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Bdubs' notoriety for sleeping through each and every night was beyond simple renown in the server. Even before he was crowned one of the gods of light in another world, his dedication was preternatural, and stealthily selfless. Half the time, Etho didn't know where his own bed was; where he'd show up if he were to die. In a brilliant explosion of redstone dust, buttons, levers, and repeaters, he'd implode and wake up breathless, struggling to get his bearings and map any path back to where he once was.
Those who never had the pleasure, however, of being Bdoubleo's roommate would be completely unaware of his restlessness at night. Sound carried in the monolith; the door to the hidden underbelly scraping open and shut, a rocket was firing by the top to send someone whizzing out, Etho could hear it all as clearly as the rattle of beasts in the corners of his hiding hole. In the night, footsteps were the most common sound from above, clunking up and down the winding sets of stairs, accompanied by quick mutters. Etho would stop in the midst of his work, fingers caught up in lines of redstone too delicate to be put down, and listen to the scuffle until it subsided.
Worry was far from his mind when he wondered about what Bdubs may be up to. Everyone had their habits, their own methods of thriving and existing. This one didn't seem, however, like it lined up with the rest of the picture painted of Bdubs in Etho's mind. With others on the server, Etho might only get an abstract brush of their personality; a smudge of who they are across interactions in meetings or events, the brief moments where they did spend time together. That version of them was often satisfactory to Etho. He understood them to the degree he needed to. Etho would like to think, however, that his image of Bdubs was at least impressionistic: accurate in feeling and hue if not always clear. This newfound fact was pressing against that goal.
The thought loitered in the back of his mind. Either he could sit and listen to the footsteps, or he could try to find sleep of his own. Usually the latter had more appeal to it, even if trying usually lead to avoiding. After all, he was the one loitering in the walls of Bdubs' home.
One morning, however, presents Etho with an opportunity. The sun is barely cresting over the horizon, putting the shopping district into a sharp relief. Shadows throw bruises onto buildings, harsh against the baby-pink sky, and Etho is saddling up for the day. Halfway across the map, there awaits a redstone question for him. It had lingered in his head through the night, outcomes and possibilities dancing across his ceiling as he pointedly didn't sleep, waiting for daylight to bring about the wakefulness of the task's co-conspirator.
The door behind him to the monolith bangs open, then is shut far more quietly. Down the stairs comes Bdubs, his moss cloak trailing behind him as he approaches the horse pen.
"Hey, Bdubs," Etho catches him, bumping their shoulders together. The mess of Bdubs' hair is barely contained by his tight red bandana, curls disappearing and blending in with the moss carpet around his shoulders. A yawn interrupts Bdubs before he can respond.
"What, Etho?"
"I was just saying good morning." The leather strap that secures the saddle to his horse slots into place, and Etho offers Bdubs his own saddle. A moment of silence passes between Etho holding it out and Bdubs' fingers brushing the harness as Bdubs is scrubbing sand from his eyes. Once they're clear, however, Bdubs is reaching out and clutching the saddle close to his chest. "You're up a lot late at night."
"So? And so are you. Don't think I don't hear you muckin' around down there, up to no good." Bdubs plops Mi Amore's saddle down onto her back, hands deft and practiced securing it to her back even when he's slowed by exhaustion.
"So, I hear you too. I was just wondering what you're up to."
"Wanna see?"
The answer is more immediate than Etho anticipated. Bdubs stares up at him, unblinking with his wide smile curling around his eyes. It's a natural offer, one that he's sure comes with any curiosity extended towards him. Etho looks out past the trees, through the wiry birches dotted with dark eyes, to the shopping district and beyond, where his plans for the day lay waiting, along with Tango and Impulse. Neither his question, nor the day's routine were pivotal, per se. Co-conspirators would gladly wait and experiment on their own. This answer to Etho's question, however, might not be here when he returns from his work. Bdubs is offering this now, not later. And anyways, how could he say no to that face?
"Show me."
Dropping the reigns, Bdubs heads back towards the monolith, hopping the steps two at a time. His wings flare out behind him briefly as he does, and he leaves the door wide open for Etho in his wake. Etho matches him, pace for pace, but takes the stairs one at a time, half jogging to keep up. Inside the spiraling staircase is more difficult to stay at Bdubs' heel, losing his full picture of him to elbows and heels around corners. Etho's hands skim up the bumpy walls, the rough texture catching at the fabric of his sleeves. They pass rooms filled with books, with bubbling potions, with suits of armor ablaze with enchantments. Etho has no idea where they would stop, and nearly runs into Bdubs once he's halted. The doorway saves him from stumbling and bowling him over, hands braced on either side. In his chest, Etho's heart races nearly as quickly as the two of them just did.
Like all of the rooms within the monolith, the one they stopped in is small. Truthfully, it was only made for Bdubs to ever occupy, nobody more, and certainly nobody at the same time as him. Containers tip into the corners of the room, barely shut around reams of paper and bottles of ink. Etho had only ever used plain white paper for any need he had, but here Bdubs had papers as colorful as any sheep. Blues and yellows as musty as the earth, pale pinks that were splotched and smelled like berries, greens that seemed to be fading just like the yellows– there was even a set of pitch black papers.
Bdubs opens one of the nearer barrels, pulling out a tube of blue splotched with black and white ink. He rolls it out over the desk, plucking a few mossy, fist-sized stones from below the desk to keep the sides of the paper from curling in on themselves. Etho, gradually, leans over his shoulder to peer in at it.
"That's plannin' time, that late at night," Bdubs says, hands on his hips as he grins up at Etho. "You know when you're just barely asleep and that is the moment when you figure out a design flaw, or you wake up in the middle of the night and you just had a dream and that dream had just– architecture in it. And if you don't get it down right now, it's gonna be gone for good?" Bdubs shrugs. A dead and dying strand of moss topples off his shoulder onto the drawings below. "I don't let them escape. I gotta get them down."
Etho traces his fingertips over the white ink, feeling the craters in the page where Bdubs' pen scratched into the fibers with more vigor than necessary. The entirety of the page was covered in sketches, margins crammed tight with details, arrows and lines linking those up to sections of the larger sketch. Central on the page was an ancient building, shaded in white with spots of darkness throughout it. Tall, vertical lines gave it the same feeling Etho got while staring at the monolith from afar. There was more to it than that, however. With brighter colors– greens and oranges and a shimmering blue-grey –Bdubs had drawn over it. The additions, while they were made by Bdubs hand and his materials, were graffiti-like; smushed on and smudged, done with far more haste than the rest of the studious drawing. If this hadn't been Bdubs showing him it, Etho would have thought two different people worked on the same paper.
Hesitantly, Etho reaches out to another one of the barrels, shooting a furtive glance towards Bdubs. When he's invited to take what he wants with a simple nod, Etho pulls out another tube of paper, this one red (but really pink; all of the papers were pastel in hue, their true vibrance dripped out). This drawing was familiar, with mile-tall archways and stick-thin bridges, punctuated by dimly lit rooms. All the ink was black, washes of it throwing swatches of the drawing into nearly illegible darkness. Only an evergreen addition stood out against the shading. Those sketches were even more familiar. Etho recognized it as his burrow, the hole in the wall he decided to call his own. From Bdubs' perspective, his home looked almost labyrinthine, but Etho knew he was just seeing it with his own eyes. Bdubs didn't scrounge around in there day in and day out for materials he knew were somewhere in the mess. In the very corner hid a scratchy drawing of a warden, crossed out but not invisible.
"What did you add last night?" Etho asks, looking down and over towards Bdubs.
"Oh!" Launching across the table, Bdubs grabs another thin white paper from above the desk, wriggling it from its squished position at the top of the pile. He sticks his finger over a circled set of smudged, uniform dotted lines. "This! This here is gonna be, um, lighting fixtures. Inside. By the big old water wheel. They'll blink on and off again. I think green would be a good color for them, it plays well with the aging copper." Brushing away the paper Etho had plopped atop the first blueprint, he draws an invisible line between the sketch and the space in the build where it will belong.
"That's going to be in the same room as the..." Etho squints back down at the blueprint, following the labyrinth of lines over to another splotch of green. "…Sheep tubes? Do you have a better word for them?"
"No I do not! But yes, they're going in the same room. It'll be a wool farm." Patting his hands back against the edge of the desk, Bdubs bounces where he stands. "What do you think? I've got more too! Plenty more blueprints. There's gonna be a– a bridge leading from here to there– not this room specifically but another part of the monolith. I've got more ruins around here that are gonna spread across the landscape. There's redstone I'm gonna do, and you're not gonna lay a finger on it!" To punctuate his point, Bdubs jabs his finger into Etho's chest.
Etho holds his hands up, his smile straining against the edges of his mask. "I wouldn't dream of it."
"Not dreaming of it isn't enough!"
Laughter finally bubbles up in his chest, and Etho catches himself against the edge of the desk. His elbow bumps a sheaf of paper down from its perch by the desk, scattering it into his lap. Catching it, he begins to peek inside, unrolling the edge before stopping himself.
Bdubs has plans– probably these exact plans –to attend to. So does he. Unlike Bdubs, however, the lines of redstone would remain in his head, pressed against his ceiling in the flickering candlelight of night. They'd stay as precise as paintings there until he pressed the dust to earth and tested their reality, if he'd need to go back to the drawing board. Bdubs' half-dreams, half-plans, full sketches only had the chance of remaining here. Etho shoots a glance out the window, over the now auburn-coated shopping district. The day was making its shot at being in full swing.
And it could wait. "Let me see what else you've been working on."