Have I figured it out? Do I know how to edit once I've uploaded? I think I do...
Anyways, welcome! This is my first story actually ever put out for anybody other than myself to read, so I'd appreciate suggestions on how to make it better! Obviously I don't own minecraft, but Simple is all mine. The story is loosely based on my current play of Minecraft, in which I'm doing a challenge-look up the Mercenary Challenge if you want something to do, it's quite fun. The first two chapters will be slow, I'm afraid. I'm not all that good at speeding the story along, but I felt that some of this at the least was important. In part because it reveals a bit about how I imagine the Minecraft world to be.
Thank you for reading!
It wasn't so odd for Simple to be waking up mildly disorientated with the steady drone of a song in a language she didn't recognize in her ears. In fact, that was actually rather common and it didn't strike the young woman as strange in any way. What did cause her some mild sense of alarm and a quick evaporation of the somewhat pleasant disorientation was the smell of smoke and the crackling sound of fire. That, no matter what actions she may have participated in a previous night, was not something she was accustomed to waking up to, and having grown up in a very easily flammable house it was something she was cautious and tended to be overly concerned about.
To some degree of comfort, it was not her house burning down around her. However, that comfort was as quickly evaporated as her earlier disorientation had been, though the latter seemed to have returned in a much larger force than it had originally been. For while her house was not burning, the trees of the light forest around her were, largely due to the open pit of lava just a few feet from her that was surrounded by strangely calm cows, despite one of them having just caught on fire and running in a panicked state until falling and disappearing in a puff of smoke, leaving behind a nicely cooked steak and a few pieces of leather.
Simple continued to stare.
Finally she moved, pulling the brightly colored headphones down around her neck and looking a bit more around. A grassy plain stretched until it reached a desert to one side, a desert that wrapped around behind her. Forest continued on her left, while ahead of her mountains and seemingly impossible overhangs dominated her vision. Well, that and lava. The trees had seemingly decided to quit burning, so while being careful to skirt the lava she decided to make her way to the mountains. A desert didn't seem like a good idea at all, and something about being surrounded by trees unnerved her. She grabbed the steak and leather as she passed it, figuring it might be useful.
A slight hysterical sense of amusement came over her and she couldn't help but mutter to herself, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." A couple of nearby chickens clucked in what she took to be laughter and she bowed towards them before continuing towards the mountains. The logical part of her mind was telling her two things, though she was ignoring it for the most part, finding that the illogical part was less frightened and more likely to do more than sit on the ground and stare into space.
Firstly, she should stay where she was so that rescue people could find her. Though how she'd ended up in such a completely unlikely to exist location was beyond her. Secondly, she ought to be far more upset than she currently was, but since that wouldn't get anything done at all, she rather thought her illogical set of thought was more likely to keep her alive than her logical side at this point in time. Anyways, giving chickens the ability to find her words amusing was more to her liking than falling to the ground in tears or wetting her pants in fear.
Especially since she didn't have any other pants to change into should she happen to wet the ones she were currently wearing. For that matter, she didn't seem to have anything at all except her clothes, the headphones and the iPhone they were connected to. At least she was wearing a hoodie, so if it happened to get cold she had some sort of protection against the chill.
Though, if it got cold she could just huddle next to some lava. That would probably keep her plenty warm. With a possible bonus of dinner, courtesy of cows blundering into burning trees.
The trees quickly gave way to more grassy plain, stretching its way to a river that seemed to mark the boundary between the relatively flat land she was on and the mountains that were her goal. Why they were her goal she didn't really have any idea, but it seemed like a good enough idea. Getting high and being able to see was probably a good idea.
"Gah!" Jerking to a halt and windmilling her arms, Simple fell back onto her rump, before peering over the edge of what she had thought was just a hill. An even larger lava pit than the one she'd woken up next to bubbled and swirled beneath her, making her face feel warm and unpleasantly dry. Backing up she gave the lava a large berth, before pausing on the edge of the river. She could easily swim across it, but that would involve getting wet. She didn't really want to. However, there didn't seem to be any other option for getting across, so unless she wanted to stay on her current side of the river, she'd have to put up with getting wet.
Peering down into the water she sighed. It wasn't deep, but it was too deep to simply walk. At least she didn't need to worry about it being a death trap. Taking a breath she waded in, letting out a small squeak at the surprising chill. It was right next to a lava lake and she could see now that it wound around to border the desert! How was it cold? Hurrying across she pulled herself up onto the dirt on the other side, before suddenly letting out a rough, "Damnit!"
Yanking her iPhone out of her pocket she pressed buttons furiously. No good. It was well and truly broken now. "Sure, your first thought is that you should just wander off to the mountains. Did you even bother to consider, you know, seeing if you could call someone? No. Of course not. You go and swim a freaking river with your phone and now you don't even have that option any more. You can't even listen to any music. Just brilliant." Though it was useless now, she still stuffed the phone back into her jacket's pocket, before stomping off up the steadily more steep ground ahead of her.
Pausing at the top of the tallest hill she had ever climbed (and it was dwarfed by the mountains surrounding it), Simple put her hands on her knees, huffing out each breath. Her face, normally a pale color sprinkled with freckles, was bright red from exertion, sweat dripping down out of blonde hair and into blue eyes, forcing her to remove her glasses in order to wipe the sweat away. She'd been meaning to start exercising more and spending less time in front of a computer, but she hadn't exactly been planning on doing so by waking up in the middle of nowhere and climbing mountains.
Once she had mostly caught her breath she took a look around. It was pretty warm, though it had been getting cooler the more she moved south-she knew enough about direction to know that the sun rose in the east and it had just reached a position in the general vicinity of directly above her head and was sure to start it's decline towards the west soon. Shading her eyes with her hand she took a look around, turning slowly. Nothing but more mountains, desert, and what she had affectionately decided to call the Lava Forest. Not that she planned on going back to that place of lava pitfalls any time soon.
"Nothing about this makes any sense. Why am I not in my bed? I'm not dreaming-I've never gotten so exhausted in a dream. Why is there a desert right next to a nice green grassy area? Next to some green mountains? With lava lakes just sitting around and nobody anywhere?" Taking a deep breath she shoved the intruding hysterics back into that corner of her mind and decided to let her logical side have a bit of a turn, provided it could keep from giving in to the hysterics.
So, she was stranded in a place that seemed to defy all physics, judging by the giant hanging platform ahead of her, made of stone and brick and seemingly floating save for a few bits of dirt connecting it to the top of a mountain. It seemed to also defy all of everything she knew about earth, considering the desert and how close it was to a perfectly green stretch of land. Also, she was alone, knew nothing about surviving outside, except that fire and a secure place to sleep were probably both good ideas.
So, she would focus on that. Fire and a good place to sleep. Preferably a place where bears couldn't wake her up in the middle of the night while they were prowling around for a midnight snack. There was the whole "rub two sticks together and make fire and then dance around it grunting like a caveman" but Simple doubted she'd be able to pull off more than the grunting like a caveman part. Hopefully it wouldn't get too cold during the night, and she'd be able to go without fire, if she couldn't manage it. So the first thing to do would be to find a place to sleep the night away.
In front of her was a small valley, complete with a few sheep, a lake (thankfully of water and not lava) and a tree. Deciding to look around there, and because it meant she could climb down the hill as opposed to trudging uphill some more, she began to make her way down it. It was slow going, at least until she missed her next step and was suddenly plummeting down the hill far faster than she should have been.
A very heavy THUMP rang in her ears as she finally landed at the bottom. She didn't move for a few minutes, before sitting up carefully. She was bruised. She was sore. There was a scrape on her cheek that stung and was probably filled with dirt. Surprisingly she wasn't hurt any worse. After her heart rate returned to its normal rate as opposed to pure terror, she made her way to her feet and walked over to the lake, where she knelt down and tested the water to see if it was fresh. When she discovered it was, she took a few large drinks and then cleaned off her face, frowning at her reflection. She was covered in dirt and the scrape looked horrible. Standing back up she looked around, noticing an alcove in the side of the mountain-the very same one with the huge overhang as a matter of fact. Making her way over to it she was disappointed to find that it wasn't very large.
"That's no good then…" An idea struck her at about that time. Making her way over to the tree she broke branches until she was able to twist some green twigs around them, making a crude axe of sorts, which she used to break down a large portion of the tree, making more tools from that, including a pick. Well, it sort of looked like one. It was a stick…with another stick tied on top. The sun was beginning to set by now though, so she hurried back to the alcove before it got too dark, saying a silent prayer that the sticks wouldn't shatter into pieces.
Somehow they didn't, and as she beat at the stone wall it somehow broke apart far faster than it should have. Then again, nothing really seemed right with the world at the moment, so why should she be surprised by this? Before too long had passed she had a little alcove to hide away the night in. She blocked off most of the entryway, just big enough for her to squeeze through as it was, with tightly packed dirt, before turning to look at what she had found while breaking the stone. Some of it had been riddled with dark specks which turned out to be clumps of black material about as large as her fist. It was somewhat powdery, but otherwise useless.
At least, it had seemed useless until she tossed it heedlessly down on her pile of sticks where it somehow managed to catch them on fire. Scrambling to separate the burning sticks from the not burning sticks, she ended up with a few torches that she carefully set into holes in the wall, giving the place a….well, cheerful was a bit too strong a word, but it did dispel the gloom a bit.
"Hiiiisssss…" Terrified that a snake had crawled into her little shelter, she grabbed up one of her sticks and whirled around to see something far more horrible peering at her over the little dirt block that was all that separated her from it. Suddenly she wished she'd blocked the whole entryway off. With stone. And fire. And lava. Maybe even some whirling death traps of blades. The thing was slimy and as tall as she was, with a sagging mouth and dead eyes. It just kept hissing and staring at her, bumping up against the dirt block. Hysterically she swiped at it with her stick, but it just kept coming back, the hissing noise growing in frequency until suddenly it just fell over, disappearing in a puff of smoke like the cow earlier in the day.
Looking out she saw things just as horrible. Walking skeletons, people with flesh falling from their bodies, and spiders as large as she was. Cowering in the far corner of her shelter, she finally let the tears come.
Wherever she was, it certainly wasn't anywhere at all like home.