The Bull's Horns

Ch 5: Nightmares

Mumbo woke with a stretch and yawn before burying his face back into the blankets. Since installing blackout curtains, he hadn't had any issues with the sun waking him up anymore. He had slept through the night without any issues for once, pleasantly surprising himself. For the first time in a long time, the nest sort of smelled alright for once. The Horn Gang group's scents had lingered on him and must've seeped into his best. He had hung out with them most of the day which is how their scents lingered on him. He knew their scents wouldn't last but the peaceful night he had was a pleasant rarity. Plus paired with the fun day yesterday he felt all warm and fuzzy inside. It has been a really wonderful day hanging out with the other horned hermits, playing fun games, and hanging out on the beach. Even Gem didn't seem to be scared of him or his horns, which made him feel a bit better about himself. He didn't realize it until he thought about it but yesterday he felt comfortable in his own skin for once since his horns had grown out.

He hadn't really thought about it much, but he realized something else too. The handful of hermits who knew about his horns just accepted them and went on about their day as normal. They hadn't even asked him any questions, gave him space, and got bombarded him with compliments. Which confused yet encouraged Mumbo but even with the positivity he still had a habit of avoiding the other hermits. Especially avoiding and keeping an eye out for the server admin. Guilt ate him up inside knowing he lied to X for so many seasons. He had known the voidwalker for so long that part of himself figured X would be kind and forgiving. But the other part didn't want to risk the worst-case scenario, aka getting kicked off the server.

Every time he would venture out to the shopping district, anxiety filled his stomach the whole trip. He was comfortable letting the Horn Gang group and Grian around but anywhere else he would start to get extremely anxious being out for too long. Too worried Xisuma or other hermits would see him and what they might think of him. Surely after some positivity, there had to be some negatives, there had to be some negatives.

~~~~~

It had been a little more than half a week since he hung out at the beach with the Horn Gang group. Their scent had long since dissipated and made his nest smell wrong again which started to affect his sleep. He tossed and turned most nights, getting at least a couple of hours of sporadic sleep if he was lucky. His effort to try and to venture out a bit more came to a standstill as he stuck to the shopping district and his vault. Too tired to venture out father even though he had been invited over to his neighbor's bases a couple of times. He had gotten too exhausted and anxious about hermits seeing him, especially Xisuma. His plans to ask Grian or Scar for spare blankets had gone out the window long ago, also too nervous to ask them.

Everything had started to bottle up, all his nervous energy and sleepless nights fueled him to the point of explosion. His nerves were frayed and exhausted from little to no sleep and to put a cherry on top he started having more frequent nightmares. If it wasn't the anxiety that kept him awake for most of the night, it was the night terrors. Some nightmares were memories of his past server while others were scenarios of Xisuma getting angry and kicking him out of Hermitcraft.

Tonight he would try to get to sleep a bit earlier than normal. He was already exhausted and it was draining to zoom around the shopping district buying materials, while also making sure he didn't bump into hermits. Nervously keeping an eye over his shoulder, the entire shopping trip with a particular dread in his stomach at the thought of Xisuma finding him. He practically sprinted home, tossed his supplies into his sorting system, and crashed into his best. It took a moment, but he managed to get to sleep, too exhausted to care about the lack of scent in his nest. It took a couple of hours of peaceful dreaming before a nightmare plagued him and jolted him awake.

***

He sat up drenched in a cold sweat and couldn't seem to get a full breath of air in his lungs. Slivers of moonlight covered his room as he sat there panting. He tried his best to calm himself down, straining to take shaky deep breaths and grabbing some blankets to hold onto tightly. His lungs felt like they were shrinking as he struggled to breathe in enough air. He ripped some blankets out of the nest to rub his face against it, trying to ground himself as best he could.