Chapter 3: It Follows Me Home.
Much later, I decided to explore the plains to see if I could find anything interesting besides the obvious copious amounts of grass. While I was out there, I buried my dead golden pickaxe out of sheer boredom for there was nothing exciting to discover in the plains except for the occasional Creeper. I would love to find out who taught the Creepers their stealth skills, for I would then promptly track down the teacher and TEAR HIS HEAD OFF. When I began to miss my useless golden pickaxe, I unearthed it again and stowed it back in my camouflage backpack.
It began to rain. I was not used to such a natural occurrence because my igloo was in the desert. Sometimes I would watch the rain from my window as it landed a couple hundred yards away on the grassy climates, but that was as close as I ever got to it until now. Surprisingly enough, it didn't faze me. I think I had gotten very used to inconveniences by now, so it wasn't that hard for me to build myself a shelter just high enough for me to crouch in.
It was around this time that I noticed a recurring noise in background of the pitter-patter of the rain. It sounded awfully close to the pathetic mewl a cat makes when it's stuck out on the porch and wanted to come back inside. I began to wonder if I was surrounded by a herd of house cats. I kept hearing the noise coming from different directions at different distances, and a herd of house cats certainly wouldn't be the weirdest thing I'd encountered in my time here in Craftworld. Finally, the source of the mewling came close enough for me to see. It was big, dark and sort of looked like a 7-foot-tall, lanky man wearing a black full body suit. Its eyes were glowing purple, which is the only reason I was able to spot it in the rain in the first place. And then it disappeared again, teleporting away and leaving nothing but a flurry of purple floating specs in its place.
Poor thing. This rain was obviously bothering it, to say the least. In this sense, it was like a house cat, what with its apparent dislike for water falling from the sky. I decided to help out.
I had to get a little wet again to tear down my mini lean-to and start fresh. Turns out, it's quite hard making a shelter for a 7-foot-tall creature, but I ended up making it out of dirt. When it was finished, it looked a little bit like someone had taken my igloo, chopped it in half from the top to the bottom, and then turned the ice into dirt. Man, am I glad no one has done that to my igloo…
I wasn't sure if the tall thing could see my half-igloo through the downpour, so I lit it up with torches and then tried to dry my clothes while I waited. Next thing I know, I'm waking up at nighttime with a big shadowy thing standing in my periphery. Naturally, I turned to face it, and was greeted by a long, continuous scream. My hands shot up to my ears in an attempt to preserve my eardrums as I scrunched my eyes shut, surprised to find the screams stop immediately afterwards. I cautiously opened my eyes to view the creature once more and was rewarded by another screeching shriek.
Alright, so maybe I wasn't supposed to look at the guy. I kept my eyes on my feet, chancing a couple glances no higher than the shadowy man's hands, which held a large hunk of grass-covered dirt. A quick look around confirmed that it had indeed taken that hunk right out of my igloo. "Er, whatever floats your boat, I guess…"
The creature, which I shall now call a "Shadowman", did not respond. It just stood there, making the occasional gentle mewling sound as it stared down at me. Or at least, I'm assuming it was staring.
It followed me home. Turns out, it's absolutely impossible to shake a teleporter off of your tail, so I simply resigned myself to my fate and told it how much more catlike it was becoming with every passing second by stalking me to my house like that. It didn't seem to comprehend, or if it did, it didn't seem to care. I tried my best to ignore it and went to sleep that night with a big Shadowman wandering around my igloo.
I awoke during sunrise and opened my eyes to be greeted by another screech. It definitely took me a while to get used to not looking up every time I woke up from a nap or a good night's sleep, but the Shadowman didn't seem so bad after that hurdle was conquered.
I didn't mind very much that it liked to randomly carry around my stuff, except for when it grabbed one of my cakes and wouldn't let go until it had gone stale. He's very stubborn that way and he'll screech if I try to touch whatever he happens to be carrying at the moment. That stubborn disposition led me to dub it "Jackass", but my conscience got the best of me and I shortened it to "Jack". Then I got bored of that and named it "Pip" instead. It just seemed to fit the creature better.
I'm not sure when I actually started thinking of the Shadowman as a companion; you know, less of an "it" and more of a "him". It might've been when I accidentally looked in his eyes one morning and didn't get screamed at. It may have been when he saved me from a herd of Spider Jockeys. I dunno. But I do remember realizing what I thought of him when he disappeared for a few days and made me venture out to look for him. He's lucky he'd had me worried, because I had to fish him out of a creek when I found him.