're going to have to fix the situation with the bed. I think couches and cushions don't do that; we can make something to cuddle on that's not a bed, and that probably shouldn't cause... that." 

Eventually they cohere enough that Hailey settles into front. She holds Sin at arm's length for a moment, exhales slowly, and then pulls her back into a tight hug.

"Gweh," she replies, eloquently.

"I feel that in my soul."

Hyacinth hugs, then carefully pulls away. She pauses and gives the Pirate in front a few moments to reconstitute from soup. 

It's one thing to be informed that her girlfriends do this every morning, it's another to see it happen right in front of her. 

She takes a slow breath.

"Hi. Hailey this morning. I think," she stretches and twists a bit, trying to feel a bit more embodied, "the extra discontinuity of waking up on our feet fucked us up a bit. Normally we're faster about it than that."

"Yeah. You sure you're okay? I can pull the colored pillows off the bed and we can sit for a bit if you want. Don't think I trust the bed to not... that." 

She nods and squeezes Sin's hands. "Yeah. I think being busy'll help me better. If that was Minecraft physics, though, it probably only happens at night. But no way to know for sure without testing."

"Let's save that for another time." 

She gives Hailey a little smile. 

"At least I got to spend a 'night' together with you all in bed. That's been a dream for me for a long time." 

She blushes and looks away. "Same."

"So! Wha'cha wanna do today? Explore, see the forest and maybe find the locals the book mentioned?"

"We're going to have to head back up that treacherous stair again... It wouldn't be so bad if not for the dark section in the middle, but, yeah. Can't avoid it forever." 

Hyacinth takes a deep breath and clasps her hands together. "I'll lead. I want to see what the world's like out there." 

Hailey nods. "I've got your back. Let's go."

Hyacinth unbars the door, and goes out to the corridor. The treacherous stair stares back at her. 

"Okay," she says to herself. "Let's go." 

She cautiously ascends the steps. 

She edges into the dark section of the twisting stair with a heavy swallow, and keeps going, sticking close to the central pillar. 

Then she bumps into something. 

It's shaped like a person, a foot taller than her — and she's six foot one — and completely black.

"Aaaaaa!" 

She yelps, fumbles away, completely misses the edge of the stair, and falls.

"Shit!" Hailey whips around and looks down toward where Sin fell. "Are you okay?"

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?"

"And I think I see a bee nest over there!" Hyacinth points. 

She runs closer just in time to see an enormous bee pop out. "Wow! It's so big and friendly! It just looks so silly-cute!"

"Wow, it's almost as big as my head! And super cute! It's got, like, anime eyes!" 

Hyacinth giggles, overwhelmed by the ridiculousness of her situation. 

"I hereby declare this bee Fremb." Hailey giggles as well.

Haycinth smiles and darts in to kiss Hailey's cheek, her boldness surprising even herself. It just feels right. 

"Alright, let's keep going." 

She looks away, flustered, a faint blush coloring her cheeks, lips turning up at the corners, then takes Sin's hand and tries heading toward the mountainside. Maybe they live closer to the slope?

Hyacinth follows along, and a few minutes later...

The trees fall away, and Hyacinth lets out a small gasp.

"I think I see them! They're up on the mountain!"

"... That they're all the way up there is a bit of an issue. That terrain looks a bit treacherous." 

"Yeah, that looks like a tricky hike. Might be easier around to the east, though. C'mon."

She takes Sin's hand and leads the way east, finding a shallower slope they can climb.

Sin follows determinedly, keeping as best she can to bare rock, away from snow that might be unexpectedly deep. 

Eventually she comes up to the edge of the town. It looks quite extensive. The road is steep and slippery.

"This place looks kind of treacherous..."

Hyacinth looks at her book again. "Okay, how did it say to greet them — Bow three times, hands clasped, then touch your hands to your chin. Okay. I think we're ready."

On she goes into the village.

She keeps leading the way to the first building. As she walks up to the door, though, a patch of snowy ground unexpectedly turns out to be a deep hole full of powdered snow. She sinks completely into it.

"Ach! Pthp, pheh, ptch blech gweh!"

Much flailing ensues to try to dig her way out of it.

Hyacinth, a step behind her, is too slow to see the hole coming, slips, and falls into the powdered snow right after her, going completely under in the deep loose drift. 

Thinking quickly, she paws at the snow hard, trying to compress it more — and after a few tries she manages to break the top block of it, making it puff into nonexistence. 

Cold's still painfully stabbing into her legs though; she turns her attention to the bottom of her legs and attacks the snow there too, and then turns to help Hailey —

And a few moments later all the snow is cleared away between her and Hailey's flailing. Which just leaves them in an awkward hole in the ground. 

"Well, that was perilous."

Hailey turns and hugs Hyacinth for a moment, just reassuring herself that their girlfriend is okay, then turns back to face the wall. "Okay. Let's get out of this hole."

She jumps up, ready to reach for the top of the ledge, only to find as her hands slide up the stone that she can stick to the sheer rock face.

"Um."

She lets go, and instinctively finds herself springing a bit further upward, landing atop the ledge with ease.

She giggles at the surprise of it. "What?"

Hyacinth gasps as Hailey leaps off of literally nothing, then laughs. "Okay, let me try!" 

She jumps, catches, bounces - and lands up a full two meters higher. 

"That was so cool. I love that we can do that." 

Hyacinth giggles to herself and gently hugs Hailey.

"That goes beyond regular Minecraft physics. Wall-jump mod?"

"Wall-jump mod." She laughs and nods. "Sable and I take a lot of persuading to make a pack without it, so it fits."

"You think we got tossed into one of our own packs?"

"Or at least one inspired by or resembling one of ours. I haven't seen a mod we dislike yet, so whoever assembled it has similar taste, at least. We'll see if the trend continues."

She shrugs, and hops across the hole to the steps, but finds no villagers in the first house, then hops back.

"Something to think about." 

Hyacinth goes on through the town. It mostly seems deserted, but for a small encounter with an iron golem on the way — which, while it is a good sign of them being in Minecraft, she steers around just in case. Seven-foot-tall monoliths of pure steel are to be treated gingerly.

The village is quite extensive, and goes up the mountain quite a ways. There's a few more small incidents with powdered snow on the way up, but every time they're able to recover. 

Eventually...

"Is it just me, or does that look like a windmill?"

Hyacinth takes it in for a moment, then a huge grin splits her face. "We have Create! That'll be a huge help with automation. And it's not some incomprehensible tech mod we've never touched before, either." 

"Hah! Better than like, Ad Astra or something. Was meaning to try that, but never got 'round to it. Or Mekanism. But Create, we know that pretty damned well. There'll be a bunch of shit we can do with that. Automate food, automate materials, automate some of the mining even."

"Yeah. That's definitely a good sign for our overall chances. The more we can get machines to do for us the better." 

And Hyacinth continues on down the street, checking more houses as she goes. 

Until she opens the door to what looks like a restaurant and finds the chef still standing behind the counter.

Quickly, she bows three times and clasps her hands to her chin, in the greeting the book taught to her. 

The man bows his head to her in return, and goes back behind the counter, fussing with some of the raw fruits and vegetables he has in the pantry. 

Hailey bows thrice as well, claps her hands to her chin, and gratefully accepts the gift basket the man offers them.

"Wow. That's enough to really set us up, crop-wise!"

She looks through the basket: beetroots, potatoes, tomatoes, wheat, cabbage, sweet berries, rice, carrots, and onions!

Her quest book vibrates cheerfully in her inventory, too.

"Yeah, wow!"

She bows gratefully to the man once again.

He bows back, then waves a shooing hand at them and goes back to the pot of soup he has on the stove.

"Let's not outstay our welcome. These need to be planted as soon as possible, too."

Hyacinth bows once more and leads the way out the door.

Which is when she realizes that there is a large glass greenhouse in the distance. 

"— ooh! One last thing before we go, I want to see what's in there."

She darts off towards the greenhouse before really thinking about it. 

Hailey chases after her, laughing. "Hey!"

It's a bit of a hike, but not too far.

Hyacinth stops inside the dome, and Hailey catches up to her easily. There's a whole fountain inside, and lots of bushes of roses.

"Gosh, these people really know what they're doing. It's beautiful..."

A large iron golem wanders in from the street and looks directly at her and Hailey. 

"... I don't think we should stick around for long to admire it, though." 

She bows to the golem, wraps an arm around Hailey's shoulders, and makes a fairly speedy exit from the conservatory. 

"That was gorgeous. Now how do we get back out of here?"

She looks around.

"Right. Slope was easiest back to the east. C'mon."

Hyacinth follows along, careful of any more powder snow pockets. 

Gradually, they descend toward the sakura trees below. It's a nice view, if a bit misty. 

They even get to see a cloud go by at ground level along the way.

As they get back into the grove, Hailey comments, "The book mentioned a well. I'd like to try to find that on our way back. What d'you think?"

"Sounds like a good idea. I think it's probably in the cherry forest somewhere? It didn't sound from the book like it'd be a long distance away." 

Evenstar follows Hailey, pointing out a fox in the underbrush as she passes, a little of her confidence coming back to her as she starts to settle into the foreign surroundings a bit more. 

They descend into the cherry forest again, chit-chatting along the way, and gradually work their way along its perimeter. 

Their search proves fruitless, however: they end up on the edge of another biome, this one of green grassy plains and scattered trees, as the sun begins to descend in the sky. 

She frowns. "Looks like we're not finding it this time. Wanna head back?"

"Yeah, probably wise. I don't know how long the days are here, so we should be conservative. I remember Minecraft ones are pretty short." 

Evenstar turns around, and starts making her way back through the trees towards the vague direction of home.

And would you look at that:

"Hey, I think we found the well! It was much closer than we were looking all along." 

She laughs and shakes her head. "Should've figured."

She walks up and checks it out. Sure enough, there are a few empty glass bottles leftover. She dips one down and takes a drink.

"Mmmm. Refreshing. Weird that we're not getting really noticeably thirsty, but I guess that fits with our not usually adding those kinds of survival mods."

Evenstar nods, and looks up at the clear blue sky. The sun shines down steadily from overhead, despite their journey back taking a good ten minutes or so.

"The sun doesn't seem to have moved since we started back."

"Looks like days are longer, too, then. Good to know we'll have more daylight available, at least."

They keep going, and make it back to base soon enough.

"I think everything from here on depends on tools. Time to see if I can punch a tree?"

"Use one of the sticks we got off the forest floor, it'll spare your knuckles and should work just as well."

She scoops up a sturdy-looking stick and takes a few whacks at one of the birch trees near the base. Sure enough, a chunk of log breaks from the middle of it. The floating upper half of the tree is quite the sight.

"Oh wow."

"Heh. Classic Minecraft physics. You see if you can craft some things while I take care of the rest of this tree?"

Evenstar starts knocking out the remaining blocks of tree with her stick.

She takes a couple of the logs and makes first planks, then a crafting table, then sticks, then a wooden axe and pick. She looks over at Evenstar's progress.

She looks back just in time for Evenstar to knock out the last block of the tree and startle as all the remaining leaves abruptly fall to pile up on the ground.

"Yipe!"

"I thought I knew what to expect, but they fell instead of just fading away!" Evenstar rubs the back of her head. "There must be some lumberjack mod installed, I guess."

She nods thoughtfully. "Yeah, must be. Didn't trigger with hands or a stick, but let's try an axe."

She chops the next birch tree with her wooden axe, and the whole thing tumbles apart into easily collectable log blocks after several solid hits.

"Yeah, definitely a lumberjack mod. That's convenient."

Evenstar goes over to Hailey's crafting table and crafts her own wooden pick and axe. 

"Let's see about getting together full sets of stone tools, like the quest in the book said. This biome with all the calcite and basalt is going to be a pain for that, but I think there's some blackstone mixed in we could use."

Hailey nods and jogs agreeably off to a patch of blackstone, digging her way into it. "It sure is fuckin' surreal that I can clear a one meter cube of stone so fast," she comments as she mines.

"Yeah. Minecraft physics may be weird, but for making a lot out of a little they're actually pretty convenient." 

Evenstar helps out with the mining, and incidentally clears some gravel, getting a piece of flint in her inventory. 

"I have an idea. We have all these advanced crops, right? Tomatoes, rice, cabbages, onions. I bet that means that farmer's delight is 'on the server.' And if that's the case, I think I can craft this flint into a proper knife. Call it an experiment." 

Evenstar puts her materials into the crafting grid, and a moment later has a gleaming sharp flint knife. 

"There we go. It worked!" 

"Nice!"

Hailey blushes faintly at the sight of the knife, but dismisses those thoughts. Save that kind of thinking for only if they turn out to have resurrection on this server. She's not eager to let either of them take the risk of finding out.

The quest book vibrates with each new stone tool they complete, and when they've got the standard five, they get another completed quest.

"Hey, sweet. Iron ingot for getting the standard set of five."

But as she's saying that, a zombie wanders out from under some trees and shambles toward them, catching fire as it goes.

"Zombie!"

She fumbles for a moment to get her sword up in time, and gets briefly burned by a flaming punch from the creature, but slays it quickly enough.

"Ow. Fire hurts."

Evenstar manages to land a couple knife stabs as well, contributing to the zombie's quick demise. 

It is almost underwhelming how fast it dies. 

Then she catches her breath and gives Hailey a small smile. "You're okay though? Not injured?" 

"Nowhere but my health bar. I'll live."

She pats herself down just to be sure, and nods.

"I'm glad."

She smiles. "Seems pretty incontrovertible we're in Minecraft at this point, if there's zombies and they burn in daylight on top of all the other stuff we've seen." 

She opens her inventory and pulls out her quest book, and retrieves the reward for her full set of stone tools — a single iron ingot. 

"One iron ingot. Not even two so I could make a sword. Or three for a pick or a bucket. One iron ingot."

Evenstar sighs and shakes her head.

"I feel toyed with."

"Honestly, yeah. It's like they're trying not to break progression too much. I got one too, so between us we could make one iron sword. At this point, though, it's also looking like this is the kind of pack we'd make. Create, a worldgen mod, sticks on the ground, falling trees, Farmer's Delight..."

She shakes her head.

"You got a full set of stone tools?"

"Yeah." Evenstar taps her chin. "I'm thinking it's time for a furnace, and then some surface mining to try and get more iron. There's a lot of exposed stone in this hot springs biome."

"Agreed." She nods and gets to mining, first for enough blackstone to make a furnace with room to spare, then just looking for bits of exposed iron and coal.

Evenstar follows along, darting from patch of ore to patch of ore. The biome is pretty big, and close enough to the shelter that it's relatively safe to futz around in. 

Evenstar wanders to and fro, checking the boundaries of the biome. "Straw!" she announces on cutting some tall grass with her knife, followed by calls of "iron!" and "coal!" and one occurrence of "Cave! Not going in there right now." She kisses Hailey in a field of sunflowers, and spends time with her in simple, rote work. The calcite breaks satisfyingly fast even with stone tools, and there's so much iron and coal to gather...

"Okay, I got a bunch of iron together!" She smiles and looks over her shoulder at where Hailey ought to be. 

Hailey is not there. 

"Hey, where are you?" she calls. "I thought you were right behind me..." 

"Huh. I'm over here to the north of you? Could hear your voice just fine, despite the distance."

Evenstar lowers her voice. "Huh. Same. It seems like we might be... 'in a voice call', more or less. Can you still hear me?" 

"Your voice, at least. Not the little noises of your movement or mining."

"That's a little convenient, but it would be nice if this place would stop surprising me." 

Evenstar sighs and nods. "Alright, I'll finish up out here. The mining is really good."

She looks around, sees a stand of cherry trees off in the distance, and starts walking that direction.

And she comes up on the side of a giant crater full of lava, with a black stone meteorite in the center.

"WE HAVE APPLIED ENERGISTICS!", she yells at the top of her lungs.

"What!? Fucking sweet! Did you find a fuck-off huge meteor or somethin'?"

Hailey is meanwhile collecting bits of iron and heaps of coal.

"Yeah! Huge meteor in a pit of lava. I'm not going over there, there'll be safer meteors — but still! That's huge."

"It really fuckin' is. That's the absolute best high-tier storage mod."

She finishes the vein she was mining and climbs back out of the hole.

"I'm gonna head back to the house, start cooking down all this ore. Meet me there?"

"Will do!" 

Evenstar reorients, realizing that she's heading towards the wrong stand of cherry trees, and heads back towards home. 

Hailey makes it back first, and throws the ore she collected into the furnace she places in their base. By the time Evenstar makes it back, she's back on the surface, digging out a rectangle of stone to make a farm.

Evenstar comes up on Hailey by the side of the farm with a small smile on her face, and gently hugs her from behind, leaning in to kiss her shoulder. 

"Hey, love." 

She blushes and startles a bit.

"Hiya, dork. You're awful cute. I'm digging out a field."

She gestures at the rectangle of stone, slowly being filled in with dirt, a trench down the middle to irrigate it. "Wanna get some water?"

"For sure! Do you have a bucket for me?"

Hailey hands her a freshly-crafted bucket. "Yep. Thanks, babe."

And Evenstar wanders off, humming to herself as she goes over to the well to fetch water.

She returns a minute later with her bucket in hand and turns it out into the channel Hailey's been building, then watches as it spreads halfway-down the row of blocks. It's kind of cool to watch minecraft water physics in action. 

She waves to Hailey and goes back for a second bucket. 

She could get used to this, actually. Helping out her girlfriends with building things. Creating something together. She's always been a sucker for farming in minecraft.

Hazel (for it is she) continues on to spread the water all the way down the channel using the source block duplication trick, and finishes with a warm smile at Hailey. 

"— Just so you know, it's Hazel now. I was kind of blurry for a while there — being in person makes it harder to front — but I think it's solidly me now. Farming in minecraft does that." 

In the end, she's left with a long filled-in row of water, flanked by soil on both sides. It seems clear Hailey is still filling in the farmland a bit.

"Good to see ya, Hazel. I've got to collect some more dirt and fill this in the rest of the way, then we can start planting."

She keeps placing down coarse dirt and smoothing it out into normal dirt with her hoe.

"Good to see you too!" 

Hazel goes over to the closest area of dirt, pulls out her stone shovel, and starts earthmoving. It's not too long of a project. 

She comes back a few minutes later and tosses Hailey a stack of dirt from her inventory. "Here you go, and take this too; I know you've got a furnace somewhere around here." She follows up the dirt with a full stack and a half of iron ore she tore out of the hot springs biome. "I wasn't just wandering off because I'm ADD, the pickings were really surprisingly good."

"Wow! That's enough to set us up for a little while! Nicely done, cuties."

She starts placing down the extra stack of dirt Hazel gave her.

"I'll go start smelting it as soon as this is done. Crops are a bit more urgent."

"Yeah, for sure. Do we have wheat seeds yet? There was wheat in the basket but I don't think you can turn that back into seeds, because minecraft physics."

"Nope. Can't do it with beetroot, either, so we'll need to be on the lookout for those if we wanna do a complete set of crops. And if you get enough straw with that knife of yours at the same time, we can make a bunch of Farmer's Delight ropes to hang around the sides of the staircase, make it safe in case we fall off."

She places the last block of dirt, and then her hoe breaks in the process of starting to till it.

"Looks like I need new tools anyway, so I'll go down and throw the iron in, make fresh tools, and get the crops, all at once. Mind getting the wheat seeds?"

"Not at all." 

Hazel heads back to the grassier area of the sakura forest and starts whacking grass with her knife. Mostly she gets a lot of nothing, but occasionally she gets seeds or straw. 

After she's got ten or so wheat seeds she heads back to the farm, only to realize that Hailey's been busy without her and already planted most of the crops. 

She plants her wheat seeds too anyway, and feels the book buzz on her hip again. 

The farm's really starting to come along now.

She looks up at the sky. The sun is starting to get pretty low, now. It won't be long before nightfall. 

"I'm heading inside," she says to Hailey. "I need to get something to eat, and night's falling soon. We should be safely inside when the undead start spawning." 

On her way down the perilous staircase she puts in a few torches from her stock of coal, lighting the staircase so it's a little less dangerous. 

Then she stops in the safe room, and sits on her side of the bed. Pulling from the stock of wheat in the chest, she crafts some fresh bread and eats a little to fill in the gaps. It's a bland meal, but much better than starving — and she's not actually all that hungry, even after all day outside hiking around. It might be because of how her body is different here, or just because the days here are shorter... hard to tell. 

She finishes planting the rest of the crops, gives a brief satisfied smile to her field of soon-to-be-food, and heads down to join Hazel in their room.

"Got everything planted. Nice rows, to take advantage of Minecraft's row-farming bonus, with the berries off to the side."

She sits down on the bed next to her girlfriend.

Hazel flushes slightly, and then shakes her head as if pushing away a thought.

She smiles at Hailey. "I think I want to go through the book a little more before skipping the night, see what's happened over the work we've done."

Hailey hums curiously and nods. "Yeah, sounds like a good plan."

She leans closer and follows along as Hazel opens the book. "I'm curious what all is in here."

"Let me see..." 

Hazel opens her book to the first page she can. 

It falls open to an index that she's pretty sure didn't exist before. 

"Whoa, all these different chapters..." 

She flips to First Steps, and is confronted with the familiar web of quests that they've been working on today. 

"Okay, so we've been working our way through First Steps. So blue means that we've done a quest from the chapter. Let's see what all the other chapters hold..."

She flips to Entanglement, and looks at the quests in it. 

"So Entanglement is the Applied Energistics chapter," Hazel muses. "Interesting. So each of these chapters maybe represents a mod or a theme...?"

She looks over at Hailey. "What chapter do you want to look at next?"

She frowns. "Sulfur & Flame looks concerning. The name sounds like the Nether."

"Yeah. I'm not sure I want to risk that without a lot of preparation, if at all."

She flips to the page.

She winces. "It's as you feared. The quest book wants us to go to the Nether."

"Ugh. It's necessary for some of the better techs, but still. Definitely need to get very well geared up before we risk that."

She shakes her head. "Agriculture would be practical to check out next. On the other hand, Rebirth sounds neat."

"We can look at them both, then."

Hazel flips back to Agriculture.

"Compost, huh? Farmer's delight again. So it's farming and planting. I guess that was expected."

Then she flips forward to rebirth. 

"Oh. Oh no. Oh yes? Okay, I'm having mixed emotions here. On one hand, minecraft HRT. On the other hand — having to collect, uh, that."

Her face scrunches up in disgust. "Oh gross. We'll do it, because magic HRT has got to be pretty fucking wow, but automating it is some pretty heavy motivation to hit the Nether and make brass."

"Yeah, I think they've got us good with that one. Hard to make brass without blaze burners."

She tilts her head. "Do you actually know anything about Create: Estrogen? I've heard of it as a meme but I've never tried it. Did you ever consider it for a pack before?"

She nods. "We've definitely thought about it. Core device is the centrifuge, which processes filtered horse piss into estrogen. Gets into some Celeste references, too, if I remember correctly."

"Yeah. I could maybe stand for a little less realism in my alternate-reality HRT. But I will at least take it existing."

Hazel looks back at the book. "That leaves exploration, factories, magecraft, and Building Up."

She flips back to Building Up. 

She flushes a little. "Well, um. Someone certainly is invested in us getting along well."

"Um." She blushes vividly. "That. Is not wrong, but the ROBs don't need to say it like that."

She looks away and mumbles. "But they're not wrong."

Hazel flushes as well, but nods quickly. "Y-yeah, that's very true for me too."

She quickly flips to the next chapter she hasn't read — Factory.

"Yeah, okay, so Factory is the Create chapter, it'll detail what integrations we have, that makes sense..." She flips forward again, hoping for something more interesting to fill the gap in the conversation. "For Magecraft there's..." 

"Okay, so it's enchanting? Seems kind of small as a subject to get its own chapter... maybe there's some enchanting enhancement mod? I guess we'll just have to figure it out." 

Still desperate for a real topic of discussion, she flips back to the last chapter she hasn't looked at, Exploration. 

"And I guess we have Atlases rather than some less immersive minimap mod. That's cool, I guess?" 

"Waaaiiit." She grins. "I recognize that icon in the exploration reward. That's a lodestone. You can set a compass to point at one instead of at zero-zero. That's a really great way to always find our way home."

"Cool! Is that a modded thing, or in the base game, or what?"

"Base game," she replies, nodding. "Tricky to obtain normally. You need a netherite ingot."

"Whoa. I wonder if anyone actually crafts them..."

"Good question. We've never tried."

She looks at the chapter list.

"Have we covered everything? I suppose it'll unlock more stuff with time. What new quests do we have in First Steps?"

"Oh, yeah, let me see... There's "build a campfire", "get an iron pick", and "get a set of iron or leather armor." Oh, and livestock."

Hailey laughs. "I can take care of all three of those right now, without leaving the house."

She hops up and grabs a few logs, a piece of coal, a few sticks, and lots of iron from the chest and furnace. Then she gets to crafting. "Okay. Crafted a campfire, probably place it down in the other room at the other end of the hall. Next, a pick. Finally, iron armor. Figure we go right to a whole set each?"

"Yeah, for sure. Sin will feel a lot safer with some protection." 

Hazel winks. 

"I bet."

She gets to crafting, making two of everything, and then tosses one of each to Hazel. "I'mma put the campfire down across the hall."

"Careful of the sm— minecraft physics. Still, I would watch it just to make sure there isn't some realism boosting mod going on."

She nods as she heads off. "I'll watch it for a few minutes while I tidy up that room, just to be sure."

Across the room, she finds a cauldron on the south wall, held to the walls by chains. Also, a lot of stair blocks being used as tables that interfere with her current plans, so she clears those out, starting in the middle of the room. Once the center's open, she throws down the campfire to complete that quest too, and gets to emptying out the rest of the room. It all turns out to be just spruce stairs, apart from one lone chest holding a pair of leather boots — and that completes another quest.

"Hey! There was a pair of leather boots in here, and that completed another armor quest. Got a bunch of smithing templates for it all."

She looks at the ceiling. Has any smoke collected?

No.

Sweet. She jogs back down the hall to the bedroom. "No smoke."

"Glad to hear it. I guess it's time we slept. Or, well, skipped the night."

Hailey flushes and nods. "Yeah, I'll just throw the last of the ore into the furnace for the night."

She does so, then strips out of her armor, shoes, and skirt, and scoots into bed.

"I'm not going to bother getting all the way undressed. It should... ease the transition a little."

Hazel takes off her shoes and lies down in bed. She snuggles cautiously up to Hailey.

"Ready?" She asks.

She nods, smiling softly. "Ready."

And then they both close their eyes.

Once again, there's a sense of time passing, warmth, and safety. Hazel awakens back on her feet at the foot of the bed, once again kicked completely out of bed by minecraft physics.

"Whuff. Less bad than last time now that I know to expect it, but..." She shakes her head. 

She looks over at the Pirates with a soft smile and waits to see who it'll be today.

"Bwuh."

Please be patient. Your Pirates are loading.

They manage to hug Hazel while their brain boots up.

Hazel very gently hugs the Pirates back, and waits.

It doesn't take as long this morning, and soon Sable's arms are tightening around her.

"Hiya, sweetie."

"Hey! Sable, I think? Hailey's less big on calling me a sweetie."

She laughs and nods. "Our voices sound a bit different, too, though that'll take a little while to get used to."

"Yeah. It's just hard to get that from only two words because yours and Hailey's are a bit closer than the two of you and Ruby or Maya."

"Very true," she replies with a soft smile, then presses a soft kiss to Hazel's lips. "Love you."

She flushes a little, but kisses back. "Love you too."

She streches. "So, what to do today?"

"Probably one of us should make some food, and then I think I want to build an animal pen."

She runs a hand down Hazel's side, gently.

"I've got a knife, some chicken, and enough crops to make something actually tasty that isn't a sweet. I'll go harvest and make you some chicken sandwiches." 

She sighs. "I bet the crafting interface won't let me not put lettuce on them, though. Farmer's delight is a bit insistent on lettuce on everything. It's alright, there's still bread, I won't starve, it'll just be a pretty boring day for me cuisine-wise." 

"Right, your sensitivity." She runs her fingers through Hazel's hair. "Hm. If we've got any integration between Create and Farmer's Delight, we'll be able to make more-flexible chicken sandwiches sooner or later, but you may be stuck for now, yeah."

"I think we should try and get together some animal pens today," Hazel says. "We can use the meat, and even if we decide the animals are a little too intelligent for us to be comfortable killing them there'll be eggs and wool and milk and feathers, all of which are important for comfort. Eggs in particular would let me make egg sandwiches, which would be a huge step up from nothing but bread."

"We do have the berries, at least, so you can probably make something with those."

She stretches and gets her armor on.

"Yeah, I'll think about it. Let's get moving, daylight's spending."

She gets her armor on, goes over to the door, opens it, and heads up the spiral staircase to the surface, careful to take it slowly so she doesn't fall.

The crops have all grown in overnight, so she gets busy harvesting.

Meanwhile, Sable treks up to the cherry grove and starts chopping trees and replanting them. She finds herself covered in leaf piles a few times.

"You figure we go for a whole barn, or just a pen for now?", she asks while she chops.

"Just a pen for now; we can always raise a barn around an existing pen, but raising a whole barn and then having to go to bed having done just that for today would be uncomfy. Better to get the animals together first and then get them something proper to keep the rain off."

Hazel replants rows of crops, carefully reseeding her farm. 

"Yeah, that makes sense."

She giggles as another leaf pile drops on her, continuing to chop trees.

Hazel finishes re-seeding, then goes to the sakura forest and digs more dirt to expand the farm with. Once she has a stack (and has broken her stone shovel) she goes back to the farm... and promptly gets distracted by trying to find enough blackstone to replace her broken tool. She doesn't want to take it from the nearby pools' rims because it'll ruin the local landscape...

She is in the middle of her search when she almost bumps headlong into a pig. And she's got carrots on her from her harvesting.

"There's a pig over here," she says, trusting the 'voice call' to carry her words to Sable. "Should I try and bring it back to the house?"

"Good idea! Thanks for finding one."

Sable keeps chopping trees.

"Alright! Here piggy piggy..." 

She dangles out a carrot from her inventory, and the pig's eyes fix on it. It comes in close to her, then stops an arm's length away and looks at the carrot fixedly. 

Hazel backs away a bit, and the pig follows, keeping its same exact distance. 

She keeps backing away, and almost bumps into another pig. It fixes on the carrot in her hand too, and follows her as placidly as the first. Even when she bumps into trees and has to pause, neither pig is impolite enough to take the outstretched carrot from her hand. This continues on all the way back to the shelter. 

As soon as Hazel puts the carrot away, the pigs lose interest and start wandering randomly. She needs a pen if she's not going to stand here all day. 

She pulls her carrot back out and gathers up the pigs again.

"Please, ma'am," she says to Sable over the 'call', "May I have some wood?"

Sable laughs and blushes. "Yeah, you can."

She wanders over toward the farm, looking for Hazel, and then passes some logs to her before going back to chopping.

"Almost done over here."

Hazel hastily throws together an improvised pen to keep the pigs in, working as fast as she can to fence them in while they try to wander off. It's slightly challenging to herd both of them, but she manages it after a couple minutes.

Then she slowly refines down the kind of ramshackle pen until it neatly confines the two pigs. 

By this time, Sable's gone on to clearing land up the hill for a proper pen; she goes and pitches in. 

In fact, she pitches in so enthusiastically that she accidentally bonks Sable in the side with the wooden axe she's clearing trees with. 

"Sorry!"

The axe hit pulls a surprise yelp out of Sable, but she shakes her head and hugs Hazel before getting back to work. She soon finishes leveling the hilltop where they've agreed to put the future pen. "Separated pens, you think, or all together?"

"Saparate pens for each animal, but they can share walls. More efficient that way. I'll go fetch more animals while you build?"

Sable nods and gets to work. Early in the process of deciding the layout, she has a moment of feeling like it would be easier if she could mark where she wanted walls and corners, and then a thought occurs to her.

"Oh hmm. We've got all this calcite... I wonder."

She crafts two calcite together... and gets a stick of chalk.

"We have chalk!"

"Oh, nice! That'll make caving a lot safer."

Hazel goes off and starts collecting the sheep she saw earlier. 

Sable chalks out the outline and carefully builds each pen, long rectangles sharing walls, with gates at the south (house-facing) end. Eventually they're all laid out, and she tries another idea.

Hmm. What if I try a recipe like the composter but shorter? That should be a trough, if we have that mod. Only one way to find out.

She tries it, and successfully makes a feeding trough. Then makes three more, and puts one in each pen at the front corner, for easy access.

Hazel goes and fetches cows, and comes back.

At which point she witnesses the sheep making a break for it over the fence by using the feeding troughs as steps. 

"Sable, they're getting away!"

"Shit! I should've realized the trough would be enough of a step."

She immediately picks up all the troughs and grabs a carrot and a stalk of wheat, and starts luring animals back into pens, and using fences to try to sort them back into the right pens.

Hazel helps out as best she can with her own wheat and carrots, and after a few false starts (and some interfering cows) manage to get the farmyard animals sorted out into a pen each. 

"Okay," she says after all the higgledy-piggledy is done with. "I think we have that sorted now."

Hazel takes a sigh of relief. 

Feeling a bit annoyed at the animals, Hazel heads downstairs to prepare to harvest them, primarily by making a proper knife to slaughter them with but also by arranging her food situation. 

Sable collects more logs to use for house-building, then has a thought and calls down to Hazel.

"Sweetie, could you harvest the crops and fill the feeding troughs? Wanna get the livestock fed sooner rather than later."

"Oh, yeah, I can definitely do that! Just a second!" Hazel answers distractedly, not really hearing the words, and hurries up her food processing.

"Yeah, could use some wheat. Thanks." Sable keeps chopping trees. It'll take a lot of wood to build a house.

Yeah, okay, wheat, wheat —

Wait, are the animals escaping gain? She wasn't really listening too closely —

"Coming!", Hazel calls back, and grabs the wheat from the chest and hurries up the twisting stair — 

But in her hurry, she slips, and plummets from the stair.

She doesn't even cry out. Her last thought is "Aura will catch me." 

Her aura doesn't save her. It shatters.

Evenstar42 fell from a high place.

"Hazel!!"

Sable drops what she's doing and rushes for the base.

"Shit shit shit shit please be respawned please be respawned," she mutters as she sprints.

"I'm alive! Fuck that stair! It's okay, I'm okay, I respawned!" 

Hazel wraps herself in the bed's sheets and comes quickly to the bottom of the stair, where her own grave waits for her on the ground of the passageway. 

Yeah none of that is stopping Sable from continuing to sprint to Hazel to hug her.

"Fuck that staircase so much, I'm tearing it out, that's the next construction project, we're just tearing the whole fucking thing out. Replacing it. Fuck."

She reaches the bottom of the stairs and wraps her arms so tightly around her girlfriend.

"I love you. You're so important. I'm so glad you're okay."

Hazel hugs Sable so hard. "Wasn't even a fucking monster, just a stupid badly designed stair and a moment of haste —"

She squeezes Sable tighter and sniffs back tears. "G-guess this is why we've got OSHA on Earth, huh..."

She chuckles wryly and nods, stroking her hands through Hazel's hair. "I love you. You're safe. I'm so glad you're safe. My precious girl. I love you so much." She keeps squeezing so tightly.

"I love you too. I'm so glad I'm not dead."

Hazel lets out a soft sigh and hugs Sable firmly.

"I'm so glad you're not dead too." The hugging will continue until the desperate relief subsides. "I'm glad this world already has resurrection, so I don't have to invent it myself, and then stab whichever god forgot to include it. That would've been such an ordeal, and I would've been so lonely without you."

She continues to hug Hazel so tight.

Hazel hugs Sable firm and hard and holds her tight to her. 

"I didn't even expect to die when I fell off the staircase, it was just, 'whoops,' bam, and I woke up at the foot of the bed..." 

She nods and keeps hugging.

There is so much hug.

"I'm so glad you're alright."

"I am too. In a way I'm glad we learned this now, instead of in a worse situation..."

She presses in a little closer to Sable. "Still... It makes me shiver." 

She nods. "Yeah. It's scary. Better now than when we're doing stuff further from home, but... Oof."

She continues to hug.

"... By the way, I think the quest book vibrated on my hip when I respawned."

Sable side-eyes the quest book. "That..." She sighs. "Of course it did. Well, let's find out what ROB-chan and ROB-chan have to say."

She opens it up and looks alongside Hazel.

"Ugh. I kind of hate our ROBs. What a cruel joke. I have to admit it's a little funny, but..." 

Hazel shakes her head and hugs Sable closer.

Sable nods and hugs Hazel tighter. So so tight.

"Yeah. Wanna take the rest of the day off to snuggle?"

"Yeah, for sure." Hazel hugs Sable firm and close.

In that case, Sable scoops Hazel into a princess carry with a playful smile and a kiss to her forehead.

"Eep!" 

She flushes a little, but clings on gamely, and a little smile comes to her face despite herself. 

She carries her girlfriend off to their bed, sets her down in it, pulls her shoes off, kicks off her own, and wraps around her so tightly.

"I love you," she says with a smile.

"I love you too." 

Hazel cuddles in closer.

Sable has a distant, thoughtful look for a moment.

Then blushes and looks away.

"Damn it, brain. Not now."

Hazel gets a little smile on her face. "Having interesting thoughts?"

She grins sheepishly. "Maaaaybe?"

Hazel giggles, and strokes Sable's hair a little more. "You're so yourself." 

Sable looks down, blushing and smiling. "I suppose. Still, not a topic for right now."

She squeezes Hazel tighter.

"So did you sort out the animals, or..? I thought you called for wheat."

"Hmm?" She tilts her head. "Oh, that was just to fill the feeding troughs."

"And here I thought the animals were escaping or something..." She shakes her head and nuzzles in closer. "Silly me..."

Sable sighs softly and shakes her head, running her hands through Hazel's hair.

"Sorry for startling you into rushing."

She presses a soft kiss to Hazel's forehead.

"So you're going to tear out that stair, right? The book says we have unlimited lives, but I don't know if I trust it after that."

She nods firmly, glaring in its direction. "Absolutely. Whole thing's getting replaced with something completely unperilous. That's the next project, as soon as we're out of bed." She punctuates her promise by squeezing Hazel again.

"I am so in favour of unperilousness."

Hazel snuggles in, and stays. 

Sable stays wrapped around Hazel, petting her gently and occasionally kissing her forehead, until she falls asleep.

She seems pretty deeply asleep, in fact.

Oh good. Sable gets out of bed, since there is still plenty of daylight left, and goes to get all her freshly-chopped cherry logs. It's time for a perilous staircase to die. RIP to whichever long-dead villager designed this thing, sucks to suck. She puts it all in a chest at the bottom, then fills her inventory with stair blocks and planks, and starts tearing it apart from the top. As she goes, she replaces it with a new wooden staircase. The shaft is five meters by five meters, with a central stone brick pillar, so she builds each flight of stairs three by two, with a one-by-five landing at each end, and an additional block of cherry planks in between the flights connecting each landing to the central shaft. A torch hanging from the central pillar illuminates each landing. She gets a vibration from the quest book on her way down, but ignores it in favor of finishing the job.

When it's all said and done, she looks upon her work proudly, packs away all the wood in the main bedroom, and strips off her clothes to fall into bed alongside her girlfriend.

And time skips again to the next morning. 

Hazel rocks on her feet in her dress and makes a muzzly noise.

Sable manages to boot up reasonably quickly this time, and wraps her arms snugly around Hazel before she even gets out of muzzy-noises-mode.

Hazel hugs her instinctively, and then finally boots up and squeezes firmly. 

"G'morning lovely creature." 

"Pot, kettle, cutie." She squeezes tighter, smiling and blushing a bit.