ryland grace is aroace. however he is also stratt’s dead wife, rocky’s red string of fate starcrossed soulmate, & intensely violently homosexual for mark “simon iron lung” iplier. all things are true & all things can coexist. peace & love on planet erid
“This means… of Rocky, possessive. Of the speaker.”
“My.”
“Correct. But only for names.”
“So you’re calling me…?”
Rocky repeats the word: “My Grace. Yes.”
“Are there other Graces? Why do you need to specify?”
Rocky considers this, tapping his xenonite-encased claws idly against the floor.
“No other Grace,” Rocky says. “We just do this.”
“Like an honorific,” Grace guesses. “It goes before everyone’s name? Everyone you know?”
Rocky whirs in surprise. “No, no, no. Not at all.”
“Okay, then who? What makes me qualify?”
Rocky is silent for a moment.
“...Does this offend Grace?” he asks, voice lower.
Grace blinks. “No! I don’t think so. Is there a reason to be offended?”
“Good,” Rocky says, relieved. Grace is starting to recognize what Eridian relief sounds like. “No, no reason.”
“Who else do you call that?”
“You don’t have this on Earth?”
Grace considers. What for, friends? He couldn’t call Marissa “my Marissa.” That would be weird.
“I still don’t know what it means,” he settles on. “So I couldn’t tell you.”
Rocky groans in frustration. He’s a very impatient tutor. “We just say it.”
“Are you my Rocky?” Grace asks. He hits the two keys to make the my note.
“I don’t know!” Rocky says. “You decide this.”
“I decide? Who do you use it for?”
“You. Adrian. I will use it for my pebbles.”
Grace blinks. “So few?”
Rocky shifts. “I am… you do not have the word yet. Eridian who works alone often, not close to many other Eridians.”
“What, mechanical engineer?”
Rocky chitters with amusement. “Acceptable.”
“Is Adrian your only friend?”
Rocky draws back, like he’s taken offense. “I have friends. Coworkers. But different.”
So just Adrian. And him.
“This worries you,” Rocky says.
“Adrian is your mate,” Grace points out. “I’m not your mate.”
“Correct. You are not. You do not like to be a mate.”
Grace isn’t sure how to respond to that, so he ignores it.
“I’m your friend,” Grace says.
Rocky hesitates, for a second. “...Correct.”
“Like your coworkers.”
“No.”
Grace sighs, rubbing his hand across his face. Okay, maybe that’s fair. It’s not like he felt about any of his coworkers like he feels about Rocky.
“Best friend,” Grace amends. “You’re my best friend, too.”
Rocky hums. “Acceptable.”
“Just acceptable? Now you are offending me. Can you just explain?”
This makes Rocky fall silent for a minute longer than usual. Grace is half-ready to apologize and to say let’s move on and to retype his own name without the superfluous my.
“The Earth ‘best friend’ is not strong enough,” Rocky says finally. “It does not translate this way.”
Grace runs his fingers through his hair, a little nervous, for some reason. “Okay.”
“It is…” Rocky pauses. He has to pause more often, now that they’re not using the translator, to simplify his language. “It means that I am not Rocky without my Grace. You are part of… of the whole. When I wake up, I think of you. When I work. When I eat. When I think I am going to die.”
Rocky speaks slowly, but it’s still a lot of Eridian for Grace to grasp all at once. Even as he works out the sentences in his head, he can feel hot tears rising in his eyes.
“It means that when you are sick, I am sick,” Rocky continues. “And it means I will take care of you, because taking care of you is taking care of myself.”
Grace bunches up his sleeve, wiping it across his face, blinking furiously.
Rocky’s voice is soft. “So Grace is part of Rocky. Grace is like a cell. You see? My Grace.”
Grace is quiet, for a moment, trying to get himself together. When he speaks, his voice is shaky.
“...Oh.”
Rocky hums, pressing his carapace gently against Grace’s arm. “You are leaking. Does this make you sad?”
Grace shakes his head, sniffing, crossing his arms across his knees and resting his chin on his sleeves. “Not at all.”
“Good, good.”
“I feel like that,” Grace mumbles. “Just like that. Just exactly—exactly like that.”
“About your old mate?”
“Don’t act stupid. You know I’m talking about you.”
Rocky hums, burrowing closer. Grace curls one arm around his carapace. That’s not enough, so he leans over, dropping his head down so his forehead presses against the xenonite.
“My Rocky,” Grace whispers in English.
“My Grace,” Rocky echoes in Eridian. Grace can recognize the note at the start. He will add it when he plays Rocky’s name.
“How long have you called me that?” Grace asks. “Must’ve been a while. I didn’t notice it change.”
writing fic and just pulling shit from my irl interactions. like ryland grace getting into his thesis laboratory by beaming ur hyperfixation at ur prof. or ryland grace sobbing over the concept of LUCA's relatives all being extinct with no traces and no way to even Find traces of its relatives.
k but imagine Rocky wanting to learn about how humans became the apex predators of their planet so he has Grace “hunt” him in the biodome as an experiment and during it he thinks Grace isn’t trying or taking it seriously which is bad bad bad because this is for research purposes
only for Rocky to get more and more tired as the experiment goes on just to realize that Grace isn’t which makes him panic so he puts as much distance as he can between them and finds a (hopefully) safe spot to sleep and when he wakes up the human is crouching over him like “got youuu” and Rocky has never shrieked so damn loud before in his life
Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.
What about the one with the princess locked in a tower learning to become a wizard? That’s lived in my mind for years and I haven’t seen it in a long time
Oh, love that story, adding it to the list:
20. Princess Talia
and adding a few more contenders
21. Thyme
22. The Monster under the Bed
23. A Meaningful Death
24. Humans are unstoppable…until they aren’t
25. The Monster under the Fridge
26. Antler Guy
27. Cleric slamming healing spells
Adding a few more I remembered:
28. The Frog and the Scorpion
29. HSTHETE
30. The First Witch in the World
31. Imagine that Oceans were replaced by Forests
32. A Faerie taking a Name
33. The Dragon on the Farm
34. Synovus & Menace
35. Raising the Anti-Christ
36. Aliens vs. Flora & Fauna of Earth (pretty sure there are even more additions to the original post but I had this one saved)
37. Doctors without Borders…in Space!
38. The Villain-Wrangler
39. The Last Contact
40. The 100 Parent-Point Children
41. And the Heavens Wept
42. The Night Gentleman
43. The Serpent God and their Priestess
With winter continuing in Gaza, many fundraiser campaigns have established short term goals in order to obtain more urgent needs to protect families from the wind and cold temperatures.
One of these campaigns belongs to Siraj @siraj2024, a journalist who is the sole provider for his family and four other families. In total, he oversees 23 other people, with other half of them being children under the age of 12. He shared this with me (image description in ALT):
As he has written, he is looking towards raising $90,000 CAD as soon as possible because that’s the value needed to rent an apartment for everyone. He still needs $1,100 CAD to reach this value (around $1,000 USD), so let’s bridge that gap as soon as possible!
hi, my name is ahmad and I'm raising a fund for my cousin Siraj and thi… Ahmad Abudayeh needs your support for Support Siraj's Family in Reb
Vetting information: Number 219 on @/el-shab-hussein and @/nabulsi list of vetted fundraisers!