Chapter Text
Silence.
Steve had grown accustomed to it.
A quiet wind rustled among the grass beneath the hoofprints of his horse and breathed whisps of hair out from the ribbon it was held by, deceiving itself as a whisper as it snaked around his ears. It tugged on his bright blue shirt, melting it into the clear sky. Graphite, is what he'd named his horse, after her dark grey coat that shone in the sunlight like polished metal. He blinked against the breeze. Squinting, he held his hand above his eyes to block the sun, straining his vision to gaze across the seemingly endless rolling hills. A sea of green dotted with few smudges of brown to mark trees.
Endless.
Sighing, Steve dropped his head and dug his hand into the bundle attached at his belt. Emerging with a frayed roll of paper, he loosened the string and unravelled it.
A familiar ocean of green covered the page, a forest painted on the bottom half with a winding stripe of blue flowing through it. The colour had long since heavily faded by the touch of sunlight and lost voices; he had found it in the last village he'd rummaged through, hidden at the bottom of a chest blanketed by cobwebs in what he assumed to be the house of the village's lost cartographer. His heart had leaped upon inspecting it and recognising the twisting shape of the river a few ten thousand blocks away from his base. He had crossed it once or twice in the past but never wandered beyond the forest on the other side, too afraid of getting lost since he'd broken his compass and hadn't been bothered to go mining for redstone to replace it.
This map, however, indicated another settlement nestled deep inside said forest. To Steve it appeared to be more of a small city than an ordinary village, taking up a sizeable area of the page with each house individually drawn and labelled in the Lost Language with squid ink. Notes and arrows were jotted in tiny characters across the forest, possibly directions. In the lower left corner, a larger arrow with circled text. The way to his current village, perhaps?
Steve had carefully rolled up the map and draped a piece of string around to secure it, fingers slightly trembling as if the piece of paper would disintegrate into dust in his hands. With excitement drumming in his chest and a grin plastered on his lips, he'd begun to comb through the remaining chests in what was left of the tiny house. If there was one map there had to be more, surely?
All that he had managed to scavenge past the cobwebs were a few lousy pencils and paintbrushes, mould nibbling at the wooden handles. The remaining houses had little else to offer. Although a mild disappointment, Steve had returned to his base for once with hope in his heart. Nowadays villages were rare to come by since he'd already trekked the entire 50 thousand block radius around his base hundreds of times and had painted every tiny detail, each abandoned shack onto his stagnant collection of maps. He couldn't trust himself to go any further after the last incident had left him with a compass shaped hole in his heart, a broken set of fresh iron armour and a demolished jungle temple.
This new discovery though, reignited that fire for exploration within him. Hidden TNT traps be damned, he would spend a thousand painstaking hours mining for redstone to craft new compasses if it meant he could possibly find any new information. And maybe even... life, even if Steve knew deep down in the depths of his isolated mind that that was impossible. Parts of him, even if only a few, still grasped onto the possibility. Still lingered its gaze for ticks too long on the paintings of familiar, forgotten faces hung in Steve's study room.
The breeze dancing about his eyelashes, Steve's eyes scanned along the stripe of blue along the map. Surely he should've reached the river by now, he thought to himself, furrowing his eyebrows in frustrated thought. He rolled the scroll back up and tucked it under his arm, prying back into the bundle and taking out his personal map. His prized possession. Each tree, each cave, tirelessly etched into the paper. By tracing his finger along the surface, Steve located the stronghold opening he had passed earlier and deduced his current location. Only a few hundred blocks to go until he reached the bridge he'd built, then approximately 10 thousand more until the settlement. Just the mere thought of, finally, new houses and libraries and chests to scour through made his breath quicken momuntarily. Both maps were roughly stuffed back into the bundle as he grasped Graphite's lead and hurriedly motioned her back into a trot.
...
Water droplets glistened with sunlight as they leapt out of the stream and landed on the sediment, glittering among beads of sand. The rush of water began as a mumble as Steve gradually neared, yet now roared with blithe against his ears while Graphite strolled lazily around the edge. A deep sigh of relief escaped him when he'd first spotted the brilliant blue. He had dismounted, landing lightly on the grass and shedding his freshly crafted iron armour. Interlocking his fingers, he stretched his arms high above his head and arched his spine, wringing out the stiff bones and hearing them crack in relief. He approached the water, detached the water skin from his belt and ducked it under. Taking a long swig once it was full, he sat down and rested his weight on his hands behind him. He stretched his legs out in front of himself and rested his gaze on the trees beyond the river.
They seemed to tower above him. Branches stretching out over the water, breeze whistling among the leaves and murmuring to him, casting dark, sharp shadows over the trunks and grass below.
Steve narrowed his eyes and stared into the forest.
It stared back at him.
He blinked, snapping his head away and in the direction of soft hoofsteps. Graphite was eagerly lapping at the water, which now threatened to muddy its blue with a gentle, sunny-orange hue. Steve glanced up and noted that the position of the sun was far from midday, now streaks of light oranges and purples beginning to creep out from behind the clouds; he'd severely underestimated how long he'd need to travel despite beginning the journey many ticks before the sun had even risen. Grimacing from the way his limbs ached, Steve pushed himself up and meandered over to Graphite, brushing his fingers through her silver mane while he waited for her to drink.
...
Sharp clacks sounded across the short, wooden bridge as pairs of hooves crossed. Steve gazed at the setting sun over the darkening silhouette of trees, painting the sky in wonderful swirls of fire and violet. He would never grow tired of it. What a beautifully haunting image, he would think to himself every evening as he sat on the fallen log outside his base, his eyes remaining transfixed on it. He would watch until the very last strokes of colour melted away and until the monsters began to stalk out from beyond the horizon.
Steve shuddered at the memory. Hopefully he would reach the settlement before the sun fully set. Despite fighting and killing those things his entire life, he was perpetually terrified of them. He hoped that maybe one day he would become desensitized to them and sleep soundly at night, but for the present moment even the groan of a zombie or hissing of a creeper would freeze him in his tracks and make every breath feel like it was being ripped out of his throat. He could slaughter hoards of them no problem, yet too many close calls still made his hand tremble while he reached for his sword.
He clenched his jaw as hooves reached soft ground again and the sun's light began to flicker through leaves. He still had time. He could make it. Diving into the bundle he retrieved the map yet again and unravelled it. His bridge wasn't marked onto it, he made a mental note to do so upon returning to his base. He could only pray to the Lost Gods that he was headed in the correct direction. He hoped that they were looking over him now. Prayed that whatever he would find there would bring him new information, any information. Anything.