Part 36: In which no progress is made

Morning in the deep woods, with a creeper at the door.  The day was not off to a great start.

I just noticed him staring in dismayed horror at the pile of ashes by the window.  Those are dropped by dead creepers, and I had unthinkingly emptied the useless item while cleaning out my inventory earlier.

Before I could do anything else today, I needed to take care of the creeper problem.  Remembering how easily I used this method to take out a wolf a few days ago in another universe, I punched out a block of glass, and stood ready with my bow?

No sign of the creeper - had it wandered off?  Quite stupidly, I edged closer to the window.

This was not well-advised.

Immediately Boxter, who must have seen this coming, leapt in front of me, and began jumping up and down.  A split second later, I realized what he must have been trying to get through my thick skull, because I heard the ominous hissing of the creeper.

"Run, you fool!"

 I backed off rather in a hurry.  By breaking the glass, I'd made the boneheaded mistake of allowing the creeper to scent me.  With glass in between us, I was safe.  But with just one block removed, I'd suddenly given the creeper sneaky ninja ranged attack capabilities - it could get me from behind the stone wall, even if I couldn't see it at all.  As far as the creeper was concerned, we were now in the same room, and I was fair game.

This is probably a safe distance from the window.

I opted out of the clearly ill-fated battle.  Instead, I decided to escape by digging a tunnel clear through to the other side of the mountain.  It would take me ages to dig this tunnel large enough for Boxter, but maybe, considering the creeper-laden forest that awaited me, I would exit on my own and scout around to see if there was a sane path out of this mess.

Freedom!

My tunnel to freedom completed, I looked back the way I had come.  Boxter was, to my astonishment, distracting the creeper by engaging it in a jumping contest.  I didn't even know creepers jumped, but here was one matching Boxter bounce for bounce.  I guess they do jump - admittedly I'd never taken the time to study their behaviors in detail.

This is an even safer distance from the window.

 The other side of the mountain held a thick and lion-infested forest.

The lion looks particularly joyful, though.

I wandered around to the north, looking for a clear path onward.  It looked grim, but away to the northeast it looked like there might be a sandy beach wide enough to ride on.  Assuming we could make it through all these trees.

I took some time to try to prepare a path, clearing a tunnel through the worst of the trees.  I had no idea how big to make the cleared way - we were massive, that's all I knew, and a single leaf in the wrong place would be enough to block our progress.  The other problem was that all trees tend to look alike, so I managed to lose track of the path even as I was trying to clear it.  I had a feeling that I was never going to find these spots again.  Forlornly I placed a torch as a waymarker, then realized just how many torches I was going to have to place.  Forget it.

And the requisite bear.

Looking back the way I came, I made the discovery that the mountain I'd built the night's shelter in was actually quite staggeringly cool.  It would have made a great base for a mountaintop castle, accessible only by pegasus.

Majesty!

In the woods I was surprised to find a creeper lurking nearby.  It was past noon - what were the creepers doing still around?  They don't burn up with daylight, but they're supposed to eventually lose interest and wander off.  This one was possessed of exceptional patience, apparently.  But not exceptional brains.  It got stuck behind a tree trunk, and I was able to pick it off with arrows.

Surprise afternoon creeper!

Moments later, I was attacked by another afternoon anomaly.  What was a spider doing out in the afternoon, and why was it still aggressive?  This was getting weird, and a bit worrying.

Ow.

 Near sunset I returned to the mountain shelter to find that Boxter had attracted company.

Company!

It was two identical horses which, until my arrival, had been bouncing near the windows.  Had they come to absorb wisdom, to check out his toned cubic physique, or to taunt him?  They wandered off when I drew near.

The pair of horses wanders off into the sunset.

Inside, Boxter was practicing his daily exercise regime, which consisted of bouncing repeatedly and neighing a lot.  I blocked up the hole I'd punched in the morning, and ran down the long hallway to take care of the door on the other side of the mountain, quickly before anything scary wandered in.

The Minecraft equivalent of a boarded-up window.

I returned to find Boxter determinedly bouncing again.  He kept it up for the entire night, a feat that would put any human athlete to shame - in addition to his mental powers and his horse magic abilities, he apparently was in top physical form.  If he was an action hero, I'd probably be forced to hate him, especially if the next thing I discovered about him was a mysterious and troubled past.

All of my screenshots of him from that night show him in midair, like some sort of horse-shaped helium balloon.