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Go without
'Til the need seeps in
You low animal
Collect your novel petals for the stem
And glow, glow
Melt and flow
Eviscerate your fragile frame
And spill it out on the ragged floor
A thousand different versions of yourself
— Sleeping Lessons by the Shins
The thing is, it isn’t always that bad.
Sometimes George doesn’t mind the silence. Sometimes he forgets. All that exists is him and his pickaxe and the way the earth twists around him — plains pocketed with flowers, beaches iced with snow, the sour-smelling swamps and half-lit caves. He knows it’s all so different, but after a time, it starts to feel the same. It starts to be nothing but another hill to climb, another puddle to jump, another pit of complacency to slip into.
But then he shows up.
He never looks the same, but George always knows it’s him. It’s something about the way his edges never quite line up, a blurred-out chromatic aberration that makes your eyes want to slide right off the sides. It’s the color of his clothes, too. Most items are a shade George had never seen before, and he forgets about its effect every time until the man appears again. Then the warped awe returns, because seeing it is never not strange. If he had to guess, it’s probably what most people would call green.
He starts with one word: “George.” Voice wavy, almost indecipherable. But George always hears him. Sometimes, he thinks he’s the only one who really can.
“DreamXD,” George will say.
And then they’ll walk.
_______________________________________
George. George, wake up.
_______________________________________
George never wakes up in the same place.
When he exists alone, he never knows how long it’s for. He can’t even really tell if the sun is rising and falling, or if the sun exists at all. George finds that he doesn’t care, then. He never knows anybody in those times, and he never will.
But today he wakes up to an acrid, earthy smell, something that makes him want to dig his hands into soil and just breathe. It’s an unusual urge — one that only one place can give him.
When George opens his eyes, he doesn’t see a ceiling, or even the sky. He sees mushrooms.
They’re all the size of trees, some even bigger, and their pale white stems are about as big as George himself. Their caps shade his face like enormous umbrellas, overlooking smaller patches of fungi that cluster together under the protection. The size isn’t concerning, though. He’s seen them before.
George sits up, letting out a deep breath as his bones fidget under his skin. Sometimes he feels like his body is a jigsaw puzzle, the pieces loosely rattling together, and he needs something to force them back into a whole picture, secure with a click. But all he gets is a stretch, something to placate the shift.
George looks down. Today he’s woken up on a bed, an old wooden thing with lazy ivy trailing up its sides. It’s rickety, the legs splintering and the planks not lining up quite right, but he trusts it anyway. In his rare moments of self-realization, George guesses that’s part of his problem.
He swings his feet down and stands up, but doesn’t get to take a single step before he hears it.
“George.”
Tri-toned, playful. He almost sounds like a lullaby.
“DreamXD,” George says, turning around.
He looks different under the shade of a curved mushroom cap, dark shadows stretching diagonally across his form in the afternoon sun — but then again, DreamXD always looks different, and it’s not just the bright green cloak or blurred edges that does it. Today it’s in the way his mask sits slightly askew on his face, covering every feature except a runaway tuft of dark blonde hair at the top. It’s made of light-looking bleached wood, but the letters ‘XD’ are carved in deep, stained an earthy oak brown.
It’s also in the way his neck is placed closer to his left shoulder than his right. It’s a difference you’d have squint to see, but George notices. George picked up on DreamXD’s ever-changing idiosyncrasies long ago — the six fingers that sometimes crowd one hand, the mismatching ears, the overcrowded smile. Always an approximation of something, of someone.
But George doesn’t want to talk about that.
“Hello,” he says, voice hoarse.
“You seem tired,” DreamXD says. There’s something almost plaintive about it.
“I’m always tired.” George steps out of the mushroom’s shade, the sun warming him up in a way that even his best blankets can’t manage. Then he cranes his neck left, right, until he sees it, right on the horizon — one ivy-choked, two-capped mushroom, flanked by a tri-decked pagoda, its roof edges sloping sharply toward the sky.
“Kinoko Kingdom,” he mutters, and DreamXD hums like a live wire, a sound that George feels on his skin more than hears.
“I’ve been to the library many times,” DreamXD says. “It’s easier to travel that way.”
“Travel?” George says, but DreamXD is already floating away. Today he has no legs. Maybe he will tomorrow.
“Come,” DreamXD says, and George almost laughs, because where else would he go?
They walk for some time like that — George on his trembling two legs, DreamXD hovering ahead but never too far out of reach. Sometimes he stops and waits, never quite looking back on that misshapen neck. But George doesn’t know what else he could be waiting for. Somehow, it seems that almost everything DreamXD does is about George.
“You always did have an ego,” DreamXD suddenly says, and George snorts.
“Am I wrong, though?”
DreamXD doesn’t answer that one.
It takes some time, but the mushrooms eventually fall back to reveal the pagoda, the central lake sprawling out in a large circle in front of it. George places his hands on the railing, peering into the yin-yang symbol at the bottom. Koi swim laps around the edges, their tails whipping up ripples that send flower petals on the water’s surface into dizzy whirlpools.
“They wanted this to be a place of peace,” DreamXD says. He’s floating just above the water, the edges of his cloak stained a deeper green with wet. George rolls his eyes.
“Like that would ever happen on this server.”
“Hey, George!”
George blinks, turning away from the railing.
“Sapnap?”
And there he is — sprinting toward George, white headband fluttering in the wind, flame logo on his t-shirt almost flickering like the real thing as he moves. He hits George with all the force of a creeper explosion, and George lets out a tortured wheeze.
“Gogy!” he shouts, wrapping his arms around George to clutch at his back. “Dude! I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages!”
“Y-yeah,” George wheezes, wildly grabbing at Sapnap’s shoulders until he takes a hint and steps back. George heaves in a few breaths, wiping stray tears from his eyes. He’s not sure if they’re from barely surviving a Sap-attack or from something else.
“You must’ve just gotten out of bed! I didn’t see you leave the dojo, though, and I was just in there. What, you doing some parkour? Jumping out of the windows?” Sapnap is ecstatic, the edges of his brown eyes crinkled in glee. George scours him for inconsistencies and finds none.
That doesn’t mean anything, though. He’s been wrong before.
“Uh.” George looks back, but DreamXD is gone.
“Hey, man, you okay?” Sapnap says. George turns back toward him, blinking. He slowly reaches a hand out, grasping the fabric of Sapnap’s shirt sleeve between his index finger and thumb. Then he rubs — back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
“George?”
“I can’t tell,” George mutters.
“George, you’re scaring me. Is something wrong?”
George looks back up. Sapnap’s face is open, honest. And George is about to answer, about to believe, but then the darkness opens back up and swallows him alive.
_______________________________________
George, please. Listen to me.
_______________________________________
George doesn’t have any choice but to listen to DreamXD.
He’s tried everything. Closing his eyes, grabbing his ears. One time he even shouted what little he could remember of the L’Manberg National Anthem on repeat until his throat ached, but it doesn’t matter. DreamXD doesn’t talk in sounds — at least, not normal ones. He talks in pitched waves, sines and cosines that shake the skull and stitch knots into the ridges of George’s brain until signals shape into meaning. The only people who can hear DreamXD are George and maybe the dolphins, if they’re ever close enough.
But George can’t see the sea right now. Instead, he’s stuck in Church Prime.
He doesn’t remember waking up. Sometimes that happens. It’s all dark until it’s not, until he’s standing in the middle of the aisle, royal purple carpet plush beneath his feet. And behind the pulpit is DreamXD, two hands extending from his oversized cloak to grasp onto the wood. Harsh light that George thinks must be purple pours in from the stained glass windows on each surrounding wall, taming his green.
“Oh, so you’re a god now?” George mumbles. He looks down, noting his bare toes pressed against the floor. It really is a nice carpet.
“I always was.”
“But not this god.”
“No. Not this one.”
George sighs, sliding bonelessly onto the closest pew. For all the comfort of the rug, the seats are nothing but hard wood, cold to the touch. On the back of the pew in front of him rests a small pocket full of tri-fold handouts, and George grabs one, leafing it open. Twitch Terms of Service, it reads, rows and rows of a tiny, tidy font. George huffs.
“Worship and prayer,” he says, and DreamXD hums.
“WAP,” the god says, and George immediately presses his hands to his face, shrieking in laughter. It’s the kind that takes him by surprise, gripping his chest in sharp breaths and staccato hiccups.
“Oh, God,” he gasps. “I was not expecting that.”
DreamXD makes a noise that might be a chuckle. George can’t quite tell. But then the silence falls flat, so George fills it.
“Pray to the great Prime, maker of money,” he says, holding up an imaginary cup in a fake salute. DreamXD shifts, the purple light cast on his form deepening as the sun begins its descent.
“Money cannot offer forgiveness,” he says solemnly. “But I can.”
“Since when?”
“Since I’ve existed.”
“And how long has that been?”
Never let it be said that George doesn’t try. But every time he asks a question like this, DreamXD’s answer is vague at best, cryptic at worst. Today he simply doesn’t respond, turning to stare at the setting sun through the large windows. The sky is cast in different hues of lavender through the glass, its core the dangerous purple of the Nether portals before stretching into pale, flower-like lilac at the edges.
George wonders if he can see anything through that mask. He wonders if gods even need eyes.
“Long enough,” is all DreamXD says.
“So how long is long enough? When does the whole forgiveness-offering thing come through? Is it, like, a sub badge? Six months and you get saint powers?” George says, just to say something.
“I don’t know. But I do know that he wants you to forgive him.”
Everything in George goes cold.
“And what the fuck,” he says, clenching his fists in his lap, “would you know about that?”
“He is a part of me,” DreamXD says without hesitation, and George stands up with the all grace of a marionette jerked upright on a string. But there’s no puppet master — not anymore. It’s all George.
“You always say that, and I don’t know what it means,” he snarls. “And you can’t just say that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it matters, idiot!” George grabs his hair and immediately grits his teeth, because his hair feels the same. He can’t remember the last time it didn’t fall just above his ears. Has it grown at all? Can it grow anymore? If he cut it, would it even change?
“Where am I, DreamXD?” George demands, stepping out of the pew and starting down the aisle. “What’s going on? Because it wasn’t always like this, I swear.”
DreamXD just looks at him then. George can’t see his eyes, but he feels like he can. It’s not a comfort.
“Are you sure?” the god says.
George laughs again, but it isn’t kind this time.
“Yes, I’m sure. I remember L’Manburg, Kinoko Kingdom, all of it! God, even the McDonalds! I was once king! Don’t you dare tell me none of that was real!”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t real,” DreamXD says. He doesn’t move, but George does, storming down the aisle, grabbing onto the pews to hoist himself further and faster.
“Then what are you saying?” he demands. “What are you trying to say, huh?”
George slaps his hands down on the pulpit. The sun is down, and it’s dark, and the XD carved into the god’s mask looks more like a series of valleys than any discernible letters. But it seems DreamXD has nothing else to say. He just stands on two feet for once, motionless.
George heaves out a shaky breath. And then he looks down, because surely he’s feeling something wrong. He placed his hands right where DreamXD’s are, wanting the impact to sting.
But instead they’ve melted right through. His fingers are pressed straight to the oak, passing through DreamXD’s like they aren’t even there.
George lets out a crooked sort of noise. It comes out wrong, but there’s no way it could have come out right.
“I’m sorry,” DreamXD says. The worst part is that he sounds like he means it.
George just snatches his hands away, turning on his heel.
“Just leave me alone,” he whispers. As he leaves the church, he doesn’t look back to check if DreamXD remains.
_______________________________________
Are you even here anymore? It’s like you’re barely breathing. You’re so quiet.
_______________________________________
It’s so loud.
That’s what George thinks before anything else. Before the cloudy eruptions of dry soil, before the tangy, green smell of wood and grass freshly lit on fire. The ground is shaking like it’s trying to get something off of its back, but all George can feel is the noise, the eardrum-shattering pops and whizzes and screams.
Everybody’s running — TommyInnit, Nihachu, Quackity, Fundy, Tubbo, Karl Jacobs, Technoblade, Ponk, Awesamdude. So many people that George hasn’t seen in so, so long.
“Oh my God.”
“What happened?”
“It’s all gone!”
And above it all, another voice.
“Kill me, Phil. Phil, kill me,” it says. And in the din, somewhere between the yells of confusion and the fleshy noise of Phil’s sword running through Wilbur’s chest, George shakily lowers himself to his knees.
When he looks back up, all that remains is a crowd and a crater. A lone firework fizzes up toward the sky and explodes in a wash of red, blue, and white like some kind of sick joke.
This is the first destruction of L’Manburg. George wasn’t here when this happened.
Or was he?
George clutches at his stomach, desperately willing down heaves.
“Yes!”
And George actually does gag upon hearing that voice, looking up at who’s suddenly stepped beside him, shading the sun from his eyes. But he isn’t looking at George. He’s just staring at the rubble, the smile on his mask cut wider than usual.
“Dream,” George croaks. He lifts his hand and hates himself for it. “Dream.”
George wants to rip that stupid mask off his face and see his eyes. What would they look like? Would they hold any remorse?
But George doesn’t need that, and he knows it. He can hear everything in Dream’s voice, in the confident stride of his steps as he walks away, the sun beating raw on George’s skin again.
“Why are you doing this to me?” George whispers. “Why is this happening? Why can’t you stop? I want it to stop!”
He stays there on the ground, bearing the arguments and the monologues and the hisses of the Withers, until everything goes quiet.
_______________________________________
Is this just some kind of prank? Are you doing this on purpose? Because I’d deserve it, but I don’t appreciate it, George. Not even a little bit. Just get up!
_______________________________________
The next time George gets up, he decides everything has to go.
He wishes he could say that he thought it through, that he sat down and calculated what to do and when and why. But the truth is that George woke up enraged, and nothing was enough.
He knows he had rational conversations. He knows he sat there and watched and listened as Dream talked about destroying Kinoko Kingdom, as he asked him the directions to the city, as he killed him.
George also knows that stabbing his own sword through Dream’s glowing chest plate came with a rush of biting vindication, a feeling more real than any of the words he’s ever said. And it’s then that George throws away vocabulary altogether.
Next comes Technoblade. Then Manatreed. Then the houses, the pets, and then there’s Quackity and Las Nevadas and Karl, for some reason, Karl is there, but George doesn’t care, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t fucking care, because every lit flame, every stack of TNT reclaim scraps of what he’s lost. They burn clean and hungry, and George feels it collect in the hollow between his ribs. It’s an ending. It’s control.
Eventually there’s DreamXD. They’re near the portal, near The End, and George doesn’t know how they got there, but he doesn’t care. DreamXD won’t stop talking, but his green suddenly doesn’t look so imposing, and George had already decided that words meant nothing.
He didn’t think that a god would go so easy. Maybe that makes him god.
Maybe George even believes that, as the Ender dragon’s dying light washes on his face and its final whine ekes into nothing. But he doesn’t want to be god.
He just wants to go home.
_______________________________________
God, I’m — sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, George. Forget I said that. I just… We haven’t talked in so long.
_______________________________________
The next time George talks to DreamXD, he’s picking flowers in a field.
He’d woken up not long ago, his body just sprawled out across the plains like he’d plopped down and taken a nap after a frolic. Then he just got up and walked, the breeze ruffling his clothing and pressing the tall grass against his legs.
He remembers everything. George never thinks he really forgets, even if it all disappears for a time. And maybe he really did blow all of it up, because he can’t see anything beyond the undulating foothills and fluffy white clouds. It’s far too nice of a day for someone like him.
But the flowers remain. Scores of them, scattered all across the land like they’re trying to take over. George thinks he’s seen enough of that, so he bends down and plucks some up, delicate fingers gathering the bundles in the crook of his arm. He can’t see their true colors, but they look pretty all the same.
Just as he thinks of scattering them to the wind, DreamXD flips into existence like the turned page of a book, like somebody peeled off a sticker and stuck it into what was once just thin air. George doesn’t jump, though. He just stares, and DreamXD stares back.
“George,” the god finally says.
“DreamXD.”
And George reaches into his flower bundle and holds one out — a poppy.
“We’re going to be stuck together,” George says, “for quite some time, aren’t we?”
DreamXD chuckles. He takes the flower in one clawed hand, spinning the broken stalk between eight fingers.
“George. We already have been.”
________
George. Please, I-I know I fucked up. But I’m out now. I got out, and I want to tell you about it. About everything.
I miss you.