Section 12:

     Another day. The last one ended in a stand-still, no one sure of what to say or do when peace had once again fallen over the village. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE was shaken up. A few of the adult villagers even began comparing with one another the incident of last night to the raid that had killed my parents. It was.. not fun to listen to, especially when they were brought up as some of the only casualties of that distant event. Other than little conversations here and there, the village was nearly silent. Work continued though, as it always did.

     Drake went back to brewing potions/crafting/enchanting/map making/bow weaving/well, whatever he wanted to do. Hokeson went back to crafting weapons again, except this time hammering away at his work like there was a time limit or something. Tabby was back to working in the library with her cat Sniffles. And.. I had no lead so far on my case against the human. It was hard thinking in such a time, much less thinking about someone else's wrongs, when you have your own to worry about. I sighed. Maybe it was finally time to dip my toe into the other side of the argument.

     I slowly began walking into the familiar direction of home, but instead of turning to the house I always stayed in, I stepped up to Hokeson's front door, absent mindedly looking up at the sign with the strange text written on it. Through the door, I could hear him still hammering away, iron on iron. I knocked on the door. There was a sudden silence. Then, the front door opened, and I looked up to see Hokeson's one eye looking down on me, a dark, tired look to it.

     "Oh.. Tim? What are you doing here?" He asked. I stared up and blinked at him a couple times. He was often so awake, it was new seeing him this tired all of a sudden.

     "I, um. Well.. I have a couple questions to ask you about the human- for the debate.. Would you mind..-?"

     "Of course. Come on inside. It is pretty snug though. You can sit on the opposite bed." He invited me inside. As he had said, the house was pretty small; all it was were two beds along either wall, and Hokeson's tool-making-thing in between.. WHAT?! I hadn't ever been interested in making weapons anyways, so why learn what they're called?! AmIright?!.. I sat down on the opposite bed as Hokeson plopped onto his own across from me, glad inside that he could finally take a break and sit down for a bit. "So.. what do you want to know about?" He suggested I begain.

     "Um," I paused for a moment, trying to think of the best question to start with, "I would like to know why you are such a big fan of the human."

     "Oh. That. Pretty simple, actually. He pretty much raised me."

     "...Wait what?"

     "Yeah, I used to be in the same situation as you, except that was before; when he didn't constantly move on from one job to the next.. Did you know he created the library from scratch?- Yep! I watched him build the entire building from the ground all the way to the small tower on top.- Did you know he also built the entire schoolhouse to begin with?! You probably wouldn't even have your classes without-"

     "Okay, okay, okay! One thing at a time please." I just had to interrupt him. Any more and I felt as if my brain might explode. I thought I had overheard some of that stuff, but it was older news I had never really paid attention to before. ..It was weird thinking about all that, now. "Um, do you think you can start at the beginning? Like, how did you even meet the human?"

     A long thinking pause, then, "I was but a young villager when the human first appeared in our village. He was certainly a stranger, with the strength to chop down trees all on his own, and create objects we had never even imagined was possible. His abilities seemed endless: even able to take down hordes of monsters when night struck, all on his own... I grew up believing he was invincible. ... But, one night we learned this was not the case. It was so long ago, and I was still so young, but I can remember the fear; the screams, as if it were only a couple days ago... The monsters rose from the river. They attacked from all sides, even from within caves in the very center of the village. It was a nightmare, and the human could not handle it all by himself. So, he created our first iron golem. Then another; and another. With their help, we were able to survive the night. Well, not all of us. My parents were a few of the many casualties. This took a big toll on everyone, even the human. I know no one here seems to think he has emotions like we do.. but I remember vividly the look on his face. His eyes looked wet and his mind momentarily clouded. From that moment forward, he made a silent vow to make sure that never happened again..

With no family to turn to after the attack, I stuck near the human for protection and comfort. He even allowed me a portion of his bed. I would supervise him as he came back out of the caves with stacks upon stacks of stone and andesite, and built the wall that now surrounds our entire village. I know he could have made the wall taller, I saw he had even been thinking of making four to even five blocks high.. but I think he still wanted us to be able to look up at the sky, without seeing an ugly wall or anything.... Heh. Now I am just rambling, aren't I?" He looked back down at me, cheeks turning to a light shade of pink in embarassment. I straightened, reminding myself that this wasn't just some bedtime story he was telling me.

     "Oh.. No. It is alright... And?" I coaxed him into continuing.

     "Well, when I grew up, I moved out, into this house. I kind of worried he might just forget me, but instead, he visited me often. He wrote that sign above my door. He even began teaching me some basic fighting techniques.. and stuff."

     "How come he doesn't visit you much anymore? What changed? Why is he acting this way: just running around from project to project?" I began asking. Now, it felt a lot less like I was asking, just for the debate. I was.. genuinely interested. Here, sitting before me, was actually a villager a lot like me. A lot more than I originally thought. So, I wanted to know why were also so different at the same time. We both lost our parents, and we both had to share our lives with the human. So what was the big difference between the human, then, and now?

     "There are many factors that when built up could all together be responsible for his strange behavior.. but I personally think the big one was only about five years ago.. In the Pillager Raid. Again, the human was not able to fight them all off. Their beasts had broken through weak points in the wall and were destroying everything!.. I am sure you remember.."

     "..Yeah, I do..." Memories flashed through my mind. Unpleasant ones full of roaring and screaming. I thought it was the end of the world then! But, how did that affect the human?! He wasn't hurt! He didn't lose anyone he loved like I did!.. Unless, he didn't need to lose anyone so close to him to be personally hurt by it..

     "Well.. After the raid. I attempted to try and comfort him. I looked everywhere for him, but he had left the village entirely. It wasn't until an entire week later that he returned. His armor had been shredded further, and it was clear he hadn't slept in days. I attempted to communicate with him in the way we had found worked well enough. The two of us had seemed to understand one another pretty well back then... But, he made no attempt to communicate with me; not with anyone. He just came back, reinforced the walls, built the school, and went fishing nearly all day for months!. Later I found that he purposefully stayed up all night so he could fight monsters, then would sleep sprawled out on the grass when it was day. It was.. strange. But, slowly, he began going back to normal. Well, sort of. But.. he still never tried to talk to me directly again. And I don't even know why..." With that, Hokeson ended on a sad note. I sat silently.

     'From his point of view, the human sure did sound a lot more villager-like!'

     "So, is that all you wanted to hear?" Hokeson sat up quickly, smiling tiredly as he looked back at me kindly. I did the same.

     "Umm....... Have you... made any progress on translating the human's words to ours?" I asked.. mind genuinely curious all of a sudden for some reason.

     "Oh! Yeah, a little. I found one of his old books in the library, actually, that matches up perfectly with one of ours, though I haven't had enough time to go through the books letter by letter just yet. So far though, it looks like his language pretty much mirrors our own, just using different symbols!" I lit up in that moment, subtly. Maybe finding out about the good side of the human wasn't such a bad thing afterall. He suddenly seemed a lot more.. understandable. "..Would you like to help me?"

     I stopped to think for a moment. Just yesterday I would have slid on out again.. but, this time, I sort of wanted to help. Maybe being open minded allowed my curiosity to grow. "Uh, sure. Where are the books? I watched as Hokeson's eye lit up, and he pulled the two identical books out from his bed, only one of them was a slightly darker shade of blue and was a lot more torn.

     "These two identical books should in theory be the exact same ones, just in different languages. From what I have observed, it seems as if all the words have the same spacing and word size as the other, so this last step should be easy, but tedious. Do you think you have the patience?" I nodded my head. "Nice. I hope all the letters are in this book. Let's start with 'A.'... So here....." And, the entire rest of the day went on like that. By the time it was way past my bedtime, and the moon was high in the sky, we had finally found 'z.' By then, we were both exhausted, and absolutely ready to go to sleep. But, before that.-

     "Hokeson?.." I turned back to the front door once I had stepped down the stairs, Hokeson's body blocking a large portion of the light that spilled through the front door.

     "Yes?" He asked tiredly, stopping himself from closing the door.

     "Um. Now that we have finally finished that graph-thing-"

     "-Yes. Thankyou for helping-"

     "-I wonder if maybe now we can try to translate the words just above your door." I looked up at the sign, lit up by a torch high up on the wall. Hokeson didn't speak, but I watched as his eye lit up again, pushing back drowsiness and rushing back inside. He came back out quickly, holding the piece of paper which had written on it both the symbols in our language and in the human's. Maybe.. oh, I don't even remember what I was about to think.

     Hokeson, very carefully, looked back and forth between the sign and the paper, me standing beside him. I watched patiently as half his brow raised ever-so-slightly. On another paper, he wrote down the letters he found, solving it like a puzzle. After the last of the letters had been translated, Hokeson paused. He just stared down at the paper, absolutely expressionless. I tried hopping a couple times to get a good look at the words he had written down.

     "What?! What does it say, Hokeson?"

     "...It reads:.. 'Billy's.. House." He spoke, voice distraught and expression softening into a kind of confusion, and understanding at the same time.

     "Billy?! There is no Billy in the village!" I huffed, eyes looking around for something else to look at as I stood there thinking.

     "I think.. I think that's the name he gave... me."

     "...No way." I breathed. After neither of us had anything left to say or think, I left; I turned for the front door of the house I stayed in every night.

     As I pushed open one of the two oak doors, it's hinges creaked. The opening doorway slid open before me, slowly; a thin trail of orangish golden light expanding, leaking into the darkness of the house. Two others already lay sleeping, snoring softly, shifting and turning a little in their sleep. I stepped through the cracked door carefully, looking up upon the darkened stacked chests at the blue bed which sit hollowly. It wasn't mine, all of a sudden. Instead, it felt more like the little remaining proof of a long gone.. somebody. I stopped upon seeing it, eyes automatically searching for the oddities. My brain questioned what I was looking for, but then it too knew... The human had still not yet returned. How long had it been since he had left? A week now?.. What could have been the cause; and why was he not back yet?

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Section 13:

><>another POV<><

     My very first memory flashed again in my mind, consuming my thoughts. Meters deep. Dark blue. Very dark, cold, wet, blue. The desolate sensation of death creeping ever closer. Would my first memory be my last? Would this be my existence?

Crack!

Drowning. I need to swim!

Crack!

Lungs burning. Swim faster!

Crack!!

I can see the sunshine! Almost there! Just a little more..

CRACK!

     I convulsed in my sitting position, dirty hands reaching out to comfort my throbbing leg, which had broken in the fall. Darkness lay coldly about my shoulders. My shaky breaths were the only sounds audible, which reverberated off the stone walls, making me feel a sense of uneasiness with every breath. My eyes seemed glued open, even though they were rendered nearly pointless in the darkness. The only light was of a soft blue color, which came in through a crack too small to allow even an item through and too high to reach.

     My inventory: scattered all about me. I knew I should have brought a backup sword. With no materials to make a new one, my only option when it came to fighting off the occasional monsters was by throwing items at them. Now, I had nearly nothing left hard enough to deal any damage. Maybe I could crawl back to my fallen objects and pick them up one by one, but that would take too much of my strength. I needed as much of that as possible; it was precious. At least.. at least Lumpy hadn't been as injured as I.. Other than being a little chipped, he had made it through a lot better than me...

     The gold! Quickly, I pulled out some of the last items in my inventory: the ones I refused to throw. They were what I had come for, afterall. I could just barely make out their shiny surfaces, the little blue light bouncing off of them perfectly. I looked up to the tiny crack which allowed in the little light, eyes catching a small flake of white as a star hovered over-top. Said star was over shadowed by yet another phantom. I listened in as the creature glided over me. At least there was a plus side to being trapped underground, though every now and then my heart would jump when one of those heat-seeking gliders would slam their heads into the thin layer of ground above me. I had already scooted as far into the corner as possible, just before a pit which most of the monsters I threw items at had fallen into; but still, I scooted back further, hugging my one knee that didn't sting with every mild movement, and held the only gold I had managed to retrieve close to my chest.. breaths slowly evening out with time.

     Silently, I wondered how I would get out of this situation. I wondered if this would even be worth it in the end. I wondered if this, might end up being my last memory...

     Lesson learned at the end of the day: Never forget to repair your old sword, before traveling far.. far... from home.

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Heyyy! Well, that just about wraps it up for Mini Book 1: "Why." I hope you guys have enjoyed it so far.

Next up! Mini Book 2: "Where!" ;D