The Tale | Dream SMP

I - Chapter Four

Tommy set down the stack of wood next to the rest he had gathered. He took a step back to admire his work, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead. It was tough and tiresome, but there was no other way to gather wood than to go into the forest and chop down some trees.

He had seen some other people in the forest as well. Sapnap had been around at some point, but he had been busy talking to another man, one with a blue shirt and weird-looking goggles, to pay attention to Tommy and Tubbo.

Another man came around to help them. He introduced himself as Wilbur and proceeded to chop down trees along. After spending a day with Tubbo's sad sense of fashion, the man's clothes seemed godly. A red beanie perched on top of wavy brown hair, a yellow wool sweater, and black jeans with tears around the knee area that looked so much cooler on Wilbur than on Dream.

It was already nighttime. They had been in the forest for the entire day and had the logs to prove it. In a way, he almost felt sorry for the trees.

He glanced over at Wilbur, who was chopping the logs into useable planks. "I am the Lorax, and I speak for the trees," Wilbur joked. "And the trees say 'Fuck you.'"

Tommy scowled, looking over at Tubbo. "Wilbur! There are children here."

"I'm the same age as you," Tubbo said, looking up from his work.

"Oh. Well, uh...." There was no good way for him to finish that sentence, so he decided to just start another. "I hate the Lorax."

Wilbur laughed. He had a really musical laugh, the sort that made Tommy want to smile. "How could you hate the Lorax? It's so short and fluffy. And it's got a mustache."

"Can't not love the mustache," Tubbo muttered as he piled the wood. He grabbed a length of rope and tied it around the stack, securing it with a tight knot.

"If there's anything good out of that entire movie, it was the mustache," Wilbur agreed. He flashed a crooked smile as his axe came down, splitting the thick trunk of a tree cleanly into two. "I want a mustache like that."

Tommy took a second to stare at Wilbur's face and decided that a mustache would look horrendous.

The sun was already beginning to get lower and lower in the sky, and they still had lots more work to do. There was something about working in the darkness of night that didn't sit right with Tommy, so he disregarded the idea altogether.

"I think this is all we're going to get done today," he decided. "Let's head back."

Tubbo set down the stack he was working on and stood up, not bothering to pick up the rope. "I am tired," he agreed with a yawn. "And I probably have splinters. Lots and lots of splinters."

"You're right, we should head back," Wilbur agreed.

"Wait, will our lumber get stolen?" Tommy asked, suddenly fearful for all of their hard work. "I mean, I put a lot of effort and back pain into getting this wood."

"And splinters," Tubbo added.

"I've got a dull axe now," the man sighed.

"So many splinters."

"My back is sore," Tommy complained.

"Splinters."

Tommy followed Wilbur as he started heading back towards the heart of the SMP. Tubbo trailed after them, mumbling to himself as he picked out bits of wood from his hands and arms. They had made a good team, what with Tommy ferociously chopping down trees, Wilbur slicing them into planks, and Tubbo tying them up together in stacks.

They passed by stumps of trees and fallen leaves before finally getting to the wooden path again. The hard walkway felt a lot nicer against his feet than the forest floor did. Not stumbling around everywhere was nice.

He glanced around him as they went. The place was already beginning to come along, with the startings of buildings littering the area. Based on it all, there was more people in the SMP than Tommy had previously suspected.

"So, we're all new, aren't we?" Wilbur said as they walked. "There was maybe eight people before we started showing up. Who have you two met so far?"

Tommy considered the question. "Well, I met this lady named Alyssa, then Tubbo immediately afterwards. We met Dream, and then later I talked a bit with this guy named Sapnap, who warned me about getting lynched in my sleep."

"Nice," Wilbur said approvingly.

"You think I'm gonna get killed at night?"

The man shrugged. "I mean, you never know until it happens, right? And then by that point, you're too busy being dead to notice."

Tommy glanced back at Tubbo to see if the boy found the idea as lucrative he did, but he was nodding along in agreement, though still mainly preoccupied with the wood bits still stuck in his hands.

"So did you get a death threat?" Tommy asked.

"It's not exactly a threat as near as it is to a warning," Wilbur mused. "But, no. I'm just impressed by how straightforward this Sapnap guy was about it."

"I met Ponk," Tubbo piped up. "He had cool clothes."

Wilbur frowned. "That's not a lot of people, then. We're still the newbies."

"I think at least half of the population can still technically be considered 'newbies' at this point, Will," Tommy pointed out.

They reached a fork in the road. Tommy gave them a nod goodbye before heading down the right path, back towards his house. He hadn't brought back any wood with him, so he couldn't begin building his fence yet, nor did he want to at night.

Wilbur didn't seem to take Sapnap's words seriously, while Tubbo had completely freaked at them. Tommy was stuck in the middle, both semi-cautious about it while not really believing that it could be true.

He hated being stuck in the middle.

An idea struck him. "Hey, what if we killed them before they could... oh, right. They're all gone."

But... what if we do? We could take them out before they could even try to lay a finger on us. Three of us against Sapnap. That's enough, right?

Look at me go... already plotting murder. How great.

Tommy sighed and kicked at the dirt. The dirt didn't respond. In a way, he almost wished for it to come alive and start attacking him so that he'd at least have something to do.

There was another alternative to killing before he got killed, and that was to form alliances so that he'd at least have backup in case the worst happened. But if that was the case, then he'd be pitting himself up against the alliances that Sapnap already had. He'd be indirectly assulting Dream, too.

Another irritated huff escaped him. You're just overthinking things. It's fine. This is Dream's Safe, Merged Place, after all! Nothing is going to happen.

Nothing at all.