Gooms And The Enderman

[The Cleaning Crew 571]

Gooms leaned back against the dark wooden fence surrounding the only farm that had survived the orcs’ cultivations, his wirey fingers wrapped around the hilt of a worn and chipped stone sword which he had used as a walking stick more often than a weapon. In fact, the dull blade could hardly be called a weapon anymore. But making another one would take days and though Gooms had little else to do with all the other orcs out on a raid, he certainly didn’t feel like undertaking a task which required so much heavy lifting at the moment. It wasn’t like he was much of a fighter anyway. He sighed and let the tip of the sword fall forward until it hit the ground, blinking in surprise when it only penetrated half an inch into the packed soil. He really did need a new weapon.

“Nub, mi juzt kep diz az travulen steck,” he mumbled to himself, reaching up with his free hand to adjust the gutted pumpkin he always wore over his head. When he could see clearly again, Gooms turned around to stare at the sickly-looking plants growing on the small farm. They all looked the same to him. They were all green.

Green is a bub’hosh color, but nub when it comes to noms, he thought, shaking his head at the prospect of eating only vegetables for the next few weeks as he shifted his gaze up toward the sky. The clouds that appeared nearest to the sun were already a dark pink. Sunset was almost over and in a few minutes it would be fully night. Gooms knew better than to travel at night, but he was just outside the gate. He figured he could watch the only mildly interesting thing he’d seen all day until it was over.

When the sun’s light finally faded, Gooms, his interest having disappeared with it, began to turn toward the large, gated entrance leading into the temporary orc settlement he’d called home for the past fortnight. A loud whooshing sound froze him in place. A cold sweat broke out along Gooms’s spine. He knew that sound all too well. He associated it with unnatural movement. It was the sound of the air rushing out of a space to make room for something which was not in that space a moment ago. There were only a few entities that Gooms knew of which could make a sound like that, and none of them were friendly. He turned around slowly, careful to stare only at the ground in case this particular being was what he thought it was. The whining gurgle that emitted from the general direction of the whoosh a moment later confirmed his fears.

This was an enderman. Do nub peep the enderman, Gooms. Do nub peep it, Gooms told himself silently as he shuffled, slowly, away from the creature. The enderman whined a second time, the high, keening noise slipping through the small holes in each side of Gooms’s pumpkin and grating against his sensitive eardrums. Gooms cringed, dropping his useless sword and covering the ear holes with his hands.

He began making his way toward the camp again, abandoning his sword in the dirt. He made it to the gate, apparently without attracting the enderman’s notice. Before he walked through, however, Gooms’s curiosity got the better of him. He pressed himself up against the side of the gate, peering around the corner toward the area where he believed the enderman to be, only to find that there was no longer anything there. He sighed in disappointment, having missed an opportunity to finally witness something worth being around for. He turned back around, cursing in annoyance when he scraped his pumpkin against the wall, knocking it askew. He reached up to adjust his unusual headwear again, taking a few moments to make sure he could see before looking up - directly at the torso of the enderman standing only a few meters in front of him.

Gooms reeled backward, losing his balance and plopping right down on his butt. He hissed in pain, but scrambled back to his feet, shooting a panicked look at the enderman to determine how close it had come. He knew that when you’ve looked once, it didn’t matter how many times you saw the thing afterward. It would attack no matter what. Only, the enderman wasn’t coming toward him. In fact, it had hardly moved at all. Gooms continued to stare at it. It didn’t seem to notice him.

His excitement began to grow. To his knowledge, this had never happened before. A docile enderman? Unfathomable. Gooms waddled closer to the tall form. Still no reaction. Gooms’s spreading grin could have activated a redstone repeater. He knelt, setting his pack on the ground. After a few seconds of rummaging around, he lifted out of it a long strip of pale leather and a feather.

“Skah!” he exclaimed vehemently. This earned him a cursory glance from the enderman. Gooms froze, but the thing just looked away again, apparently completely invested in staring at the wall of logs which made up part of the orc camp’s defenses. Gooms went back to his search, a little more quietly this time. He hadn’t written anything in decades. The two items he had out could be used as a makeshift journal but he had no ink to write with. He looked around his immediate area desperately, looking for some kind of substitute. Soon, a brilliant idea struck him. Gooms retrieved the jagged topstone from a nearby cairn and dragged it across the soft skin of his inner arm, drawing blood. Throwing the topstone over his shoulder, he reclaimed his makeshift pen and paper and looked back at where the creature had been. It wasn’t there.

Gooms was panicking again, dashing about desperately in search for the elusive creature. He needn’t have worried. The enderman had only traveled a few dozen meters further into camp. Gooms scampered toward it, breaking the tip of the writing end of his feather so that it would hold more ink. He ran the point of his new pen along the cut in his arm, then pressed it to the leather and began to record his observations:

me have peeped an enderman in this day.

- it am nub attempting to flat me.

- it am buurz.

- tha enderman am about ashety agh h’ feet tall. Very bub’hosh.

- tha enderman am very stick-like. It have very thin arms agh legs. Tha belly am nub mor then ash foot in wedth.

- tha mussles peep very hard; possable reason for hardness to flat.

- tha edges of tha enderman seem hazy, like it am a illushun; possable reason for evaporashun upon flatness.

- closer observashun: tha peepers seem reel.

Gooms looked back up at the enderman for what felt like the thousandth time. He had been sitting in the same spot for nearly ten hours, observing the creature as it teleported around the camp. It had been staring at the various items any run-of-the-mill orc camp would have in an apparently random manner. It didn’t look like it had any goals in mind, but Gooms reasoned that no natural creature could have no purpose. Could it? The sun breached the horizon. The enderman took little notice. Gooms had expected the thing to vanish immediately into whatever hidey-hole it called its home, but it didn’t seem at all worried that the sun might burn it up. He dipped the feather into the shrunken, seeping cut on his arm one last time, wincing slightly, and added that to his list of observations:

- am nub a snaga to tha sun.

Then, the creature vanished. Gooms looked around, but he did couldn’t spot it anywhere nearby this time.

Just as well, Gooms thought, Me am finished with it anyway. He rolled his pen up in the bloody leather and stumbled tiredly over to the pack he’d left on the ground earlier that night, shoving both items inside. Upon further reflection, he also waddled out the gate and toward the garden where, after a minute or two of bleary-eyed searching, he reclaimed his useless stone sword.

“Lat am speshul nuw, zult,” Gooms told the sword, tapping the point on the dirt a few times before leaning on it and using it as a walking stick on his way back into camp, where he collapsed with exhaustion on the grass near the animal pen. Just before falling asleep, Gooms thought he saw the enderman appear once again and stare down at him, its too-real eyes boring into him as if it were trying to figure something out. Gooms slept.

[Garet867 36]

im too lazy too lazy to read this so im assuming it says the enderman raped you and made you prego.

[The Cleaning Crew 571]

im too lazy too lazy to read this so im assuming it says the enderman raped you and made you prego.

( Everyone is. I just got bored last night and decided to write about the random encounter with an enderman I had near the farm for fun. Thought I'd throw it in here. )

[Cracker 4570]

( I read it; good job. We could use more day to day accounts of things and interesting lore pieces. They don't have to be super significant, but anything to flesh out Orcish customs and society would be welcome.

Good job! )

[The Cleaning Crew 571]

( I read it; good job. We could use more day to day accounts of things and interesting lore pieces. They don't have to be super significant, but anything to flesh out Orcish customs and society would be welcome.

Good job! )

( Maybe I should continue writing about Gooms's escapades, then. Writing this was actually pretty enjoyable. )