Oh Avians ~ Hermitcraft Short Story

Part 2: Are you okay?

The soft heartbeat of the base reverberated along every wall.

It had been a couple months since Mumbo had started helping Grian and by now, all Grian had to do is fly into Mumbo's base without notice and sit down for him to get the message.

It was currently evening; the setting sun beamed it's warm light through the windows and caused each cloud in the sky to glow a pale pink.

Grian had only just flown into his base, looking exhausted and out of sorts. Not only did dark bags shadow his eyes, but his wings seemed an  absolute mess, which was surprising considering Mumbo had cleaned them twice this week already.

"Seriously, what are you doing for them to get like this?!" Mumbo muttered as he pretended to sound miffed, but he couldn't help the hint of amusement in his tone.

Grian shrugged lazily at him. "I don't know, it just gets like this sometimes. " He yawned loudly as he stretched out even more so than before, until he was practically reclining on top of the chair. Mumbo took his hands away from the wings as he stared at the smaller of the two, who had his head rested on the chair and his eyes closed.

"...You okay, mate?" Mumbo asked after a while of having done nothing but watch the avian look as though he was at the brink of passing out. He couldn't help but feel even more concerned as Grian didn't even bother opening his eyes to respond.

"Mmhm.." He responded with a sleepy hum. "Did a lot of building today, probably why I feel so tired. That, or I'm coming down with something."

Mumbo glanced at the dark bags underneath his eyelids. "Only time will tell," He sighed. "Just make sure you give yourself enough time to rest, or the phantoms will be after you."

Grian only nodded and chuckled subtly as he shifted his wings to cover Mumbo's lap, a signal to continue. Mumbo did so, but with more caution then before as he was more wary of how Grian was feeling. He hoped that he wasn't going down with anything nasty; so he thought it would be a good idea if he checked up on Grian tomorrow just in case.

The engineer had been able to speed up the process of cleaning the avian's wings over time after becoming more used to it. Efficiency was key after all, but it still didn't stop him from taking longer than he needed to on purpose sometimes.

This wasn't one of those times. He managed to complete the job quicker today, fueled by the fact that Grian really just needed to go home and get some sleep.

However, he realised that Grian had other plans. He stood up and took a step away from the avian,  he imagined Grian would stretch and do the same, just like how he always did. But he didn't move an inch.

Mumbo watched for a moment and reached out his hand to nudge him when he realised that Grian had probably fallen asleep. But had to stop himself; Grian was clearly exhausted, so what's the point in waking him? It wouldn't be much of an issue if he just let his friend stay a while to rest up a bit.

The logic made sense to Mumbo, so he decided to leave Grian to it. Quickly moving over to one of his chests, he pulled out one of the spare blankets he kept with his assortments of coloured wool. Unfolding it, he placed it over Grian who remained sound asleep against the chair and checked he was carefully wrapped up, before turning off the lights and making his way out the room to finish making one of his redstone farms.

——

Mumbo was glad to find that finishing off the farm only took him a couple hours as he didn't want to be working too far into the night.