Scar: Hi G-Man.

Grian stared at the message that popped up on his phone. How the hell was he supposed to reply to someone who trapped him in a literal cage?

Grian: hey
Grian: why message me now?
Grian: i was under the impression you wanted me dead.

Maybe it was a low blow, but he was still hurt.
It hurt having to spill his secrets just so he could live and it hurt leaving everyone and everything behind without so much as a second word.
Maybe if he was a bigger man, he'd apologise and let it all fall behind them. Go back to being friends.

But he wasn't. Grian had his own wounds, his own past that he never truly faced; he ran from it. Everyone here ran from their pasts.

It was one of the unspoken rules to never ask about it.
To never pry.
To just focus on the here and now.

But how the hell was he supposed to manage that?
It felt like his world was falling apart. Scar caught him and suddenly he found himself living in a different jungle, hundreds of thousands of miles away. Where only the people he wanted there could find him. Grian had to admit it was still pretty lonely, even with Professor Beak and Mumbo in the area.

Scar: I just wanted to say I'm sorry.
Grian: you know that "im sorry" won't fix it now, right?
Scar: ...I figured that I'd try. I know you're mad at me. I'm mad at myself for what I did. I just wanted you to know that I'm genuinely sorry is all.

Yeah.
Yeah he knew Scar was sorry. He saw the group chat freaking out over why the Grian and Scar vanished, and then later over Mumbo disappearing as well. He had intervened when they were debating sending out a search party, sending a quick "im fine guys" message before ghosting the chat again.
It was easier this way, he decided. Being away from the humans.
Maybe he could teach Mumbo more about magic. They certainly had the room to expand and the time to practise.

Already Mumbo had taken to poking around the room with curiosity, peering through cloudy glass at strange potions and powders contained within. Grian never had a problem navigating the room due to how high the ceiling was. When he first strung the bottles up, it was to get them out of his way- he never really intended for a much taller neighbour who was always over, constantly bumping his head on the glass bottles hanging there.

Things were...weird, to say the least. The duo had never properly shared a base before and the last time Grian tried, it ended with his friend moving out.
How long ago was that now? He could barely remember his face but the bright blue shirt.
The headphones.
He could remember those easily.

So Mumbo resolved the matter by making another house and connecting the two with a vine bridge.
And just because Grian was a perfectionist, he made Mumbos house hang in the canopy with thick vines supporting the build. It was thematic, after all.

Being in the canopy meant he could ignore the growing amount of fairy rings on the floor. Ones that he or Mumbo certainly didn't make.
The fact that they were made of red-capped mushrooms and chrysanthemums sent chills down his spine.
Chrysanthemums didn't grow naturally in the jungle after all.