Erin Meets Minecraft (Non-Canon Short Story)

Hey, I don't like spamming you all with stuff, but this is marginally entertaining stuff and it might hold you over until the next chapter, which is soon!

I was playing Minecraft yesterday after having bought the game for the first time in 9 years. I'd played with other friend's accounts before, but this was my world. Long story short, I ended up in a world with a female avatar, an inviting hilltop nearby, and as night fell, a few friendly skeletons trying to put arrows in my butt.

I called it The Wandering World. And I wrote a short story for fun while I was doing it based on what was happening. It uh, became around 2,000 words long somehow. I'm still playing, but the story's over. Here it is. You might not enjoy it, or you might, but I figure this is the kind of thing is what you come from. Enjoy!

----

The first thing Erin did in this new, pixelated world was kill a rabbit. To her vast disappointment, it did not drop anything. Which was kinda bad, because she'd already lost a heart and her hunger bar was decreasing fast.

In a minute after her casual slaughter of a cute bunny, Erin saw another one and went chasing after it with her wooden sword.

"Come here, you! I feel really bad about this!"

She killed it too. It did not drop anything. By now, Erin was feeling very guilty and a bit peckish. She sighed.

"Maybe I need to find a cow. Or pigs? Do they live in the snow? I'm not eating zombies! You get all pukey!"

She looked around. The empty, brightly-colored landscape stretched out in every direction, disappearing into a fog which was presumably her rendering distance.

"Oh boy. It's gonna be nightfall soon. I hope [Minotaur Punch] works on Creepers or I'm going to be in trouble."

She sighed and kicked at the ground. What Erin really wanted was for Ryoka to pop up, or Klbkch, or Pawn, or even Pisces. But it looked like there was no one around for now.

Alone again, hungry again, homeless...again. Erin looked around and felt a pang of what could only be peckishness...or bad poops. Did you get bad poops in Minecraft? She had no idea, but she was building an outhouse as soon as she got her inn ready.

Erin sighed and began trudging through the snow. Food first, though. And she might have to dig a hole in the ground if she wanted to survive the night. Lovely. She was already missing her inn. Why was life so unkind to her?

"At least there are no Rock Crabs."

----

"Ooh! An apple! Lucky!"

"Gyaaaaaaaah! A hole! In the ground!"

The day ended after a few noteworthy events that ended up with Erin gaining a full stomach...and losing a heart or two. But she was back on top of her hill at last, blocks of wood in hand, trying to figure out how to build an inn in the darkness.

It was very, very hard to ignore the growling zombies and the sound of the skeleton shooting arrows at her as she built her inn. But since the skeleton seemed to be the inbred, mentally-deficient version of Toren with a bow, Erin felt reasonably safe.

From them. It was slightly harder to avoid meeting the Enderman's eye. He'd somehow wandered onto the top of her unfinished inn's floor and wasn't going away. Every time Erin turned around she nearly stared at him. Her memory of Minecraft wasn't exactly up to date, but Erin had the vague recollection that staring at the Enderman...or punching him...might end in someone's horrible death.

And she only had a wooden sword. The night had never seemed so long. Erin wiped some pixelated sweat from her forehead and then jumped as an arrow thunked into the wood block beside her.

"Watch it, jerk!"

She shouted at the skeleton archer below. Erin reached for the arrow, but it had no substance to it.

"And why can't I pick up arrows? It's right there!"

No one replied. Erin got back to work, punching dirt (a surprisingly soft and almost pleasant feeling) and muttering to herself.

"See, this is why no one plays Minecraft anymore. Why could I have gotten transported to Stardew Valley?"

----

When dawn came, it wasn't nearly quickly enough. Erin stared down at the flaming zombie a few blocks away from her and didn't feel bad. At all.

She knew she should feel bad, but in theory, all of the things in this world were actually just pieces of code, not real people. Goblins had much more humanity than the zombies, which Erin wished nothing but stabby things upon.

She was also glad they were all burning to death, because she'd spotted a spider.

"Those die in the sun, right?"

If they didn't, Erin was going to have a bad time. She'd safely encased the Enderman in dirt (a heart pounding experience of nearly meeting his blank, staring eyes), but she'd lost a heart falling off the top.

"It was like three blocks! How is that fair?"

Erin stared up at the floating hunger bar over her head. That was a problem too.

"Nearly half empty. I'd better find food other than those rabbits which don't want to give me meat or..."

She stared with narrowed eyes down at the spider, which had yet to burst into flames.

"...Or I'll start getting hungry, Mr. Eight Legs."

She looked away. Then she looked back with a frown. The zombie had died. But standing right where it had been was some...person?

"Hey, a villager! Did the zombie turn into you?"

She smiled and went over to talk--or interact with it. But suddenly something hit her! Erin cried out and immediately threw up. The hearts over her head had turned green.

She was poisoned? She looked back at the villager in horror. Only now Erin recognized the hat over her head.

"A witch? Oh, it's on!"

She had a wooden sword. The witch had potions, or magic, or something. Five seconds later, Erin saw her last heart disappear. She fell to the ground and saw everything she was carrying fall down around her.

"No. Not like--"

She was trying to breathe, trying to reach out. The witch just stared at her blankly. Erin gasped--

And woke up. She was on a hilltop. Right in front of her was a familiar hill, with half-build wooden floor on the top. Erin blinked. She felt at her body. She looked up and saw a row of gleaming red hearts, and a full food bar. Her eyes narrowed.

"Oh, it's on."

----

The witch was gone when Erin got back. She contented herself with expanding her inn, digging out the foundation so more annoying monsters couldn't get up and bother her. Erin frowned as she heard the Enderman make unhappy grunting sounds inside his dirt prison.

"Shut it, you! I know you don't eat, so you can just sit in there and think about what you've done! Er, that is, what you might have done!"

She had gotten a good start on digging, and Erin had even found that you could dig up snowballs with a shovel! But it was already getting dark again!

"Seriously? What's with these stupid days?"

Erin sighed. More monsters. But she'd done good, at least in her opinion. She'd removed all pathways but one small stairway of blocks up to the hill where her inn was being built. And with a few blocks of dirt she could seal off the one entrance, protecting her from everything but...

"Spiders."

Erin frowned at the wooden sword in her hand. She really, really needed some stone. Or better, iron.

"First things first. I need more wood, and I saw some cows where I respawned. I'm not hungry yet, but when I am...sorry cows!"

Erin paused. She felt at her pockets and pulled out a bone from somewhere. She still wasn't sure how her pockets managed to hold all the dirt, wood, and other stuff she was carrying. Erin sniffed at the bone suspiciously, and then carefully nibbled at it. Then she bit down hard on the smooth, improbably white bone.

"...Nah. Just not doing it for me."

She sighed and got back to work.

----

That night Erin discovered that while it was impractical to kill zombies by throwing snowballs at them, it was fun. Mind you, it wasn't much easier to kill them with a wooden sword. Erin felt sure that if she had a sword, even one made out of wood in the world she'd just come from, she'd be a lot better at it than she was here.

"If I had my [Minotaur Punch] Skill, you'd be having flying lessons about now, buddy!"

Life continued. Erin slew the zombie, went out into the night and cut trees down until both her wooden axes broke. In the morning she went back to her inn and got a nasty surprise.

"Two spiders? Aw! Don't you know what I did to the last Shield Spiders I met?"

It took her over half her heats, but she killed both with gravity, a wooden sword, and not a little bit of pent-up fury. When she was done, Erin sighed. She had a bit of string. Maybe now she could make a bow? But she had to kill the cows or she'd die.

She built a chest to hold her stuff, and then stared around. Her inn was unfinished, she was hurt, and there was so much to do! Was she really going to do this?

What choice did she have? Erin sighed. She picked up her sword, took a step off of the dirt and went to the water to wash off the spider blood--

And then Erin woke up. She sat up in her blankets and pillows, in the kitchen of her inn, and stared ahead blankly for a few seconds. Then she slapped her forehead.

"I knew that pork smelled bad!"

She got up, grumbling, relieved to be in a world where pain was pain, you only got one life, you couldn't break rocks with your bare hands (unless you didn't mind losing said hands), and where monsters were a lot scarier than Creepers and zombies.

Erin paused as she thought about all that while making an egg-and-ham breakfast.

"Huh. Maybe I wasn't so unlucky after all."

She walked into the common room. To her surprise, Ryoka was already awake.

"Hey Ryoka! Guess what! I had the weirdest dream last night..."

She was about to tell Ryoka all about it over some hot food, but she stopped when she saw Ryoka's expression. The girl looked...haggard.

"Ryoka? Um. I had a dream...about Minecraft..."

Ryoka stared as if she'd seen a ghost. She opened her mouth and closed it a few times. Then she looked at Erin, dead serious.

"I dug my way all the way down to bedrock. I found a cavern full of redstone and found five diamonds as I was fighting my way through monsters. I was eating zombie flesh to survive. And then...and then--"

She grabbed Erin, drew her nose-to-nose. Erin could see Ryoka's wild, bloodshot eyes.

"And then I tripped and fell into the fucking lava."

Erin stared at Ryoka. The other girl slowly let go. Erin coughed.

"Sorry about that."

She let Ryoka sit in a corner, muttering to herself. Erin was distractedly trying to get ready when someone burst into the inn. She turned and saw Relc, hands blood, dragging something into the inn.

"Relc--wha--?"

He grinned, looking crazed as Klbkch followed him inn, carrying the other end of the long, brown...tree?

"Hey, Erin! Look! Look! You can totally punch down trees over here too!"

Erin stared at the felled tree, and then at Klbkch. The Antinium had a crack on the carapace over his right hand. Relc swayed in place, grinning. Erin turned and looked at Ryoka, who met her eyes.

Slowly, the other occupants in Erin's inn began to wake up. Erin distinctly heard Pisces shrieking about 'gold swords' and 'an endless supply of servants', and heard Jelaqua shouting about fishing up an enchanted bow.

Silently, Ryoka went over to Relc and made the Drake sit. She looked at Erin. Erin stared at her pan full of eggs and ham and cheesy goodness and put it on the table. Relc blinked and then began to gobble down the food with his bare hands. Klbkch joined him.

Ryoka looked at Erin. Erin looked at Ryoka. Both girls shrugged. All in all, it promised to be an interesting day in their world. And on the whole, a better one.

At least in this world food actually tasted good.

The End