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Stump looked over at Emerald.
They were sitting in front of the main well. She was underneath a nearby oak tree, the last of the autumn leaves falling on her. Stump sat next to her, softly brushing the leaves off himself. The soft, dying sunlight shone through the tree, patching the ground with light. Emerald looked up and sighed "Hope winter holds off for a while. The zombies are always worse in winter."
Stump nodded absently.
Breeze and Runt sat at the ice cream stand, about twenty blocks away. Runt said something and Breeze giggled. He picked a leaf out of her hair and they both blushed. Emerald slumped against her tree and flicked a fly off her shoulder. Breeze presented Runt with a gift. She sighed, feeling a twinge of bitterness. "They're adorable."
Stump leaned back. "Yeah. I...guess."
Then he slumped. "Runt hasn't hung out with me at all this year."
Emerald sighed. "Neither has Breeze." Then she shook her head and sighed "They'll come back someday." Stump stared out "I've been childhood friends with Runt for years. He just...too many things changed this year, you know?" Emerald snorted "Tell me about it. Last year, my highest aspirations were not killing my pet fish. Now, this year...I'm defending Villagetown."
"How did that go, by the way? I liked the fishtank."
"Uh...Shimmer ended up in the sewers after six months. No idea what killed her. The snails are still in the fish tank, though, so I kind of half-succeeded...and the plants are also dead, and so is the coral, and everything else but the snails, but it worked enough to keep some snails alive." Stump stared "Uh...alright, so you killed two-thirds of everything?" "Well, the algae's thriving."
He snorted "But I mean like...people. They changed. I mean...just Pebble went from a anxious kid to a outrageous jerk to...pirate-exile?" She snorted "Gay pirate-exile. Him and his buddy are dating." "Notch, he needs to write a book. It would sell amazingly." Emerald snorted "Well, add "gay pirate-exile" to anything and it would sell well."
Then Stump sighed "That aside...other people changed too. I mean, Pebble was probably the most dramatic...but Max was a bratty guy who became the brain of Team Runt. Lola was a goofy girl who liked redstone...turned into a wild monster hunter-explorer. Heck, Runt and I used to prank Leaf and read Urg The Barbarian together...now he's captain."
Emerald nodded sadly. "I can't believe how fast everybody did it. Like...one day we're playing Hide and Seek...the next we're fighting zombies and figuring out grades and getting bullied. God, everything changed so fast. It feels like just yesterday I was a block tall and today I'm somehow so...grown-up."
More leaves fell.
Stump stared at them, gathering in a neat little pile. He wished he could turn the clock back to summer. When it wasn't so cold and rainy and ugly. When the wind didn't bite at his skin and the light wasn't so dim. But he couldn't. He couldn't turn it back to summer. It just wouldn't work. The clock turned back for nobody.
The wind howled. It started drizzling lightly on them.
He softly said "Do you think it's ever going to be the same?"
Emerald looked up at the storm. "I...I don't know. Breeze is so different. So is Runt. I don't get anything anymore. Nothing makes sense. Like...I don't even have my old friends anymore. You know Ariel? Sara?" Stump nodded "Ariel seemed nice. Good student. Sara seemed a little bit...mean."
She leaned back "I don't even know them anymore."
A thunderclap resounded, jolting both of them.
She continued, a lump forming in her throat "Everything about them is completely different. They're...man, Ariel got knocked up and dropped out. She's a party girl now, always dancing...far cry from her earlier days, huh?" Then she shook her head "And Sara just...imploded on herself. She even stopped going to school. Her folks yelled at her too much and she just...snapped."
