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There’s a world above, the piglin children whisper to each other, small voices hushed to keep the older members of the tribe from hearing. Its not a natural place, weird and wrong, where the sky is the color of diamonds, the ground the color of rot, and the air pushes you like it has a mind of its own.
It is where the fae live.
Micheal is all of three, three and big enough to speak his Piglish in two syllables instead of one and he is so proud of it. He is three and he is already starting to rot properly, a nice dip down his head to show his skull, and his mother tells him he is beautiful, he is all of three, and he fears the fae.
His sister does not help, she whispers the stories into his ear when their mom isn’t looking, of strange beings who clothe themselves in purple plates with weapons enchanted and pockets full of gold, ready to gift a piglin or strike them down without warning or reason. “The don’t follow the rules of trade,” she whispers in his ear, “it’s impossible to predict what it is they will do. Sometimes they’ll even pick you up for the trade and wisk you away to live with them forever.” She smiles, tusks visible against her pretty rot.
Micheal shutters, pulling closer to his brother, a way from he knowing smile. His brother seems to sense his fear, and steps between him ans his sister.
“Fae aren’t real,” his brother states, sticking his tongue out. “If they were, we’d have seen some. There’s nothing above.”
“There is too!” His sister protested. “They walk by the pathways and portals. I know! I heard it from another band! If u wait by a portal, you’ll see one too!”
“You’re just making it up!” His brother inisits. “You just wanna scare us. And if you keep it up, I’ll tell mom.”
“Tattle tale,” his sister whines, but she stops, fear of Mom enough to quell her tongue.
But the silence is not enough to stop Micheal wimpering and demanding Mom to hold him whenever they move to close to the portals and pathways that cut awkwardly through their land.
Micheal is four, and he is hiding.
His sister has shoved him into a small hole, and pushed a lose rock half over the edge, enough to disguise him in the shadows, hopefully enough to keep the Blood from noticing, and killing a young Rot like him. “Stay here,” she tells him. “Until I come and get you.”
“What about you?” He whispers, uncertain if she can hear him over the fiercesome clash of Rot and Blood, two tribes at war over sacred gold with their band stuck in the middle. But his sister hears, and shakes her head.
“I need to find our stupid brother,” she replies, lifting a rotted finger to wave at him, “stay quiet, or the fae will come for you.”
Then she is gone, and Micheal waits. And waits, and waits.
He waits until the cries have died to pained whimpers, to silence. He waits as the air fills with the smell of Rot come to take its own beyond, as the scent of lava sharp with burning skin claims the fallen Blood, and still his sister does not return.
But the fae do.
“What do we have hear?” The rock is yanked from his hole, and two hands wisk him into the air. He blinks, adjusting after so long in the hole, gazing at the thing that is holding him.
He is a fae, there can be no doubt. His skin is to pale for a proper pink. His brown fur only upon his head. His tusks are all wrong, perched curving on his head and not in his mouth. He craddles Micheal against the purple plates on his chest, to frightened to move, and smiles back at the other fae behind him, “can we keep him?”
“Slow down Tubbo,” the other fae bends his long, long body down to smile his heteocromatic smile at Micheal. “Where are your parents little one?”
Micheal does not want to answer, terrified of what his answer could make the fae do, but as the silence carries onwards, he chokes out, “w-waiting.”
“What did he say Ranboo?” The one called Tubbo asks.
“He says he’s waiting,” the taller replied, giving Micheal another smile, eyes like lava and rot pinning him in place. “Would you like some gold while you wait?”
Gold appears in his hand, glistening and perfect, and Micheal felt the tension leave his body. They’d given him gold. That meant they wouldn’t kill him. He’d passed whatever unknowable test the fae held. He grasped it with trembling hands, pulling it close like the life-line it was.
A sharp growl emits between them, and it takes Micheal a minute to realize its from his stomach, having forgotten his hunger between the fear and the waiting.
“Looks like its more than gold he wants,” Tubbo joked, producing bread from no where like Ranboo had done only seconds earlier. “Here little guy, have some food.”
Micheal has never heard of fae giving food, but he is to hungry to protest, snagging it so quickly he nearly drops his gold, and stuffing it in his mouth whole.
He chokes, and strong hands pull it back, freeing his throat for the air to fill. “Slowly,” the taller one murmurs. “You’ll make yourself sick.”
“Looks like we’d better keep an eye on you,” Tubbo agrees, as he settles them both on the rocky floor, Micheal still in his arms. “At least until your parents come back.”
Ranboo nods as he settles beside them both, hands breaking the bread into smaller pieces to press into Micheal’s hands. “Until they come back,” he echoes.
But still Micheal’s family do not come.
The fae are far kinder than his sister had told him, and he wonders why he was ever afraid of these gentle creatures who shower him in bread and gold and toys. He couldn’t wait to tell her how wrong she’d been. She’d be so shocked, his brother too.
But as time ticks down, his new friends begin to grow antsy. They try to hide it from him, but he’s spent most of his young life looking up at that exact expression on the elders of his tribe’s faces. The look that meant they’d be on the move again.
“Which direction did your family go?” Tubbo asks him, glancing around the outcropps of stone and lava.
“That way,” Micheal grunts, pointing with his hand. Tubbo does not understand his words, bur he understands the guesture, and rises to his feet.
“I’m going to look around a bit,” he say to Ranboo. “Keep an eye on him for me.”
Ranboo nods, and pulls Micheal close. Together they watch Tubbo march towards to place where the Rot scent is thickest.
Tubbo returns quickly, feet rapidly pounding down on stone. “We’re leaving,” he skitters to a hault before Ranboo and Micheal, skin paler than before and eyes glittering brighter.
“What?” Ranboo gasps, and Tubbo pulls his head forcefully down and hisses into his ear to fast and too low for Micheal to understand.
“He has the right to know,” Ranboo pulls his head back, hand stroking Micheal’s fur where the rot hadn’t set in yet. “So he doesn’t wonder.”
“No child should see that,” Tubbo growls, low and dangerous and unmoving. “None.”
“What’s happening?” Micheal asks, and both turn to look at him.
“Your family can’t come back for you,” Ranboo offers. “They’re stuck in the beyond...or where ever it is that zombie piglins go.”
“Then I’ll wait,” Micheal says, not comprehending the heartbroken looks he was recieving. “I’ll wait.”
“The girl with the rotted fingers is part of your family right?” Tubbo pipes up, and Micheal nods, recongnizing his sister’s description. “She gave me permission to take you,” Tubbo explains a blinding smile on his lips. “So you’re coming with us.”
Micheal hesitates. This doesn’t sound right. His sister wouldn’t want him to go to The Above. Not after all the stories she’s told. But Tubbo’s smile quells his worries. After all, fae can’t lie right? She must have changed her mind.
“Okay,” he nods, and Tubbo and Ranboo’s faces fall with relief. “I’ll come. Until they come and get me.”
“Of course,” Ranboo pulls him tight against the purple plates on his chest. “You’ll have a home with us.”
Micheal is four when the fae take him to the above, to a world of wonders, where the sky is blue and the grass is green, to live in a house made of wood in a land covered in snow. He is four when he gets a chicken as a pet and gold for toys. He is four when he loses his family, and gets two new parents to replace them.
Micheal is four when he learns to love the fae.