We Could Be Sleeping in the Flowers (A Hermitcraft Story)

Chapter Four: The Tea Shoppe

A quick overhead pass showed that Stress was busy in the woods behind her house, yelling something about geezers and beating a zombified villager with a wooden sword. Grian decided he wouldn't get involved in that situation just yet and settled down on the broad crossbeam of the GigaPies sign to wait. It was a beautiful late afternoon, and even through the haze of lilacs he could smell the fresh scent of river, a hint of nutmeg and cinnamon from the factory, and the woody aroma from the cluster of giant trees nearby.

Scar's tree base was nearly finished, Grian realized, turning to look at the sprawling complex across the river. It had to be; there was only so much he could shove into one build and still call it a starter base, Swaggons notwithstanding. He knew that Scar's megabase location wasn't too far away from his own, but megabases were different than starter homes. Even neighbors were so widely spread out that they could easily go days without seeing each other, especially given Scar's penchant to go on long building kicks. Who knew if he'd see Scar at all once he started building that theme park?

The thought was enough to give his heart a little squeeze, which in turn brought the tickle right back to his throat. No more spore blossoms, thank Jeb, but the daisies were plenty bad enough, especially in large quantities. He was trying to get one particularly stubborn one out from behind his teeth when the person he most and least wanted to see landed right next to him, all but crashing into him. "Hello there, Grian!"

Grian froze, a daisy halfway out of his mouth. He had to make this look normal somehow. Maybe Scar wouldn't notice anything if he could just look normal about this.

"Are you eating flowers?" Scar asked, looking from Grian's face to the little pile of daisies in his lap.

"Uh... yep!" Grian shoved the flower back into his mouth and crunched it between his teeth, trying not to grimace at the bitter herbal taste. "Very healthful food, daisies," he babbled, even as he chewed and swallowed the terrible thing as fast as possible. "Putting them in soup just dilutes the effects."

If anything, that made Scar look much more worried. "Are you sick?" he asked, putting a hand up to touch Grian's forehead. "Your face is all red." He looked at where they were sitting, then over to where Stress was still thrashing around in her backyard. "Is that why you're here?"

"No, I'm fine, really," Grian insisted, even as his throat tried to close up around whatever terrible floral monstrosity actually being touched by Scar was bound to bring up. "Just... just the allergies again, I think."

"If she's busy, I can respawn you right now," Scar offered generously. "I've got my bow with me and everything."

"No! No that's okay!" Grian insisted. "I've just got... I've got a rash," he blurted out. "A terrible rash, I need lotion. But I'll be fine, I promise." His voice sounded like he was squeezing it through a crazy straw.

Scar looked very dubious, but he was never one to not go along with a story, however implausible it seemed. "A rash," he repeated slowly.

"Super itchy," Grian wheezed. "I hope it's not contagious."

Despite his skepticism, that was enough to have Scar scooting back a bit. "I'm sorry to hear that! I hope the, ah, daisy cure does the trick!" He scooted back another foot, obviously forgetting he was already on the end of the beam, and fell right off.

"Scar!" Grian yelped, jumping to a crouch and scrambling to the end of the beam. He leaned over as far as he could and came within inches of being knocked over as Scar rocketed past him on a straight vertical lift. Grian staggered backward, a lump in his throat that was either his heart or the biggest flower so far.

"Sorry!" Scar called over his shoulder, looping around and obviously not fully in control of his flight path. "Feel better soon, I'll talk to you later, goodbyeeee!" The last bit faded away as Scar arced away over the river, clinging to a rocket with both hands.

Grian, now clinging to the beam for dear life, watched Scar disappear into the distance. ..."Why?" he finally asked, unable to control the reluctant laugh bubbling out of him. "Why does he do that?" Along with the laughter came a wave of undeniable fondness for the clumsy builder who could somehow make Grian laugh even on the worst days. He wondered what might have happened if he'd been just a little braver, if instead of making up excuses he'd touched Scar's face in return, maybe brought it closer to his... The new wave of coughing was hard enough to topple him off the beam entirely, sending him fluttering to the ground in a cloud of soggy daisies and flapping elytra.

All he commotion had apparently caught Stress's attention, since by the time Grian sorted out the elytra wing that had draped itself over his head she was jogging over, wooden sword still in hand. The zombie villager had been shoved in a minecart with a leather cap on its head for safekeeping. It looked very put out about the whole thing. "That was the worst landing I ever saw!" she told him enthusiastically when she was still yards away. "Did you forget how to fly?"

Grian considered his options. There was a fine line between "looking pathetic enough to invite help" and "looking so pathetic he could never show his face in the server again." He tried to reassure himself that he was not already on the wrong side of that line. "I'm sick," he told her, giving her big eyes and a sad little frown. "Something's wrong with my code."

Stress grinned. "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" she asked sweetly. In her hand, the wooden sword was replaced with an enchanted diamond axe.

He took a few hasty steps backwards. "No!" he yelped. "Respawning isn't going to help this one, I swear! If it would, I'd have done it myself!"

"Come on now," Stress chirped, "no room for negative thinking here!" She swapped out the axe again, this time with a block of TNT. Why was she carrying TNT? Grian wondered a little wildly. Who did that? "You can't really know until you try. It'll be fun!"

"For you, maybe!" Grian found a clear spot and started pillaring, hoping to at least escape her blast radius. "But really, it's Hanahaki Disease, they said specifically in the book that respawning doesn't fix it."

Stress stopped pillaring after him, staring up at Grian with the explosives forgotten in her hand. "Hanahaki Disease?" she repeated incredulously. "At your age?"

"Why does everybody say it like that?" Grian grumbled. Stress began giggling, dropping the TNT to put both hands over her mouth. "And it's not that funny. It's not funny at all, really." He sat down on the cobblestone block he'd just placed. "I have a disease."

"A disease," she parroted mockingly. "Himself has got a disease of the heaaaart! Let's see it then," she added abruptly. When he just looked at her uncomprehendingly, she circled a hand at him. "Come on, cough it up! I want to see this."

"I'm not your performing monkey," Grian pouted. He realized that this did not help the overall patheticness situation, but he felt he'd earned it.

Stress gave him a level look. "Luscious tree elf," she told him. Grian coughed up white petals, glaring at her the entire time.

"How does everybody know this?" he groused. Stress had no useful answer to give, too busy howling with laughter. He hoped she'd fall off her pillar. "You know, if you're going to mock me, you could at least be helpful. Nobody else has been."

It took her another minute to control herself enough to talk. "Well, what do you even want from me? I can't resolve your feelings for you."

"My feelings are fine!" he insisted. "I don't know, you're the potions expert! Give me something that shrinks flowers! Herbicide for my lungs!"

"Oh, I'm not doing potions this season," she told him breezily. "Cub wanted to try his hand at brewing, so I've been doing bottles of enchanting instead."

"You're not brewing?" Grian demanded incredulously. "Your shop is a teapot!"

"Enchan-tea!" Stress giggled. "It's perfect!"

"I can't believe I came over here for nothing," he groaned.

"If it helps, you gave me the best laugh I've had all week," she offered.

"That does not help."

She studied him, head cocked to one side. "Do you want a hat?"

He was silent a moment, then heaved a long sigh. "Fine."