He saw the Earth.
He saw the Earth in all its beauty, all patterns together, fusing, merging, going down, suddenly rising up. The sun under the horizon, and the moon that was about to rise, shining in its luxurious, silver light, the one that still wasn't enough to save from monsters at all, the one that embraced everyone during the night. It was magnificent, it was brilliant, it was like seeing a gem in a mine.. The light in someone's eyes when they laugh, that was the only light it could be compared to.
He saw the tall trees, grasping the sky with dark branches, the ocean gently circling a small sand island, and then..
The approaching ground.
Grian was falling.
At least, that's all he could remember, before he supposedly entered a familiar unconscious state to save himself from vanishing off this beautiful Earth completely. Something warm and wet touched his forehead, and the young man opened his eyes at last. It felt like the very inside of his skull was pounding, sides of his head being tightly held by an a visible metallic ring, vision going blurry and out of his focus. Grian's body wasn't moving, even when he wanted to do it - he wasn't being held or tied to something, but despite the persistent attempts, everything stayed still.
"Are you awake?", a soft voice descended to his hearing senses, the ones that the survivor could still bear controlling.
His mouth twitched in response, desiring to ask who's speaking to him, but then, images in vision finally came to one, forming a familiar face. Too familiar to not recognize from the first try.
"Mumbo! What happened?", with all enthusiasm, Grian tried to lift his torso on shaky elbows, but immediately fell down on what, he thought, were only soft bed sheets.
One quick glance of Mumbo's mildly concerned, worried eyes was all it took for the other survivor to lay down completely and take a more steady, comfortable position. He felt his stomach drop every time the redstone expert looked at Grian that way, and it worked fascinating on bringing him back to reality.
"I'm assuming you lost control of your elythra and.. fell, from a very high place. Luckily, I was around, found you rather quickly and tried to take urgent care of you."
"You're always around, aren't you?" the first thought that came across Grian's weakened mind surprised him, surprised by the way it sounded - it didn't sound annoyed in his head, it was.. Heartwarming, even too much of this strong feeling, carrying away the pain in his body, that he just started to sense all over.
"I mean, I never was too good of a flyer anyway, and probably not too careful as well." The light-haired guy parted his lips to make a silly, please-forgive-me smile, looking in his best friend's eyes. Mumbo's facial expression suddenly softens even more, and his mouth opens a little to smile back, but stays like that only for a brief moment, Grian catching it for roughly two seconds. Or was he seeing it all wrong?
He knew Mumbo too well. Well enough to always keep in mind that there's no way to make a conversation less serious when he was quite far from joking too, exception made only for Grian himself, and the brief humor wasn't commonly mutual too. Why would the engineer smile back at him now?
"I sense no presence on Hermit besides the two of us, and there are pros and cons of that." Yeah, just like the architect was guessing, there's no way Mumbo could not be serious right now, even ignoring what he said previously. "The con is that no one assisted me in helping you, and I thought, you broke a couple of bones, and - I dearly hope not - got a concussion, but seeing how you're talking now, I think it's not the case. I was worried sick about that earlier."
"And what's the pro then?"
Before dozing off a little with his glance and looking over Grian's injuries, Jumbo blinked and stared at his closest friend, holding a little pause before speaking. His chest widened, shoulders spun back, head tilted to side.
"No one on this land really gets a chance of privacy, since we all sense each other's presence, nearby or far, and can tell when we leave or come back. I could say.. We are private now, and it was long ago when we were completely private, alone on miles and miles worth of land." It seemed that the engineer was trying not to sound hesitant and unsure, but his voice became quieter, and the architect immediately picked up on his friend nervousness.
What only could be the reason to it?
Mumbo's gaze went distant and far, like if he was trying to look into something ahead of them, and his side profile stumbled upon Grian's view, as he was looking in a mirror next to his bed. It was getting dark, soft light of lamps nearby them warming up the wooden walls of the house they appeared to be in.
And the moon was rising.
And the image in front of Grian was so unbelievably beautiful - he held his breath, not even blinking. It rose right above the engineer's head, the white halo, edges of it shining and blinding his eyes.
Some time passed, both of the young men staying silent, until the builder felt another's hand caressing his very cheek, softly stroking it near chin area and lifting it up.
"What are you thinking about?" An adoring smile on Mumbo's lips, as he watched his friends face turn pink in a matter of seconds. He caught Grian completely off guard, him not even realizing that he's been staring in one place for quite a while now.
"I've been thinking, there's duality to everything in this world. There's the good to the bad, there's the black to the white, there's the land to sky. There's the moon to the sun." His hand went up and covered Mumbo's resting palm on own face, feeling the warm touch. Their fingers intervened together, as no one wanted to let go of the other.
"There's you and me. Inseparable, really. If anything happened, they'd find us together no matter what. We always have each other's backs, we create so many great projects together. If someone needs to find one of us, they ask the other. But to separate us, you're.. the technical genius. You know how everything about mechanisms around here. You keep to yourself, quiet, reserved, perhaps even distant, but always analyzing and calculating. The moon. And me, I'm the opposite - loud, silly, the jokester, the social one, positive, shining bright.."
"My sun."
Finally opening his mouth to speak, Mumbo put his friend's hair back behind his ear, and Grian leaned in the touch, briefly brushing his lips against the rough hand of a hardworking man. He saw the silver flames in the others dark, now shining, eyes, as if he was the one who was beaming the moonlight, rather the moon itself.
"Nobody has ever said such thing to me, ever. But if I'm being honest, no one in this world can be compared to you as well." Mumbo truly spoke from the bottom of his heart, and his voice was a delightful melody to Grian's ears, noticing how it slowly became a breathy whisper. "I don't know how to thank you for this."
"Well, you were the one who saved my life after all." The architect let a chuckle escape his mouth. "But if you still want to thank me, lean in closer."
Heartbeat rising, Grian was now looking in the eyes of the person who meant the world to him, in the past, in this very moment, and forever in future.
"I thought you'd never ask."
Slowly and carefully, Mumbo leaned in, and closed his eyes, watching the other rise from the bedsheets only a little bit.
As his lips met the other's slightly opened mouth, allowing a long kiss, their souls were in peace now, accepting their duality, finally together.
