Author: Chanel Hand

This is a snippet of a much longer story that's not entirely fleshed out. Cheers!

I stumbled blindly through the yard, the open door swinging behind me, and everything was too loud.

“Nicky!” Sarah Ann called, joy ringing through her voice like a bell calling for its dog. “Where you going, Nicky?”

Punch dribbles from my hair, my shirt clings to my skin, and every breath I take feels like I’m gonna die.

“Is that even your name? Nicky?” She yells. “Because what I heard—”

“I don’t care what you heard!” Even I could hear the tremor in my voice, the way every piece of me rattled as I scrambled my way into the woods with my hands quivering and my chest filled with wasps. “Just leave me alone!”

I didn’t want to be here, I didn’t want to be anywhere, I couldn’t breathe right as everything was pounding on my skull like a drum and my chest was bashing itself in like the world was coming to an end and this was my final soliloquy.

I kept everything straight, had all my accounts locked, not even my best friends knew, so what could’ve tipped her off? How did she find out? Did she get into my phone? She got into my phone, and she saw it, that’s what happened. I don’t get to keep a single secret, and I trusted her, I really did trust her, why am I so stupid?

I should’ve realized I would’ve gotten lost when I started running through woods that weren’t mine. This wasn’t my house, this was some stupid dumb party I decided to go to and now I’m stuck here.

By now the wind was starting to get to me, and I knew I couldn’t run much further, so I stopped, the tired burn of my legs and the shake in my hands just another part of the noise.

“Nick?”

He found me. I didn’t turn around.

“I don’t wanna talk right now.” My voice cracks. “So don’t make me talk right now.”

He didn’t say anything. For once.

But I couldn’t, as my head ran a thousand different ideas about how I’m gonna die and how this is gonna kill me. “You’re not gonna fix this, Gray,” I said. “I don’t even know if you can fix this.”

I collapsed against a tree, my laughter hollow and my voice broken. “I know what’s gonna happen. The school finds out, calls my parents, and I’m out of Westerfield by next Tuesday. Or they’ll just call me—”

I stopped myself.

He didn’t follow up on that. I guess he knew he couldn’t. Instead he mutters, “I was worried you were gonna come out here and do something stupid when I saw you running.”

“With what?”

“I dunno..” He kicked up dirt.

“Well, I wasn’t, so.” I shrugged. I said it just to get him to leave, but he didn’t. I didn’t know why I wouldn’t just tell him to leave; it was like I couldn’t. Maybe I knew I would be alone if I did.

Local libraries are an incredibly important aspect to our communities and access to public information while also becoming an increasingly endangered species. And it makes sense! Why would we use libraries when compared to computers and smartphones, they do comparatively less?

Why, when I have my information right at home?

Problem solved, libraries already have computers, but that doesn’t really answer our question, the question why should we use libraries? Free things.

Honest to God, best answer. Public access to books, computers, and records is so important, something the library not just supports but is. It’s built on giving those without access, access to resources. The poor, uneducated, ostracized, anyone who needs it. The library is what the foundation of the internet is. But rocking the boat is gonna be the easiest wrench for people to get in and start restricting that kind of knowledge.

But that’s a case for why we need libraries to exist and how important they are. But why would we use them?

And honestly, I’m not gonna hide it, I’m an avid library enjoyer. Have been since childhood. And man, the library has been like such a positive experience in my life? It just fosters such a friendly environment, with librarians who make polite conversation with you, finding quiet space, and depending on what your experience looks like, making friends.

I can’t tell you how many days I’ve bonded with people at the library even if I never saw them again. Strangers of all kinds, the library is a hub for those types of people, whether they just be passersbys or regulars you’ve come to recognize.

And hey, closing statement: my opinion is not yours. Do whatever you want. Libraries are just a quiet space for people to hang out, and I’m entirely biased. But I’d recommend visiting once or twice. Keep the library system alive and all that. It can do wonders.

It’s been a couple years since you played Minecraft, but hey, you bought the game. What do you wanna do first?

Mine? Okay!

Let’s go down a couple Y levels.

You’ve mined below stone into deep slate at this point. It’s taken you a while, but you’re not very afraid. It’s still the same experience; you’ve been going through caves and making tunnels, but then you start to find these blue blocks. They’re really dark and look like a fungus, it must be a new update. You mine through. They drop a lot of XP. Sweet!

The entire area is shrouded in dark blue. I’d watch my step if I were you.

You take a couple careless steps forward. Nothing out of the ordinary.

You hear a sound you’ve never heard before to your left. What?

You don’t see what activated it, so you keep exploring. He’s not here yet.

You don’t hear the sound again, thankfully, and eventually get bored, take your XP and leave. You might come back later.

Congratulations! You’ve just avoided an encounter with The Warden! Presumably, if you would’ve run into it, The Warden would’ve immediately killed you and you’d lose all your stuff, but I’m here to explain how to not make that happen.

To preface, The Warden spawns in deep dark biomes, approximately anywhere below Y Level 0 and under a mountain. It has two types of attacks, ranged, and upfront. Ranged is what usually kills you.

When you are confronted with The Warden, you will notice cannot see players, only hear them, so any noise you make is to your detriment. If he does not find anything, he will start sniffing the air, and any nearby mobs, (including you,) he charges on sight.

The Warden doesn’t spawn the same way the Dragon or the Wither does. It’s invited. He spawns at the sound of four sculk shriekers, and if you’re not careful and counting for shrieks, you’re going to set it off. The sculk shriekers react to another block, sculk sensors, who vibrate if they detect noise or lots of movement, same as the Warden. Your goal is not those guys however, your goal should be the shriekers. Break them as quickly and as quietly as possible. Both blocks are going to be scattered all over the place, but they will be in range. You do not want to be loud.

By not setting off a shrieker, you should be able to get around the deep dark without much hassle.

But if you do manage to set off a shrieker four times, well.

You have 6 seconds to run.

GIF taken from GeekFlare's article: How to Defeat the Ultimate Mob in Minecraft: The Warden (no relation)

Far From Noise is sort of a bottle-nose game where the main premise is you, a girl presumably in her twenties is stuck on the ledge of a cliff after driving out to the coast, even as the game’s opening shot. Throughout the game, we never leave this ledge and are left alone with the girl, her thoughts, and the wildlife as she comes to terms with her situation.

As you are stuck in a car, the only choices you are offered are between different dialogue trains and how you want the story to unfold. Sort of like a visual novel, contained.

Being ‘stuck’ is a big theme in this game, as the main character is stuck not only physically, but in her life as well.

She’s come to a point as a young adult where she doesn’t really know where to go, but she can’t go down and she can’t go up. It kind of ponders the question, if you were at the end of your life, but you had time to just think, take in the world around you, what would happen?

The game doesn’t shy away from the fact you are about to die; it’s one of the main focuses of the story. But despite the setting and liminal environment, the game is incredibly calm. Just to be put simply. It takes you seriously, and it takes its message seriously, but there are many jokes to break tension or small laughs thrown in.

It evokes something simpler; that’s all it really needs. Because throughout the certain death and the existentialism, you’re taken slowly on a journey through this character and what her life means. And sort of, what it means to be alive.

The game doesn’t ask a lot of you, as you play it. It’s only about an hour worth, I think. And if you can’t sit around for a slow-paced, low mechanics narrative, or you hate existential stories, this game isn’t for you. That’s okay.

But if you have time to sit down on a Saturday and set aside one to two hours worth of this game or something quiet and philosophical, I’d recommend it. Like I said, it’s not a lot, but it doesn’t need to be.