This fanart of Xel and Miesall celebrating Salt's  birthday (December 25th) was made by @JacqPumpkin ! I thought it was super cute so I just had to share! :D

♡『♡』♡

When Martyn awoke from the hard plank floor, he could tell by the noises outside that it wasn't morning just yet. He sat up and stretched his arms, biting his lip to prevent himself from letting out a satisfied groan and waking up Ren. He could tell the creature was still asleep by the soft breathing pattern coming from beside him. He rubbed his eyes, stalling those few extra moments before finally opening up his eyes. That still felt weird to do.

Sure enough, still dark out, and it'd probably be that way for hours yet. 3 am, maybe? He guessed that his time in Hels really screwed up his internal clock, but then again, he wasn't so sure he got much sleep these days, either. Not that had mattered.

Looking over at Ren, he couldn't help but notice that he looked noticeably fuzzier than before. He narrowed his eyes as he crept up closer to get a better look. In the darkness, his button nose looked so much more like a snout and his hands looked so much more like paws. Actually, he just looked more like a dog in general, really. With exception to his arms, which dogs clearly didn't have, and maybe the fact he was dressed as a person (still inexplicably wearing sunglasses, might he add) Martyn might've mistaken him for a dog if he didn't know any better.

Was that some kind of glitch, he couldn't help but wonder as he sat back. Part of him debated whether to wake him up and ask just to be sure, but he decided against it. Sometimes players had really weird things about them like that. Elves too, for that matter, though not much of this strangeness inhabited his old village from years ago. Or Evolution, come to think of it, even though Netty thought it'd be so cool to have animal traits. She always wore an animal hoodie because of it -- well, that and because it was a gift from her brother and it reminded her of home.

Putting that aside, he figured now was of good a time as any to get back to work. He picked up his communicator and turned it on. The light it emitted quickly lit up half the room. And, might he add, his entire face, including his eyes. He let out a cry  and covered his eyes before he could help it, dropping his communicator with a thud. The light pointed at the wall away from him and Ren.

Realizing that he had made noise, Martyn froze. Not daring to move a muscle, he moved only his eyes to look over at the sleeping form. He watched as he turned over. Then relaxed. Martyn let out a breath he didn't realize that he had been holding before going to pick up his comm again. This time, he tried to expose his eyes to the light as slowly as possible. This time, he didn't make a sound, but it still burned his eyes. He closed them, trying to get used to it that way. Then he cautiously opened them. His instincts told him to keep them closed, but he fought against them, keeping them open. His eyes watered. He blinked, once. They filled right back up. They rolled down his cheeks. He wiped them away, cursing under his breath. How could he possibly be this weak?

"Mmmmm...artyn?"

Martyn froze once more, but only after wiping a stray tear. Really, how was it that Ren hadn't woken a minute ago, but now he did?! Now, that it looked like -- gosh, it probably looked like he was crying! He impulsively looked away, almost shuddering at the realization that his cheeks could be glistening. Not because he was crying, but because his stupid eyes couldn't handle light as well as they used to. (He was beginning to worry that they might never again. He never did get to ask Aerric or anyone else if this was normal for his situation. He didn't want to think about that anymore.)

"What are you doing up? It's the middle of the night!" Ren exclaimed in a hushed tone.

Martyn shrugged, refusing to turn back around. "Couldn't sleep." He replied in a louder, but still quiet tone. Now that they were both awake, there really was no need to be quiet, but it would break the serenade that played in the night outside. His words weren't a lie exactly. He hadn't meant to wake up at this time, but he hadn't tried to fall back asleep either. Another secret of his to keep, one of many he was sure if they stayed here long.

"You should get back to bed. Starring a bright light like that isn't doing you any favors, my dude, unless that's the kind of thing you're into." Was Ren's response.

Martyn wanted to protest, but as much as he hadn't wanted to admit it, he really was tired. It had been an incredibly long day. Exciting, sure, but also loaded with more information than he possibly could process at once. And with his guard up, searching for any abnormalities even in the smallest of places, perhaps he hadn't realized just how much it fatigued him until now. And maybe it was selfish, and maybe it'd make him a terrible Champion, or a failure, but he really did just want to go back to sleep. He let out a quiet sigh, turning off his communicator and putting it back on his wrist. He could do it later. "Right..." he hummed before lying back down. Then, he remembered something, rolling over so he could see Ren. "Oh -- Ren, I noticed that you look a bit more.-- uh, furry."

"I know, I know. I change from wolf to man throughout the day. I can explain it more in the morning if you'd like, but really -- get back to sleep Martyn."

Martyn couldn't help but chuckle slightly, like a naughty child that had been caught doing something two seconds after they were told to stop it. "Whatever you say, boss." A pause. "but say--."

"Martyn!"

Martyn couldn't help but laugh more. "Fine, fine. I'll go back to sleep... unless?"

"Void help me Martyn, I will come over there and smash you—" Ren growled.

"Oh, is that what get in line means?"

"That's it! This is the last time I'm ever sleeping with you!" And try as he might to stop himself, Ren couldn't help but join Martyn's fit of laughter at the sheer absurdity of their words. But breathing a sigh and simmering down, he replied much more seriously, "But really, go back to sleep right now."

"Fine..." And as tempted as he was to say even more just to annoy Ren, Martyn decided against it. It took much longer than it had for Ren, but sleep eventually followed for Martyn.

♡『♡』♡

It had taken almost no time at all. Not even checking anything that Grian had, Scott opened up a window Grian had never seen before.

"What's that?" he asked, looking at the few different panels before them. Scott turned around, giving him a weird look.

"The console? Don't tell me-- you've never used it before?" He asked with a frown, his demeanor implying that it was the most basic of applications for an Admin to know about. Grian shied away, resisting the urge to flinch.

Scott's eyes wordlessly drifted back to the screen before he began tapping away. He went through a few different screens, each one displaying more information that Grian didn't even begin to understand how to read.

"So, since it seems that everyone is having issues to our knowledge, the server itself must be having issues. If we're lucky, it'll just be a setting under here..." Scott muttered under his breath. Grian knew that he was a sorry excuse for an Admin, but he had never felt as inadequate as one until now, when he got to see a real one at work.

Scott went to access a new page filled with a long list of things. He scrolled through most of it so fast that Grian only caught a few names of things. Some of the boxes beside each item were checked, while others weren't. Scott seemed to pay that no mind, until he found one in particular. "Oh. That'll do it." Scott hummed.

"You found the issue?" Grian asked, perking up. Honestly at this point, he hadn't even been paying attention -- it wasn't as though he had known any of what the other was doing this entire time.

"I'm really hoping so, but we'll see. There could always be multiple issues, and in this case, I happened to see--" Scott paused and shook his head. "Anyway, I'm just going to focus on getting messaging up and running again for now. Then I can focus on the other things."

Grian frowned at his words. Was there something else unusual going on here? He thought about asking, but decided against it seeing as he probably wouldn't understand that, either. He watched as Scott checked the box and rebooted. Then, he placed it back into Grian's hands and told him to test it now. Grian nodded, opening up the chat and typing out a message.

Grian: Hello. I don't know if this is going to work, but... if you're reading this message, it means we've figured out how to enable chat!

One second passed. Two. Both he and Scott looked expectantly at Scott's communicator. And then it worked -- it buzzed!

"Yes! I got it!" he exclaimed and going to check it on his own device.

Smajor: Yes! It worked!!

They both let out a collective sigh in relief as other messages began to roll in from the various members of the server. InTheLittleWood. Smallishbeans. Rendog. TangoTek. Bigbst4tz2. BdoubleO100. Wait, Bdubs? What was he doing here? Grian knitted his eyebrows as he stared at the screen, watching as other people -- other Hermits-- replied. ZombieCleo. ImpulseSV. Solidarity. Ethoslab. Skizzleman. And finally, GoodTimeWithScar. The chat was going crazy now, everyone trying to talk over each other, but Grian didn't reply to any of them.

"What's wrong?" Scott asked beside him.

"It's--" Grian bit his lip, humming. "Well, a lot more of my friends are here than I'd imagined..." He replied, blinking at the ever-changing screen. It had just been the four of them that had fallen, so how were Cleo, Bdubs and Impulse here? And Etho; that was one of the former Hermits that was coming back in the new season. Admittedly, he had only met the man in passing a time or two, but that caught his attention as well. He glanced up at Scott, whose expression told that he had no idea about any of this, either.

"That's... strange," Was all he said, shrugging his shoulders slightly. "In any case, we probably should have everyone meet up soon. I would say that we should do it as soon as possible, but there are a few things I would like to check first before that happens." 

Grian nodded. If he had ever doubted that Scott was a real Admin, he had very quickly proven himself. Not only had he managed to fix the main issue in a short amount of time, he was being proactive and making sure that there weren't other issues lurking about. Even after so many years with the Watchers, he couldn't imagine himself having the patience and dedication for that kind of thing. "Of course." He replied. "I'll send a message telling everyone to be at the village at noon?"

"Make it three, just to be sure I have enough time." Scott replied.

♡『♡』♡

Three o'clock. That was plenty of time, Martyn had decided. After Ren had forced him to eat some breakfast (which was completely unnecessary, might he add), he was back off into the world to "spread the good news of Renchanting," explore the world and get resources. He first headed off to the village, but to his dismay he had found that a group of people had settled there. Silly as it sounded, he felt rather attached to the area even though he wasn't planning to build there. That being said, he supposed he wasn't too upset about it all.

He told Tango and Impulse all about his employer as promised. But just out of spite and a dab of tomfoolery, he used a mod installed on his comm to imitate the sound of a creeper to spook them beforehand. Overall, they weren't terribly mad about it all, and afterwards they talked for awhile.

"So you all just got here yesterday?" He asked them just to be sure he had gotten that right. That couldn't possibly be a coincidence.

"Yup, me and Impy here lived in the same world and it kind of... you know, it wasn't in very good shape when we left it, really." Tango explained, Impulse nodding along.

That too didn't sound like a coincidence. Martyn couldn't help but wonder if these were the friends that Grian had mentioned before. If they weren't, that would be even weirder. There were so many mental notes he had to be sure to take, listening closely to every single word. "I'm really sorry. That's gotta be really hard. I-- my home was the same way." He frowned, letting a solemn moment of silence pass them by. It wasn't his home that had gotten wrecked; he had no home, but they didn't need to know that. "Say, you two didn't happen to come from a world named Hermitcraft, did you?"

The light of recognition passed through their eyes. "Yes, yes we do! How'd you guess?" Impulse asked.

"I ran into Grian earlier. He mentioned that there might be other Hermits here." Martyn explained. He thought of introducing himself as a friend of Grian, but decided against it. These two had their own secrets, and who knew what those could possibly be. He didn't trust them. And, not to mention, apparently he was banned from even saying the word Evolution. Would Grian consider their relationship a secret, too? He still didn't really get that part, but he would stay true to his word as promised.

The two Hermits nodded before talking idly on the project they were working on. (They had said that they wanted to make a villager breeder, but they weren't sure if there were any villagers left. Impulse kept swearing that he heard one or two somewhere. Whoever these were, they sounded like big redstoner nerds to Martyn for even considering such a project on the very second day in this world.) He made a few scarce comments to sound interested, or at least interested enough in what they were doing, before going back to what he actually cared about.

"You haven't happened to have anything weird happen since you got here, have you?" He asked them. He tried to sound absent-minded, only making idle conversation, as he ran his hand along the fence post that were keeping a horde of sheep in.

"Why do you ask?" Tango asked, pausing what he was doing to look back at Martyn.

Martyn only shrugged. "I don't know. That guy-- Ren-- was turning into a wolf it looked like last night. I wasn't sure if that was like... a glitch, or like, just who he was." He chuckled to himself. "I didn't quite want to go out and ask him, you know? But if there are glitches in this world we all got sucked into, I'd want to know, you know?"

"Right, right." Impulse nodded. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, Martyn, the thing with Ren is just him. But --" He and Tango shared a glance. "There are some odd things happening around here."

Yes, this was just perfect. Martyn sat up, making sure that he didn't seem as excited as he actually was. This was just a simple conversation, after all. "Oh? Like what?" he asked, tilting his head slightly.

"Well I'm an elytrian, or at least I'm supposed to be." Tango replied, running a hand through his blonde hair. "I was born with wings and flames for hair, but when I woke up here, they were gone, as though they were never there."

"Gone?" Martyn echoed, his eyes narrowing as he studied Tango. There were no signs of either trait of his, and he could tell the man was being truthful with him. Or, at least, not lying. With open body language, neither of them seemed deceitful, either. "That's... yeah that's weird. Is there anything else you've noticed?"

"Well, it was kind of hard to not notice Scar's amazing abs!" Impulse snickered. Both he and Tango shared a knowing glance.

"Yeah, yeah! How'd he even get those?!" Impulse exclaimed.

"What... happened to his abs, exactly?" Martyn asked, a bit warily. He was unsure if he should inquire more, but he needed to know. For research purposes, of course. Nothing else. 

"He got like, super buff! Like, he's ripped!" They both exclaimed, laughing to themselves. Martyn laughed right along.

"Man, only if that could happen to me! Why just him?" he joked, moreso just to fit in. The two of them took it in stride, agreeing right along. 

Martyn lingered for another ten minutes or so, mostly obsessing over this stranger Scar's chest, before he excused himself. Despite the envy stirring in his chest, he had his eyes set on what really mattered: recording any and all abnormalities and fixing them (which right now seemed to be potential code glitches). Watching over Grian, and making sure he didn't make some universe-ending choice. Freeing his love. He wasn't there to make friends. If he had any luck, they would all be out of there before he even had the time to build a base. For now though, he would go gather supplies to make up what little he did yesterday.

♡『♡』♡

Scar was one of the first people to arrive at the village at the diccused time. He found that he liked half-using a wooden sword as a crutch, although it was awkward at best. He located a nice place to sit down under the shade of a tree and waited for other people to come talk to him. He watched as Bdubs, Impulse, Etho and Grian wandered about, saying something about villagers. He had hoped that one of them would go say hi to him, but they hadn't. Maybe they hadn't seen him, or they were too caught up in what they were doing. He thought about going over to them and saying hi instead, but he had gotten worn from the walk over here.

Still though, sitting there and doing nothing was boring. He rummaged through his inventory, trying to see if he had anything to play with in the meantime. He paused when he found the flint and steel -- that would be perfect! He took it out, and like any man who was bored would logically do, he set the tree on fire and scooted away.

Actually, that would make it obvious it was him, wasn't it? While he didn't want to, he pushed himself back up to his feet and hobbled over to Grian and Etho. "Hey guys!" he called.

When Grian turned around and saw Scar of all people standing there, he stopped in his tracks, dropping the shovel he was carrying as his eyes widened. "S-Scar?" he whispered. He looked the shirtless man up and down several times, wondering if there was any way that he was mistaken.

"Grian?" Scar asked, tilting his head innocently as though he didn't know what his friend was getting at. His classic smirk betrayed him a moment later, giving him away.

"Dude, how are you--?! What?!" Grian squeaked. Having finished his full body scan, he found himself staring right at Scar's pecs rather than his eyes.

"New workout routine." Scar nodded excitedly, his smirk only growing that much more.

Etho sighed, shaking his head. "No, no. The truth is--" Something caught his eye and he paused, looking over in that direction. "Hey!! My tree!!" He exclaimed before running off towards the burning tree. Scar couldn't help but chuckle deviously in a way that told just who it was that had set the tree on fire in the first place.

Grian took a deep breath, trying to not let Scar's antics get to him. "Scar." He demanded, setting his hands on each of Scar's shoulders to lock him in place and force him to stare into his eyes.

Thankfully, that was enough to take the silliness right out of Scar's demeanor. He tried to look away, but Grian's grip on him prevented him from doing that. "I--" the best he could, he glanced around them before speaking in a low voice. "Look G, I really, really don't know. I swear -- I just woke up like this and I just -- my wheelchair was gone, and this place doesn't have any of my accessibility mods, and it looked like that I might be able to walk so I tried and-- well, I-I know, it isn't great! And... and it hurts. But Grian, I know what you're thinking, but what was I supposed to do? The chat wasn't working and if I stayed where I was, I would have--" In his rambling, which had begun getting faster with every passing second, he had to stop to bite his lower lip to prevent the tears that had formed in his eyes from falling. "--And then there were so many pwe--people and -- it never really ah-- no, oh! Occurred to me to really tell them, and acktrually -- the Hermits have been really good to me but when I'm out of the wer... wa? No-- world!! -- A lot of pweople don't see me as -- you know, a human or a play... player-er or a --" Despite his best effort, the tears began streaming down his face, and his dyslexia had kicked up, causing him to stumble on his words. To try and cover it up, he had started speaking even faster than before to the point even he hardly understood what he was saying anymore.

And as much as Grian wanted to listen to him, it was all too much all at once. He had lost what point his friend was trying to make. More important than that, however, was that this wasn't helping Scar any. Grian knew how his dyslexia got worse when he was emotional, and that usually only spiraled things further. He glanced behind him, making sure that they were still alone. They were, but he pulled Scar closer to where he was hiding villagers, anyway just to be safe. "Scar - Scar, breathe. Breathe with me, okay?" He asked, beginning to take deep breaths to try and help Scar.

"B-b-but Grain--"

Grian pretended not to notice the slip up, because really, it didn't matter and pointing it out would only make matters worse. "Scar, just breathe with me." He instructed again, leaving no room for argument. This time, Scar listened without complaint. Slowly and gently, as they focused on their breathing, Grian began rubbing circles in Scar's shoulders to help ground him further. It was only until Scar's ragged breathing had steadied and the tears were gone that Grian spoke again. "Hey, you okay?"

Scar nodded, silently at first. Then he paused, hesitated before replying a timid, "I think so."

That was good, or at least, good enough for now, Grian figured. "Scar, I'm not judging you, I just... want to know what happened to you, alright? And that doesn't have to be right this second if you need some time. It's just... well, I just worried a lot about you after we fell. You're my best friend and I can't help but feel protective over you, especially in a situation like this." He replied.

Scar nodded again, finding that words were still sticking in his throat. He took a few extra moments to unscramble them fully, silently appreciating the way Grian waited patiently for him to respond. "Thank you, Grian. Really." He replied, feeling the warmth of their bond bubble pleasantly in his chest. "I think later would be best, when we can really be alone. But um..." He had to pause to collect his thoughts again. "Please don't tell them -- the uh, strangers-- about my legs and my -- you know... Everything else."

"Your... legs?" Grian echoed, his eyes shifting down to them instinctively as he furled his brow, trying to understand what Scar meant. It came to him a moment later: he didn't want them knowing about his disability? "But Scar, why--"

Scar gave him the biggest, most innocent-looking puppy dog eyes. "Please, G? For Hermit code?"

Grian almost flinched at the word. Any time that a Hermit called Hermit code, it meant it was a secret, not to be spoken with anyone else. Or, alternatively, that the person would not elaborate on the subject matter any further. No exceptions. He of all people, who probably used it most of everyone, knew better than to argue. He let out a sigh. "I... okay. I understand." He replied, making sure that he didn't speak through gritted teeth. It sounded like a terrible idea in his opinion, but he would never argue with Hermit Code.