so before i go to bed (because i work mornings) i thought i'd dive some more into one of the swdnt kids, dusty.
to start off with what's already been established, dusty was born from a dying flower on poisoned land at the site of the biggest racially motivated massacre in the state in the last century.
however, here's the thing about rainbow monsters: when a flower-born monster blooms, they're supposed to be "picked" within an hour. when a baby rainbow monster is "picked" they bond magically to whoever picked them. a baby rainbow monster can't survive without a bond, and it's seriously not recommended for them to go longer than an hour without one.
over the years since the briar's grove massacre, 33 rainbow monster babies have been born from the poisoned flowers. no one came for them, and they all died shortly after birth, both from the polluted environment and the lack of a bond.
it took wally 4 hours to find dusty. that's why, when he finally found dusty and picked him, dusty's flower immediately withered away. dusty would've died had wally taken longer to find him.
so combine the bond deprivation, the toxic environment, and the death-tainted negatively-charged magic in the area, and you have a dangerously sick baby fey.
on top of that, once bonded, a baby rainbow monster can't be too far from their parent for the first few months to first year of their life. maybe a range of 10-20 feet. dusty would start screaming if wally so much as set him down for 5 minutes. couldn't even set him down in a crib for the first few months without him crying. dusty couldn't even be left in another room until he was almost two.
another thing was that, because dusty was deprived of a bond for so long, wally had to actively feed him magic instead of just letting him absorb the ambient. the PROBLEM comes with wally's magic also being tainted with home's demonic essence, so obviously wally was scared of doing this until franny and bea talked him through it.
barnaby has a similar problem, but what makes it harder is that dusty isn't as strongly bound to him as he is wally.
also, notice how dusty's color scheme is a lot more muted than normal rainbow monsters? that's a birth defect. it's why wally named him dusty because his color scheme is washed out and "dusty" looking. plus his flower turned to dust as soon as wally picked him.
another condition dusty has is that he doesn't grow that much compared to other rainbow monsters. that's partially due to his health and partially because he bonded to wally of all people, whose growth was also stunted by medical neglect. remember, pre-feywood wally stopped growing when he was 10.
pre-feywood wally is 4'6". dusty by the time he's a teenager is gonna be even shorter at 4 feet. he's the littlest in the family. the next smallest in the family is yardley and she's 5'3"!
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