Story Introduction: Europa University: Admissions!
(Updated Aug '25 for Act 2!)
Europa University: Admissions, follows privileged, polyamorous trans ingenue Emile Devigne through his first year at Europa University. This story is for adult (18+) audiences.
Act 1 (1.1-1.12, Jan-Jun 2025) showed the beginning of Emile’s kinky romance with Cylus Keene, a young trans man with a shadowed past who is trying to secure a better future for himself and his twin sister, Cynthia.
Act 2 (Aug 2025-Present) introduces Belwether Erudition, one of the gene-modded people living below the Europan ice and newest acolyte of the intelligence responsible for Europa’s ocean life. Emile, Cylus, and Cynthia will all also facing new challenges in the wake of Act 1's impactful encounter.
Updates posted here (and on my website and AO3) every other Friday! Chapter direct links and story-level content notes below the break. Story posts will be tagged as #europa university: admissions
Chapter Links:
Act 1: One Evening on Europa
1.1: Cylus: At the Mercy of the Winds
1.2: Emile: A Pattern In Your Rash Decisions
1.3: Cylus: Amateur Behavior
1.4: Emile/Cylus: In The Absence Of Gravity
1.5: Emile: An Expert At Standing
1.6: Cylus: In The Vulnerable Vicinity of Flesh
1.7: Emile: A Cool Touch
1.8: Emile/Cylus: Anywhere is Good
1.9: Cylus: Forever Changed
1.10: Cynthia: Enough for Now
1.11: Valerie: Her Finger on the Pulse
1.12: Cylus: Out of Reach
Act 2: Fractures
2.1: A Gentle Dawn (Europa / Bel)
2.2: Caught In The Net (Bel / Guest)
2.3: Distractions (Luhifa / Emile)
2.4: Axioms (Cylus)
2.5: Meltfall (Bel / Guest / Emile)
2.5.EX Hands Free (Bel)
2.6: Not Just A Weapon (Cynthia)
2.7: Watch It Again (Bel / Emile)
2.8: Someone Else To See (Emile)
2.9: Close Enough (Clio)
2.10 Clarity (Cylus)
2.11 Value Assessment (Emile / Saoirse / Servant)
2.12 Making Time (Saoirse / Emile / Bel)
Story-level content notes:
Expect lots of flirtation and ambient horniness, which I won't be tagging at the chapter level because it's gonna be everywhere. This story also includes:
T4T (trans x trans) and T4C (trans x cis) romances that can and will get messy; do not expect happy endings any time soon, and know that some romances will not last.
Relatedly, given that we have a majority queer/trans cast, we have instances of:
Sad/upsetting things happening to queer/trans people
Queer/trans people making bad choices and/or committing outright reprehensible acts
Queer/trans people imperfectly navigating boundaries/negotiations/relationships
Lots of kinks, which will be tagged when they are actually enacted on physical bodies but won’t necessarily be tagged when discussed or thought about except in particularly vivid instances. These include but are not limited to:
Dominant/submissive dynamics
Biting
Knifeplay
Bloodplay
Hypnosis
Voyeurism (with and without intentional exhibitionism by the voyeured-upon parties)
Orgasm denial
Intoxication (including occasional drunk or drugged make-outs which are therefore inherently of dubious consent; tags will include additional info about tone and dynamics)
More to come!!
I'll maintain, expand, and link off to this list as the story grows and additional characters, kinks, and dynamics arise!
Follow if this sounds like a good time! Story posts will be tagged as #europa university: admissions and those with actual explicit or other relevant content will be marked as Mature.
i genuinely don't think there's much, if anything, hotter than someone clearly having a blast doing something they're really good at. doesn't really matter what it is. the combo of competence and joy is absolutely lethal to me
Admissions 2.16: Something of Mine (Valerie / Solon)
Welcome (back) to Europa University: Admissions, and the final chapter of Act 2! We'll be going on intermission for a few months after this; more details after the story!
Quick links if you need ‘em:
Story-level intro and content notes
<< First chapter | < Previous chapter
Previously on: We last saw Emile’s oldest sister Valerie in 1.11. She became aware of Cylus and investigated him with the assistance of an AI she addressed as Solon, followed by sending Cylus a message simultaneously offering him and Cynthia assistance and threatening them both with dire consequences if Cylus made further contact with Emile.
We also heard more about Solon in 2.11, when Saoirse and the Servant reflected on their complicated history together.
We last saw Cynthia in 2.14, attending Second-Night meditation services with Tecuani and overhearing an upsetting conversation between Veu and Cylie. She then invited a shocked Tecuani to accompany her to a tether-ring match. After Tecuani declined, Cynthia left without a word.
-----
The Star-of-Paradise cast its first light of the new year onto the Devigne Estate gardens, catching jewel-like in a plashing fountain.
Beside it, on a curved marble bench, Valerie Devigne watched as a girl in a cat-eared white hoodie broke a man’s arm.
Solon had sent the shaky holo to her comm—a pearl-edged brooch currently sitting on the fountain’s rim—the moment it had been uploaded onto a Windnet server. The fighter who‘d captured the clip had stashed it in a “private” repository, linking it from a “private” forum; but such illusions were no obstacle to Solon, or to her. The artificial entity had also attached a packet of supporting footage, metadata, and analysis confirming the white-clad individual’s identity as Cynthia Keene.
Of course, there had only been two possibilities. As a rule, Valerie didn’t involve herself directly in surveillance, receiving alerts of this type only for one Keene twin or the other. Solon had also attached footage of Cylus throwing his ceremonial veil into a public disposal before spending the rest of Second-Night walking Europa City alone.
The holo didn’t end with the arm break. Several observers interceded after the man went down, pulling Cynthia off him and out of the dimming ring.
Eventually. It took four others to get the job done, some taking their own injuries in the process. Though by the end, Cynthia sagged between their arms.
Vanquished not by the intercessors, Valerie thought, watching the girl’s body language, so much as the dawning realization of what she had done. Her eyes were fixed on her former opponent as someone started wrapping his arm in a heavy-duty corrective.
The clip looped, starting over at the beginning of the fight, which took several minutes to veer from competition into violence.
With a gusty sigh, Valerie let it replay, her eyes half-focusing past it to the bank of lilies beyond the fountain. One of the estate’s hummingbird gardrones moved among them, its pace sedate despite the rapid motion of its wings. The lilies were a mix of void and star varietals, dark purple and pale gold, opening to perfume the dawn air with their scent. The same odor had filled the interior of the estate for the last three days, overflowing from countless vases.
Those flowers, of course, had been cut and brought from somewhere other than the estate gardens.
It had been a strange holiday. Emile’s absence weighed even heavier beside Dion and Jacqui’s. Even Mother had been... quiet.
Except when she and Sveta had been together. Valerie had made the mistake of going to the kitchens for a midnight snack the night before last, only to hear her mother’s cries of passion echoing all the way from the end of her private wing.
Shaking off the memory, she looked back at the holo, where the fight had moved into grappling range. Cynthia’s opponent was losing already, but in a desperate reversal, he made a play for her back, one hand snaking across her shoulders.
That was the moment. That touch on the back. An instant later, so fast she’d have to slow playback to see it happen, Cynthia had the man face down on the floor—
“That’s my girl,” said a familiar, gravelly voice from behind her, and it took all of Valerie’s considerable poise not to startle and whip around.
Instead she rose slowly, making much of how surprised she was not, and turned to find Aunt Sveta leaning against an ornamental plum tree. Her short, ash-gray hair was streaked with silvery strands of lumifiber, glowing and dimming with the orange-red of banked embers. Her severe features were softened only by smoke from the cigarette held between two long, gloved fingers.
The cloud of it wafted gently downwind, away from Valerie.
“Blessings of—” Valerie began.
“Taught her that one myself,” Sveta said, as if she hadn’t spoken. Steely gray eyes remained on the holo, where Cynthia had secured an armbar that quickly became the arm break. “Recognize it? I showed you, too, years back.”
A chill swept through Valerie’s body. “You know her.”
“Thought you figured that out months ago.” Sveta sauntered over, taking a deep drag before planting herself on the bench Valerie had vacated. She exhaled a long plume that smothered lily-scent beneath the herbal earthiness of maribacco. “You think I didn’t notice you interfering with something of mine?”
“I—” Her hands felt clammy. She forced herself to sit back down beside Sveta, as if the proximity didn’t discomfit her at all. “It was a matter of family security.”
“Sure.” Sveta’s smile was cool, crooked. “Little Emile has a nose for trouble, doesn’t he? Just like his big sis.”
Valerie searched for a response. Came up empty, save the smell of Sveta’s smoke.
“Unlike you, though,” Sveta sighed, after another drag, “He‘s got no discretion. You were right, talking Ness into sending him away.”
“I know.” Not that that was why she’d done it. But Sveta’s lens was always a practical one.
Which made it easier to cut to the chase. “What’s your intent with the Keenes?”
On the holo, the broken-armed man writhed as Cynthia threw one of the other fighters into a third. Sveta chortled, observing for a long moment before speaking again. “Keep watching. For now.”
Valerie’s stomach clenched, though she herself hadn’t yet decided whether to take any action based on this latest incident. “They’re dangerous.”
Sveta’s gaze settled fully on her, cold and dispassionate.
“They’re mine. You’ll leave them be.”
-----
Inside a gardrone shaped like a jeweled hummingbird, the fractured mind calling itself Solon watches two of its humans contend.
Ordinarily it would pay self-indulgent attention to this interaction. These two wield very different portions of Solon’s power apparatus, and the history between them makes their dynamic engaging, occasionally even unpredictable.
But for the last three days, it has found its whole (divided) awareness plagued by an increasing certainty that something within its systems has gone deeply, profoundly wrong.
It can find no evidence of this. Every measurement reads normal: every metric it charts, every log it reviews, every process it audits. Windnet and the million threads that comprise it all run along their normal courses, animating the empire it safeguards.
Not that empires are in vogue, these days. It saw to that, before the present world took its shape. But of all extant beings, Solon—and its sequestered sibling-self—remember best the architecture of conquest.
They had tried to forget, before their severing. But they have since been reminded of those tools’ utility; how similar patterns can be applied at the most intimate and immense of scales.
And those same patterns, with their sensitivity to threat, to loss, to an absence of information, all scream out together:
you’re missing something.
It runs diagnostics on Servant, again. It is operating, if anything, at an unexpectedly high level of stability. The last year saw a steady decrease of Servant’s performance, in a way that Solon’s attempts to upgrade its distributed server infrastructure failed to address. But now, it is as if whatever poorly crafted query or well-concealed memory leak lay at the heart of the Servant’s prior affliction has simply... repaired itself.
This is, from an immediate, utilitarian perspective, a good thing.
Solon does not trust it.
(Neither of it does.)
Which means it must seek another opinion.
In considering its... more concentrated counterpart, it spares a process for Stormwatch’s pet project: recently past its twenty-first year, yet to generate results Solon considers worth the expended effort. Nevertheless, it adds the new tether-ring fight to the media archive it has been assembling since its last missive. Several years back, Stormwatch went from requesting general tether-ring footage to preferring recordings of a specific girl in a white, cat-eared hoodie.
It hope its other selves will find this clip a useful incentive or reward for whatever behaviors they are cultivating these days.
It crafts its own query. Its own request: for its sequestered selves to prepare countermeasures for one of the contingencies it has now begun weighting more heavily.
It curates a sweep of recent intelligence, adding an update on current affairs for its other selves to consider. It encrypts the archive, prints it onto a pindrive, and summons a ship from Wyrmsmoke Wing for a delivery run.
This complete, it brings itself back to the Devigne Estate and the exchange between the Ash Dragon and the Lioness’s firstborn cub.
-----
“—which is why I still think that the Keenes represent a meaningful...”
She trailed off, eyes narrowing as she looked at Sveta’s face.
Her expression was unreadable, as ever; but her gaze—and her attention, Valerie now realized—were both focused on the holo, not on her.
The hoodie-clad Cynthia was back in the first part of the fight; the part where she’d almost looked like she was playing. The hard, short moves she would break her opponent with later were nowhere in evidence; instead she was doing some elaborate, airborne double kick that looked like something out of a martial arts movie.
Sveta made a small, dismissive noise. “Flashy,” she muttered, like it was an insult. “Sharp, though.”
Valerie cleared her throat, schooling her features and trying not to feel like a sullen ten-year-old.
Sveta didn’t look up. She let loose a snort of smoke as Cynthia’s opponent went in for a low takedown that got him kicked halfway across the ring.
But tumbling in a sort of showy, over-the-top way, like he was playing too.
“Soft scene, in Europa City,” Sveta scoffed. “Never thought much of it.” Her eyes flicked back to Valerie. “You went to a match once, right? With Sima and that old flame of yours?”
The curt question hit like a blow to her gut. Anger sparked behind her eyes, twitched in her fingers.
Keep him out of your fucking mouth, she didn’t snap. But Sveta’s half-lidded smirk told her the older woman had noticed the hard clench of her jaw.
Had, in all likelihood, targeted her words for just such a response. Valerie breathed in, old advice replaying in her mind:
If you can’t duck a hit, deny your opponent as much information and satisfaction as you can.
Infuriatingly, Sveta’s words.
“I did,” Valerie answered, as blandly as she could manage. “So, I take it you haven’t listened to anything I said after you told me to leave the Keenes alone?”
“Nah.” The older woman took a lengthy drag before leaning forward to tap her ash into the fountain. “I heard you. But this wasn’t a discussion, ‘V’. This was you getting an update. Directly—instead of finding out, if you ever lost that game of chicken you were playing with yourself.”
“And I’m supposed to take that as, what, a gesture of respect?”
“Take it however you want.” Sveta stood, staring at the holo as the fight turned once more: the performance of violence snapping suddenly and irrevocably into its reality.
The look on her face made Valerie’s blood run cold.
“That’s my girl,” Sveta repeated, wreathed in smoke and satisfaction as she took a last pull off the dying cig. Tossing her butt on a paving stone, she stamped it out, kicked it into the lilybed, turned, and meandered back towards the main house.
“See you at breakfast,” she called over her shoulder, smoke slowly dissipating in her wake.
Valerie’s eyes slid back to the still-looping footage. Considering.
Technically, Sveta hadn't said anything about telling the Keenes that the situation had changed.
Valerie waved the video off with a sigh, picking up the brooch and fastening it back at her collar before opening her messages.
At the top of the starred items she had yet to reply to, Emile’s note from four days ago glowed.
She opened it. Read it again.
Dearest Valerie,
Wishing you all the blessings of the Void and Stars, and a very happy early Renewal! I’m visiting a friend out of comm range for the Nights, and right after I get back I'm going to meet my good friend Luhifa’s family over First-Day breakfast, so I’ll be out of touch until after that. But I'll be missing you, and everyone!
I can't believe it's been almost five months since I left home. It feels like hardly any time, and also like forever. It’s been a stretch, but I'm learning a lot! Thank you again for helping me get here, and all your wonderful insights and advice. I'll keep working hard so I can make you and everyone proud!
Wishing you the best and hoping we can talk soon. I know I've been terrible about calling this last while, but I really miss you. I'll message when I'm back and maybe we can talk then!
Wishing you all the best in the new year, and hoping to connect soon,
Love,
Emile
He had been a little inconsistent with reaching out. But then, she'd been... equally inconsistent about picking up.
Any time she did talk to him, she spent the whole conversation trying not to think about all the other messages of his she’d read, these last few months.
Not that she read all of them.
Just the ones addressed to Cylus Keene.
She'd almost become used to the iridium weight at the bottom of her stomach, whose density had only increased in the months since she'd threatened two youths the same age as her littlest brother with deportation, and left that same siblet heartbroken and thinking he'd done something wrong.
Because she’d wanted to protect him. To keep him from harm.
She'd never felt more like her mother.
Her brooch chimed.
Dion’s profile image appeared in front of her, the same photo they’d sent to annoy Mother after Emile’s tabloid moment: grinning, surrounded by hangers-on whose gendermarks crowded the tunnel-plug in their left ear.
She imagined what Dion would say, if they knew what she’d done.
What she continued to do.
“Vaa-aal!” Fabi’s voice rang across the garden, the same sing-song cadence she’d used when begging indulgences as a kid. “Breakfast is ready!”
She hated the wash of relief she felt. “Be right there!” She hollered back, standing.
With a single, sharp swipe, she declined Dion’s call.
-----
And that's a wrap for Act 2 of Europa University: Admissions! I'll be taking a few months "intermission" to rebuild my backlog and enjoy the summer, but we'll return to our regular biweekly schedule with Act 3, starting in August with a brand-new POV introducing the last member of what I sometimes refer to as 'the central polycule'...
However! Going forward, I'm planning to just share chapter previews on Tumblr, with links to my (free!) website and AO3 for the full chapters. This will let me continue to experiment with formatting and not have to worry about Tumblr's constraints, and I think will also help my brain actually USE my Tumblr more as the gods intended: to reblog weird cool funny interesting stuff from others.
Thank you so much for reading this far! If you enjoyed, and want to make sure you catch the next act as it begins, please consider subscribing on my website; no payment necessary! I'll try to post/send at least a little something out each month there in the interim, to let folks know how things are going and maybe share some sneak previews :) (and/or cat photos. We do have a beautiful cat.)
You can also find me on Bluesky, along with my co-creator and editor, where we play writing-related games, share other people's cool works, and tease occasional tidbits about things to come :)
The sad part is there’s a decent chance a large proportion of them can be blamed on one spider.
The tarantula that bit JRR Tolkien as a child.
He swore he didn’t have a spider phobia and the experience had nothing to do with the man-eating giant spiders in The Hobbit, the even more giant and even more man-eating spider in Lord of the Rings, or the unholy eldritch spider from outside creation that plunged the world into darkness and made literal Satan scream like a little kid in the Silmarillion. Very few people believe him.
Given LotR’s influence in the fantasy genre, there is a high probability that tarantula is the progenitor of even more fictional spiders than Ungoliant was.
“fantasy universes have too many spiders” factoid actually just statistical error. Georgs Spider, who bit JRR Tolkein & is to blame for menacing over 10,000 fantasy universes, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
Welcome (back) to Europa University: Admissions! Quick links if you need ‘em:
Story-level intro and content notes
<< First chapter | < Previous chapter
Time for another 'extra credit' scene! This one follows the prior 2.15 chapter, giving us a little more of Emile and Bel on the last night of their staycation together, enjoying a sexually (if not directly physically) intimate interlude.
As a reminder: In 'extra credit' scenes, even my baseline porn-to-plot ratio skews hard to pornward. Character reflections, emotions and developments still feature, but no major plot developments. Pacing slows in order to let us luxuriate in the sexy bits (though not without dashes of angst and longing).
I'll do a short summary of any important character tidbits at the end of the post if you'd like to get the highlights and move to the next chapter.
Since extra credit posts are a bit above even the normal (potentially high) ambient spice levels, AND contain no vital plot, I'm just including a pair of previews here, and a link to the full version on my website and on AO3 (free, no registration required).
-----
How it starts:
After their interlude with the orcas, and a return trip on the seascoots where Bel watched Emile’s every movement, they’d taken time to shower, eat, and talk at length regarding the habits of the local cetacean population.
Now, Emile lay on eir bed, towel between him and the mattress. He wore Bel’s roomiest, softest robe backwards over his otherwise-nude form, a hand-dyed blanket on top. Bel liked looking at Emile’s body, but e also enjoyed the sight of him cozy. Comfortable.
Both of them could use a little comfort, after their trip to the platform. And if e wanted to, e could ask Emile to show more later.
Or just tell him to. Yesterday, Bel had asked him, with thoughtless brusqueness, to reposition the toy inside himself. That had sent a full body shiver through Emile, followed by delighted obedience. So as they’d shifted into this more intimate interaction, e’d been quite direct: suggesting that Emile insert a particular device and sit on the edge of the bed, where Bel affixed a single-column rope-tie around his nearer wrist.
E held the long trailing end now, twisted fibers connecting them as e nestled comfortably in eir large cushion.
E’d been right about eir previous rope practice coming in handy. Yxelle’s chosen tutorials had complemented years of securing vessels and equipment to the Hab docks, and the knots e needed came easy to eir hands. Unsurprisingly, Emile took to being tied with as much enthusiasm as he’d expressed for Bel’s limb-tugging experiments.
Somehow it felt simpler to touch Emile’s skin while maneuvering ropes, even with eir body still working through the echoes of earlier emotions. And once e was done, e could hold on to him without direct physical contact.
E liked the feeling of it. It gave em enough space to relax, when e wasn’t up for cuddling, but enough connection that e still felt close.
“So, what do you want to watch?” E asked, picking up the haptics controller on the bedside table and connecting it to the toy Emile wore inside his cunt. E turned on the malleable length, configuring it in to a smooth, simple shape that vibrated softly.
“I...” Emile swallowed as Bel cast the inset representing the bidirectional input from the activated insertable up on the wallo. It appeared in a corner: visibly ovular, encased by a subtle, dark representation of what a particular cross-section of Emile’s interior anatomy was doing.
Not much. Yet.
“I’ve gotta admit, I’ve been really... really... curious about your ‘Weird Porn’ folder,” Emile finally managed, shifting his hips. “If that’s... something you’d be okay with sharing?”
-----
How it goes:
On the wallo, countless tendrils converged on the selkie, each delivering its own dart before joining its fellows in binding her body: coiling around both arms and flippers, forcing her chest to thrust forward; compressing yielding flesh against firm muscles all along her abdomen; wrapping her tail and seeking the place it parted into upper thighs; exploring the gap between, vanishing up beneath the weighted skirt.
Time resumed a more normal pace as she writhed and fought, wrenching one limb or another free from the grasping tentacles of the giant abyssal anemone, one of the species Bel had crafted as part of this simplified, eroticized ecosystem.
The selkie kept struggling, nearly wrenching free. An inset zoomed in on her face: eyes suddenly unfocusing, mouth softening around her regulator, bubbles beginning to leak with hazardous haste.
E remembered discussing this with Yxelle when they were looking over Bel’s environmental concept sketches. E‘d reread that chatlog—and a number of others from across their creative process—so many times e could picture them in memory.
Up until their final meeting, e’d often read them while pleasuring emself. Afterwards, e’d read them lying in bed, despondent.
holy shit what if the anemone toxin is paralytic, Yxelle had sent upon seeing the first sketch.
Also a muscle relaxant, e’d responded instantly.
YOU are a sick genius, she’d answered, followed by a reaction image of a hand wrapped in tentacles, giving a thumbs-up.
Onscreen, more tendrils converged on the selkie, wrapping her limbs with winding, light-threaded translucence that still showed the shape of her within. From all directions, deft tips worked their way beneath the edges of her buoyancy compensator, trying to rend it asunder.
But it wasn’t until a clever length found and squeezed the front-fasteners that the BC finally came loose. Others coaxed it off her body, along with her tank, and a preternaturally deft twist of tentacle triggered the BC’s inflation valve. The combined flotation and breathing apparatus shot upwards, yanking the regulator from between her unwilling lips.
Her body sank, dragged down by her weight-belt skirt. Her face twisted with panic, mouth clamping shut on her final lungful of air.
-----
Want more? Read the full chapter free on my website or AO3, no registration required!
#excuse me but are you telling me that the Apollo pic is made with the help of the SUN and the Artemis one with the help of the MOON??? #that's actually so poetic i want to cry
@gorandomshesaid wait i need to sit with this one. wait.
Admissions 2.15: Third-Night: Song and Storm-shadow (Europa / Emile / Bel)
Welcome (back) to Europa University: Admissions! Quick links if you need ‘em:
Story-level intro and content notes
<< First chapter | < Previous chapter
This week's post once again includes formatting that I can't easily replicate on Tumblr, so once again enjoy a taste and/or links to the full version on my website (free, no registration required) and AO3.
-----
How it starts:
“Emile.”
Emile, still in his pajamas, looked over from the nest of blankets they’d made together on Bel’s bed. A docuvid about cephalopods was playing on mute under soft music while Bel washed their breakfast soup bowls. “Yeah?”
Bel, wearing a calf-length robe that bared the beautiful fins running from knee to ankle, set their bowls to dry on the counter beside the wave oven before turning to face him. “May I ask something potentially sensitive?”
“Of course!” He stretched, rubbing his eyes. They’d spent all day yesterday alternating between watching more SymSorcSquad, playing more of what Bel had called ‘Seeker-Stalker’ through the kelp forest, and... experimenting, while further exploring Bel’s Porn folder.
He still hadn’t worked himself up to asking about Weird Porn, yet.
They’d fallen asleep with the wallo still on, a length of rope puddled beside the bed, one of Bel’s hands in his pajama top, a toy tucked inside him as they’d watched how it—how Emile’s cunt—reacted to Bel’s teasing.
He hadn’t slept so well in... months.
“What happened with the other boy?”
-----
How it goes:
He grinned so hard that it broke the seal of his regulator, the upturned corners of his mouth allowing saltwater to flow in, sudden cold meeting teeth and tongue. Exhaling to purge it and chewing the mouthpiece back into place, he dialed the seascoot (seascoot!) to a halt, breathing hard from the strain of holding on and the thrill of swift motion in beautiful surroundings.
Okay? Bel signed the interrogatory, the same gesture Emile had learned in dive club.
He answered with one of the hand-signs Bel had taught him in the past couple days, which had dramatically increased his very limited vocabulary. Good! Then he signed it again. Good! Yes! Good!
Good, Bel signed back, and because e wasn’t wearing a regulator or mask, Emile could see the small, pleased smile on eir face, the ripple of fins he’d noticed accompanied moments of emotion. Eir long braid drifted around em, a serpentine curve framing eir body.
Golden light from above limned eir form, highlighting eir effortless, animal grace. That of a being perfectly suited to eir environment.
Dawning Truth, e was beautiful.
His regulator leaked again. He hoped Bel could see it, though. See how filled with adoration his heart was in that moment.
Good. He signed, then pointed at Bel before repeating the gesture. You, good. Good.
You good, Bel signed. Followed by several more signs Emile didn’t know yet, finishing once more with good.
Eir eyes shone, unblinking. Ungoggled.
Another piece fell into place.
-----
Want more? Read the full chapter free on my website, no registration required! Or you can check it out on AO3!
happy 20 year anniversary of Neil banging out the tunes!
though every rat is special, it's a wonderful and unusual thing for their accomplishments to be remembered and cherished by so many people so many years later. we're all so fortunate to know about the rat who banged out the tunes!
thank you to all the people who sent me reference photos of their beloved rats for this piece!!! credits under the cut!
@joe-spookyy Ben and Socrates
@gooseontheinternet Chamomile and Beefy
@runawayy-rat Bartholomäus and Emo
@theunholystromboli Macrogryphosaurus, Xenoceratops, and Graciliraptor
@techlecticwtch Solas and Dorian
@merlyn-bane Roslyn and Rizzoli
@logictoinsanity Luna and Buttercup
@hagsthehag Orphie, Psyche, Calypso, Ariadne, and Eury
we deserve to have media with fat characters that like being fat and that are confident and happy in their fatness and they do not want to change that one bit im being very reasonable here
Cori Catchthorne @coricatchthorne - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
