Just Don't Leave Yet

Ink is to a quill as blood is to a blade

Bang!
A wooden sword finds it's mark at the bark of a rotting tree.
Bang!
The hit rattles through the attacker's shaking arms, covered in a black tunic and armour, but still they shake of the sharp winter air that's harsh against the flesh on the side of his face, and numb against the bone of the other.
Bang!
The young mob's hair falls loose of it's tie, marked with white from his time in a realm that isn't his.
Bang!
A harsh awakening to a warm summer day.
BANG!
A father's face, eyes troubled with fear and worry for a son.
BANG!
In their arms one last time a message sounds, a massage he forever wished he could un-hear, he forever wished the hands that covered his ears was enough to keep out the words that plagued his mind like a ghost on colder nights when sleep was close to impossible-
A message of death.
BANG!
The wooden weapon drops to the snow and his bare fists meet the scraping bark, again, again, again, again; until the thoughts go quiet and he rests his forehead on the tree, his pink-ish hair falling shortly down his back,
tired arms hanging limply from his shoulders.
A drop of crimson blood falls to the ground from the broken skin on his fist- though still, not warm enough to melt through the snow.

A few silent moments passed that no one bothered to count, Michael sighs and pushes himself from the tree trunk.

He tightens again his hair tie, not even bothering a glance at the wooden sword abandoned in the ice and leaves.
From blue transparent light and smoke Michael brings his darkened metal axe that's grip feels all too familiar in his fists as it has been for years before this; he swings it heavily at the tree, and with a single blow the rotten tree takes the last attack to it's bark and falls from it's long occupied place in the sky with a sickening crack.

Thunder: a booming crack of thunder that had lit the darkened atmosphere only seconds previous observed behind a glass window thats view holds the fenced area of his snowy home.
Feels like almost nothing, the moments between the time in the woods and now; though so many times he had traveled from there to here uninterrupted, should it feel like something more? Or did he only wish it did?

The companion he had long forgotten the company of clears his throat with no real intent to say anything further, to brake the silence the two held so dearly: black raven wings fall behind his companion's back, dressed in green and white, a hat on his head that feels so normal it seems unimportant to even describe.
Companion?
Friend?
Father?
Philza, just Philza.

He speaks, "Do you remember?" a question so vague, but Phil looks to his young companion's face as if it should mean the world.
"What?"
the question causes Phil hesitation, as if he wished from those three lone words Michael would understand it's unspeakable meaning: and maybe he did, and asked simply to hear the long awaited question on Philza's breath and not just in his silence-Asked to hear him say the words that seemed banished from the confines of their isolated home.
Phil opens his mouth to speak but closes it and shakes his head and golden hair.
After a moment he nods. "Do you remember your dads?"

Michael sighs in the long awaited release of a question that had floated on the very air itself for years into the past.
"I remember everything, Phil." He wished to continue but his tongue failed his mind: He remembered his dads, they seemed much like opposites even then. He remembered when they brought him from a place that was his own, but a place he would surely die in- to a home, their home: a home they kept warm and safe despite its place next to frozen waters. a home with berries, and flowers he would weave into his dad's thick brown hair that more often then not fell over his golden eyes, and vines he would string around his curly horns. Tubbo- Tubbo he remembered in That way, Michael didn't witness that ending; Unlike Ranboo he didn't see the long thought impossible fear in his father's eyes, the red and green burning his face with tears. Unlike Ranboo he wasn't held in their shaking arms as the sky exploded with sound and colour- unlike Ranboo, the young piglin wasn't left by his only living father, to run back to war and aid a dead man in battle.
BANG!

A hand touches his shoulder. "Michael?" Phil asks with such calmness as if he knew every thought behind the young piglin's eyes.
"One more time Phil, one last time..." Phil nods in swift understanding, and puts his pale hand into a pocket, returning with a small piece of parchment that he lays the tip of an ink covered quill to. "Tell him... uh-" Michael stumbles over his words as he has every time Philza held a quill to the face of parchment in anticipation for black ink to mark its surface.

Silence.

"Tell him to just-" a drop of ink hits the paper. "...just don't leave yet."

———

'Should it feel like something more?' Micheal had thought those few days previous when Phil stood by his side, and now walking through a sunny plains alone he returned to the thought: well, not alone, a bear walks heavily by his side; giant and covered in thick white fur the young piglin's hand resting on as they travel.

Michael's eye turns up to stare at the verdant leaves of a broad oak tree, casting splotchy shadows to the grass, that he turns and falls to lay in.
"Let's stay here a while" in response to Michael's words the polar bear, Benson, sits.

The grass is sharp against his skin, a feeling all too familiar to notice- akin to the silent breeze that carries the words of birds on the sweet smelling air.
What is something more? This realm holds either peace or war; most times the latter but never has he fought for something, a loved one, a home- it seems a sense of accomplishment would come with such a victory, or even with a lost battle: perhaps would come simply from fighting for something.
Accomplishment: a word which seems so unfamiliar to him, of course he has felt such a feeling- but only small; such as the successful crafting of his old bow, the successful swing of Philza's axe that from that day had become his to hang on his back; but never was that feeling something bigger.

Through his closed eye he sees the sun blocked from his face, suddenly the world felt wrong. The young mob bolts up, swearing while taking the axe from his back and pointing it to the green stranger with a single hand- unnatural strength compared to his appearance.
"Who are you?!" He addressed the green stranger with as much strength his voice could muster. Though all it does is stand there, well, float there if one were to get into the specifics: its head a floating ball of white with cracks into a pitch black core, horns and long creature-like ears coming from its center, akin to the shapes on its front mimicking the bony structure of a human chest

"Never heard of me?" Its voice is unnatural, broken, it speaks with no fear or malice or kindness. It waits for Michael's answer with an unnerving patience.
"...dream?"
"...." Its stance stays unchanging, the only movement being its wings slowly bobbing behind it. "Close."
"Why are you here?"
"For you Michael, i need your help" It rests its arm-less hand on Michael's shoulder, and there it stays as they walk through the grass, away from their meeting place, only now lit by the rays of a setting sun.

"Is this all you do all night?" It asks with a simple tone of curiosity, braking the long preserved silence that persisted from the ask of a ridiculous request to now. "Eh, well i guess you wouldn't have to sleep- considering you're not a player."
"Shut!" That hurt, why did that hurt, the god is right- "Doesn't the 'god of the server' have anything better to do then follow me? I've told you already I'm not going on a hopeless mission to take a player out of your miserable dimension for you."

"I didn't come for your help for simply anyone, you may of lost faith, but not both your parents are dead." It says this with the same carelessness as any other word it spoke.
"If Ranboo's not dead then why isn't he here-?" I question that chipped away at his mind for years before now, a question no one ever had the answer to, though one he never dared to even speak.

The god only answers with silence, for a long time; a silence that seems portrayed by the rest of the world, as if when the green being speaks it makes the world speak along with it, and when it found silence in a question both knew wouldn't be answered with the next breathe, the world fell to nothing but a gentle hum.

The young mob only stares at the green god, waiting for an answer both knew won't come. His hand still resting on the rough fur of his companion. why is the world so cold?

"Will you trust me?" It's not a question, it's a demand, an order-
That Michael found himself nodding to.