mysteryguest

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The sun is bright and blinding when Grian wakes up in his quaint little hobbit hole, its light peeking through the window.

Groaning tiredly, Grian tucks his head underneath his blanket, successfully becoming a human-sized cocoon. Except, instead of coming out as a butterfly, he’ll come out looking like a zombie, most likely.

 And look like a zombie he does, when, after the sound of a flurry of rockets firing, the door to his hobbit hole is knocked on very loudly. Quite literally rolling out of bed, Grian lands upon the floor with a thump, and crawls his way out of the blanket cocoon to tread downstairs and thumps his head against the door.

 The knocking ceases.

 Sighing quietly, he rubs at his eyes and slowly opens the door. His eyes have already fallen shut by the time it’s open.

  “Wh’d’you want.” Grian states.

 “Woah, hey there, G-Man!”

  Grian opens his eyes, and offers a small smile when he meets Scar’s own grin.

  “Oh,” He hums. “Hey Scar. Sorry for taking so long, ’m not a morning person.”

 “Yeah,” Scar laughs. “I can, uh, see that. Sorry for bothering you so early, but!”

  Scar raises a finger as if to stop Grian from saying anything. The man in question is too tired to formulate another coherent sentence.

  “I was won-der-iiing, if you…” He begins, his bright grin turning shy. “Wanted to go end-busting with me? I mean, I really miss the wind in my hair, man, and end-busting is way easier with someone who already has wings.”

  Grian blinks, forcing himself to wake up a little more. End-busting?

He hums, glancing at the soft lavender hue of his feathers, before tucking his wings in and shrugging.

  “Sure, why not?” He agrees. “Probably a bit later, though. I gotta wake up, first.” He adds with a smile. Scar giggles, nodding.

 “Of course, of course! Oh!” He gasps, fumbling around in his pack before pulling out a barrel and a handful of different colored items- though what they were, exactly, Grian wasn’t sure from a glance.

  Grian pretends like he doesn’t notice Scar rapidly putting the things inside the barrel. A poor man’s shulker box.

  “Before you go and wake-up-ify yourself,” Scar starts, a sly grin growing on his face, “I have some magical crystals you may be interested in buying!”

  Grian falls silent, his gut churning at the mention of magic. Magic was bad. Magic was dangerous. He thought the whole wizard getup was a bit, not the real thing!

Scar seems to take his uneasiness as uncertainty, however, and continues his sales pitch.

  “Now, now, I see some hesitance there. But I can assure you, these magical crystals are 100% the real thing!” Scar says brightly, pulling out two “crystals” from the barrel. “Here, on the house! Think of it as a sample. There’s a health boost crystal, ooh, and a luck crystal! We’ll need them for the end-busting.”

  Grian looks at the crystals. It’s quite obviously chips of stained glass.

Suddenly, as he reaches out to grab the “crystals”, he feels very stupid for thinking any of the hermits would have gotten a hold on magic, of all things, how silly of h-

  “AH!” Grian yells, snatching his hand away from the glass. He hisses through his teeth and grabs his now-burnt hand.

 “Ohmygosh! Grian, are you ok?!” Scar yells, dropping the crystals. “I’m so sorry, that’s never happened before, I’m so so sorry- are you alright? Do you need a health potion? I mean I don’t have any yet but I’m sure there’s someone who-”

 “Scar,” he rasps, suddenly much more awake. “It’s fine. Just a little burn. I just need some water, probably.”

 “Right! I’ll- I’ll go get that, stay right there!” He yelps.

  As Scar stumbles away to the nearby lake, Grian releases his hand with a wince and looks at the damage. 

 His heart nearly stops.

 Littered over the palm of his hands are faint burns, stretching out like lighting, but that’s not what scares him. What scares him is the faint glow of purple flickering in the center of his hand. He clenches his hand shut into a fist, holding back a hiss of pain, and looks up just as Scar comes back with a bucket full of water.

 He shoves in his hand before Scar can say anything without a second thought, hoping that the magic will go away.

When he pulls his hand back up, the faint burns are less irritated, and the glow of magic is gone. He lets out a quiet sigh of relief.

  “Again, I’m really sorry, Grian,” Scar whines, setting down the bucket and picking up the two crystals from the ground. “Maybe these ones are just duds? We- we’ll probably be fine in the end without-”

 “Actually,” Grian cuts him off in a hurry. “Maybe tomorrow?”

  Scar falls silent, face scrunching up with guilt.

  “Of course,” he says quietly. “Let me know if you need anything, okay? I’ll come drop off a health potion for you later anyways.”

 “...Thank you, Scar. I’ll make sure to do that.” Grian replies just as softly. “And… It’s not your fault, don’t feel guilty, ok? It’s just a small burn, I’m fine.

  Scar gives a small smile and picks the bucket up to dump back into the lake, giving a farewell as he walks out of sight. Turning away with a tight frown, Grian shuts the door behind him, sliding to the ground as he takes a deep breath.

 He looks down at his hand again. Any trace of that faint Watcher magic that had shown was gone.

It was probably nothing, he thinks, as his heart pounds loudly in his chest.