Just Don't Leave Yet

"Home"

There he sat. the young piglin, on the back of a polar bear who never knew the importance of where they stand: on ground hardened by weather and speckled with snow that still fell from its clouds, overgrown from abandonment- forgotten- nothing but a crater, nothing but a battle field left over, a broken nation, Snowchester. Heartbreaking how quickly something can start to be called anything but 'home'.

Michael stared. just, stared- at what he called home, at the broken paths he would run over when he was much smaller, the rubbled patches of grass that in a time long before now, held so many flowers, poppies and dandelions, alliums; remembering it as clearly as if it was only one sunrise ago. Snow rested carelessly in his hair, melting away like the more- wholesome, memories of his time here. the sounds of a long past war sang almost silently in his head, his mind, but nowhere outside it: a memory, Michael was only sure he remembered.
"...I'm trusting you on this." Michael addresses the green god, stationed silently beside him. "If you're lying, I'm going to put my axe through your fucking head." It's a threat, but he says it almost as an attempt to comfort himself.
"No need for such threats piglin we're parting soon. Its through there." It points down to the hole that broke the terrain, down to the far edge of Snowchester's crater, to an archway of concrete and stone.

"Where does that even lead?"
"To a portal."
"A nether portal?"
"No."
"Why not do this yourself?"
"A player going in would upset the server."
"Then how the fuck could i help?!"
"You're a mob. You have no heart, no goal for exploration, no goal for creativity or progression: you, are a zombie piglin, heartless." It speaks this not as an insult. Just, a fact.

Silence. A bitter silence,
"Fine- you can shut up now I'm going."

———

Micheal crouches in front of the polar bear, holding its face.
"I'll be back soon, bud." Probably-

Michael slides down the side of the crater, pebbles of the unstable walls fall to the bottom as he descends. A small light blue potion, hanging from the piglin's belt, clatters. With silent hopes it will be enough to keep him warm: as it has since the day his dads made it, to better their son's life in a realm much colder then his, in a realm he would call his home, in the realm he's about to leave- the overworld.

The young piglin cautiously enters through the archway of stone, rubble from a thirteen year old war littering the ground even within it's gates; the air was stale and warm- familiar, lava. All of this, but none felt normal while surrounding a portal no one had before seen- well, not seen lit. Michael stops his pace while staring into its void, like stars, like a sky held within a square box. Like a million voices telling him to run- run, go back- back home, hide again like you always have. Run.
"So the green god bitch wasn't lying..." he mumbles to himself.

standing there, above the void of infinite sky, above the door to a realm non before his father had ever seen- about to fall endlessly into it. endlessly? it couldn't be endless, it won't be.
unsure of when, uncertain when he convinced himself enough to jump into the dark starry portal: he fell, into the sky he fell- until he felt free of anything but tangible darkness against his skin, until he felt nothing.

———

An arrow flung across the snowy cabin Philza and Michael lived for all those years, alongside Technoblade, just a cabin beside. The arrow strung across the air carefully sewn by its archer- Philza, until it hit its mark: the white, now shattered face of its target, of the green god.

Phil lowers his bow, glaring at the god, at the hole through its ceramic-like face. They stood there, a god, and the winged man who shot him: in another world they might even be seen as equals.
"Where the fuck did you send him?" His words sharp of anger.
The god took the arrow from its wound, something like neon green blood falling from its face, and coated the arrow: it considered it, as well as the winged man's words; before disintegrating the wood of the projectile, of the weapon, of the sign of weakness, the sign of fathomable destruction. The arrow fell from the god's hand in two pieces, they clattered to the ground slowly burning to ash from a flame-less fire, the god rose its head and speaks with such a calmness it makes the cloudless winter sky feel as a bustling nation.
"To do my job."