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watcheraurora · 2 days

Text

A Life UnRemembered

Author's Note: Hermitcraft is... unique 1.7k words

Based on all the art of character!Joel not seeming to know why he built a shrine to the Ocean Queen. It's all gorgeous

—

Joel wandered his base. He liked how it was coming along. He enjoyed the resource gathering and the building. He enjoyed spending time with the Hermits. They were all so comfortable with each other that he couldn't help but feel welcome even though he was new.

But there was something needling at him. Something he couldn't quite remember.

He strolled down the stairs to the temple he'd built. The empty dais in the center where something should be enshrined. Pulling some clay out of his inventory, he slapped it down onto the dais and started to sculpt. It had been a long time since he sculpted anything.

He turned his brain off and let his hands just go where they wanted. Somewhere else in the world, Cleo would be proud of him. As the other major small-scale sculptor, they knew how much work it took to make statues this small, rather than huge with blocks. That was the easy way. Small amounts of clay around an armor stand were much harder and more fiddly.

Hours passed while he tugged at that needling feeling that he'd forgotten something. Trying to free it from where it was buried.

Nothing. He couldn't remember what it was he'd forgotten.

Two hours after beginning, he leaned back from his sculpture, stretching his back. Clay was caked under his fingernails.

Before him, he'd made a statue not quite to the scale he felt it should be, but he hadn't brought enough clay.

The statue was a woman. Tall. Lithe. Powerful. She had the regal bearing of a queen in some coastal kingdom far away from his cherry tree mountain. A trident slung casually in the crook of one elbow. A circlet resting above her brow that he'd jammed a diamond into the clay for effect while sculpting. The circlet had coral branches twining off at the woman's temples. She had long, flowing hair. He needed to paint the sculpture, but he already knew her hair would be pink. Her eyes and skin would be blue. The flowing gown a soft... lavender, maybe? Lilac?

A long axolotl tail extended from the base of her spine and up into the air, coral fanning off its ends.

And held gently in her arms, a much smaller man. Joel knew he'd paint the man's shirt purple. The crown in his hair gold with an emerald embedded just above his forehead. The sash green.

Why he knew those colors as easily as he knew his own hands, he wasn't sure.

Before he could lose the inspiration, he flew to the shopping district, landing hard at Pearl's dye shop. He scrambled to get his diamonds out of his Ender chest and bought every color he'd need. Dye wasn't exactly paint, but if he mixed it with a few other ingredients, he could make it work.

His Elytra's membrane snapped in the wind with the speed of his flight. He ran into his landing in the little hut he'd started his base in, scrounged up the last of the materials he'd need from his unbelievably disorganized chests—not his fault someone had come and messed with them—and soared back down to the shrine.

He painted quickly. Faster than he sculpted and certainly faster than he built.

When he finally stepped back, he was covered in paint and there was dried clay all over him. Creative projects were always messy with him.

He was breathing a little hard in the heat of the mid-afternoon, hair clumped on his forehead with sweat.

"There you are," he breathed, a tiny smile touching the corners of his mouth. He set his paints and brushes down.

The woman had come to life, in the clay and the color. Her deep blue eyes glittered. The gills on her neck looked delicate, despite being made of clay. The coral fans on the end of her tail were vibrant pink, her hair pastel. Her face shone with love and kindness, yet the fierceness of a true warrior of unknown power.

"Who are you? Why don't you leave my mind? Why don't you leave me?"

Because the smaller man in her arms, with his royal purple doublet and green sash—

He'd sculpted and painted himself.

The green in his hair that refused to dye out, only just starting to maybe grow in pink with this new world he found himself on, if he looked hard in the mirror (though he admitted that could have been an irritated scalp from him pulling so hard to try and dye it). The shape of his nose and his face. He'd sculpted himself without meaning to or trying.

Why the crown? Why the sash?

"Who was I then? Who were you to me?" he asked the statue.

The woman didn't respond.

Joel knelt before the statue on one knee. Even that felt oddly familiar. Like he'd taken a knee before this woman before. Maybe more than once.

"No..." He looked down at his hand. At the ring that remained on his finger no matter how many times he respawned or the situation that caused him to respawn. Simple and strong. If he took it off to build and then fell, the ring would be there when he came back. Always.

Tango had hypothesized it was a wedding ring. He had one himself. Tango had lived in Hermitcraft for a lot longer than a good portion of its other members. Since the second incarnation of the world. He hadn't always had his ring—gold and solid with a flaming red ruby and pale sky blue sapphire nestled against one another. It had appeared only a few years ago in the middle of a season after a jaunt off-world. Around the same time Joel and Etho met, though the memories were blurry. But since Tango had been on Hermitcraft for so long, he had lots of hypotheses. The world was isolated from the greater multiverse. Even the creative version of each Hermitcraft incarnation ran so closely parallel to the real world, its effects were the same.

But Tango had spent a late night telling Joel about his ideas of the multiverse while everyone else slept—the two of them awake to build a redstone machine and finish a building respectively. Each of them could create their own worlds elsewhere. And Hermitcraft's effects would no longer apply to them out there. But they all struggled to remember anything beyond Hermitcraft when they came back.

Tango thought they both might have a spouse. Somewhere out there on another world. Waiting for them. Spouses that the barrier between Hermitcraft and the rest of the universe didn't let them remember.

Could she be...?

Joel looked up at the statue.

The woman had webbed hands. She couldn't wear a ring.

"Are you my wife?" he asked. "Were you my wife? In another life? Or are you still? Somewhere out in the multiverse?"

The statue continued to be silent, looking down on the tiny version of himself with a face full of love and care. But the still-wet paint made those deep blue eyes glitter. Almost bittersweet.

Joel reached up, as though to cradle her face. To reassure her that It's alright, love. It won't be forever. I'll always come back to—

He couldn't reach her face. He'd made her too tall on the dais for him to reach without his scaffolding—that he'd already torn down.

He pulled out his communicator.

/w PearlescentMoon: Want to come see what I did? I think you'll like it

He didn't expect her response to arrive so fast.

<PearlescentMoon> whispers to you: Sure! OMW!

He only waited for a few minutes before he heard the snapping of Elytra membrane and Pearl ran to a stop on the flat area before his stairs. "Joel? Where are ya, mate?"

"In the temple!" Joel called back.

Pearl appeared at the entrance after a moment. "Hey!" she greeted, taming her long hair after her flight.

"Hi," Joel replied. He gestured to the statue. "I'm not as much an artist as you are, but I tried."

Pearl approached it curiously. "Oh my... mate, this is incredible. It's beautiful."

"Thanks," he said.

"How'd you pick the Ocean Queen?"

"The what?"

"Well that's who she is, isn't she? The Ocean Queen? Demigoddess of unlimited power over the sea?"

"I have no idea who... what?"

"Oh. Did you just come up with it, then?"

"I just let my instincts guide me through it."

"Hm. Maybe she's calling to you, mate. From beyond the stars." Pearl looked toward the setting sun, hidden as it was through the temple's structure.

"Maybe." Joel was less than convinced. "Tell me the story?"

"It's an old legend. From... I dunno, thousand years ago? Surprised you've never heard of it." Pearl leaned against the entryway frame, folding her arms. "Does the Cod King ring any bells?"

"Distantly?"

"That's the Ocean Queen's baby brother. She watched over his egg before he hatched after their mother died..."

—

"Lizzie?" Joel called, pushing open the door to Lizzie's base on SOS. "I'm home!"

Thundering footsteps met his ears. Lizzie appeared, the last of her armor falling off of her, a few bits of sculk caught on its edges. "About time!" she exclaimed, rushing across her kitchen and throwing her arms around him. "How's Hermitcraft been?"

"Fun," Joel said. He didn't have much to say beyond that. His memories of Hermitcraft were... hazy. At best. He remembered emotions. Some jokes. Lots of laughs. The vague shenanigan here or there. But nothing detailed. "I've really missed you." He held onto her tight, burying his nose in her hair. It smelled vaguely like sea salt and coconut. The cool metal of her wedding ring rested against the skin of his neck where her fingers threaded into his hair.

"I'm glad you're here. How long are you staying?"

"As long as I can. We knew when I accepted the invitation that it would be hard for me to travel more. But this was an opportunity too good to miss."

"I know. And I'm proud of you. But I miss you."

"I miss you too." He kissed the side of her head. "I'll stay for at least a month."

"Good."

#smallishbeans #joel smallishbeans #Hermitcraft fic #ldshadowlady #Joel X Lizzie #Aurora Writes #Rory Writes #finally a short fic that isn't 3k words #jizzie

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