#tmoto

Hello! I'll admit I still haven't entirely given up on the story ^^ as much as I struggle to write in general I would still love to get back to it one day.

I had a lot of things planned, but working on that fic was a ton of work since I was constantly rewatching old Evo videos and rereading what I had already written (Since there were many disjointed thoughts coming from Grian I had to be careful not to repeat stuff when not meant to or forget to include something) also when I was writing that the area 77 arc was still going. I had a very clear image of where everyone was and what they were up to which I really liked, now I wouldn't have that, I would have to go back and rewatch a lot of videos, even if the events of the story move away from canon.

I actually wrote a scene for the story not too long ago (I woke up at like, 4 am, with the need to write Keralis and Grian interacting because BOI do I like what I had planned for Keralis's character in that story) in the scene Grian wakes up after Keralis bonked him on the head with a bottle because he was doing the thing again and then proceeded to offer him a sangria, they are wonderful and Grian has a headache.

He clutched the book tight leaving some ink stains on the cover. “It’s messy..” He muttered before handing it to Mumbo.

Mumbo smiled taking the book. Seemingly relieved.

“If it’s anything like your base then be ready to catch me, ‘cause I will faint” He joked.

Grian chuckled slightly.

"I can’t believe I'm helping you." Grian heard his friend mutter under her breath.

"You always say that!"

He chuckled as he carefully placed the TNT around the room, creating a checkerboard pattern in the floor. 

This was going to be hilarious. They would be so scared to walk around here! 

"I always mean it," He heard a little bark coming from the door's direction as he placed his last bit of TNT.

"I'm gonna put Rufus outside, it's too dangerous in here for puppies!" 

Grian smiled, of course, she would think about the dog's safety. 

He turned in her direction ad saw her picking the dog up in her arms. The puppy barked and waved his tail happily as he tried to give her kisses on the face. 

She laughed as she tried to open the door while holding the puppy away from her face.

"Aww! He likes you N--

Grian woke up suddenly in his bed, his heart was beating frantically and his ears ringing. 

Almost instantly he tried to look at his watch to know the time, but he had to take a deep breath first and felt the smell of gunpowder in his nose.

That usually meant one thing.

He looked inside his inventory. Empty.

He had died. He had died while he was spacing out again. 

He quickly looked at the main chat on his communicator.

<Grian was blown up by Creeper>

Grian groaned. Of course It was a creeper! What perfect timing! 

He saw a glimpse of some messages as closed the com but he would think about those later. If he was lucky they were talking about other things and not asking about his new death.

He didn't feel lucky today, not with this start. 

Grian pressed the palms of his hands on his eyes for a few moments, trying to recollect what little he had remembered before thinking about what he was doing before. 

He almost had a face, he almost had a name! 

What was it again?

How was she?

 She was.. she was nice. She was.. caring.

Grian's chest ached a little, a feeling he couldn't really pinpoint. He missed this person he couldn’t remember maybe?

What was her name?

Something with an N? 

Something...

His thoughts got blurry quickly, he felt as if what little he was feeling and remembering was about to escape from his hands like sand. He closed his hands into fists as he felt frustration build up in him.

 The wandering thoughts. Trap them in ink.

Grian jumped down from his bed, leaving it a mess and rushing to the nearest ender chest.

He quickly grabbed a spare elytra and clumsily put it on. It was slightly crooked. If the other saw him they probably would have scolded him for putting it on so badly, something about it being unsafe. It didn’t matter now.

He needed to get to his stuff quickly.

The took off was messy, he almost face-plants into the three line of the commune. The others would have been right telling him that flying with an elytra non-properly secured was a stupid idea. Still, he managed to fly off. 

He landed at Hermitland pretty soon, tripping a little on his steps and feeling the elytra twists around his back uncomfortably. 

Where was he before? Where did he die?

He should have looked for creeper holes while he was still flying, but didn't think it through properly. He was too preoccupied with landing without crashing.

He tried to remember.

What was he doing before spacing out? What did he need to do?

He was.. he..

The Sahara Eats stand! He was restocking it!

With a grin, he ran on the gray pathway in the direction of the mini shops. 

He caught a glimpse of a familiar gray helmet peeking from the entrance of Dig straight down as he ran past it.

“Hey Grian-” He heard Xisuma call but he didn’t bother turning around, he arrived at the shop and saw the hole that the creeper had left.

The shop was slightly damaged but nothing that couldn't be fixed in a few minutes, he looked at his scatterer belongings and quickly jumped down the hole, grabbing everything but most importantly what he needed right now.

The book.

He flipped through the scribbled up pages until he got to a blank one.

He tried to put down what little he had remembered, but he couldn’t really find the right words. 

She's caring, her name starts with N. She's a dear friend.

Grian felt frustration build up as he didn't seem to be able to add anything more to it. Nothing else. 

He took in a deep breath and tried to let the emotion go away. Don't get angry, just think a little bit more.

What did her face look like?

She looks- her face- her smile- 

Grian stared at the tip of his pen as a drop of ink fell on the messy page. The image he had in his head wasn't clear enough to put it in words.

Maybe words weren't the right idea.

He started scribbling messy lines, he wasn't exactly an artist but he did draw from time to time, usually building projects. It surely wouldn't do justice to this person but it was better than leaving the page blank.

In the middle of the page, there was now a drawing of a faceless figure holding a puppy. 

Grian resisted the urge to rip the page out of the book.

"Is everything alright?" Grian instinctively closed the book before looking up at the voice.

Xisuma looked down at him from outside the hole, Grian didn’t like not being able to tell what his expression was like because of his helmet, he could only see his eyes when he wore that. 

“Yeah! I just..” Grian clung hard on the book for an instant then stood up quickly, taking some dirt from his inventory, putting the book at its place. “Need to patch this up, and Sahara eats too! I didn’t hear the creeper.”

“I see,” X replied calmly.

Grian started filling up the hole, trying not to look at the admin. Which became a little more difficult when he jumped down the hole too and started filling it with him. 

Luckily Xisuma didn’t say anything, just helped to fill the hole and then fixing the Sahara Eats stand. Grian was glad about it. 

“Thanks.” He said, unsure if he was thanking him for not asking anything else or for fixing the hole. Probably both. 

“No problem.” He was about to walk away but stopped, as he had remembered something.  

“Say, did you see Doc and Scar around lately?”  

Grian frowned, thinking about the last time he had seen the two of them. He was sure he had seen them work on the entrance of area 77 at some point a week ago… or was it two weeks ago? Still, he didn’t see them in a while. He assumed they were busy with whatever was going on inside the depths of the military facility.

"Not really, I think they have been working on the inside of area 77.."  Probably on his time machine actually. "Why you ask?" 

"Keralis asked me to go check on them, he seemed a little worried… I'll probably go take a look today."

Oh? Was Keralis paying more attention to them than he was? He knew that he had built his house in a place specifically chosen to look in the area, had he noticed something he and Ren didn't? Or was he just a worried friend? 

Probably the latter, Keralis seemed like a very good friend, even if he had spoken very little to him, he had shown he was a very good person in those moments in the cave a few days ago. 

Maybe he should visit him later. 

"I'll keep an eye out for them. I should be doing that anyway." 

Xisuma tilted his head to the side. 

"Try to also sleep sometime. You could use those bags under your eyes as extra inventory space."

It sounded like a joke, but at the same time, it wasn't. Sleeping had been too difficult lately. 

Grian instinctively brought his right hand under his eye. Was it so bad? It's true he was going on mostly 4 hours of sleep per night this week, but he didn't think it would be so noticeable. 

"Well, maybe that was my goal all along!" Grian replied with a slight grin. 

Xisuma chuckled lightly. 

"Seriously, take care."  He said softly before walking off. 

"I'm trying to" it's what he wanted to say. But he held it back. He waited until the admin was out of sight to move, he didn't know why but he felt as if he was stuck in place until he was completely out of his line of sight. 

He managed to finally restock Sahara Eats and fixed the straps of his elytra. He was about to fly back to the commune when he felt the low buzz of his communicator. 

[Private message from MumboJumbo]

<MumboJumbo> Can we hang out today?

He looked at the message for a while. 

Technically he should go back to work in his way inside area 77. He had started to dig a tunnel to get in there, but he had noticed that spending too much time in that tunnel made him.. space out more frequently. As long as he was inside of it.

He thought about the book in his inventory, he had managed to map out an entire room from his memories. A room he used to have, with tunnels everywhere going under people bases. He knew all the tunnels were supposed to be named, but he didn't remember the names yet. 

That's what he saw the most when he went down there.

He needed Ren around to shake him up from time to time to actually work on the tunnel, and today Ren was busy building something else. 

So maybe spending some time with Mumbo was a good idea. 

Sure, if he didn't fall asleep on him. 

He sent a simple reply and flew off to a nether portal. 

---

In the main redstone room of the Sahara building, Mumbo smiled tiredly at his communicator. 

[Private message from Grian]

<Grian> Sure! Where are you?

<MumboJumbo> Sahara

He signed in relief as if a giant boulder had been taken off his chest.

He hadn’t been able to calm down up until that point, he didn’t know why he felt such a rush of anxiety when he saw that death message.

<Grian was blown up by a creeper>

Mumbo had twisted and turned nervously the little gold ring on his finger for minutes on end. 

Was it an accident? Was it that again?

He couldn’t know. That’s probably what made him so nervous 

He put had the communicator back in his pocket and tried to get back to work. He needed to get himself a little busier, but even working on the complicated redstone of Sahara didn’t help him much.

He had made a promise. And he intended to keep it. 

But that promise didn't really have a clear definition.

 Grian said he wanted to be treated normally, he didn't want to see their worry or concerns.

But Mumbo just didn't know anymore what would feel normal to Grian. 

To him worrying was normal, he couldn’t stop. Even if he wanted to. 

He wanted to ask if everything was all right, to go check on him so often. But he had to hold himself back. 

He didn't know what was the limit. 

How much concern could he show to his friend before he felt like he wasn't being treated normally? 

What if he asked one too many times how was he doing and Grian shut completely?

What if Grian felt Mumbo broke his promise? 

He couldn’t let that happen. He cared too much to risk that. 

He thought about all the possible outcomes to every question and every conversation, he saw the worst first and then the most likely. He picked words carefully when he could. 

Though messages it was easy, he could stare at the messages and read them over and over before sending them. Till they felt safe enough.

He had spent way too much time just writing “Are you okay?” or “Is everything alright?” and any other variations of these phrases, to just cancel them a few moments later. 

This probably wasn't "treating him normally" but Mumbo couldn't help it!

He was scared.

He was so scared of what was happening to his friend, he was scared he would get farther and farther away from him if he didn't do something quickly. 

He was scared he would stop talking.

Grian was right when he said that he and Iskall couldn't help. It felt so true, but they still tried! They tried so hard.

Mumbo took a deep, deep, long breath. 

He was overthinking everything again. 

Right now he needed to finish his work on the redstone circuit and then he’d be able to just..hang out with Grian! Nothing else. 

If they could spend a day together without worrying about anything it would mean that everything was going mostly okay, no?

He hoped so. 

It didn’t take much for Grian to arrive and the first thought that crossed Mumbo’s mind was that he needed a nap. 

He looked tired, but Mumbo had seen him in worst conditions actually, which reassured him slightly. He remembered how he and Iskall looked when they were working on the G-Team base, they looked more dead than Cleo. 

"Hey dude!" Mumbo called him from the top of the redstone contraption. 

Grian looked up and gave a small and tired smile. 

“Still updating the system?” 

Mumbo nodded. 

“Yeah, but I’m almost done, don’t worry about it!”  He said as he speeds up the pace to finish his work.

He also realized that he didn’t really think of what to do with Grian yet, sure hang out, but what else? Maybe they could go play some of the games over at Hermitland, but Grian probably had just came from there! He should have thought about it better. 

Maybe they would decide on something once he was done.

“How’s the hippie stuff going?” He asked without stopping his work on the machine. 

“I’m trying to make a tunnel and Ren made a “shroom room”... I can still smell the mushrooms on my clothes!” 

Mumbo frowned, unsure of what a “shroom room” looked like, then he grinned slightly and looked down at Grian, that was still standing near the entrance of the room.

“Ah, yes. I can clearly smell them too!” He said jokingly. 

“Hey! I don’t stink that bad!” Grian gasped in fake offense as he held back a laugh. 

Mumbo chuckled seeing his friend trying to hold back an amused smile and failing miserably. 

“My nose says otherwise!” He added as he went back to his work. 

He spent a few more minutes working on the circuit, it was almost done, just a few more blocks to be placed and then he just needed to check if it all worked, tho, even if it didn’t work he wouldn’t spend more time on it, he would fix it later. 

“Is it because of your tunnel that you look so tired? Did you spend all night digging it?” He then asked hesitantly.

Grian didn’t respond right away and when he did it came out more very softly and hesitant almost as the question before. 

“No… that’s not why.”

Mumbo waited quietly for his friend to continue. 

He didn’t. 

“Uhm, Why then..?” he asked as he placed the last piece of the machine. 

No response. He fidgeted with the ring on his finger. 

“Grian?” He called as he looked down. 

For a moment his blood ran cold as he saw the familiar sight of Grian standing there, gaze fixated on an undefined place on the window. 

He was about to jump down from the machine and go next to him but Grian seemed to snap out of his little daze very quickly. 

It maybe lasted a minute or two then. He rubbed his eyes tiredly and then reached for something in his inventory.

A book and quill. 

He sat on a nearby chest and started writing.

Mumbo let out a shaky breath and stopped fidgeting with his ring. This was fine, he was.. fine. He didn't even hear his question but it was okay, he would ask again later.

“What are you writing there?”  Mumbo asked trying to peek from the height of the Redstone contraption. Not that he could see anything other than black splotches all over the page.

Grian seemed a little startled as if he was so concentrated on what he was writing that he had forgotten Mumbo was in the room with him. He almost let the ink fall down on the page but managed to stop the bottle from spilling and only get a few drops on his hand instead.

"Sorry.." He muttered under his breath, looking for something to clean his hand with. Then signed and put his hand on a blank page, leaving a few stains and probably deciding to clean the rest later. 

He looked down at the page for a few instants then up at Mumbo. 

"I've been trying to write down all I started to remember," He looked back down on the scribbled up page and added a few lines "It should help, I hope." He added speaking softly.

Mumbo rubbed his hands together to get rid of some of the Redstone dust and jumped down from the machine, letting his elytra activate to get near Grian in a swift landing. 

"Can I see?" He asked holding back the urge to start fidgeting with his golden ring once again.

Grian's first instinct was to close the book with a quick and loud sound. Like he had done earlier when Xisuma saw the book. He had been contemplating whenever it was a good idea or not to show it to others and his guts kept yelling at him that "no" he shouldn't show it. 

The amount of scribbled up sentences without rhyme or reason, the messy drawings and random words. In his mind, that would have made him look insane to the eyes of others.

But he too had made a promise. 

He would talk. 

He clutched the book tight leaving some ink stains on the cover. "It's messy..” He muttered before handing it to Mumbo.

Mumbo smiled taking the book. Seemingly relieved.

“If it’s anything like your base then be ready to catch me, ‘cause I will faint” He joked. 

Grian chuckled slightly. 

Mumbo sat beside Grian on the chest and opened the book. 

The first thing that caught his attention was the phrase written on the back of the cover.

"Wandering thoughts are easier to keep track of if you trap them in ink?"  He read out loud.

"It was already there when I got the book, it's just a way to say that I should write down stuff I remember."

"A very fancy way to say it."

"Yeah... At first, I thought it might have been by Joe, but I've seen his handwriting, he's not this bad."

Mumbo nodded looking at the way the message was written. Tilted to the side, heavy and not a single letter was the same size as another.

He remembered Doc having very bad handwriting, but it was worse like a "doctor" bad. Neat but at the same time unreadable. 

Cub used to have really messy writing, but he got better at some point, Scar got tired of having to write down all the important stuff by himself to have it readable.

Mumbo started flipping through the pages. 

The first few were not messy at all. Grian’s handwriting was pretty and a bit fancy at times like usual.  

Mumbo still remembered when Iskall showed him the letter to join the Architech Grian left at his base, full-on calligraphy there.

The first notes were things that made very little sense to Mumbo, but they were the kind of nonsense that he noticed Grian would get confused over at the beginning of the season. 

When he first appeared in their world.

 The list ranged from “stairs should disappear on ice” to “Chunk Errors are useful, they should be a thing here!”, some things he already heard him talk about and others not yet. 

“The chickens will not explode? That’s the egg thing isn’t it?” Mumbo looked at Grian and they both had a chuckle thinking back to the failed egg prank. 

“I was so sure that they would explode everywhere!” He whined but with a smile on his face.

Mumbo went back to the book. 

The more he advanced to the pages the more confused it became: Other than being written all over the place it was also written in every direction possible, he had to turn the book around a few times to read some of the words. The writing wasn't so pretty anymore but still clearly Grian's. 

“I wrote most of this stuff while I was half asleep…" Oh, so this is what he's been doing instead of sleeping, thought the redstoner. "I didn’t bother with what direction the book was facing.” Grian continued.

Mumbo squinted as he tried to read some of the more messy words. 

Some were clearly notes on buildings. Block combinations, room descriptions, and measures. Some drawings even. 

Very bad drawings but still.  

The one he seemed to have spent more time on was one of a large room with what seemed to be his face at the end of it and many corridors at the sides. There seemed to be some attempt at naming the corridors but any attempt had been scribbled on. 

"I don't like this one." 

Mumbo frowned and looked at his friend. 

"Why?" He asked.

"These tunnels should lead to...to friends," He crossed his arms, clearly irritated. "There should be their names and I can't remember a single one!" 

Mumbo nodded and turned pages. He wasn't sure what to reply to that.

He found a page mostly blank if not for a few phrases that didn't really seem to connect to one another. 

"The mobs falling keep hitting me. "

"They put obsidian on my chests and called me greedy. "

"I promised him cake at the end."

Grian didn't say anything to this one so he quickly moved to the next.

There were not many phrases in the last pages, mostly random words or letters, and a few more drawings. Some of them repeated multiple times. 

Empire was one of those. He had written it all over the edges of the pages. 

On one of the last pages, there was a single drawing of a faceless girl holding what seemed to be a puppy. The drawing took most of the space of the page but there were some small notes around it.

She's caring. She's a dear friend.

Mumbo felt incredibly sad watching that picture. For a moment he imagined what It must be like to know you forgot someone and not being able to remember their name or face.

Being realistic he was sure that he had forgotten someone, everyone on the server probably did. But he wasn't aware of it, he had no idea if he had forgotten 1 or 100 people, while Grian seemed close but not close enough to know how many people he had lost when he arrived in this world. 

He was close enough to remember how many and how he felt about some but nothing more. 

He wanted to help him.

Mumbo closed the book and stared at its cover for a moment, collecting his thoughts. 

Grian waited for him to say something at first but then decided that there had been too much silence in between that moment and when Mumbo had closed his book. 

“I know, it’s kinda creepy at times," He started off while pulling at the sleeves of his jumper "It’s just that I remember stuff at weird times and if I don’t put it down quickly I--” “It’s not that weird...Well, I mean, It is technically. But hey! You are doing something none of us ever did!” Grian Blinked.

“I..am?” He said unsure.

“Yeah! None of us remembers a single bit of what was before coming to Hermicraft, while you are starting to remember something!.” Mumbo smiled and gave the book back to Grian. "Sure, right now you don't remember everything yet but you're working on it, no?"

Grian nodded and looked down at his ink-stained hands for a few moments. 

“What if I can’t remember everything? What if I stay stuck like this with.. bits and pieces of everything?”

Mumbo didn’t respond right away. 

"Why.. Why don't you try building?"

"Uh?" Grian looked at his friend that right now just seemed to have realized something. He quickly reopened the book and flipped through the pages. 

"Hear me out, the first thing you always seem to remember is always build related." 

He pointed at the pages with the building notes, the room with the names and other less detailed structures. 

"It was made out of this or I made it in this style.  You're a builder! Your brain works in terms of structures."

Grian nodded and stared at the room drawn on the page.

He doesn’t have a base just yet. 

He doesn’t have all the names.

"Just...pick a block. A single material. Think of what you had to build with it."

Grian stayed quiet for a while and picked the book back from Mumbo. Maybe it was worth a try?

“Can you help me with it?” he asked hesitantly.

Mumbo smiled.

“Of course!” He said cheerfully “I wasn’t really sure of what we could do today anyway-” He then admitted sheepishly making Grian laugh.

The builder stood up and quickly put the book back into his inventory.

“Let’s go to my base,  I’m pretty sure I have a little bit of every existing block.” Mumbo let out a strangled whine. “Do we really have to look into your storage?”

Grian grinned and sprinted outside of the room, grabbing a handful of rockets and flying off. 

“There’s no escape from the chest monsters!!” He yelled as he took off.