Safe places were scattered all through the wilderness, if you knew where to look. Few were actual houses. This one was a small platform high in the trees, made of smooth branches lashed together. A rope ladder could be rolled up to avoid undead interruption during the night, and the tree stood by itself in a clearing, so there were no tree spiders—they liked the deep woods, where trees tangled together and it was hard for anything but a spider to move through the upper branches. The one drawback was that it was, of course, a wooden platform in a tree: so no fire, and lots of drafts. It hadn't been a problem early in the night, but by predawn the brothers were sitting huddled together against the tree trunk, trying to keep warm. Both were wide awake, but there was no question of leaving. The dawn was visible only as the faintest of coral glows in the east, and there were rustlings and growls from the underbrush. Steve was melancholy. He had eaten his last roll the night before and they were down to the sort of dried provisions that took a week of chewing before they could be considered edible. Herobrine, who was more bothered by the cold, was trying to distract both of them with conversation.
"It started in the golden age, I think. Braided hair was the mark of a warrior, and each house had its own special type of braid. You could tell someone's allegiance and heredity by looking at the different braids in their hair."
"We don't do that anymore."
"Nah. Some of the types of braid have been lost entirely, nobody remembers how to make them. A lot of knowledge has been lost."
"Well, when you're struggling just to survive, you're going to drop some things that aren't necessary, and sometimes beautiful things are lost that way."
"I know about that but a lot of the knowledge of our house was intentionally destroyed. Good old pirates." He snorted.
"Wait, pirates? I haven't heard this version of the story. I thought it was our grandparents."
"It was. Ithaka has always been the home of pirates."
"Brin. Our grandmother was not a pirate and you know that."
"Wish she had been. She might have simply sold the family treasures instead of burning them."
"Let it go. It was a long time ago. And I'm sure she thought she was doing the right thing. After all, the rest of the family agreed with her at the time. Magic is anything but harmless."
"Steve, she burned half of our library."
"It was much less than half!"
"Alright, she locked up half of it—"
"And our father promptly unlocked it."
"Oh, right, she just burned the interesting parts."
Steve said nothing. Lately he had been mildly concerned about the things which Herobrine considered 'interesting.' Only mildly—he had an ingrained idea that Herobrine always had more sense than Steve did.

Their alliance with Ithaka had been unprecedented in history. They were one of the old houses of magic, allying with the island-dwellers, who were, stereotypically, either religious or pirates. (Some of the mainlanders couldn't decide which was scarier.) Natives of Ithaka were often taller than the nobility, but seemed unrelated to the testificates: grey-eyed, bearded, with hair cropped short; whereas the numerous mainland-dwelling testificates were green-eyed and bald, or nearly bald with silvery down on their heads. Herobrine had inherited the grey eyes brought into the family by their grandmother, Steve seemed to have picked up the hairstyle.

They knew when the sunlight was bright enough to hurt zombies because the one standing at the base of the tree began snarling in pain. They waited for the sounds to stop before climbing down. Steve flexed his leg and held the staff out to Herobrine. "You want this back? I think I'll be alright without it."
"You sure?"
"Uh, yeah." he didn't feel right carrying it. Herobrine was the mage, not him. He passed it to his brother with a sense of relief, of a weight lifting.
Herobrine hefted the stick in his hands, feeling again the vague but unsettling sensation of an alien presence. He shook it off and let the end of the staff drop to the ground. It was an inanimate object. It couldn't actually dislike him. "Right, let's go."

They had walked only a few yards when Herobrine disappeared.

Steve had been looking up into the trees, trying to place an especially musical burst of birdsong, when there was a scuffle and a sharp cry from in front of him. He looked down quickly and saw a hole torn through the underbrush, where a cave must have come too close to the surface. He could hear a muffled sound of shouting. Steve ran to the hole and dropped in, almost without looking. He landed on a heap of collapsed brush and topsoil and scrambled up, pressing his back against Herobrine's. "Creeper," said Herobrine shortly, staff pointed into a dark corner. "Haven't seen it yet, but I can hear it. So far I've been able to keep it from coming forward." so the staff was cooperating for the moment, at least. Steve strung his bow and put an arrow to the string, black pupils dilating as he scanned the cave. "Anything else around?"
"Not yet." they could both hear zombies from around the bend. Steve aimed at the creeper.
"It's going to move as soon as you shoot it," said Herobrine. "Shoot quick."
"I'll try." Sometimes creepers could explode with one or even two arrows stuck in them. He drew the sting all the way back before releasing, and the arrow ripped through the fragile, gourd-like green body and stuck in the earth wall behind it. The creeper swelled with a hiss. Herobrine dropped the staff and threw his hands up, shielding his face. Steve grabbed Herobrine and pulled him backwards. The next few moments were an incoherent rain of dirt. When it cleared, they were lying in loose dirt with a deep concavity in the wall in front of them and clear sky above. The staff had somehow landed in the loose earth near Herobrine's head and was standing there, perfectly upright. Muffled snarls came from behind them where the zombies had been trapped in the cave-in.
"I think we should leave the stick," said Herobrine after a quick glance to make sure Steve was OK. Steve's eyes widened.
"It's right there!"
"Steve, it's a stick, it… doesn't have ears…" but Herobrine looked suspiciously at said stick. "You have a point. It feels superstitious, but something funny is going on here and we need to keep the thing safe until we understand what. I'd better not touch it though. You carry it."
"I don't want it either!"
"It likes you better."
"It's a piece of wood! You keep telling me it can't think!"
"I'm… still working on it." Herobrine stood and dusted himself off, then pulled Steve's arm. Steve half-rose and then crumpled with a gasp. His healing foot was trapped under the remains of a large rotten log which had dropped onto them along with the dirt and underbrush. Herobrine stared, then kicked it away before turning to the staff standing in the dirt. "You utter jerk," he said.
"What?"
"You need it now. Maybe it can think."

A/N: "Stop that, you know our grandmother was NOT a pirate!" That's not something you hear every day.
Also. ITHAKAAAA! These are my peeps. I love them. Also, if you think they're not coming back later, think again. Eheheheh. This is just their first introduction.
I need to write an anthem for them so I can annoyingly shout it at people. Let's see—O Ithaka, O Ithaka, where it never snows and the sun never shines, O Ithaka we love your rocky shores! All nineteen hundred of your numbered square inches of arable land, every knife-edged crag of volcanic rock, we love to hear the waves crash on your shores from every side at once because you're so tiny… Whoops, I did a parody. Parodies are easier than serious stuff. Um… I'll get back to you.