Part 43: Twobit

Throughout the lonely night I mined, once breaking through into a cave (a scary moment, but it turned out to be a short dead end, free of monsters), and once breaking through into clear night air (even scarier, since I knew without a doubt that there were monsters out there).

Oops!  Brickitup brickitup

In the morning I continued my search for a new horse.  It was an auspicious beginning - good weather (admittedly, in this version of Minecraft it's always good weather) and open country.

My last night's shelter was somewhere back in the fold of the hill - I ran so far this morning that it was out of view.

I came across a high-altitude pumpkin sheep party.

Hey, who invited the fox?

And soon I came across a pair of horses!  One was full-sized, and the other was a mini.  They were both the bottom-of-the-line light brown horses, but the mini horse intrigued me.  If I could possibly tame and ride my very own mini horse, I would.

The big horse bounced up and down, apparently trying to attract my attention.  But my sights were fixed on the mini-horse.

Mini-horse!

I went up to the little tiny horse, and tried to put a saddle on it.  Nothing happened.  Perhaps the horselet needed to be sweetened up with some sugar cubes first?  I tried feeding the horse some sugar cubes, which it happily devoured.   I tried the saddle again.  Nothing.

It looks like I'm trying to put it in a hamburger bun, but that's a saddle, apparently.

More sugar cubes, perhaps?  I fed the minihorse some more sugar cubes, but still the saddle wouldn't go on.  Eventually I noticed that with each sugar cube, the tiny horse was growing gradually larger.  Oh.  I was merely turning the minihorse, at the great expense of a rich diet of sugar cubes, into a perfectly ordinary large horse, at which point the saddle would probably go on, and I'd be in possession of an plain light brown horse.

Slightly-bigger minihorse

Well, if I wanted that, there was already a full-grown light brown horse just over yonder.  I turned my attention toward the big horse.

It jumped up and down.  "Oh, boy, oh, boy, pick me!  I'm a good horse!"

I hesitated.  The light brown horses were the economy models among horses.  They were supposed to be slower, weaker, and less able to jump.

"Oh, boy, oh, boy!  I can help!  I'm a really good horse!"

There were no other horses in sight, and in the spirit of a journey northward on horseback, I realized I really ought to tame the very first horse I saw.  In this case, that meant the lousy light brown horse.  "Okay," I told it, and put the saddle on the horse - it went on immediately, with no need to coax with sugar cubes.

"Look how well it fits me!  As if it were made for me!  This is gonna be great!"

In its excitement, the horse has begun to bounce down a cliff.

The next step in taming a horse is to sweeten it up by giving it sugar cubes, then try to climb on.  Usually the horse will throw you at least once, and you'll take considerable damage from the fall.  Eventually the horse will let you stay on, and you can then ride away.

I gave the light brown horse five sugar cubes and then climbed on its back.

In retrospect, it probably wasn't a good idea to try this on the side of a steep hill.

As expected, a split second later I was at the bottom of the hill, having taken quite a bit of damage.  It was a moment before I realized I was still on the horse's back.  Apparently rather than the horse throwing me, we had simply walked off the edge of the hill and hurt ourselves by falling to the bottom. This was probably not a terribly auspicious beginning.

"Wheeee!  Let's do it again!  Did you see how far I jumped?  This is gonna be so much fun!"

At least it seemed the horse was tame already, with a minimum of sugar cubes.  I decided to name the horse Twobit.

"Wow, that's a great name!  What does it mean?"

"Mighty warrior."

"Gosh!"

We started on our journey through the high and open lands of Horse Heaven.

As I had feared, this horse was slow, noticeably slower than Boxter had been.  I think it was faster than me.  Barely.  I hoped it was faster than a bear.

Heading uphill

We began to climb upwards, and I discovered another problem: apparently this horse couldn't jump any higher than I myself could.  I can jump one block.  Boxter could jump two blocks.  Twobit, on the other hand...

"Nono, I can jump really high!  Watch this!"

"You just jumped a single block."

"With room to spare!  Lots of room to spare!"

"Can you jump two blocks, though?"

"Ummm... not quite.  Almost."

"You can almost jump two blocks.  So you can in fact jump only one block.  Just like me."

"No, look!"  We leapt against a two-block barrier and fell back.  "I can almost do it!  I'm jumping one and a half blocks!  Almost two!  I can be a good horse!"

"There's nothing that's one and a half blocks high.  You might as well be jumping one block."

"Fences!  Those are one and a half blocks high!"

"Um, okay.  If we come across any naturally-occurring fences, we'll be sure to leap over them with ease."

"Oh, boy!  I'm gonna be a great help!"

A somewhat dizzying view.

Shortly thereafter, we fell off another mountainside.

My health was once again depleted to near-death.  I wondered how Twobit was holding up.  He looked about the same as ever, but there was no way of telling whether he was really all right, or nearly at death's portal.  If we made it to shelter tonight, I probably should distribute healing sugar cubes.

"Hooray, I have a pronoun now!"  Twobit bounced with excitement.

Oh no, the health meter's doing the nervous shaky thing again.

We spent the day slogging up and down the mountainsides, only passing two more horses - I looked wistfully after the dark brown horse we passed, a Boxter-level model.

And another minihorse.  Sort of disappointing to find out they can't be tamed... I'd still pay attention to a mini pegasus, though.

Finally I stopped to dig a cliffside shelter.  Twobit watched with interest as I dug the cave, remembering to lower the floor past the entrance barrier, since we couldn't jump over a two-block barrier on our way in.

I broke into a cave during my digging, and he danced with glee.

"Wow, look how dark it is in there!  Are we gonna go explore?"

"No, we're not."  I began bricking up the cave.  "There are scary things in dark caves."

"Wow!  Will we meet any?  I can help you fight them off!  I'm a mighty warrior!"

"Let's not try to meet any tonight."  I bricked up the last dark scary hole.

Scary!

Soon, the cave was deep enough and tall enough, and I had built the entrance barrier.  I climbed on Twobit's back, and we rode inside.

"Hooray, we're camping!  What are you doing with that glass?  I can help!"

"No, that's all right, I - mffph - get out of the way"

"I'm helping, I'm helping!"

Despite Twobit's aid, I managed to get the shelter's entrance sealed with glass.

I'm helping! I'm helping!

"Oh, boy, oh, boy!  What are we going to do next?"

"I'm going to craft a new bowl of mushroom soup."

"I can help!"

"No, that's quite all right..."

With Twobit nosing over my shoulder, I did some crafting, then decided to escape underground for some horse-free mining.

"I can craft!  I can totally help craft!"

No sooner had I dug the beginnings of the mineshaft than I felt myself propelled bodily down the hole.

"I'll help!"

"Why don't you, um, guard the upstairs?  Make sure no intruders get in."

"You got it!"

With some relief I began a quiet night of mining.

Ah, just me and the creepy, lonely torches, and the sounds of zombies in the walls.

Toward morning I emerged from the mine to check on Twobit.

"It's safe to come up!  I didn't let anyone in all night!  And I swept the floor!"

"Gosh, um, that's really great, Twobit!"

I hope we find that pegasus soon.

Twobit, mighty warrior

Part 22: Shufflin'

Having survived until morning, I broke the glass and took off running as usual, finally stopping what was hopefully a safe distance away, and then turning back to see what I had run from.  In this case, it was a (harmless-in-the-daytime) spider, a couple of pigs, and a not-very-near lion.  It also looks like I've been having distinct hobbitish tendencies lately.  Maybe it has something to do with being on a long journey very, very far from home.  I could do with a powerful wizard companion to ride along beside me on his white super-horse and zap lions.

Nice day.  As usual.  This version of Minecraft only has sunny days with scattered clouds.

I had stopped on the edge of very pleasant country, Horse Heaven-like and extensive, with rolling hills and a comfortable lack of trees.  And there were valleys and mountain ranges all like this.

Room to stretch one's rectangles.

 And there were horses here, too.  I took the long way around back toward the icy lands, so that I could walk with ease across the ice from one large continent to the next.  At the edge of the ice was what I can only describe as a mini-horse.  It bounced.  It emitted resounding neighs.  And it was tiny!  Relentlessly, adorably tiny.  Ridiculously tiny, even for a baby horse.  Here's a picture of the mini-horse next to Boxter for comparison.  I can only imagine what he must have been thinking - perhaps we had indeed stumbled on the horse equivalent of The Shire, complete with hobbit horses.  Or maybe we had both gone slightly batty after spending the last two nights staying in hobbit houses.

Mini-horse!  Eeeee so cute!

We crossed the ice bridge and, like the first people who crossed into the New World, found ourselves in a new icy land.  This one had bears, like the old land, and was swarming with horses.

The new world.  Sadly, still containing bears.

 Here's a picture of a spot we found ourselves in, where there were so many horses that it was actually hard to move, and we were in some danger of getting nudged off a cliff by mobbing, bouncing horses.  These at least were normal size, but there were some minihorses among them.  Notice the size comparison between the minihorses and a chicken that happened to be standing nearby.  I wonder what would happen if you tried to saddle and tame one?  If my saddle hadn't been precious and reserved for the pegasus that I still hoped I would see (despite Boxter's skepticism), I would have tried it.  Maybe I'll find a mini-pegasus.

Horse mosh!  And mini-horses looking ridiculously small next to a chicken.

The Horse Heaven territory stretched wondrously on and on, and we kept encountering groups of horses, for some reason evenly distributed between full size and compact models.  But no pegasus.

"No griffins either," Boxter pointed out.

"Shut up.  They exist."

Another horselet!

And the landscape was quite scenic.  Lots of caves and cliffs to watch out for, so we did a lot of headlong dashes mixed with sudden swerves - probably hilarious to any casual observer.

Natural arch!

Around noon, I spotted a likely-looking candidate for a night-time shelter - a cave, not too deep, and not too vertical, which could be conveniently walled off.  Like the caves that Boxter had tended to pick out - see, I'm finally learning!

Cave.  Yes!

So I made a mental note of the cave's location, and continued exploring the surroundings.

Nice landscape.

Evening came, and I returned to the location to find that it was now somewhat less-ideal than when I had last left it.  Lions AND bears in the valley.  But other than that...

Lions!  No!

I jumped off and dealt with the nearer of the two lions, and scoped out the cave, while Boxter stood by.

"There's a lion!"

"Yes, thank you, Boxter, I see the lion."

"Do you see the bear?"

"Yes, Boxter, I see the bear."

"What about the other bear?"

"Yes, Boxter, I see the other bear too."

"Lion."

I jumped back on Boxter's back and rode him handily into the cave, taking only slight ceiling damage when I dismounted.  I fumbled for a haystack - no more messing about with fleeing horses... if I ran out of haystacks, I would just have to settle and - ugh - farm, and make more.  And just as Boxter was bunching his blocky legs to spring gleefully out of the cave, I lobbed him a haystack.

There was a munching sound as he devoured the haystack in midleap, landed, and kept sliding forward on the slippery snow until he came to a rest well beyond the edge of the cave.

Eyeing the bears in the background, I pondered the situation.  If I remounted Boxter and rode him back into the cave, I would have wasted the haystack, and there was no guarantee he wouldn't make another slip-and-slide exit.  My alternative, though, was to extend the cave clear out from the mountainside so that Boxter could be safely enclosed.  A Horse Mahal.

"Look, there's a bear!" Boxter helpfully pointed out, with a resounding neigh.  The bear pricked up its little pixellated ears.

Darn it, Boxter.

 Horse Mahal, then.  Fortunately, I had a bit of cobblestone in my pockets.  I didn't make the quickest progress, on account of Boxter's frequent shouts of "Bear!" and the occasional arrivals of actual bears.  They're not aggressive toward humans or whatever-I-ams during daylight, but at night, they turn vicious.

BEAR!

 It was getting to be night.  The bear was beginning to look in my direction.  It's surprisingly difficult to build a cobblestone mansion when one's fingers are stiff with blind fear.

Is that the beginnings of a red glint in its eyes?

But I somehow constructed the roof, and hopped inside.

Scary.

And plugged the last hole, which I had cleverly this time NOT left directly above Boxter's head.

Ahhh.

With the cave extension in the back, the shelter ended up being quite spacious.  In the picture below, I'm standing at the edge of the cave looking out toward Boxter.  You can see how far he'd slid, and why I was so concerned about the size of the shelter I would be building.

Interior shot of the Horse Mahal

Since the shelter was handily floored with sand, and since I had decided to make a policy of adding lavish windows to all my shelters, I took the time to scoop up some sand, build some furnaces, and start smelting.

I'd picked up some feathers during the day (dropped by dead zombies, for some inscrutable reason), and decided to top off my arrow supply.  For that, I needed pointy flints.  I had no pointy flints, but I had five blocks of gravel that I'd picked up somewhere, and I knew that when digging through gravel, there's a small chance of finding pointy flints.  So I placed my five blocks of gravel.  And then shoveled them back up again.  Placed the five blocks again.  Shuffled through them with my shovel again. 

 Blockblockblockblockblock.  Shuffleshuffleshuffleshuffleshuffle.  

Blockblockblockblockblock.  Shuffleshuffleshuffleshuffleshuffle. 

Blockblockblockblock - poink!  I've found a flint that was totally in this gravel all along.  And somehow a block of gravel had disappeared.  I wasn't about to argue, though, since a useless block of gravel had been transformed into a proto-arrow.  Shuffleshuffleshuffleshuffle.

I occupied myself this way for the rest of the night, and by dawn had five pointy flints and no gravels.  

Minecraft is weird.

Poink