Chapter 1: FOREWORD
Notes:
this part will be updated here and there whenever i have something to say, or deem something is important to know before getting into this fic, so i don't clog stories and chapters with long and tiring a/ns! for now, however, it's just a quick introduction and some lore drop.
Chapter Text
“And if you missed a day, there was always the next
and if you missed a year, it didn’t matter,
the hills weren’t going anywhere,
the thyme and rosemary kept coming back,
the sun kept rising, the bushes kept bearing fruit.”
— Sunrise, Louise Glück
As I’m writing this, I know the fandom is dead and buried. At best, it has severely declined in numbers. However, as I was searching through my old stuff (read: quarantine stuff) in hopes of finding something functional to sell, I stumbled upon my old PC, the one I had during lockdown. Obviously, overtaken by curiosity, I decided to turn it on and buried inside a thousand Word documents and half forgotten homeworks I never gave in, I found this fic.
It was almost entirely outlined. I remember fourteen-years-old me dedicating all her time during those two years spent inside carefully planning out the story, all while a laggy Jackbox stream was playing in the background at ungodly hours of the night. My under-eyes were bruised violet from lack of sleep, my pupils tired from staring at a screen for so long, and my brain scrambled from translating a language that wasn’t the one I normally spoke. Would I go back to this specific time in my life? God forbid. However, I truly believe I have never experienced such happiness, with such a sense of belonging and community, ever since then. I’m not a very nostalgic person, but when I look back on it, I am drenched in a strange kind of melancholy. Memories I don’t miss but look back fondly upon.
So I decided, in honor of fourteen-years-old me who would be astonished to see where we stand today, and in honor of that small part of my life who shaped me in my most formative years, I decided to rework this fic and to post it! And by rework, I mean a serious rework. My English clearly wasn’t as good then as it is now, and my understanding of characters and arcs as well. I don’t know if anyone will read it. Reader-insert and Dream SMP in the big 2025, soon to be 2026, is surprising at best. But if someone does, and ends up taking a liking to it, then please enjoy my silly love letter to the online space that helped me through very difficult times!
I would also like to preface a few things before going on with the story.
- English is not my first language. I’m French, born and raised in France, which means that my use of expressions, tenses, and sometimes dialogue can be a little wonky. I apologize and hope it won't bother you too much!
- I have always headcanonned the Dream SMP as some sort of dystopia after the world, as we know it, fell. Some references will be made to it in order to justify the archaic state of the government as well as the recurrent magical realism, but there will be no real worldbuilding around it as it doesn’t play a huge part in the story, and is normal to the characters. If you have any questions about it, just shoot!
- This fic has been outlined by me from five years ago up until Dream getting imprisoned in Pandora’s Vault. I’m currently reworking this outline and while I’m deeply enjoying it, I have no idea if I’ll go further than what I already outlined in the past—especially knowing the uncertain nature, along with the meta issues, of the Dream SMP canon end. It’s a go with the flow type of situation!
- I’m writing about the characters of the Dream SMP. Not the CCs.
- This story is divided in acts, each corresponding to the Dream SMP arcs you can find in the Dream SMP Wiki along with some small creative liberties. Each act is centered around a Richard Siken poem from his poetry book War of the Foxes (2021), and there will be a chapter dedicated to its introduction each time there's an arc switch.
Happy reading!
Chapter 2: ACT 01: THE MYSTERY OF THE PEARS
Summary:
PRE-L'MANBURG | For as long as you could remember, it had always been yourself and your quill in this isolated corner of the Dream SMP Nation. You had grown accustomed to your peace and quiet, along with the occasional but welcomed disturbances caused by your neighbors. However, someone whose mind is constantly coming up with adventures will eventually yearn of one for themselges. You just didn't expect it to come to you in such a way.
Chapter Text
"I looked at the pears. I painted the pears, what they
were like. I waited for the pears to reveal their
mystery. Five brown pears in a chipped white bowl,
soft and scarred and blushing yellow in the throbbing
dark. They shine in their suits. I hung them on
the wall. Precise. A landmark. You might like it here.
I think that you might like it here."
- The Mystery of the Pears, Richard Siken.
Chapter 3: 1. The Writer's Prologue
Summary:
You live a quaint life, and have always lived a quaint life: writing, feeding your animals, crafting... That is, at least, until one visit from your two favorite troublemakers interrupts that sacred calm.
Notes:
the first chapters, and act one as a whole, is going to be a bit slow since i'm setting up the reader's character, beliefs, relationships, and some lore before getting yall through the Horrors™ but i promise it'll be worth it!
Chapter Text
"Have you blossoms and books,
those solaces of sorrow?"
- Emily Dickinson
There is a woman in the woods, and she is a rumor long before she is a person.
It is a truth universally acknowledged through the dystopic nation of the Dream SMP. Between the jagged silhouettes of looming twin towers and the patchwork of rustic homes, past the ruins left behind by an age already swallowed by memory, the land folds into a valley where a cold, orange sun sinks every evening behind a lone jukebox and its time-scratched bench. And beyond that, beyond the last place anyone cares to sit and think, there are the woods.
No one truly ventures there unless foraging or curiosity drives them. The shadows of the trees are hostile, or maybe it's just an impression. Within those woods, lives a woman.
Well—not quite within the woods. More accurately, there is a cottage nestled in their throat, as though the forest once tried to swallow it whole and simply forgot to finish the job. Its dark, desaturated stone walls are soft with moss, heavy with ivy, and eternally slick with lingering mist that clings to the undergrowth. Sometimes, a warm amber glow leaks from behind the window, the fluttering heartbeat of a candle fighting the dusk.
If someone were foolish or brave enough to see that glow, they might glimpse the silhouette behind it: a figure bent over a desk before a frost-paled window. Majestic, curling horns crowns its head, draped in vines that twine lazily around their curve, brushing its temples with tender affection. Its hair is a riot of tangles, knotted with fallen leaves, falling across its eyes in wild, damp strands; its linen clothes, once white, now stained by wanderings.
But anyone who catches sight of it must be quick. For inevitably, it lifts its head in a dreamlike motion, and its gaze meets the glass that divides its warm world from the cold outside. In that instant, the watcher remembers where they are and flees. They slip through the clearing washed in shy moonlight, scamper past the happily cackling chickens, skirt the wild rows of herbs and vegetables, and do not stop running until they've crossed the invisible border separating home from unknown.
Inside the cottage, the figure—the woman—smiles. She dips her quill, and the candlelight brightens as though eager to witness the birth of yet another tale of the everyday.
There is a woman in the woods, and nobody truly knows her name, but if the forest itself ever chose to grow a girl from root and rain, she would look a lot like her.
She would look, in fact, a great deal like you.
Because she is you, and you are her, and this is how the story begins. This is how all of your stories begin.
With you, the woman, in the woods.
The day begins the way all days have begun since you first awoke in this cottage—quietly.
The first rays of sunlight brush against your eyelids in soft strokes, warm even through the delicate veil of sleep. A cool morning breeze drifts through the window you left half-opened, carrying with it the scent of damp earth and trembling leaves. You stir, stretching languid limbs beneath your quilts, rubbing the last wisps of dreams from your eyes until awareness takes their place. You take a deep breath. A new day, distinct from the last and unmade by the next, waits patiently for you to rise. And you have things to do.
So you rise.
A white shawl, the one you knitted in the late hours of some forgotten evening, is draped over the back of your wooden desk chair. You drape it around your shoulders and the lace kisses your skin, settling in the crook of your elbows. The old floorboards creak beneath your feet in a familiar, companionable greeting as you wander toward the kitchen.
You brew tea with the herbs you gathered from your gardens yesterday. Lemon balm and chamomile. When the steam curls in ribbons around the cup, you carry it to the front porch and sink into the soft couch overlooking the small clearing of the forest carved out just for you. You breathe in deeply.
The dew-kissed flowers exhale their natural sweetness into the air as the rising sun stretches over the treetops. The wind hums through the branches, and the morning moves—a slow and thoughtful creature. This is how every day began. This is how you began.
Living alone in the woods never felt like the daunting thing outsiders whispered through the Nation. It never towered over you like an arduous task. You have lived here for as long as your memory will allow.
You tended to your cottage with the tenderness of a mother and the patience of moss. You scrubbed away mud-stained scars from the stone walls and mended the roof using smelting tricks found in the dog-eared books in your makeshift library, tucked in the cottage’s spine, humming melodies under your breath. When your careful inspection was finished, with every creak and crack and corner accounted for, you headed to the backyard, loosely bordered by weather-worn oak fences, to check on your animals.
The chickens erupted into delighted chatter the moment you stepped toward them, their feathered bodies bobbing around you. They flocked to you in a flurry of gold and cream, chirping impatiently and tugging playfully at the hem of your skirt. You laughed, and the sound seemed to intoxicate them. They whirled around your ankles in a jubilant parade, joy so earnest it bordered on ceremonial. As you walk, grain spilled from your hand in a gentle cascade, and the flock scattered at once, pecking eagerly at their breakfast.
Leaning against the warm, wooden post of the fence, you watched them with a fond crinkle at the edge of your eyes. While your gaze turned outward, you felt the brush of something soft—charred-looking fur swirling around your ankles like smoke. Omen.
He was not yours. Not in any rightful sense of the word, at least. For you, he simply is. A spirit of the forest, a streak of shadows and flames, who chose your little clearing as a secondary den. You leave out meat, berries, water and the fox accepts them without the ceremony of an offering. Sometimes, he trailed you through the day. Other times, he curled at your feet while you wrote, paws tucked neatly beneath him, watching your quill move with curious interest.
On rare nights, you’d wake up to find he slept beside you only to discover him, later on, gone with the dawn, vanishing with such impossible stealth that you’ve given up trying to understand how he did it.
He peered up at you, dark eyes gleaming like polished onyx beneath the edge of your skirt. His little face titles, expectant. Some people were afraid of foxes. You weren’t one of them—for all the tales about how unpredictable and wild they were, you found them quite agreeable. You crouched down, letting your fingers slip into the thick fur behind his ears. He melted beneath your touch, tail flicking happily.
“Don’t worry,” you murmured, voice barely above a whisper. “You haven’t missed a thing. We still have plenty to do today.”
At your reassurance, Omen perked up, emitting a soft, pleased sound that warmed your chest. You chuckled, giving him one last affectionate scratch before unlatching the wooden gate.
You stepped through it and his paws patter behind you, faithful as a shadow.
The rest of your morning unfolds as it always does. Once the outside world has been tended to in the pale wash of early morning blue, you retreat indoors to tend to the little universe enclosed within your stone walls. You tidied what was left of yesterday’s mess: stray herbs scattered across the kitchen counter, threads you’d swept beneath the rug with the promise of later… You threw open a window, letting the cool breeze slip inside and stirring your curtains. Then, you light a candle you made yourself one idle afternoon, the warm smell of vanilla engulfing the space. You struck a match, the wick sputtering alive. With your morning tasks completed and the candle slowly melting into itself, you settled on your porch once again.
There, you’d choose what to do with your leftover hours until the end of the morning. Sometimes you’d stitch together a journal, binding supple leather with cords bound by hand. Other days, you’d knit yourself another scarf for the colder months ahead—even though the heat of high summer made such preparation feel delightfully distant. But more often than not, almost always, you reached for a book, or your quill.
Keeping you company was the comforting musicality of silence. The rustling leaves murmuring overhead, the distant birdsong threading through the branches… all of it formed a gentle orchestra you’ve long since learned to breathe in time with.
Accompanying often was the comforting musicality of silence. The rustle of the tree leaves or the pitter patter of the rain echoing on the bushes. It was a welcomed soundtrack to the general muteness of your day to day, and one you had learnt to sing along to, until each intake of breath synchronized with the breeze.
However, when even nature quieted down on the most tranquil of days. And in those rare moments of complete and utter silence, other sounds slipped through the trees. Bright, childish laughter, echoing across the clearing with enough joy and adrenaline to ricochet off the stones of your cottage. Sometimes it’s joined by muted explosions or theatrical shouts that send you rolling your eyes in fond amusement.
It’s easy, so easy, to forget that other people live in the Nation of the Dream SMP when you were as secluded as you were, but those occasional flurry of sounds were reminders enough of the world behind the treeline.
There were times your stomach twisted at the sounds, and your heart tightened ever so slightly with it, but never hard enough to make you regret the chosen peace you had settled into.
You weren’t in need of the chaos behind the husky forest separating you from the rest of the world. You were tremendously happy right where you were.
Which is why you sat now at your kitchen table, sunlight slanting through the window in lazy stripes, announcing noon. Your journal was opened before you. Its leather cover was worn with age, pliant in your hands after five years or more of loyal service. The pages jutted out in uneven waves, stained with ink in colors you no longer remembered choosing, crowded with handwriting so dense it sometimes tore through the parchment.
Writing is one of the earliest loves you ever knew. As soon as you learned how to steady a pen, you learned the joy of jotting down stories and chronicling your days—morning, afternoon, evening—no matter how similar one might be to the next.
Your chair creaked pleasantly beneath you as the soup on the stove bubbled in drowsy breaths, waiting patiently to be stirred. You placed your quill to the page, ready to detail your morning.
Or at least, you would have, if three awfully familiar knocks at your front door hadn’t snapped you out of it.
They rapped against the wood in a very particular rhythm. One-two, three. A private code you’d invited together so you could distinguish a “scary intruder” from your only semi-visitor—though Tubbo was neither scary nor particularly stealthy, and no one else ever came calling anyway.
You stood, brushing your hand down your skirt, a smile already thinning your lips. A rookie mistake, really. You should’ve expected that the door would flung itself open before you could even touch the handle.
“Y/N, you there?!” Tubbo’s voice cracked through the cottage, pitched just a bit too high at the end of his question. His gaze darted frantically around the entryway, managing somehow to miss the entire open kitchen where you were visibly standing.
Hand braced on the table, the other resting on your hip, you watched the teenager wander aimlessly into your home. An affectionate sigh slipped past your lips. “And where else would I be, Tubbo?”
He spun away from one of your bookshelf, where he’d briefly gotten distracted by an illustrated herbology tome, and the moment his eyes landed on you, his whole face lit up in a huge grin.
Tubbo was a small figure for sixteen, all in wiry limbs and short height. His messy blonde hair fell into wide, green eyes in a constant state of wonder, sparkling with unquenched curiosity. Despite the swelling summer heat, he remained loyal, stubbornly so, to his chunky, frayed green sweater and battered brown boots. You’d noticed that about him: his unshakable loyalty. That, and the horns curling from the top of his head.
It was an uncommon feature in the Nation, according to him—because how would you know? It was a comfort you rarely admitted aloud, the quiet solidarity of seeing another person shaped like you. Well, sort of like you. Your horns were much burlier, curling into a perfect swirl against your temples due to the few years you had on the boy.
“I dunno,” he shrugged, already crossing the room toward you. “Foraging shit or something. Seriously, you should get one of those open-or-closed signs that the fancy shops used to have.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for the two whole visitors I get every week. Is—”
“TUBBOOOO!” The shout rattled the trees outside your home. “IS SHE FORAGING SHIT?”
“NAH, SHE’S HERE!” Tubbo bellowed back, cupping his hand around his mouth to amplify the already earsplitting volume.
You winced at the sudden noise shattering your cottage’s usually tranquility. When Tubbo turned back to you, he simply shrugged, smiling in perfect normalcy. “Yeah, Tommy’s with me.”
As if summoned by the name alone, the second blond teenager materialized in your doorway.
Tommy was taller. Lanky, all in elbows and height, his hair was an unkempt mess of dirty-blond curls brushing the top of his ears. And, true to form, he wore the same patched-up red and white shirt and cargo shorts held together by thousands of decaying stitches of amateur sewing, along with a sage green bandana tied around his neck. His knees, arms, and face were a map made up of scars and bandages.
He hovered on the threshold, glaring at your floorboards as though they were conspiring to keep him out. You and Tubbo, now standing shoulder to shoulder in the open kitchen, waited. And waited. And waited.
“You can come in, you know,” you finally offered.
Tommy jolted, eyebrows flying upward as if he’d forgotten both your existence and the doorway he was rooted in. The surprise melted instantly into a frown, and you had to lift a hand to your mouth to hide your laugh. Tubbo’s exasperated sigh did nothing to help your composure.
“I know, I know,” Tommy muttered, sulking. He stuck one tentative foot inside the cottage.
“Mate, are you serious?” Tubbo groaned. “We’ve been here a thousand times. I cannot believe you’re still scared—”
“I’M NOT SCARED! Why would you even suggest—”
Watching the two of them bicker, voices overlapping each other, you couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at your lips. The familiar clamor stirred memories. You never truly met Tubbo, and Tubbo never truly met you. In the most accurate retelling, Tubbo simply stumbled upon you.
You were well-aware of your reputation in the small Nation. Whispers, when loud enough, always managed to reach even the furthest corners, and so disrupting the quiet of your clearing. People steered clear of the recluse in the woods, the woman with sharp teeth and an even sharper dagger, who supposedly chose seclusion for sinister reasons. You found it slightly, and only slightly, offensive. Your teeth were perfectly normal, if a bit crooked, and your dagger was used strictly for carving wood. You had always despised violence and any of its uses—your lifestyle was the sheer proof it wasn’t needed.
Books had taught you that people tended to mystify whatever they could not comprehend, shaping the unknown into stories they could swallow without choking, insert into their world view with meaning. So, a myth you became.
As a result, no one ventured near your cottage, or even the outskirts of your clearing, for that matter. You lived alone, save for Omen, your animals, and the tall trees standing like ancient guardians around your home.
At least, that was before Tubbo wandered a bit too far from the main paths.
He later told you he had been gathering wood to build his house. Most of the trees near the main living area were claimed or being preserved for “aesthetic reasons”, as he’d put it with a long suffering sigh. His fourteen-year-old self had reasoned that going deeper into the woods would yield enough birch to finish the last details of his home. Unfortunately for him, your woods held mostly dark oak and spruce, and the nearest birch settlement stood not far from your cottage. Which was how a very unaware Tubbo stumbled upon your clearing and found a very startled you perched on the roof.
To say he was frightened would be a laughable understatement. More crudely—and far more accurately—Tubbo had been scared shitless.
You hadn’t been especially approachable either. Your hair was tied back, leaving your horns boldly exposed, your baby blue dress was stained red with clay as you patched a hole the last storm had carved into your roof and in your hand was a knife, midway through shaving excess material. You must have looked horrifying, looking back on it. A spectral guardian. Tubbo dropped his bag instantly, frozen in place and mouth agape in shock. And you stared back, equally bewildered that a living human had breached your carefully kept perimeter.
It took a long moment before either of you spoke. As the older one, you thought you’d take the lead and introduce yourself, gently ask why he was there.
Tubbo stammered through a quivering explanation, which somehow led to you inviting him inside for tea and honeycomb, offering him a bit of your birch reserves. You still weren’t sure of what compelled him to accept in his terrified state. Survival instinct, perhaps. He’d have to weather another storm if his house remained unfinished.
From that point on, conversation flowed surprisingly easily. The awkwardness evaporated once Tubbo realized you were far from the monstrous figure whispered about in the Dream SMP Nation. Instead, he found a young woman who tended to chickens and read until the moon dipped low. And, much to his delight, you had horns like his, except with vines curling around them like adornments.
Not growing fond of Tubbo had been impossible. He had a way of speaking that warmed the room, beginning slow and thoughtful before speeding into breathless rambling when his thoughts outpaced his tongue, his voice pitching higher and louder. It endeared you completely. Especially when he began arriving twice a week, pockets of his threadbare jacket brimming with honey jars, meat, and materials you couldn’t produce yourself, which were traded for healing salves and potions he neither knew how to craft nor had the capacities to.
You never pried much during his visits, but you took to writing the stories he shared about his week—the tales of the life beyond the treeline and, more accurately, the adventures of one eager teenager with blonde hair and a green sweater. You delighted in the way he flushed and laughed when you read back to him, or pulled your quill as he was speaking. Tubbo, you suspected, secretly liked being a hero in someone’s pages.
Soon enough, Tommy began accompanying him. You learned quickly that one simply never arrived without the other. Tommy entered your life with far more noise, swaggering into the clearing with bravado entirely too disproportionate to the fact he spent the first month too scared to put a full foot inside of it. The contrast between his words and actions was far too amusing. He kept coming back, though, again and again, which was, in its own way, endearing.
Of course, he insisted he wasn’t scared. Tommy just “didn’t like the woods”, or “the cottage smelled weird”, and sometimes “her horns looked even weirder.”
Two years later, here they were. Sitting comfortably in their usual seats around your kitchen table, Tubbo’s hefty trade bag hitting the floor with a muted thud. The smile on your lips could only grow.
“I’ll bring the potions I brewed yesterday in just a second. The invisibility one turned out especially potent, so I hope you two have something worthy of trade to offer me,” you mused and, predictably, both boys perked up like hounds catching a scent.
“Trust me, you don’t have to worry about that,” Tubbo assured you with a bright grin.
“Damn right she doesn’t!” Tommy crowed. “We got the gooooood shit.”
Tubbo’s elbow found Tommy’s ribs with the efficiency of long practice, and the latter squawked indignantly in his direction. You snickered at their antics as you moved to the stove. “Yes, you do,” you agreed softly. It’s not like you traded with anyone else, anyway.
You stirred the simmering pot, your lone lunch, and ventured, “Are you staying to eat? I made too much soup again. It would be nice if someone, or two, could help me avoid drowning in leftovers.”
On any other day, the answer would have been an immediate and resounding yes. It always was. Their visits had a way of stretching, naturally, into shared meals—no matter how short they actually had to be. Enough so that you’d taken to “accidentally” doubling your portions when you expected them over. However, today, your routine shifted half a degree.
“Can’t this time, sorry!” Tubbo called, already shoulder-deep in his bag.
“Yeah,” Tommy added, retrieving a pouch of jerky Tubbo had evidently been hunting for. He slapped it on your side of the table. “‘Cause of the war.”
He said it so casually that the words almost slid past you.
Almost.
Your spoon froze in the middle of a circle. Very slowly, you turned, brows furrowing at their perfectly innocent faces, as if Tommy hadn’t said what he had just did.
“What do you mean, war?”
“Actually it’s not technically a war,” Tubbo clarified. “Well, it’s not not a war. Tommy’s exaggerating— it’s more of a… fight. Tommy’s been messing with Dream and so he stole his discs—”
“I wasn’t even messing with him!” Tommy snapped, affronted. “He messed with me! The bastard took my discs—both of them! Cat and Mellohi!”
“—and it just got a little out of hand, that’s all.”
Your frown only deepened. Confusion, unwelcome, curled through you. By instinct, your hand drifted toward the counter and the battered green-leather journal with the small silver T on the cover. It originally stood for Tubbo, but the longer Tommy added commentary to his friend’s stories, the more it had started to stand for him as well.
You sank in your seat at the table, journal in your arm and your quill lying in wait where you had previously set it when you were ready to document your morning. The moment you opened to a fresh page, near the middle of the book, you sighed. “All right. Let’s… backtrack, from the beginning. What does Dream have to do with this? What happened?”
As you poised the quill over the paper, a single blot of ink bloomed onto the page. Tommy’s gaze snapped to it like a moth to a flame, and you could see the very moment he realized what was going to happen the second one of them would open their mouth. He practically lit up from the inside.
“Well, obviously, you’d want to document this,” he announced, puffing up. “I mean, it’s not every day you get to write about Tommy’s First War! Honestly, you’re welcome—”
“Tommy.” Tubbo turned to him with the weariness of someone who’d aged three decades in three seconds. “Are you going to actually explain?”
Tommy scoffed. “I am explaining. I’m giving context! I’m setting the tone—or whatever the fuck people in books—”
“Y’know what, I’ll do it if you—”
“Don’t you dare, Tubbo—”
Tubbo raised his brows at him pointedly. You shot him a grateful look, a silent thanks from one chronic sufferer to Tommy’s dramatics to another. He responded with a sympathetic smile.
Tommy inhaled rather loudly, throwing himself backwards in his chair. “Fine, fineee. But you better write this down good. Like—really good. I want to sound epic.”
You dipped your quill to the page once again, the corners of your mouth twitching upwards.
“Start at the beginning, and then we’ll see.”
And this once, Tommy did.
The longer Tommy spoke, his hands carving wild shapes in the air, the more you understood why Tubbo had insisted it wasn’t a war. To your immense relief, he’d been right. If you narrowed down their tale to its essence, it was no heroic epic like you may have read before. It was, indeed, just a conflict that had been blown way out of proportion. However, did that make everything right? Not at all.
The whole mess sprouted, apparently, from a chain of escalating pranks. Sapnap—whom you had heard of through Tubbo’s many stories—and Ponk—whom you had never heard of at all—had started it. Tubbo had tried to intervene after the burning of a lemon tree (you didn’t dare ask), and Tommy, in quintessential Tommy fashion, had flung himself into the fray with all the subtlety of a falling boulder.
Allegedly, Ponk was in the wrong, though you found it difficult to believe that a man whose entire garden and house had been griefed for the sake of humor could truly be the villain here. Regardless, Tommy and Sapnap had rallied against him, Dream caught wind of the conflict, and in a move in equal parts petty and theatrical, he had stolen Tommy’s discs to avenge Ponk. Tommy, Sapnap and previously neutral Tubbo stole them back in a grand escapade you suspected had been exaggerated for dramatic effect.
To understand the importance of these discs, though, you had to understand where they came from. They were relics from humanity’s final century, shrapnels from another world entirely. After the Earth we know of had fallen and the remnants of civilizations had built another world above the ruins, they were fragile survivors of an ange devoured by time. In a land where the world’s old technology had long since rotted away, discs were both treasures and currency.
Tommy had found two as a child, Cat and Mellohi, and though he had always adored coins, he held these discs with an almost tender possessiveness, for reasons he never confessed aloud. Something sentimental, you suspected, and God forbid Tommy be anything but tough.
By all accounts, that should have been where the tale ended.
It wasn’t.
Your head snapped up, quill halting suddenly. “He blew up your house?”
“Not my house,” Tommy corrected with a shrug far too casual for the horror it contained. “But, like, the surroundings. He was looking for the safe with the discs and he found them. Only realized it this morning when Tubbo showed me.”
Tubbo nodded. “Yeah, it was mad. Dream went proper unhinged.”
You had never met Dream. That wasn’t surprising. Again, no one from the Dream SMP ventured near your clearing, not unless they were named Tubbo or Tommy. Most preferred to cling to the stories told about you (your favorite was the one about the horned hunter waiting for the foolish and the lost). Dream, however, was the exception. You had lived on this land long before it bore his name, and so did he, before he even decided to make it a nation. He knew of you, your existence and the boundaries of the cottage that had existed long before you both, and yet he had never introduced himself. Not when you were a child, and not now.
You held no real opinion of him. All you knew of him, you got from Tubbo: lime green clothes and an eerie white mask with a painted smile. He mostly kept to Sapnap, George, Alyssa, and Punz, the original people who founded the Dream SMP. Tommy had his own colorful list of accusations, but Tommy’s words always required… filtration. The boy was a fountain of dramatics. Still, you had been a little disappointed Dream never once thought to say hello.
Yet neutrality didn’t soften the sharp frown creeping over your face as the boys kept going on with their story.
“You’re sixteen,” you said, the words clipped with disapproval. “Is he aware he’s fighting teenagers? Stealing from teenagers?”
“Hey, we are plenty capable,” Tommy objected, stabbing a finger in your direction. “And I fought very valiantly, actually. Tubbo and Sapnap too, I guess.”
“Oh my God—true! Check this out.” Tubbo kicked his foot up onto his chair and tugged his long cargo shorts aside, unveiling the most gruesome, half-healed gash you had ever seen.
The wound was still seeping in several places, angry and swollen, probably due to his constant movements and lack of proper bandaging. Your heart plummeted like a stone.
Before you could scold him, Tommy jumped in, unwilling to be outdone. “Don’t steal my spotlight, mate! I’ve got some war trophies too.”
He yanked up the hem of his shirt, revealing a sprawling crimson wound branching across his ribs. From the look of it, it was still fresh—and heavily inflamed. Their proud smiles paired with those horrific injuries turned your stomach in a violent twist. You dropped your quill instantly, the journal clattering shut.
Without a word, you swept to your shelves, fingers flying across jars and vials, searching desperately for a salve, an ointment, anything to tend to the boys behind you boasting about their open wounds. In the background, their voices rose in overlapping excitement, bragging and comparing scars. It didn’t help the unease in your guts.
After a few moments of frantic searching, your hand finally closed around the small purple vial you’d been seeking. Relief loosened the knot between your shoulders. You returned to the table and slid the glass across the wood. It skidded in a neat line and tapped to a stop directly in front of Tommy and Tubbo, cutting through their laughter. Both boys blinked down at it in confusion.
You spoke up in face of their silence. “Apply this to your injuries twice a day. Change the bandages at the same time, because you’re going to bandage it. It needs to stay clean. Do you understand?”
Tubbo shot a sidelong glance at Tommy, sheepish. “I mean… they’re not that bad.”
“They’re on their way to being infected, Tubbo,” you replied, tone stern but not unkind. “So either you use this, or I’ll have to sever your leg and cut into Tommy’s ribs, which I would very much prefer not to do.” Their faces twisted in identical, horrified disgust at the imagery and you softened instantly, voice dropping. “It’s free of charge. It doesn’t count in our trade.”
Tubbo hesitated a bit longer, then tucked the vial into one of the deeper pockets of his bag, murmuring what you assumed was a quiet “thank you”. He then rummaged through the rest of his pack, laying out the goods he’d brought with him: small redstone components, bundles of frozen meat, jars of honey…
You went to gather your side of the exchange, your potions and rarities you’d been holding onto but had no real use for. Among them, two enchanted golden apples, their unnatural skin shimmering an iridescent violet due to the magic coating them—that you had struggled to get a hold of. Tubbo’s eyes nearly glowed when he caught sight of them.
“That’s so sick! Where’d you find it?”
“If I told you,” you teased, “you’d never come trade with me again, would you?”
“Nahhh, we’d find a way,” he said with a laugh, right as Tommy snatched one of the apples straight out of his hands.
“This is gonna be so useful for the war!”
The words hit you like a pebble to the ribs, small but jarring. The images of their wounds flickered behind your eyes, wildly uninvited. You winced before you could stop yourself. “Be careful with this… fight.” You refused to call it a war. “And don’t antagonize Dream for too long. I don’t want either of you to get seriously hurt.”
Tubbo and Tommy shrugged in unison. You resisted the maddening urge to roll your eyes at the synchronized motion.
“Don’t worry, we’re fine,” Tubbo promised with a grin.
“Yeah, and it’s all gonna stop once I get my discs back anyway!”
You wanted—achingly—to ask how long “once” meant, if it was a matter of days or weeks and how many more wounds would they collect in the meantime. But you knew better. There was no undermining their firelike determination once it sprouted. Instead, you held your tongue, pressing it so firmly to your teeth you almost tasted copper, and simply watched them go once the trade was done.
They disappeared in a flurry of excited chatter, boots thudding against the earth as they crossed your clearing and vanished behind the treeline. Tubbo twisted back to give you one last enthusiastic wave before the woods swallowed them whole.
Just like that, your morning routine slipped back into motion, with the soft bubbling of the soup on the stove, the scent of herbs thickening the warm air, as though nothing had happened at all.
You grow to realize, somewhere in the unraveling of the afternoon, that you were missing the final herb for your stamina potion.
Typically, the hours after lunch would have been spent drifting through the woods, digesting and harvesting what the morning hadn’t yielded. But the unexpected chaos of Tubbo and Tommy’s visit had shaken the tidy map you kept of your days, and the disruption echoed long enough so that your daily walk slipped clean out of your mind. Only when you reached the last step of your potion and found the space where the herb should be did the mistake sink in.
Thankfully, the mixture needed to rest half an hour before the final addition. A small grace, you thought. You grabbed your basket, tied your shawl a little tighter around your shoulders, and stepped outside.
The sky beyond your porch was a painting in its own right. The slow-burning orange of a sun nearing retreat, streaked with the last deliberate strokes of blue. The woods basked in it: bushes turned to deep molten gold with their leaves catching fire with reflecting light, shadows stretching long and soft across the earth. A gentle coolness wrapped around your bare forearms, the kind that only arrived after the day had sweated itself empty. It kissed the remaining warmth on your skin, leaving behind a pleasant chill.
You slipped into a familiar rhythm. Bending and examining, collecting… then bend again. The bruised colors of herbs stood out vividly in the amber glow, and the certainty of the pattern soothed the unsettled places in your thoughts. You liked knowing what to expect. You enjoyed the repetition. It pressed a balm over the ache that lingered since the boys’ midday tale.
So, naturally, since today insisted on surprises, you were only half-startled when you nearly walked straight into Eret.
Sunglasses perched on the bridge of their nose despite the fading light, short brown curls falling across their pale forehead, the tall figure was crouched beside a tree. They were inspecting, quite seriously, a small cluster of delicate pink blossoms blooming at the roots.
You leaned back against the oak beside you, watching with an amused tilt of your head. “You might want to wash your hands after that,” you called gently. “Those are oleanders. As pretty as they are, they’re very deadly. All parts of it are toxic and can cause vomiting, abdominal pain—the whole ordeal. In overdoses, sometimes even a heart attack.”
Eret’s head snapped up. For a heartbeat, their expression was simply confusion until recognition softened it into an uncertain smile. “Ah. I… didn’t realize. I saw you had some growing near your cottage, so I assumed—well, perhaps they were useful.”
A quiet laugh slipped from you. “I keep them because I like how they look. Unless you’re planning on poisoning someone, they’re not much good for anything.”
Their eyebrows lifted just slightly, perhaps in amusement, and the evening breeze rustled the pink blossoms between you.
You hadn’t been lying when you said Tubbo and Tommy were the only ones who ever visited your cottage; Eret never ventured anywhere near it. Still, they were the only other person in the Nation you knew. You had stumbled into them months ago while foraging, an encounter that left you just as startled as the moment itself. It was rare enough for anyone to wander this deep into the woods. Yet there Eret had been, kneeling in a patch of sunlight like a misplaced painting.
What struck you the most wasn’t their presence, but their composure. Surprised, yes—anyone would be, coming face-to-face with you in the underbush—but not frightened. Not even wary in the way most people tended to be. Eret had been calm and polite, speaking to you as if you were just another normal individual and not the subject of whispered stories. They’d even offered to gather herbs together someday, maybe make it a habit if your paths continued crossing.
At the time, you had assumed their ease came from ignorance. They hadn’t been settled in the Dream SMP as long as others, and newer residents were always blessedly unaware of rumors older than their arrivals, but not for long. However, the more you’d spoken to Eret, the more you realized ignorance had little to do with it. They simply didn’t care.
Or perhaps it was the sunglasses, always in place, that they never took off, but you weren’t quite close enough to inquire about it. Whatever the reason, you found yourself welcoming their company without even meaning to.
Eret straightened up and fell into step beside you without a word, basket swinging loosely from one hand.
“So,” you asked gently, “how have you been?”
“Same as always,” Eret sighed. “I’m almost finished with my project. The one I mentioned last time.”
“The castle, right?” They nodded. “You’ve made so much progress in so little time. It’s impressive. Maybe I should hire you to help me with my cottage, the back wall’s stones went crooked again after last winter.”
A soft laugh rose from them. “Maybe you should. At least your house isn’t in danger of being blown up by Tommy’s latest shenanigans. This Discs War of his destroyed one of my stone gates yesterday.”
Your eyes rolled so violently it turned your head downward, your gaze falling to the tender grass brushing your bare feet. Even the hush of it against your skin couldn’t soothe the irritation knotting your shoulders.
“The Discs War,” you repeated flatly. “Is that what we’re calling it, now?” A dry huff escaped you.
“So you have heard.”
“Yes. Tommy and Tubbo stopped by this morning to trade.” You crouched to gather a cluster of wild fern at the base of a mossy trunk. “I’ve read about countless real wars. Whatever this is, it isn’t one. It’s a childish quarrel, at best.”
Eret snorted, accepting half of the fern you offered him and slipping it into their basket. “With the enthusiasm they’re throwing at it, it certainly looks like a real war. Same collateral damage, too. I’m sure Tommy told you about his house.”
“Dream and Tommy are both being careless,” you said, rising and brushing dirt from your palms. “A fully grown adult shouldn’t be waging a ‘war’ against a teenager, and a teenager shouldn’t be escalating it and defying authority either.”
“I wouldn’t call Dream careless,” Eret countered as you resumed walking. “Tommy, maybe. Dream often act careless, but from what I’ve seen, it’s mostly calculation. Hard to tell the difference with him, nobody knows him well enough to draw the line. Besides, conflicts don’t have an age restriction here. A war is a war, retaliation is retaliation.”
You shook your head, firm in your disagreement. “Thinking like that does no good.”
“Both Tommy and Dream are no good anyway,” Eret said lightly.
That earned a startled, bright laugh from you and Eret quickly joined in, their laughter mixing with yours and floating up between the trees.
An unspoken agreement settled between you two, not quite deliberate but mutual all the same, not to prod at the topic anymore. The conversation drifted to gentler currents. You asked who Ponk was, since Tubbo and Tommy had thrown his name around, and Eret launched into yet another rundown of the Nation’s residents. More unfamiliar names joined the mental roster of people you’d likely never meet, like Purpled and Bad, but you didn’t mind. You liked your isolation, cherished it, even, but it didn’t mean you disliked knowing the shape of the world beyond it.
An hour slipped away easily, the sun dwindling lower between branches until the shadows stretched into long velvet ribbons across the forest floor. When your baskets were heavy enough and the air had severely cooled down into a blue-edged dusk, you exchanged farewells and parted ways. You followed the warm flicker of the lanterns you’d strung through the woods, their glow guiding you home like will o’ wisps.
Back in your cottage, you tossed the last needed herbs into your simmering brew, inhaling the rich herbal steam that curled upward in delicate, dancing twists. You decided to let it steep a little bit longer before filtering and bottling it. An invisibility potion like the one you had traded to Tubbo and Tommy wasn’t of much use to you, but stamina potions were invaluable—especially on labor-heavy days—so you wanted this one flawless.
You drifted to the kitchen table, eyes landing on your journal and the quill you had abandoned earlier in the day. They rested exactly where you’d left them, patient, as though awaiting your return. A quiet smile tugged at your lips as you pulled the book closer, settling the quill in its rightful place between your fingers. The page open before you was blank save for a single ink blot in its center, proof that you had meant to begin, but life intervened.
As aforementioned, writing had always been your saving grace, your first love, and last constant.
There was a particular solace in having someplace to sit things, your days and very thoughts. Even stories you composed on lazy afternoons had a home there. The quill’s tip whispered across the page, and words rose from you as naturally as breath. Maybe solitude honed that gift, silence sharpening it like a blade, but you liked to have the pretension to think yourself as talented. Your journal was the anchor at the center of your routine, the steady pulse beneath days that could sometimes blur together. A quiet rebellion against the gentle normalcy of your life.
On some evenings, however, like this one, as the potion bubbled in the background and dusk finished settling against your windowpanes, you wished you could write something that truly mattered.
Something that could be more than half-spun tales and musings, something that could stand proof that you had been there at all. You liked to think that’s what you were doing, but something deeper inside of you tugged for more.
If anything, your many journals would be relics. Testimonies of daily life, carved in ink rather than stone. Even if the pages yellowed unread and the world forgot you, the words would remain as an echo of your hands and voice.
With that thought warm in your chest, you lowered your quill to the page and began to write.