Long-ass AN at the bottom. Whipped this tiny chapter in an hour as an excuse to NOT just have the note.


Day 64

Just about done finishing the attic up. Turned out to be, well, way less space there than I initially thought, but still plenty enough to put a few chests and barrels around. Grabbed and sorted most of the junk – think mob remains and the like – to fit nicely up there. And it doesn't look half bad either. Good job me!

Look at that, it's about time I went to feed the donkey. Really want us to get along.


Well, good news and bad news for you. No wait, me.

Good news: donkey, the little buddy – I can see him warming up to me. Even let me pet him a couple of times and didn't shoo away!

(Then of course I had to push my luck and try to mount him – obviously ended up butt-first on the ground, with the animal slowly and indignantly walking away. Why did I think that wouldn't happen?)

Now for the bad news – came back home and realized something: my attic, it's not going to be exactly waterproof either – because the freaking roof isn't for some reason. I mean sure, I'm hoping that it will stop leaks to the 1st floor – by being the one to get extremely damp in case of rain or something similar instead.

I need to keep it more or less dry up there somehow. I could make another fireplace with one of those infinite campfires.

Or, now that I think about it; what about netherrack? I remember, back in the Nether, I could see patches of this weird material being on fire – and it looked to be burning for quite some time.

I think it's worth a shot. Going to take one block, put it outside somewhere, light it on fire then do something else and see if burns as long as it appeared to.


Just lit the thing on fire. I have to say, it burns hot. Not lava hot, but I went to my signal campfire for comparison, and it's certainly nowhere as blazing as this netherrack fire.

If it really is that hot, the thing might be just what I need to keep the place dry.


I came back after doing some menial maintenance around my base, and what do you think? The rock is still burning as brightly and hotly as when I first lit it – and it doesn't seem to be worse for wear in any way.

All of that after at least a few hours of me being away. If it also never stops burning, just like the campfires...I don't even know.

Think I'll go to sleep early today. If, by the time I wake up, it will still keep burning and not doing something like melting or withering away, I'm just going to assume – and probably end up being right – that yes, it does burn forever.


Well, it's been a few hours since then. Haven't really gone to sleep yet, because I'm both not tired enough and it's a bit earlier than the "schedule" I worked out for myself…but it's dark outside and the nether rock keeps burning. I even got up and went as close as I could – no real signs of, um, deterioration? Yeah.

And I'd lit it on fire when the sun was still pretty high in the sky.

At this point, I'm already convinced that I was right.


So, the update.

I'm fine. Not dead. Not dying. The health problem I'd mentioned last time - I still don't know what it was, but it's gone away on it's own, so I'm not complaining. Not entirely mind you - still feel a bit out of breath and have to be mindful of my breathing once in a while, but it's all fine. Annoying, but fine.

Truth be told, I could've been pumping out updates much sooner, even with severely limited free time due to my studies going from online to face-to-face. But...I remembered there was a game by the name of Fallout 4. Through some sheer voodoo magic and a touch of determinism I managed to get it running on a laptop that is decidedly not for running games. And I've been playing it almost every day, for hours. Since September. Not much time to be thinking about how, or what, to write, as you can imagine.

But now? Now that I graduated and have little to do - maybe I can get something going again. Probably not in terms of this story yet - I'm rusty. I'm thinking a few oneshot/twoshots here and there - I've accumulated some ideas over the course of my self-imposed hiatus. Then, once I get my groove back and figure out a proper strategy to not fucking procrastinate all the time, we can get back on track. Just really want to finish the story.

In any case, I'm back.

Oh, and 1.18 is out already while we're still stuck on 1.16 here, lol. How typical of me.