dedicated to minecraft
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at /works/31547219.
Rating: General Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Fandom: Minecraft (Video Game) Character: You Additional Tags: Minecraft, The End Poem, I tried to create emotions, lots of references, don't mind me, music is magic tbh, thank you so much for reading, C418 - Alpha (Minecraft Volume Beta), and the universe said I love you because you are love., much love much love, (if you want more music to read to there's some in the end note) Stats: Published: 2021-05-26 Words: 6203 dedicated to minecraft
by WhelminglyAsterous
Summary
and the universe said I love you because you are love.
a/n: Consider this my own little personal tribute to Minecraft. First time writing a one-shot, tried to make it as pretty as possible, I hope you cry a lil.
pssst music for the vibe [ watch?v=xLfm2nnCOpc ] (loop this if you like music while reading, this really sets the tone)
The world starts off simple, as it always does.
You will yourself to move forward, and you do. You dare to look around, and you take in the landscape. It is clean, untouched, if only for a moment.
You feel the air in your lungs, the blood pumping through your limbs to the tips of your fingers. You have a body, under gravity, in air.
You have joined the game for the very first time.
A sense of achievement resonates in your chest every time you accomplish something new. Taking Inventory! Getting Wood! Benchmarking! Pride swells through your body. You've done it. These are your first achievements, your first steps in this new world you've found for yourself.
It feels like it's only been 10 minutes before your first day fades into night. Who knows, maybe it has been. Stars shine down on you, watching you. They hold all the memories of the players who came before, all the memories of the players who will come later. Texture packs will change, mechanics will be updated, but they will remain always. If you listen closely enough, you swear you can hear them chatting with each other, speaking to one another across the void of space, their faint light dancing simply because they can and they are.
You want to listen more, but it is the first night, and you must seek shelter. Comfort comes easily though, because deep in your soul, tucked into the fold of your heart, you know; if ever your torchlight fades, the stars will remain.
Wood is collected, gingerly cradled in your inventory, and you stare as the leaves left behind. They remain floating in the sky- levitating in the same way sand and gravel refuses to- before they disintegrate one by one leaving nothing behind except for saplings and perhaps, if you're lucky, an apple.
You smile to yourself and start off on your adventure with the rising sun in the background, signaling the closure of your first night. Your adventure has already begun long before this, but this time you acknowledge it consciously, with steady hands and a beating heart.
Walking is the first step, and it comes easily. Pretty soon you're sprinting through the birch wood trees as if you've done it your entire life. You will sail down small rivers filled with salmon and ride horses through grassy plains. You will stroll along village pathways saddled on a pig, or cross entire lakes of lava on the backs of creatures born from heat and smitten with the blue spongy mushrooms of the netherworld. The rat-tat of the railroad will echo from under a minecart, or freezing air will sting your nose as you push the boundaries of speed with nothing but a path of ice and a boat. The wind will rush past your face as you fly higher and higher and higher, a trident spawned in sea foam and bubbles clutched in you hand, a constellation of raindrops forming tears down your arms, the clouds swirling far below you and you will be alone, in the world of nothing but sky and stars, if only for a breathless moment of desire.
You travel the world. You explore.
Chunks load in, biomes form before your very eyes as they move into your render distance. You experience everything- the valleys filled to the brim with flowers, the forgotten temples of the past, the deep caves lit only by the soft glow of lava and a crackling furnace. And it's sunset, and maybe it's beautiful. You travel hundreds of blocks to reach a wide expanse of ocean and for a minute you feel small. Insignificance churns in your chest as you face the great vastness of it all, but then you let it encompass you and it's cold. It hides you from the scorching sun as you dive beneath it, watching the bubbles of your breath float away. You burst to the surface as the lack of oxygen stings your lungs, and after you recover you sink into the water and do it all over again.
You create. You destroy. You learn what it means to leave your mark on the world.
Items collect until you have rows of chests full to the brim. You have placed block upon block upon block. You have mined in the deepest recesses of the earth, explored the darkest ravine. You have fought hoards of zombies and armies of skeletons and creepers enchanted by lightning cast down from the sky in a violent display of fire and light. You have done it all.
And then you think, what next?
Your 'firsts' have faded into oblivion. New discoveries become a rarity as time continues its endless trek. You have punched down a tree a million times over at this point, you have built redstone contraptions and mined diamonds more times than you can count. Death, has even become a commonplace occurrence, a temporary lull until you respawn, simply because death is not the end. The end is in and of itself; death cannot conquer it.
Perhaps it's not about the build, or the end goal, or the final destination, but the journey. The cumulation of everything you've learned and experienced to get there.
Or maybe it is about the build. It's the feeling as you stand over a completed project, a land transformed by your vision and your work alone, the swelling in your chest and tears pricking at the corners of your eyes.
You have learned the intricacies of the game, the fine code written within every block you touch.
Similar to the way an artist starts as nothing more than a toddler, clumsily fumbling with a crayon and a sheet of paper, you have grown. Perhaps not in height or stature, no you are forever confined to being two blocks tall and one block wide, but in other ways.
Your simple farms built of rows of wheat and tilled by your own hands are replaced by automations of redstone and science. Xp is no longer the rare magic that it once was, because even spectacular stars born of dying dreams and flying whales in space are commonplace if you've seen them enough. This is no exception.
But there is still more.
Villages, you discover, are quite nifty and cozy. Simple houses lined by simple paths, adjourned with quaint farms and a single blacksmith. The villagers are nice, welcoming. They don't speak your language, and learning theirs ends up being too difficult a task, but they'll trade with you and occasionally you'll get an extremely profitable deal. Every village you come across, be it in the freezing cold of a snowy tundra or on the edge of a savannah, is always willing to give you shelter, a place to sleep and set your spawn point. When you're too far from home, villages provide safety.
The air is clear, when you're 256 blocks in the sky. You know you're 256 blocks high because you counted, and you can't bring yourself to stack up any higher. Instead you sit, watch the sun and moon endlessly chase each other. When you jump you're not scared, and when the shock of cold water hits you, you smile.
Even when you get lost, you march on, like you've always known the trail. This is your singular life to die and respawn in over and over again. You claim it as yours, and so it is.
And you feel joy because you are yourself and there is no one to tell you no. You do what you want and you love every part of it because the world is you. You see yourself in the world, and it is you.
And as you gaze across the endless treetops of the jungle, perched on the chilly mountain surrounded by flakes of snow, you are content.
The next day, the next place, the sky opens up, and it pours. The rain falls and endermen vwoop like pinballs over the landscape. You wish maybe they would stop, wish they would stand in the downfall of rain as the earth was watered and soil grew heavy, but they don't. They don't tilt their heads up to the grey clouds, they don't let their eyes close as the world around them prepares to grow lush and full. Instead, they burn.
Such strange creatures, endermen are. They're terrifying at night. In dark mineshafts when they manage to fit into cramped cave systems. Their eyes glow purple. That knowledge came at a cost, you think as a shudder runs through your body. A very scary cost.
Eventually, all of your wood and stone is replaced with precious metals of the earth; iron, diamonds, gold. So you set off to venture into the depths of hell, through a portal made of rock almost as dark as the night. It is spawned from the clash of extreme elements, a dance of opposing power to create the glossy obsidian framing a swirl of viscous purple. You swear you hear the haunted screams of the souls that come before you as you light it.
You take your time when you build the Nether portal, because first things are meant to be savored. Such a strange thing, you think. Other people, you've heard, have gotten so fast at building this portal that they're able to do it within 5 minutes of spawning in their own world. That they're able to reach the End, fight off the Ender Dragon and her breath of purple sparks in under half an hour.
To you that's an outlandish idea, an impossible feat, but they've been playing this game for far longer than you have. They've been here since the beginning, before technology sprouted up in society, before creatures from beyond plagued your existence. All in their own time, you suppose.
Entering the Nether brings about a sensation you've never experienced before. It's as if the universe shifted beneath your very feet, your ears popping and goosebumps forming along your arms. The heat is suffocating, and this new realm is unpleasant. Every aspect of it is designed to invoke suffering, but you'll end up finding the good parts as well. The glowstone, for example, is something that you simply must bring home.
And eerily similar to your first day spawning in the overworld, you take in the barren landscape, and you make it something new. Everything you create stems from you, your originality, your personal victories. You could build fortresses of nether brick that span entire bodies of lava, you could build shrines that lay hidden beneath the waves of the ocean, but you don't. Where's the glory in repeating what others have done?
The Nether becomes as common as the desert temples and shipwrecks as days continue to pass. It's strange creatures are no longer foreign, the civilizations of Piglins no longer attack you. Gold becomes extremely useful. But out of all of it, the one thing that continues to surprise you every time is the feeling that washes over you when you step into the clean air of your lovely world. The sky is so blue.
Out of everything the Nether has given and taken from you, the expansion of magic is the most prominent. Potions, which were once mysteries that lay unsolved in the huts dotting the swamplands, are now available to you. Brewing takes some time to get the hang of, it being a very exact science, but eventually you possess a repertoire of potions and information. Arrows dipped with magic are even more complicated. Like the magic of enchanting, potions give off visual effects. While armour that has enchantments clung to it glow with xp levels, potions create bubbles, swirls and pops of color. In the end, magic is difficult to use and easy to spot, but it's magic.
Orange swirls dance around you and the lava is warm, and all you can think is magic.
Time marches on.
Despair comes in many forms. For some, it's boredom. Exhaustion. The defeat when an automated farm refuses to work. A baby zombie clad in gold armour. The sizzle of items burning, the explosion of a creeper. For you, it's loneliness.
And it is lonely, in this world. You've heard of potential far beyond your land. Of magic, or technology, or perhaps both. Because as different as they are, they are one in the same. Both created by the innovation of man, the care and energy of creative souls.
But this magic, this technology of greatness has not reached you yet. You cannot visit other players in their worlds, and they can not come to you. Not yet. Maybe someday you will wage great wars upon the same earth as hundreds of other warriors, you will explore deep mines and build cities that stretch across landscapes, touched by a thousand hands. Someday blocks will pass through hundreds of others inventories before reaching their final resting point. But you are still young, inexperienced. You are great in your knowledge and you have learned much of this world, but you will always be dwarfed by those who came before you.
It's also around this time that servers begin to crop up. Places full to the brim with players, where lives are taken easily and sports are held on floating islands in the skies. Where you hide from hunters in disguises of magic and you battle for beds, for walls, for eggs, for anything really, against enemies you've never met, with teammates who you will know for all of ten minutes before you're whisked away. Where you can build new worlds under the watchful eyes of the server owners, so-called admins keeping unruly players in line. It sounds chaotic and wonderful and you long to join them, to meet new people in this game, but you can't go yet. Soon, but not yet.
But it's alright. It really truly is. Because you are playing this game, and you will see it through till the end, if you ever find one.
One day you dig straight down- feeling emboldened by the afternoon sun- and dare Herobrine and Notch to smite you where you stand, just because you can. They never do, and you start to wonder who really is up there, who holds the power of the codes and creations. There are always rumors. Mojang, it seems, is becoming collectively more popular, but you still cling to the old tales of Notch and Herobrine. You dare them to be true. You shoot arrows into the sky and dare them to answer you, and they remain quiet.
Flowers are delightful, you discover on a blasé morning. They are pretty and colorful, and they are simple in their existence. Similar to the sun hung in the sky or the sugarcane on the shores of sandy rivers, they are simply there; they ask nothing from you.
It's noticed that there are no purple flowers. There are magenta flowers, lilacs which are delicate in their happiness, and alliums which seem to symbolize new beginnings and sudden endings in their rare, circular aspects. But there are no purple flowers. It seems right in a way, purple is not a color for something as gentle as a flower.
You look at a rose and wish it were yellow.
Music is one of your newest discoveries. You find a disc, hidden away in a small room, where creatures spawn from a cage holding everlasting sparks of fire. Written in small letters, etched onto the disc below the center of white and yellow, are the words "C4118 - strad." You don't quite know what that means, but you appreciate it anyways. You go home, spare a diamond that is no longer precious, for you've roamed this world enough to be blessed with plenty, and you listen to the melody fill the quiet space, notes expanding in the air like huffs of breath blowing up a balloon. Someone else has made this for you, someone else has touched this music and left it here for you. The song rejoices, and you give thanks.
There are friends that join you as loyal companions in your solitude; dogs and cats and various other pets. And while they may not be fellow players, they ease the ache of solitude whenever the peacefulness feels overwhelming. Fish, you discover, are not easy to keep alive. Rabbits as well, have a tendency to jump to their death. And parrots, when you first discover them, are tempting to kill in their frailness. But you refrain. It would be wrong, to kill a bird. They are small and they are guiltless. But they make creeper noises right when you're about to venture into a dark, unexplored cave, so are they really that innocent?
But beyond all of this, beyond the small collection of moments that is life, you have learned. You have given and you have taken. You have built and you have destroyed. You have prepared.
And when you set out on the next road to Ithaca- because there's always another road waiting for you, the moment you dare to look for it, it's there. And so when you set out on the next road to Ithaca, you're prepared. You're prepared for the blooming lotus flowers and piercing song of the Sirens. You're prepared for Scylla and Charybdis and all the storms the gods can throw at you. And you're even prepared to never make it to Ithaca at all, to turn back and take a different road, because not every road is meant to be taken.
You are close to the end.
You are full now, and sure. You can craft complicated items without needing to reference a recipe, you can enchant without it taking all your energy and concentration. You know how to jump off of cliffs and survive with nothing more than a bucket of water or even a simple wooden boat. You have achieved greatness, nothing less and nothing more, and yet your hands still shake slightly as you breach the structure of a forgotten society.
Right before you enter the stronghold, you climb up a nearby mountain. The eyes of ender pulse in your hand. They long to go home, they have led you here. But a moment, first, because last moments should be cherished just as much as first moments, and still they rarely are.
A final goodbye, perhaps. You look back now, at it all. You're too far away. You have traveled over hundreds of blocks to get here, and yet you see it. You see your home, your work, your love. You look back at the landscape that was once new and is now cherished. I did this, you think. This was all me. You didn't realise you were making memories, all that time ago. You just knew you were having fun.
And so when you enter the stronghold and travel through darkened corridors, pass by a library lost to time, you don't feel fear as you thought you would. The emotion isn't one you'd be able to name, but it sits in your ribcage strong and steady, like a beating heartbeat. In it you carry your strength, your compassion, your perseverance. Everything this world taught you, you carry inside you, and the emotion shines brighter.
The portal is loud, louder than the Nether portal was, and it is a deep emptiness decorated by a spray of stars. Once again, you feel the universe shift as you step into the sky of twinkling lights.
It's the End. You think that if you went to the moon, it might look like this. Endless void, a concept which once terrified you to no end, now a familiar presence. As if it's been here your entire life. The humbling expanse of darkness grows softer.
The first and final fight is not important. It's everything you've trained for, everything you've prepared for, and yet it barely holds any significance. Like a formality, there only for the appearance. You still need to utilize all your skills, all of your items which you've grinded for over the course of months, and yet the actual fight seems anticlimactic. The Dragon seems sad as she perches over her egg. This is a story that's been told a million times over, the ending isn't going to change this time, and it won't change next time either. The Ender Dragon knows this, and still she perches over her egg.
When the battle is good and won, and the final blow has been dealt, that's when the climax truly begins.
The Dragon's body explodes in a brilliant display of purple. It's always purple. Xp rains from the fallen corpse like shooting stars falling to earth, their wishes that they set out to grant long forgotten as time held steady.
It's dark, the final portal, the End gateway. Even though it looks identical to the portal that you used to enter the End, it's different. You know this intimately.
It's dark, and yet you still summon courage. You've fought so long and hard, you faced your wildest dreams and confronted your darkest nightmares. You've bested her, the Ender Dragon, and the obsidian towers remain your witnesses. A sense of fulfillment and longing swells behind your eyes, burns tears into your cheeks. Your heart feels full.
This is perhaps the hardest step. Everything else you've prepared for, but it's impossible to prepare for the end. The true end. If one did prepare for it, it wouldn't be the end.
And in the end, all it takes is a moment of courage. A second and nothing more, for you to grasp all of your accomplishments, your failures, everything that you are proud of and everything that you regret, you clasp it all tightly in your fist and raise them above your head. You scream out to the universe: I am here! You did it! You lived, you reached the end!
And you fall.
The portal encompasses you, the same way the brilliant blue sky did moments after spawning. It's dark, or maybe it's light. It doesn't matter. Music swells in your ears, and perhaps tears are forming in your eyes, spilling over and gracing your cheeks, your lips with the salt born of earth that chose to gather inside you in preparation for this very moment.
The music is full now, and sure, surrounding you, and it's the only thing that matters. Everything else is inconsequential. You are somewhere in between, floating in music and nothing else.
And perhaps it's an eternity or perhaps it's mere seconds, seconds that are taken for granted in the world of grass and ocean but savored here for a lifetime. But there's quiet, and then there's music, and then there's voices.
Voices reach you, voices from beyond the music, and yet you get a feeling that without the music the voices would also not exist. There are two of them, and a second feeling emerges within you, a feeling of intrusion; you are listening in on something that you're not supposed to.
And the voices are familiar, the way the sight of the road leading to your home is familiar, but they're indescribable in every other way. They speak, but not to you, not yet.
I see the player you mean. one of the voices says, crossing across infinity to reach your ears.
And you hear your own name, your own name, being spoken, a question and response from the second voice.
Your breath is taken away in awe and shock, and you are surprised to find you still have breath, that your chest is still rising and falling, your heart is still beating, blood pumping through your veins and you are alive, if that's even possible.
Yes. the voice responds, Take care. It has reached a higher level now. It can read our thoughts.
Thoughts. You are listening in on a conversation of thoughts, and you feel silly for just realizing now. But how were you supposed to know?
That doesn't matter. It thinks we are part of the game. And you did, was this not the game? What else could there possibly be, except this game?
I liked this player. It played well. It did not give up. Surprisingly, pride swells in your chest.
It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a screen.
And a brief flash bursts in your vision. It is no longer all encompassing dark and light because the thoughts of the voices manifest themselves before your eyes. They are words now, dipped in the blue of lapis sitting in an enchantment table and dyed green like grass stains on leather trousers.
This is how it chooses to imagine things, when it is deep in the dream of a game.
Words make a wonderful interface. And you think, maybe you did not choose the words, but the words came to you instead. The voices are much nicer, accompanied by words after all. Very flexible. the voice continues, And less terrifying than staring at the reality behind the screen.
They used to hear voices. Before players could read. Back in the days when those who did not play called the players witches, and warlocks. And players dreamed they flew through the air, on sticks powered by demons.
What did this player dream?
This player dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created. And it dreamed it destroyed. It dreamed it hunted, and was hunted. It dreamed of shelter. You miss your shelter.
Hah, the original interface. A million years old, and it still works. But what true structure did this player create, in the reality behind the screen?
It worked, with a million others, to sculpt a true world in a fold of the §f§k§a§b§3, and created a §f§k§a§b§3 for §f§k§a§b§3, in the §f§k§a§b§3.
It hurts, the words that are a thought. They reverberate within your head, and you know that there was sound. You heard the sound, and yet you cannot decipher the meaning.
It cannot read that thought.
No. It has not yet achieved the highest level. That, it must achieve in the long dream of life, not the short dream of a game.
The long dream of life? No, you want to stay here, in the short dream of a game. It's better here. Smaller, safer. Simpler.
Does it know that we love it? That the universe is kind?
Sometimes, through the noise of its thoughts, it hears the universe, yes.
You think of the code behind each block, written inside not only your being, but everyone else's being. The code written into the universes beyond, the servers and players that you can not reach yet but one day will, and think that much is true.
But there are times it is sad, in the long dream. It creates worlds that have no summer, and it shivers under a black sun, and it takes its sad creation for reality.
You think of loneliness, and know that much is true.
To cure it of sorrow would destroy it. The sorrow is part of its own private task. We cannot interfere.
Sometimes when they are deep in dreams, I want to tell them, they are building true worlds in reality. Sometimes I want to tell them of their importance to the universe. Sometimes, when they have not made a true connection in a while, I want to help them to speak the word they fear.
Tell me, you beg. Tell me.
It reads our thoughts.
The music grows gentler now, and you didn't realize that it had ever gotten strong to begin with.
Sometimes I do not care. Sometimes I wish to tell them, this world you take for truth is merely §f§k§a§b§2 and §f§k§a§b§2, I wish to tell them that they are §f§k§a§b§2 in the §f§k§a§b§2. They see so little of reality, in their long dream.
And as you look back on your short dream, you wonder. Maybe the universe was telling you all along, and you just didn't realize.
And yet they play the game.
Of course I play the game, you think. That was never really in question, was it?
But it would be so easy to tell them…
Too strong for this dream. To tell them how to live is to prevent them living.
I will not tell the player how to live.
You grow restless.
The player is growing restless.
I will tell the player a story.
But not the truth.
No. A story that contains the truth safely, in a cage of words. Not the naked truth that can burn over any distance.
Give it a body, again.
Yes. Player…
Use its name.
And you hear it again, your name, whispered into creation only for you. Lightning strikes down your arms and festers at your fingertips. That is you. Your name spoken, followed by the label: Player of games.
Good. the voice responds.
Take a breath, now. You do. Take another. You do. Feel air in your lungs. Let your limbs return. You do all of this. Yes, move your fingers. Have a body again, under gravity, in air. Respawn in the long dream. There you are. There you are. Your body touching the universe again at every point, as though you were separate things. As though we were separate things.
Who are we? Once we were called the spirit of the mountain. Father sun, mother moon. Ancestral spirits, animal spirits. Jinn. Ghosts. The green man. Then gods, demons. Angels. Poltergeists. Aliens, extraterrestrials. Leptons, quarks. The words change. We do not change.
Like the stars, you think vaguely. They do not change either.
We are the universe. We are everything you think isn't you. You are looking at us now, through your skin and your eyes. And why does the universe touch your skin, and throw light on you? To see you, player. To know you. And to be known. You are known. I shall tell you a story.
Once upon a time, there was a player.
The player was you, the voice whispers reverently. Your name is spoken, perhaps for the final time, uttered by the universe and nothing less. You are addressed, acknowledged. You are known.
Sometimes it thought itself human, on the thin crust of a spinning globe of molten rock. The ball of molten rock circled a ball of blazing gas that was three hundred and thirty thousand times more massive than it. They were so far apart that light took eight minutes to cross the gap. The light was information from a star, and it could burn your skin from a hundred and fifty million kilometres away.
This is true.
Sometimes the player dreamed it was a miner, on the surface of a world that was flat, and infinite. The sun was a square of white. The days were short; there was much to do; and death was a temporary inconvenience.
This is true.
Sometimes the player dreamed it was lost in a story.
This is true, your heart soars with every statement, because this is true.
Sometimes the player dreamed it was other things, in other places. Sometimes these dreams were disturbing. Sometimes very beautiful indeed. Sometimes the player woke from one dream into another, then woke from that into a third.
This is true, this is true, this is true.
Sometimes the player dreamed it watched words on a screen.
It's all true.
Let's go back.
The beat is calling you, the music is great and sure. You want to find another road and walk to this symphony, march off for a new adventure with this melody backing your every heartbeat.
The atoms of the player were scattered in the grass, in the rivers, in the air, in the ground. A woman gathered the atoms; she drank and ate and inhaled; and the woman assembled the player, in her body.
And the player awoke, from the warm, dark world of its mother's body, into the long dream.
And the player was a new story, never told before, written in letters of DNA. And the player was a new program, never run before, generated by a sourcecode a billion years old. And the player was a new human, never alive before, made from nothing but milk and love.
You are the player. The story. The program. The human. Made from nothing but milk and love.
Let's go further back.
The seven billion billion billion atoms of the player's body were created, long before this game, in the heart of a star. So the player, too, is information from a star. And the player moves through a story, which is a forest of information planted by a man called Julian, on a flat, infinite world created by a man called Markus, that exists inside a small, private world created by the player, who inhabits a universe created by…
Shush. Sometimes the player created a small, private world that was soft and warm and simple. Sometimes hard, and cold, and complicated. Sometimes it built a model of the universe in its head; flecks of energy, moving through vast empty spaces. Sometimes it called those flecks "electrons" and "protons".
Sometimes it called them "planets" and "stars".
Sometimes it believed it was in a universe that was made of energy that was made of offs and ons; zeros and ones; lines of code. Sometimes it believed it was playing a game. Sometimes it believed it was reading words on a screen.
You are the player, reading words…
The words are many now. They fill your vision, and each letter is sacred. You savour them as they fade.
Shush... Sometimes the player read lines of code on a screen. Decoded them into words; decoded words into meaning; decoded meaning into feelings, emotions, theories, ideas, and the player started to breathe faster and deeper and realised it was alive, it was alive, those thousand deaths had not been real, the player was alive
You. You. You are alive.
Me, you think. Me. Me. I am alive.
and sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the sunlight that came through the shuffling leaves of the summer trees
and sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the light that fell from the crisp night sky of winter, where a fleck of light in the corner of the player's eye might be a star a million times as massive as the sun, boiling its planets to plasma in order to be visible for a moment to the player, walking home at the far side of the universe, suddenly smelling food, almost at the familiar door, about to dream again
and sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the zeros and ones, through the electricity of the world, through the scrolling words on a screen at the end of a dream
Nostalgia fills you, suddenly and without warning, because this is true. A whisper of hope that your heart stubbornly clung on to, even after all this time, sings in time with this music. This is true, you think. This is true, this is true, this is true. The music swells with emotion.
and the universe said I love you
and the universe said you have played the game well
and the universe said everything you need is within you
and the universe said you are stronger than you know
and the universe said you are the daylight
and the universe said you are the night
and the universe said the darkness you fight is within you
and the universe said the light you seek is within you
and the universe said you are not alone
and the universe said you are not separate from every other thing
and the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code
and the universe said I love you because you are love.
You take these statements and hold them dearly to your chest. They build up in your lungs and explode outward. The music is gentle, it is sincere.
I am not separate from every other thing, you scream for all of the universe to hear, I am not alone. And the universe listens.
The universe loves you because you are love, and the universe's love is eternal. These are facts that can never change, can never be altered. Like the stars in the sky, they are simply there. They are for you, and they want nothing from you. You hold this knowledge within you, tucked safely near your heart, till the end of the final dream.
And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream. And the player began a new dream. And the player dreamed again, dreamed better. And the player was the universe. And the player was love.
You are the universe. You are love.
You are the player.
You are.
Wake up.
And so you do.
And the music fades away.
a/n:
thank you- for my childhood
Music (for the vibe, all by C418):
Alpha (the end poem music)
Sweden
Strad
Floating Trees
Wet Hands
References (as subtle or not subtle as they may be):
End Poem/Credits (poem by Julian Gough)
Ithaka by C. P. Cavafy
Dragonhearted by CaptainSparklez and TryHardNinja
A Tribute to Minecraft by jschlatt
Redstone Active by TheDragonHat
so break the silence by ghostbandaids
changing seasons by meridies
Quote -Rick Roirdan, The Lightning Thief
that one Winnie the Pooh quote in the comment section of every single minecraft soundtrack ost
A baby zombie clad in gold armour ft. Philza fucking Minecraft
it's a sin to kill a mockingbird
Change fate by being aggressively kind by sircantus
Allium - Dream SMP Animatic by Teadragn
Wil kills all the rabbits like srsly... Why
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Winter Dream SMP Animation by Pastel Flurry
End poem [scrambled text]
