Herobrine X Reader: Love's Wither Rose (Rewrite)

I - The Beginning...?

I made my way towards the stone staircase on the opposite end of the small room (really, it was just a pocket of a cave system that I had sealed up) and began to climb, one step at a time, until I emerged into a room with chests and shelves lining three of the four walls: my storage room. A small makeshift desk sat along the fourth wall, topped with brewing stands and a few discarded books. As I approached the desk, I flicked through one of the books until I found the page I needed - a recipe for a potion of healing. I knew the recipe by heart by now, but regardless I preferred to have laid out next to me as I worked. Just in case.

Within a few minutes I was taking a long swig of the near-red liquid, hardly even taking notice of its sweetness as my burns and broken ribs grew numb. Like water into soil, my injuries retreated inwards to a central point where they disappeared entirely, leaving my skin unmarred.

The same, however, could not have been said for my shirt, which now had five holes instead of four. Grumbling to myself, I dropped my sword and bag onto the floor without bothering to empty it or even place it out of the way. I opened the storage room's door and stepped out into and through my living space, making a beeline for the stairs.

Before long I made it to my bedroom, where my dog - (D/N) - immediately leapt from the bed and all but bowled me over in his excitement. As I sat and played with him on the floor, (C/N), my cat, greeted me with a lazy chirp while she stretched out further across my pillows. Eventually I managed to get to the box in the corner of the room, where I dug through its contents until I found a clean change of clothes and quickly replaced my now-tattered ones, which I left in a pile on the floor beside my boots.

As I settled into my bed, picking up my book from the bedside table, a rumble of thunder finally made the storm outside known to me and I looked up to see the rain lashing the window like waves on a beach. Over the din I could just make out the howling gales of wind, whistling and wailing outside. Every now and again, the pitch-black sky would come alive when a bolt of bright white lightning darted between the clouds.

But there was something else behind the storm, wasn't there?

I strained my ears, trying to work out if I was just hearing things or if -

No - there.

Hoofbeats, and the intermittent high-pitched screech of a panicked animal.

Within the minute I was hopping towards the front door, tugging on my second boot, with (D/N) hot on my heels. I didn't even stop to grab my cloak from the rack in the hall, or even to consider it: I just rushed out into the blinding rain, whistling and calling out to try and coax the animal nearer to me. I was thoroughly soaked to the bone when I finally found it: a dark bay horse, fully tacked with saddlebags to boot and missing its rider. It pranced and reared and bucked and spun near the barn, where I could hear my own horses replying to its frantic calls. Cautiously, I approached the horse and took hold of the reins before it could bolt at another flash of lightning. I shouldered open the barn door, leading the horse inside and towards an empty stable as (D/N) trotted around us, shaking the water from his coat as he went.

After removing the tack and placing it on the stable door, I fetched a net of hay and an armful of towels from the far corner of the barn, throwing two over the horse's back, one over (D/N), and wrapping one around my own shoulders - the rest I left on the floor. After I hung the net, I got to work on drying the two soggy animals in front of me; (D/N) quickly took the job upon himself, however, as he started rolling around on his towel. The horse...took some time. An hour, at least, and I frequently wondered how long it had been out in the storm. Judging from the way its nostrils continued to flare with heavy breaths (which thankfully began to grow calmer as the hour passed by), I guessed that it had been running hard for quite a distance. Regardless, the horse seemed in otherwise good shape as it gradually settled. It was even outright curious and affectionate, playfully trying to pull my towel from my shoulders and reaching over the stable wall to greet its neighbour - my chestnut mare. I had gotten the horse mostly dry, but there wasn't much I could do as far as the mud and grime was concerned; it was all still wet, so there would be no point in me attempting to brush it off (and it was definitely too cold to bathe the horse), so I resolved to let it dry overnight and brush away what I could in the morning.

Afterwards, as I left the stable and brought the tack over to a dry corner of the barn, I started wondering how the horse had gotten here in the first place - the only other people around here that I knew of all lived in a town several miles south, and I doubted that the horse travelled that far on its own. It was while I was sat on a bale of straw with (D/N) curled up beside me, scraping still-wet mud from the stirrups, that I really started to think about the situation. Mainly, where was the rider? Why were they travelling this way, and in a storm, no less?

My eyes drifted to the saddlebags - perhaps there might be something in them that could tell me who the rider is, or at least where they were going. I shook my head with a sigh. It was late, I was exhausted, and the storm had certainly settled in for the night; it could wait until the morning.

At least, I hoped it could.