Two months.
Two more months they stayed in the clearing.
And in those two months, Cleo's Portal Theory had gone exactly nowhere.
She'd probably exhausted the world's sugarcane supply to fuel the amount of paper she used every day.
"Ugh..." She drew out the word, then slammed down her quill and threw her papers around in a fit. "It's not working. How did it get from here to here?"
The dim light of her lantern hung on the wall, casting a weak glow over the room. The bookshelves on the opposite wall from her had hundreds of papers stacked haphazardly around. Even more littered the ground. The waves lapped against the wood stilts, which normally calmed her. Not today.
Cleo got up from her hard-backed chair, stretched, and stepped out into her oceanside harbor.
Two months is a long time to improve your living area. People had started to extend outwards, building bases as far north as the mountain range or as south as the beach, where Cleo was now residing.
She'd decided to build a village by the ocean. Some houses were embedded in the soft sand, and some were out in the water, their support beams encrusted with seagrass and barnacles. It reminded her of her childhood home, back before she'd set sail and eventually, you know...
...died.
Anyway, she'd connected everything with a rickety bridge that spanned across the entire harbor. She was currently the only person living here, but people came to visit often, like Impulse, who was currently climbing into a boat. At the very end of the walkway was a small dock, where his small dinghy was tied up.
Cleo waved. "Going out again? That's the third time today!"
"I can't help myself," he said, carrying an armful of filled glass bottles. "I want to get this guardian farm up and running as soon as possible."
"Stop it, you're going to overwork yourself."
Impulse raised an eyebrow. "Says the person who's been working on a theory for two and a half months."
Cleo blinked, then grinned. "Touche."
She watched Impulse set sail towards the deeper regions of the ocean, the salty sea air rustling her orange locks. The distant call of seagulls echoing in the wind and the roaring of the waves was a familiar sound to Cleo. If she closed her eyes and concentrated hard enough, she could imagine that she was back home, alive, safe, and sound.
But then she would have to open her eyes, and the harsh reality of where she was would hit her hard. She already had the withered sunflower in her hair as a permanent reminder. She didn't need any more.
To take her mind off of those depressing thoughts, Cleo looked behind her shoulder to the mountain range, barely visible over the forest canopy below. A large building stood on one of the taller peaks--False's newly-built observatory, which was her base for the time being. It was a mixture of deep purple concrete and cyan terracotta. At night, you could see a large telescope peeping out from the domed roof.
A lot of the others had chosen to move out as well. Jevin found his old grounds back in the swamp and decided to make a more livable space. Nearby in the mega taiga, Iskall had found a village and taken up residence in one of the larger huts. Everyone assumed he was just too lazy to build a base, but Cleo suspected it was more than that. She would have asked him about it, but it was obvious he didn't want to talk about it.
Meanwhile, Impulse had decided to make a smaller version of his base closer to everyone else. The only people who had stayed in the original clearing were Grian in his treehouse, Scar in his wooden cottage, and X, who insisted he stay in his proudly-made dirt hut with his pet pig.
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Hermitcraft: Origins
Fanfiction"Each world has its own story. Even if you tried to get a story from me, I wouldn't be able to tell you half of it. There is so much life in each build and block, and each event has told their own tale. But it has to start somewhere." Fate has the o...
