#ill edit it later i promise please dont flood my inbox again

[silverskye13]

3... 2... 1...

"Oh... Gosh."

It felt like the world had opened up beneath his feet. Like he'd stepped off the side of a cliff without feather falling boots. His body dropped faster than his soul and then pulled taught on gravity, and he'd been left breathless, dangling, tethered by the depths of his soulmate. It was like he could've died right there if some lifeline wasn't holding him, and his feet kicked over an endless void, centimeters from demise. This was incredibly unsettling, especially given Joel was standing still on solid ground the whole time he felt it.

It was strange, is what it was. Joel had worried it was Jimmy, because Jimmy is cursed as all heck, what with his canary thing, and while Joel had never been cursed before (nor had he ever particularly believed in curses) this certainly felt like what a curse should feel like, or what he thought a curse would feel like if they were real. Then it'd faded, and Joel did what he did best: he shrugged off the unsettling-ness of sharing a server with a bunch of unsettling people and got to work.

Then he'd met Etho, and really it'd confused him more. Etho was just so... Etho. Like, he was cautious, and quiet, and the only person the man seemed comfortable ribbing was BDubs. And like, Joel got it right? He wasn't too keen on talking to strangers either, and everyone on this dang server was pretty strange. But if Lizzie ever dropped him off at a party, at least Joel could hold a bloomin conversation. Mostly Etho loomed, and shot a handful of clipped remarks at people, and then loomed some more. Etho was funny, and he had his own kind of charisma, but he was better at stabbing conversation than carrying it.

Oh, and people were scared of him. That was a thing too. Which Joel figured was a symptom of the quiet, right? Anyone whose emotions are muffled behind a mask, whose only clue into their thoughts was in the easily obscured upturns in their voice, and who was prone to reserving those glimpses for the rarest occasions - well, they would have to be unsettling. But Joel wouldn't call it scary. Joel was scary. He was proficient and chaotic, and unpredictable. That's what's scary on a death server! Really Etho's proclivity to sinking into himself should be a sign of fear or weakness. And when he'd gone down into the Deep Dark? He'd been shaking like a leaf when he returned, and while Joel hadn't been there, Impulse had described for him the inglorious scene of Etho scrambling in the dark to escape the Warden. And like, Joel couldn't really judge that. Their lives were precious and few. But still. Etho wasn't scary, alright? He was just tall and vaguely mysterious, and people let that carry on way farther than they should.

Anyway, point being, that falling out of his own soul into the void of another's feeling Joel had felt when they'd linked? That deeply cursed, I've been joined to the belly of the universe feeling? Yeah, it didn't make sense for 'ol Etho. Etho was more of a... Eh... Something less interesting than that. He was more of a frayed friendship bracelet kind of person. Their soul bond should feel like tugging on the vein in Joel's right wrist - uncomfortable and constant, and deadly if severed. It should not feel like Joel had almost been eaten by the void or something. That's the point here.

Then he and Etho had gone down into the Deep Dark together.

There's just something about the Deep Dark, isn't there? There are places in the world that are old. There are places that are dangerous. You can walk through a portal and be in hell. Or a fortress. Or a bastion. And woodland mansions? Those labyrinths of houses? They have no right to be as scary as they can be. Some things are just old and dangerous. Old and dangerous enough you get used to old and dangerous a bit. It becomes... Not really mundane, because mundane happens every day. It becomes every second Tuesday familiar, unremarkably abnormal.

The Deep Dark is breathtaking. But not in like, the filled with auspicious wonder kind of way. It's like if a place could wring your bloomin neck. It puts cold hands on you, hands on hands on hands, even. The skulk reaches and it clings, and it feels like water in the way it leaves you damp. Like, skulk isn't clammy or anything. It just... Leaves behind. But in a deep way. It's not like dirt or sand that leaves behind and you brush it off your shoulders. It sinks into you like teeth and it clings. It crawls like... Oh... You know... Like crawly-things on your skin. You see movement on your shoulder, you feel tiny feet on your arm, and you look down and it's just skulk, still and unremarkable but somehow there when it wasn't moments ago. It's so terribly alive in a way that moss and grass are not. Alive, and deeply, deeply inhuman. Which makes sense right? It's not human. But neither are moss, or mushrooms, or trees, and they don't feel as inhuman as skulk does. It's like some things are made in a world Joel recognizes, and then some things are made because it made itself in an image only it can fathom. Like if gods existed, skulk would... Maybe not be a god. But it would be the breath of one, if the dark could breathe, and listen.

Etho leads him through it like a shepherd. A shaky, breath-held, paranoid shepherd, that would leave him behind the minute things went wrong. Okay, maybe not like a shepherd. Etho leads him through it like someone who's only scared for Joel's safety because they're linked by bonds neither of them can break, which means they have to keep each other safe despite their own personal fears. Etho leads him down to the enchanting table like it's an obligation, and really, Joel doesn't mind that. Of course, there's no enchanting table there, and that's gutting, because they risked their necks coming down here for nothing.

"Looks like somebody snagged it." Etho says, and there's a rueful smile on the edge of his voice. "It might've been Scar."

Etho looks up when he says the name Scar. He looks up, and it feels like every deep place in the world looks up with him. It's a very hard thing to describe. Etho looks up at the deepslate ceiling high above them, in a random direction that Joel can only assume is where Scar is standing, and every rock and stone and shadow cranes it's neck to look with him. It's that same breathless feeling Joel has gotten when the Warden listens, like anything that could make noise stops to crouch and and hold its breath and pretend it never existed. Except the world isn't listening. It's watching. Searching for Scar with Etho. Even the hair on Joel's arms sticks up, like it's being pulled along with the massive intent of the stare upwards. His heart lurches in his chest like it's trapped and trying to obey some call to leap out of his throat. The depths of the world get a little shallower, pulled up towards their feet. It is by far the strangest thing Joel has ever felt.

"Right... Bloody Scar with his enchantment tables," Joel stammers in a whisper, and Etho stops looking at the ceiling and instead turns to look at Joel. Joel expects it to be the red eye. Like really, as far as weird things go, that makes the most sense, doesn't it? That it'd be the eye that's an unnatural color. It's not. They make eye contact, and Joel feels like he's being pulled into the dark of Etho's right pupil, the eye so brown it's almost black. Or that's what Joel thought it was until just now. Now he thinks it's a glimpse, a bit of the cliché window-to-the-soul-y glimpse. He's glimpsing Etho. He's glimpsing a black so deep and dark it makes eternity shallow. He's glimpsing the other end of his soul, tethered to something so distant and massive all Joel can do is hang by the tether of their being soulmates over the gap. He is glimpsing something deeply, deeply inhuman, something that is offering forth the barest piece of itself, curious of the reaction. It's a bit like a crow that sits on a park bench and surprises you when it says hello, and you look around all over the place for the voice, because it should be human, but it isn't.

Then the glimpse is gone, not because Etho blinks, or closes off that bit of himself that's leaking into the world around him. Joel acclimates to it with starling rapidity, like jumping headfirst into frigid water, and finding the breeze uncomfortable once you've broken the surface. For just a second, Joel gets it. He gets why people tiptoe around Etho the way that they do. For a second, Etho is scary, not because of the glimpse, but because of how normal he is afterwards. Normal enough that Joel could almost, almost convince himself it'd all been in his head, and it was just the heebie-jeebies from the Deep Dark. Except Etho moves, making his way towards the overworld again, and he moves with the imperceptible slowness of someone trying not to be scary. Like Etho recognizes Joel as a startled rabbit, and he's trying to convince it not to run.

So Joel finishes his sentence with a nervous laugh. "The man's obsessed. This is starting to become a problem."

Don't worry, I'm not scared. See? Our conversation hasn't even stopped.

The edges of Etho's eyes crinkle in an incredibly human smile. Joel watches his red eye and his red eye only.

#the barking writer #joel smallishbeans #ethoslab #double life smp #dlsmp #boat boys #smalletho #[got no idea how to tag them as a duo eck] #anyway i wrote one where Joel got to be scary now im giving Etho the same treatment #unimaginable cosmic horror etho my beloved #also apologies to the people that wig out over longposts im on mobile #and the :readmore: thing doesnt work when i try it #ill edit it later i promise please dont flood my inbox again