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That first night in the wilderness is cold. Wilbur remembers that most of all, when he can bring himself to think back on it in the weeks after. It’s just the two of them in an approximately six-by-four hole, and there’s no wool for a bed, and no light other than the heavy furnace that can’t seem to give off any heat to save its life, and on top of everything, Tommy is shivering. His iron armor clatters like loose cutlery (and Wilbur hates seeing him in armor, it only drives home the point that they’re in terrible danger like a pocketknife driven between ribs). That’s going to alert anyone out looking for you, the terror in him says. But for whatever reason, he can’t bring himself to tell Tommy to shut the hell up. The kid’s been through enough today, they both have.
In literally any other circumstance, Wilbur would just open up his uniform jacket and let Tommy huddle under his arm, teasing him loudly for acting like a cold little bird, but they’re both wearing armor, and huddling in a seated position against the wall only makes the pauldrons on their shoulders click together. Wilbur hates wearing armor, both the heaviness of it and the boundary it puts between him and the world, but he can’t take it off, not now, nor yet.
Somewhere in the cold, in the stone, beneath the layers of diamond armor and wool uniform, an idea lights up in Wilbur. See, he’s not the best at fighting, or crafting elaborate builds, or even small-talk some of the time, but what he is good at is lying. He can lie beautifully, when given the chance, and maybe, he thinks, that’s what makes him such a good poet. So maybe that’s about the only thing he can do right now: make the best lie of his life, and give it as a gift to Tommy Innit.
“If…” he starts, his voice too high. He coughs quietly. “If you could be any mob, what would you be?”
“What the hell, Wilbur?” Tommy asks.
“No, I’m serious,” Wilbur says, “I just want to know.”
Tommy does him the kindness of thinking about it, for a moment. “A chicken, probably,” he decides.
“A chicken??” Wilbur laughs, forgetting not to be incredulous.
“Look, you fuckin’ asked, man!” Tommy rolls his eyes as if they could conjure defense for his wounded pride. “I’d be a chicken! ‘cause they’re all soft, and they can fly, and I like bread.” He says the word bread with such finality, Wilbur almost laughs again.
“Alright, alright,” he says, “That’s a pretty good choice.” There’s only so long he can go without a bit of brotherly teasing. It’s only fair. “But you know, chickens… they don’t fly very well, do they…”
“What, they don’t?” Now it’s Tommy’s turn to be incredulous.
“No,” Wilbur says, “They just sort of… fall slowly.”
“Alright then,” says Tommy, in the voice that means he’s being a proper man about this, so don’t go teasing him anymore, “I’ll fall slowly. And I’ll be happy about it.” He’s shivering less now. “What would you be, then, if you have all these ideas about this sort of thing?”
Wilbur considers. “I think I’d be a phantom,” he says. “If you forget about how scary they are, they’re really kind of graceful, aren’t they?”
“You just want to be dramatic, that’s what you want,” Tommy says. But evidently he’s not so done with Wilbur’s nonsense as to keep himself from asking- “What would Tubbo be?”
“Mm,” says Wilbur, “I think he’d be a bee.” Bees are new to the world. Tommy had been just a child when they arrived, bringing with them sweet honey and the soft humming noises that Wilbur had started to associate with the woods. Tubbo has that same sort of wonder and newness, he thinks, like it’s his first time appreciating everything he sees. That’s too poetic of a thing to bother Tommy with, however.
“I could see it,” Tommy says. “What about Nikki?”
“Nikki Nihachu…” Wilbur muses. “Maybe some sort of mermaid?”
“Oh, you’re just saying that ‘cause you think she’s good looking, aren’t you?”
“I am not! I literally just think she would be a mermaid!”
“Sure, sure.”
Wilbur sighs. “Ok, your turn,” he says. “What would Philza be?”
“Phil-za Mine-craft!” Tommy sings, “Is a… elytra… person! I think!”
“Mm, good call,” Wilbur says. “He does fly around enough for that.”
“What would we do, then?” Tommy asks, leaning back more contentedly, with his arms behind his head. “If we were all mob-people.”
This is exactly what Wilbur had been hoping he’d ask. “Well,” he says, “I think we’d have to build someplace where we could all meet up, right, because I figure I couldn’t go anywhere in the sunlight, seeing as I’m, you know, a phantom. But Nikki can’t go anywhere on land if she’s a mermaid. So we’d need to make some sort of place where we could all hang out together, and make it really accessible to everyone.”
“Like a restaurant?”
“Yeah, like a restaurant. Or a pub. Because we’re British.”
“Oh, yeah,” Tommy agrees. He’s, what, sixteen? He’s never been to a pub in his life. But somehow he already thinks of it as an English thing, and Wilbur’s not sure if that reflects well on England. “Us British. We like our pubs.”
One lie seemingly isn’t good enough for Wilbur, so he says: “Did you know we spell ‘pub’ differently in England?” Tommy squints at him. “Yeah,” he says, “We spell it with a silent ‘e’ at the end.”
“No we don’t,” Tommy says.
“Yeah, we do!” Wilbur doubles down. This is going to make a great story to tell someone later, if he ever meets someone that wants to hear him talk more than they want to kill him. He’s starting to think that might never happen again. “It’s got a silent ‘e,’ right at the end.” The thing is, he wouldn’t know either. Neither he nor Tommy have ever been to England, much as they’ve been poked fun at throughout the SMP for coming from the place.
“Well I don’t believe you,” Tommy says. “But tell me about this pub. What would we put in it?”
And Wilbur sees with satisfaction that he isn’t shivering anymore.
~~
The funny thing is, the story doesn’t die out there. It keeps growing, through the next few weeks, as they mine into the ravine, and block up the door, and finally quell their hunger with reckless, burning mouthfuls of soft, heavenly baked potato. Just when Wilbur thinks Tommy won’t ask again, he comes up with more questions.
“What mob is Schlatt? ‘cause he sucks, it would have to be something pretty bad.”
And- “Does that mean that you live in a haunted house? If you’re a phantom?”
And- “Do you scam people, in that other world where you’re a phantom? ‘cause that seems like a thing that you’d-” at this point, Wilbur upended a bucket of water on Tommy’s head, and was spared further taunting.
It becomes clear to Wilbur, as he builds the bridges of the place he can’t bring himself to call his new home, that Tommy is drawing the story out of him on purpose. It’s out of curiosity, probably. And it’s something to do, other than hack around for iron with a pickaxe, and heaven knows that Tommy Innit doesn’t have the sort of attention span that can be employed on pickaxes for long periods of time. Wilbur is more than happy to oblige – when he’s picking through the endless loose threads of worldbuilding, he doesn’t have to think so hard about the direness of their current situation. His brain likes loops, sometimes a little too much, and this is a track he can purposefully put it on and let it run, instead of endlessly circling ‘round the themes of a home he can’t return to, and a leadership the public very clearly decided he isn’t fit for, and the presidential coat that he stuffed deep into the furthest slot in a chest so he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.
He wonders if Tommy knows this.
~~
Tommy keeps asking, and Wilbur keeps telling the story, until its plot threads are as long and winding as the corridors and bridges of their commune. And with just as few safety rails. More people join them, and Wilbur has to arrange more rations for them, sketch out ever-more-detailed maps of the land he’s been exiled from, make sure their growing ranks are still hidden securely in the rocks, and maybe, if he can find the time alone, spend some of the short hours of the night bent over his crafting table, making things with sand and gunpowder that he’s afraid to even seriously contemplate.
And through it all, there Tommy is, coming up with new story ideas, or new character designs, or interrogating new citizens of Pogtopia about what mobs they’d like to be. Wilbur is (pleasantly?) surprised that Tommy brings the story up to other people. While people may say kind things about his eloquence, they never have about his approachability – that’s all Tommy’s domain. Sure, Wilbur can pull out a sizeable word like “dastardly” or “chesterfield” or “Schrödinger’s Cat” when the occasion calls for it, but Tommy is the one who can really connect to people. It’s probably because he’s less wrapped up in his head, Wilbur thinks, if he has to analyze it.
They start to prepare for war as the fall days get darker. There’s less time for Wilbur to go to the little room with the little button that keeps showing up in the orbit of his mind, and maybe that’s a good thing. It’s better that he stay in the ravine, with the people he’ll be fighting alongside.
And as he watches them sit around the hearth, and wobble across the bridges, and eat potatoes and show each other archery tricks, Wilbur sees Tommy, the loudest among them, still asking people what they think about a world in which they’re all mobs. And he smiles.
As much as he’s hard on Tommy (because he has to be, because life is hard in this SMP, and he needs to make sure Tommy is prepared for it), he has to admit, the kid is doing well. He’s holding up remarkably after the loss of everywhere he’s ever called home, and what’s more, he’s got people around that help him with it. Wilbur looks at him, and sees a bright and fascinating future and that’s… well, it’s more than he can say for himself. That is to say, it’s beautiful.
And then, inexplicably, Tubbo comes up to him one day, and starts asking him about if he were a bee, like, would that mean he has antennae? Or arms, would he have four arms? Because bees have lots of arms, don’t they? And Wilbur doesn’t know what to say.
It’s not that he doesn’t know about bee anatomy, it’s just that, Tubbo’s coming to him, about a story he made for Tommy, so that they could survive the wilderness in exile together. It feels a little full-circle. And in the next few days, it isn’t just Tubbo. More people ask him about the mob-world, and what their lives would be like there, and they pull him down to a sitting position around the fireplace, and make him explain, and he doesn’t have the time to wonder if it’s out of pity, or anything, because everyone is so interested in the story he made for Tommy.
And from across the room, Tommy smiles, and shouts, “I TOLD you it’s not spelled with a silent ‘e,’ you prick!” which, of course, makes everything feel okay.