Into the fold

“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.