@paintedshell-hermitcrab’s sideblog for writing and art! (reblogs, rambles, prompts, and my askbox live there) he/they/xe/it + ne/nem/nir ••• I don’t bother with prev/next because I like adding in-between things I tend to work on multiple things at once, so you may have to wait a bit before I post
if you want me to tag you when I post art & writing, you can comment on the related masterpost (I muted them, but I do check them) and I will tag you when I reblog from my main!
My askbox is in @paintedshell-hermitcrab’s blog! (to reduce clutter)
active ask game
If Blog = Empty (no pfp, no description, no sign of life) I Block.
•••
Mimzomworld
Mimics are sapient predators that evolved to mimic humans. mimic zombies are nocturnal land mimics (whose pups are venomous & one of the reasons for the nickname), and mimic sirens are creepuscular water mimics (who aren’t venomous, but tend to hunt humans a lot more). This setting mostly focuses on the zoms, though
Humanity is one of the five sapient species formally recognised by the Galactic Council, despite a lack of mana, due to their technological skill. All species on the Council have advanced technology or magic, and species with neither get screwed over
Project Werewolf | Setting & Bonus Stories
•••
Crossovers
Things I will do for fun and fun only. Non-canon crossovers, if I make them, will be on my main, because reasons <3
the number of things that need to get done, the number of graves still yet to be dug
contains: caretaker new master, (alien) centaur whumpees, designation numbers & chosen names, paperwork, technical issues, past misgendering (of transfem character), murder (pretty detailed), cannibalism? (person of another species), referenced starvation (misclassified as herbivorous)
•••
Sitting at the desk made of genuine wood, Edgar fills a document with his thoughts. And anything about trauma that he can use to help, pulled up on the second monitor. And—
He takes a walk to the shuttle he came here on. Gathers his things, returns to his new office, and puts a weighted blanket over his shoulders.
The computer is near-ancient. His grandfather was over a century old, and always kept his tech up to date.
The old Captain’s office was abandoned long before his death.
Too many positions need to be filled. In theory, he could replace them with the people they already have, but that’s a massive change. They might not be able to handle—
A centaur opens the door, notices him, and spooks. They’re replaced with a tall, grey one who shouts for Nineteen-trip-four.
“Midnight,” he says, when he sees them. “Did you need something?”
“Are….” They hesitate, placing the keys on the corner of his desk. “Are you busy, sir?”
“We need to know what the new rules are,” tall-and-grey says. “Are you giving centaurs free reign of the whole ship, or part of it; is it all centaurs, or just a select few; is it only centaurs, or….”
“Fives!”
He types ‘Old Rules’ and ‘New Rules’ in his thoughts document. “I think it’d be easier for me if I knew where to start. Fives, do you want to start with your concerns, or tell me what the old rules were?”
They do.
Reciting so many rules, voice flat and eyes pinned to the wall, they explain the differences between the official rules and the many many small ones they had to figure out on their own.
Fives worked under Regulus. Midnight didn’t, rarely seeing him unless something was wrong.
By the end of it, Fives’ ears are pinned back; Midnight stares at the floor, looking so small despite being twice his height; and Edgar takes a slow, careful breath.
“Okay,” he says slowly. “Okay. First, I’ll go over some basic rights. Can you read?”
Midnight sneezes. Shakes their head. “The medics can,” they mumble.
“Right.” They need an excuse to leave. Catch their breath. “Could you bring me someone who can read, so they can check my wording?”
He still goes over it with Fives, turning one of his monitors around so they can see.
Narrates his translation to new rules, so they know what he’s writing.
A short centaur, about human height, steps into the room, followed by Midnight. That was quick. Right. He slides his chair over, and they take his place in front of the computer.
“Uh—” Midnight looks horrified. “Sorry about her, Captain, she—”
She types out a snarling web of rules that are clearly suffocating the medics. Types suggestions for improvements, referencing the other screens for things like basic rights and ways to help with trauma, but rarely scrolls up to see the list of old rules.
“Thank you,” he says, and she nods. “Do you have a name you’d prefer?”
“Pebbles,” she says. “But people give the medics a lot of different nicknames, and I’m called Spot more often. Many of the medics have spots, sir, so it’s not a practical name.”
“I think you should choose what you want to be called,” he says. “You don’t have to come up with names on your own, but I don’t know if I can keep track of numbers. Pebbles, I want you to let people know that.”
Fives tips their chin up, challenging. “And if I want to be called Fives?”
“Her designation is RA-CT-10-555,” Pebbles says. “Which isn’t that hard to remember.”
“Fives,” he says, “shortened numbers count as names. As long as I have a set of sounds, that isn’t a swear or an insult, that you will respond to, I’ll be fine. If you change your mind later, then you don’t have to stick with it.”
“Why Midnight?”
“Because you look like the night sky, and I’ve been calling you that in my head.”
They don’t know what to do with that.
He’ll let them figure it out.
“Pebbles, I’ll print this out for you.” The new rules, smoothed out and separated into rules and things that need to happen. Titles are hard and he’s. He needs to make it a physical thing so she can have evidence. So they can all have evidence.
“If you think of something else, or if someone else has something to add, you can come back and we’ll edit it. I….” He collects the sheets of paper, keeping two copies of the document, so he can pin one to the wall and keep the other in his desk.
“If you can free others, safely free them, without getting hurt, then do it. If you can’t, let me know so I can figure something out. Improve their living conditions, at least.”
Wait. There is something Edgar can do now.
He turns to Fives. “Take what you need from the Captain’s quarters. Strip it clean, if you want. This goes for the rooms of any commanding officers who died or quit because of the accident.”
She grins. “Is that an order, Captain?”
“I’ll make a recording,” he says, searching through his bag for that tiny little device. He finds some string lights, a pair of socks he thought he’d lost, and several hundred loose buttons. Picks up the one box that didn’t spill, and watches those buttons spill out onto the floor. Sighs.
“Take what you need from the old Captain’s room, and the rooms of the officers who died or quit because of the countergrav malfunction,” he says, again, scooping buttons off the floor and into their boxes. “I mean things like pillows and blankets, but you could strip those rooms clean—especially if it’s—if it’s my grandfather’s room, I don’t….” The words catch in his throat.
He thought he was done crying.
His mouth clamps shut, and he shakes his head. “I’m not….
“I won’t sleep there. Take what you want.”
Fives doesn’t get many volunteers. Has to show the hologram recording to most people, and even then, a lot of them think it’s a trap.
RA-CT-1-50-50, who picked Chance because he’s obnoxious, insists on packing up the Captain’s quarters first. Goes in first, while most of the others stay outside. Puts the personal items in boxes, except for the lamps, and a weird glass sculpture he keeps for himself.
“He might want them,” he says softly, and hands the lamps to the others. Goes to put the boxes away for safekeeping.
He didn’t need to see the recording, but he was there when she played it for someone else.
By the time they return, most of the bedding has been snatched up, so they take his mattress.
Lovely can manage raiding. He canters past them in a fluffy sweater, leading a flock of centaurs with blankets and quilts flapping in the air.
Midnight set up string lights. Well, it asked the Captain to, and he took a wrench to the anchors bolted to the floor before setting up some extension cords leading into the room. Under the door. Passes the adjustable wrench to Chance before messing with the programming of the door lock.
Lets his head thunk against the door, and groans. “I broke it. It’s permanently unlocked.”
Fives is used to pain. She’s used to sore muscles and sleeping on a rubber floor that isn’t much better than metal.
They gathered enough mattresses and pillows and thick, pillowy blankets to cover the floor. The string lights soften the shadows, and the unlocked door swings open to let people in—like Sixes, who mumbles something about the lights.
Fives stands with Six-two-four for half the night, and sits up for the other half. Keeps watch. But she doesn’t argue when Lovely drapes the ugliest, softest blanket over her major back. Struggles to keep her eyes open when it’s his and Midnight’s turn to take standing watch, between the blanket and the people draping themselves over her.
She falls asleep, and only wakes up to soothe nightmares.
RA-CT-579-5 opens the door to xyr boss’ room, stalking inside. The atlantean is asleep, dreaming, his mind a whirl of fear as he dreams about what could have happened if he’d woken up early.
The room is silent.
Xe’s never killed anyone before, but xe knows exactly where atlantean hearts are. Knows how much better his night vision is compared to a centaur’s, knows the strength of his arms, knows how easily he could drown xem, knows exactly how much of any medication would kill him.
Dose and species makes the poison, after all.
Xe doesn’t poison the water in his pool. Instead, xe takes a couple, careful steps forward, and leaps.
Reduces gravity as xe rises, and increases it as xe falls.
He doesn’t sense the splash fast enough.
RA-CT-579-5’s front hooves punch through his eye. Punch into his core brain, but his arms can think for themselves. Xe struggles to pin him down, flipping the water’s gravity and taking a deep, gasping breath before his arms find xyr throat.
‘That’s not medically necessary,’ xe telepaths mockingly, voice choked by his slimy, constricting arms. ‘You don’t need painkillers to be functional, so man up and do your job before I cut up your handsome little face.’
With the blade in xyr hand, xe stabs and slices at the coiling, pulsing things. Severs them from his head. Loses xyr hold on the water, struggling to get out of the pool when it splashes right back down.
RA-CT-579-5 peels the arms off xyr neck. Takes hacking, whistling breaths, standing on xyr hind legs to keep xyr head out of the water as xe struggles to grip the smooth tile in metal shoes. Yanks the water out of xyr throat with magic.
“Incompetent fucking parasite,” xe wheezes, “No, we don’t need to update the dietary information for centaurs, it’s not like a new study came out fifty fucking years ago and I’ve had forty years to notice it.”
Xe chews on one of the dying arms. Ignores his hazy, disconnected, fading thoughts. Herbivores, honestly, what a fucking joke.
Ninety years, ninety fucking years of eating leftovers, and stealing from the morgue, and hunting small pests. Before that, thirty years of boarding school and a casual understanding that centaurs could (and would) occasionally eat meat. Which meant eggs, and, on rare occasions, deadline meat.
Too close to the deadline to be comfortable eating, but not close enough to be willing to waste.
Xe cuts him into pieces. It’s…. RA-CT-579-5 doesn’t really miss school: doesn’t miss the deadlines, or the sleep deprivation, or the—
A knock on the door startles xem out of xyr thoughts.
Gabriel Tidock. The doctor the new Captain brought in. Shit.
“I… guess I’m not looking for anyone, now,” she says, turning on the light. “I was going to ask why the species information in the system is outdated….
“Oh.” She reaches for xem, tipping xyr chin up, and xe keeps xyr breaths steady. Doesn’t fight. It’s over.
Cedar & Her Cubs!! (more words + centaur anatomy under the cut)
click images for better quality
Image descriptions are now in alt text, but I’m describing characters here. Cedar is a pink and white centaur who has cat like ears, and ossicones like a giraffe. Her chest is covered with a purple top, and she wears a cub-carrying pocket on her major body. She has a mohawk, and dark pink eyes that glow when she uses magic. Her cubs are Juniper, who is purple, Thanatos, who is black and purple, Grasshopper, who is pink, and Moth, who is also pink. They all have white patches and starry spots.
Centaurs are born in litters, and the usual number of cubs is between one and four. They can’t make their own mana, when they’re young, so they get it from milk or siphon it from whoever’s holding them.
Cubs do not have strong concepts of what things are, so they have to learn to telepath. Juniper knows one of the starlit centaurs is her other mom. She knows they look similar, and she knows they both spend time with her and play with her when her momma is away. But she doesn’t know other people have littermates too, or why they look similar.
Their cursed little hoof hands are for holding onto their parents before they learn to walk. They grow out of them, but that might be the reason their minor body evolved to have humanlike hands.
library!! kxi^anuxa nālam!! titles are hard and I’m going to quit fiddling with it
contains: library visit, minor eldrich horror (size of whale), removing traps, aftermath of the raid on Whisperstep’s home, grief/mourning
Conlang Pronouns: itex/itexirr/itexun, kī/ksirr/kīxun. Conlang translations under the cut.
•••
Nat sighs. She’s been putting this off too long already.
“Fox, we’re going to the library. I need to give these books back,” she says, adding the book about animals they really like to the pile.
“Wolf book?” They tip their head. “Library zose kxi^anuxa nālam, mo?”
When she doesn’t answer, they reach for the book and hold it up. “Nālam,” they repeat, tapping the book. “Not yours?”
She takes a cookbook from the kitchen, and shows them the difference between a library book and her own books. Does not let them peel off the sticker with their blunted claws. “I know you can’t read yet, but there’s fish books at the library—”
Chirp-chirp-chirping, they tug her in the direction of the car.
Ding! The bell on the desk is within reach. Ding-ding-di—!
She scoops them up, holding them out of range of the bell. Making a grumbling sound, they stretch their hands at the bell, think for a minute, then reach with their foot.
The bell is out of range of their foot. She should get them another pair of boots, in case these aren’t warm enough for winter.
Ding! He sighs. Fox is a mimic, they can just mimic the bell.
Setting them back down, he pushes the bell away slightly. “We’re looking for books about—”
“Fish book.” Looking up at the librarian, they smile, showing all the sharp teeth in their very wide mouth. “Fish book please?”
The librarian—Cathy—nods, and makes the mistake of asking Fox what they want to know about fish. Hearing the word, they tip their head, chattering in their own language.
Nat recognises some of the words, by now, but they fly past too quickly for him to translate. “They like documentaries, so something with realistic pictures, maybe?”
So they look at some books that are for older kids who want to know everything and not probably-five-year-olds who can’t read yet, but that’s fine. They mostly care about the pictures, and she’ll be reading them out loud anyway.
Dead fish are fine, but one of them has a picture of a whale next to a diver, showing how big they are, and Fox hisses at it. Hides behind her, leaving the book on the floor. “Big fish eats us?”
“No,” he says, “whales don’t eat us. They eat many many small things, like….” He’s talked to them about bugs. “Like bugs, but very tiny fish-bugs.”
“No more whales,” they mumble, finding a book about birds. And another one about reptiles. “Whales tomorrow or very later.”
They check the books out, and Fox imitates the barcode scanner while they walk back to the car. And then birds.
So many birds, which apparently means exploring the woods when they get home. And carrying them on his shoulders while he gets rid of all the traps they find. Some traps, he’s aware of, but he didn’t always own this house, and—
SNAP!
His sacrificial stick is bitten by rusty metal teeth. Just to be safe, he taps out the area around that trap. “Okay, we’re putting that in the cart.”
“Krrakata zoxtok,” they mumble. “Zose ilutat ksateke.”
“Yeah, I don’t like it either.”
They howl, and get a response. It’s close. Unsettlingly close, but he listens when they point him in the direction of the sound.
“Miwa!”
Tonuako^itayanek stands. Kī stands, despite ksirr messed-up leg, using ksirr spear to keep the weight off. Yes, kī could’ve gone to the ewanuxa at Moon Lake—not everyone can make the trip between the summer and winter ewanuxa^ese, and there’s always some people who stay and take care of them—but kī didn’t.
Tonuako^itakanek counted. Put the fires out, made sure the humans were killed dead, and counted. Four pups hidden in the big pots in the pantry-house, and six in the cupboards. Five frozen under blankets. Two clinging to the apprentice of a blood-covered healer who snapped at kī, and a couple others.
They had to bury their dead and gather what they could, and kī had to count again.
Ksirr pup wasn’t one of the dead. Lelasenaka^ataxa was, but not their pup. Kī stayed, when the other survivors left, because Lelaxotayanetek was missing, and kī was not going to abandon itex.
And now, and now, ksirr pup is sitting on a human’s shoulders. Wearing clothing kī doesn’t recognise.
“Mo zose kekone takrraxit?”
“Ksa.”
Itex climbs down, running to kī. Lets kī look at itex, combing through soft hair Lelaxotayanetek would never brush if it was up to itex.
When itex bumps into ksirr injured leg, kī hisses. Gets stared at with wide eyes as itex says something kī doesn’t understand.
Squeaks, when ksirr reaction to the human’s approach is to hold itex tightly and growl.
“What’s that?”
Lelaxotayanetek takes advantage of ksirr shock to pry itexun free. “What’s wrong,” itex grumbles.
And then says something to… Nat. Which ends in kī being picked up and carried while itex brings ksirr spear instead of the little cart full of—
“We’re hunting them, miwa. So I can chase birds without getting hurt!”
“What?”
Nat sets xem down on the couch, carefully. Lets Fox—lets Lelaxotayanetek handle introductions while xe hisses at him and he removes his mangled coat.
Xyr name is Tonuako^itayanek, and xe’s their miwa. And he is apparently their kiwa, which is something xe doesn’t take very well.
“What does that mean?” he asks. They tip their head. “Mo kiwa?” he tries.
Echoes of narrators talking about parents and parenting. Wolves and birds and bears and—
“Oh,” he says. “I don’t think your miwa wants to share you with me.”
Rebellious chirping. His hand and xyr hand are pressed together, and xe’s clearly uncomfortable with this but they don’t let either of them pull away. “Okay, okay.” Very gently, he squeezes xyr hand, and lets go.
Xe’s injured. Xyr leg is the worst of it, since xe’s clearly been walking and all that’s done is make it— Nat doesn’t pin xem down when xe struggles.
Right now, xe needs to feel safe. So he takes a step back, gives xem space, and goes to get xem something to eat.
“Miwa,” Lelaxotayanetek says, quietly. “Mo mewa? Mo Lelasenaka^ataxa?”
Xe squeezes their hand. “Mext xa. Lelasenaka^ataxa zose onauzi.”
•••
Words in Axanelelati
We’re trying this format. Letter approximations aren’t great (I have to make compromises and it’s based on how I speak) but I’m going do that plus a squint at the IPA chart to see if I can do that too
Syllables = sy·lla·bles || Emphasis/stress is going to be represented with ' for primary stress and ˌ for secondary stress (on the stressed syllable)
Glottal stop ʔ (<- that thing) is pronounced like the bit in “uh-oh” where it skips. I can’t really approximate it another way.
Kī/ksirr/kīxun (key/k-seer/key-HOON) /kiː/ /ksir/ /kiː·'xun/ = hunter pronouns, use the same format as it/its/itself (kī/ksirr/kī-self)
Itex/itexirr/itexun (E-teh/e-teh-HEAR/e-teh-HOON) /'i·tex/ /ˌi·te·'xir/ /ˌi·te·'xun/ = pronouns for a child born in winter, same format as it/its/itself (itex/itexirr/itex-self)
Library zose ki^anuxa nālam, mo? (LIE-bree zo-SAY keyʔAH-new-ha naah-LAM, mo?) /'laɪ·bɹi/ /ˌzo·'se/ /'kiʔa·nu·ˌxa/ /ˌnaː·'lam/ /mo/ = Library is house of stories, right?
Kxi^anuxa = kxi (piece) + ewanuxa (den, village, home) = a piece of the home/den, a building. (Fun fact: in-universe, the translations are like this because Lelaxotayanetek is a kid who really likes wolves, and they’re the one who ends up co-writing the first Axanelelati to English dictionary. As an adult, they still feel like their original words fit best)
Nālam = story, stories. Stories in either spoken or written format
Krrakata zoxtok (krrah-kah-TAH zoh-tok) /'kra·ka·ˌta/ /'zox·ˌtok/= crunching metal, metal teeth. A beartrap.
Zose ilutat ksateke (zo-SAY E-loo-taht k-sah-teh-KAY) /ˌzo·'se/ /'i·lu·ˌtat/ /ksa·'tek·ˌe/ = is bloody and cripples you/makes you unable to walk. The word “ksateke” = ksa (no) + teke (walk).
Mo zose kekone takrraxit? (mo zo-SAY keh-kohn-AY tahk-RRA-heet) /mo/ /ˌzo·'se/ /'ke·kon·ˌe/ /ˌtak·'ra·xit/ = are there any traps? (lit. will the path strike/attack?)
Mo mewa? Mo Lelasenaka^ataxa (mo MEH-wah? mo LEH-lah-SEH-nah-KAHʔAT-a-XA) /mo/ /'me·wa/ /mo/ /'le·la·ˌse·na·'kaʔat·a·ˌxa/ = Where’s my dam-parent? Where’s Clearvoice?
Mext xa. Lelasenaka^ataxa zose onauzi. (meht ha. LEH-lah-SEH-nah-KAHʔAT-a-XA zo-SAY oh-NOW-zee) /mext/ /xa/ /'le·la·ˌse·na·'kaʔat·a·ˌxa/ /ˌzo·'se/ /o·'nau·zi/ = Past breathing. Clearvoice is dead. (lit. Clearvoice is a memory stone)
A drawing with three little doodles. The main drawing is of Break, a fluffy blue space orc, curled up vaguely like a cat. Vir eyes are open because they are spider-like and do not have eyelids. Ve has little paw pads. Edgar is taking a nap, draped over vir side with his head down.
Doodles: 1. In the top left corner, a doodle of them standing next to eachother. Break is wearing a mask, and Edgar is short. There’s an arrow pointing at him that says “short dad” 2. In the top right corner, there’s a doodle of Break’s face, which is based on a pig/boar and a spider. Ve has an oxygen tube, since orcs need more oxygen than the standard air mix. 3. In the bottom right corner, there’s a loosely coloured set of hands, comparing Break’s big four-fingered paw to Edgar’s human hand. Vir hand isn’t much longer, but it’s round, and it feels twice as big.
The coloured dots on the side were me trying to decide how ve sees. Red, blue, and ultraviolet is what the dots mean, but orc vision could just be unfocused. It’s the first idea I had, and I do like that one.
Either way, I love Prince-Commander Break. Writing vir has been a lot of thinking, but ve is cute. And I love vir. And I need to decide if the stripes can actually be stripes or if I’m just going to make them dots again.
•••
Masterpost
P.S. When he first found Break, ve was closer to his height
Cactus Drawings! (Current Design + Original Doodles)
click to see better
Image: Cactus, an albino centaur, looking at space through the ship’s massive sunroof, its eyes sparkling with wonder. There’s a reflection of space on the metal floor, and it’s wearing a green hoodie with a bee embroidered on it.
Character: Cactus’ hair is messy and its ears are big but it’ll grow into them a bit. Its eyes are gold, because that’s the colour of centaur blood. That’s also why its nose and ears are peachy
I had to redraw Cactus because I forgot I described its eyes as pale. They were blue, but then I wanted it to be albino, so…. Also I finally figured out what I wanted to do with centaur tails!
I’m really happy with how it turned out. I decided its favourite colour is green because the first thing it owned was green.
My first design is under the cut
Image: Cactus, nervously holding its hand out for Dr. Gabriel to look at. It’s tense, and isn’t looking at her. Its hands, ossicones, and eyes are stained black with mana burn, and it’s wrapped in a dark green cloth. Around that loose drawing are three lineless ones: Cactus laying on the ground, staring at a bug; Cactus trying to stop running; and Cactus reaching up to swipe a cookie jar.
Characters: Cactus is a pale alien centaur with dull pink hair, grey spots on its back, and white freckles. Its eyes are a purple-grey colour. Gabriel is a black woman with green skin who I need to come up with a proper design for. There’s a pod on her shoulder, under her sleeve.
I do like the old Cactus design, and might end up reusing it. But! I think I need a character that isn’t a nightmare to draw with the spots. And the new design is lore-accurate.
contains: young (alien centaur) whumpee, references to starvation/dehydration, exhaustion, needles (just two), isolation, misgendering Captain Edgar (she/her, just in narration), and all the soft I could fit.
•••
Edgar doesn’t take the icepack Rowan offers him. Nines left with Hawthorn, but the centling needs breakfast—needs all the meals it can get—so he gets to cook while it nibbles on a protein ration. A blood cake, which is usually meant for carnivores, but his centaurs prefer them.
Being misclassified as herbivores for decades will do that.
Still, the thing is a squishy puck that tastes like blood, and is more ‘weird marshmallowy thing’ than ‘cake’.
The shuttle’s little kitchen has a basic supply of non-ration food, so he’s making pancakes. Blue pancakes. It’s an interesting chemical reaction that scared the fuck out of him the first time he used non-Terran ingredients.
Big blue pancakes. Centaurs are big, and while they do eat less than expected, the centling is a starved teenager.
A starved teenager who stares blankly when Edgar sets a plate down in front of it.
“Cactus,” Rowan says gently, “that’s for you. Do you want them plain, or do you want jam?” Only one jam option, so it isn’t overwhelmed.
He focuses on his own food so Cactus doesn’t feel as much pressure. When he looks back up, the jam jar is functionally empty. The jar is empty, and it has its face stuck in it, trying to lick the last bits of jam out.
Rowan gets it another flavour of jam. And plops another pancake on its plate. One of his.
Of course he does.
Cactus sits on the bed. Lies on the bed.
The bed that isn’t a heap of straw in a stall.
It isn’t allowed to lie down. Not for long. Not outside of designated rest times, or—it scrambles to its feet— “Headmistress Arith, I—”
Its legs shake. A hand touches its side, steadying it, and it tries not to lean on it too much.
Not that it matters.
Not that it matters, when its legs stop working and the sharp sting of a mistake bites into its skin.
“Cactus,” Rowan says, “breathe with me.”
A hand rests on its shoulder. It shudders. Tries to remember it can breathe.
It hides its face in Rowan’s back, tucking its arms to its chest. Hiding its hands. It’s not allowed to hide its hands, but they hurt.
“That’s Tidock,” Rowan says. “She’s a Doctor, and she just wants to see how you’re doing, seedling.”
“It’s just Gabriel,” she says gently. “But if titles help, you can call me Doctor.”
“A vet?” it asks.
“Yes,” she says. “I don’t just treat my own species, so I’m like a vet. I studied xenomedicine.”
Cactus pokes its head up.
She doesn’t look anything like the Headmistress. Her skin is dark green, like the nice top Rowan helped it wear, wrapped and pinned in place. It keeps tugging at it, pulling it loose.
Nothing she wears is red, and her uniform is mostly white and grey.
“Can I see your hands, kid?”
Trembling, they hold them out. Press their eyes shut.
Burn cream, for mana burn, is expensive. But unsterilized plants can be pirated, and nulls, like Edgar, can be kept away from magically sensitive plants.
“It’s pink, sir.”
He sighs, leaning on the wall with an icepack over his eye. “Yes, I can see that. It’s a pastel pink.”
“Brilliantly iridescent sunset pink, sir.”
To her, it’s only a little shiny. The kid squeaks when she puts it on their burns, peeking an eye open. “No switch?”
“No switch,” she says gently. “But there’s one little needle.” She holds it up for them to see: it looks like the one that checks her blood sugar.
“Does it hurt?”
She takes her own, pricks her finger, and reads her own blood sugar. It’s high.
It’s always high.
Her skin produces sugar. And oxygen, which means she can handle higher levels of carbon dioxide than standard. It would be useful, if her body could process more sugar than it does. Without needing a pod for insulin, inhibitors to block sugar production, and modded organs to handle excess sugar.
She has to choose between covering all the skin she can and taking vitamin D supplements, or taking insulin and an inhibitor.
Chlorophyll mods need much more regulation.
“It doesn’t hurt much, and it’s quick. I do it every day.”
They nod, sticking their hand out. Twitch when their blood is drawn.
“Good job,” she says, handing them a sugar cube.
Explaining the readings is easy enough, and they stay calm for the rest of the tests. It helps, of course, that Rowan is there to reassure them. To let them bury their face in his shoulder while she removes and replaces their tracking chip.
The old one will be destroyed, but if they don’t have one at all, they won’t be returned to the ship.
Even Nines had its chip gouged out of its shoulder before it came to them. They didn’t want her back, and she burned a lot of mana to stop that wound from visibly scarring.
The mark left on Cactus is a tiny thing, barely a cut.
“Do you want to see your room?”
It’s big.
That’s first thing Cactus manages to think. The room is big, full of other centaurs, and when Rowan puts it down, it lays on the pillow-covered floor. It’s supposed to be on ‘bedrest’.
A tall, grey centaur drapes a soft, warm blanket over it. It hides its hands in it, picking at its nails. “There’s a lot of people here,” it mumbles.
“If you want a quieter room, we can get you one.”
Leaning on the tall centaur, it shakes its head. It just needs to get used to this. At the Academy, it— Being alone all night hurts, and it just needs to get used to people.
“Where’s….” It doesn’t remember much from that night, and the shouting this morning….
“Hawthorn’s leg is still hurt,” Rowan says. “They’ll be here, but they still need some time, okay?”
He turns, hand on the door, and it squeaks— “Where? You’re— You’re leaving? Why?”
“I need to check in with the Captain—” sighing, he walks back, taking a little device out of his pocket. “Okay. I can just do it over comm. Fir, can I…?”
The grey centaur nods, eyes glowing with mana.
He comms the Captain, and a ghost of her appears above the little device. “Sorry I can’t be there, sir.”
“It’s fine. As long as you’re okay, Rowan. How are you, kid?”
“I’m supposed to report to Dr. Tidock to make sure I’m eating well, ma’am.”
She nods. “Nines works in the kitchens, and Fir’s still in the habit of making sure everyone’s cared for before she is. You’ll be alright.”
“More than alright, sugar,” Fir says, passing Cactus a bottle with a straw. It’s a sweet drink. “Captain’s got enough competence that even jaded bitches like me were decking people for comparing him to his grandfather by his second month.
“He hated that—I got stuck working sanitation for weeks—but that was it.”
The Captain sighs. “I’ll let you rest, now. Rowan, Fir, set a good example for the kid.”
They play a game with cards. Lavender—a very very short centaur—sits next to Cactus and shows it how the game works. And the names of all the cards.
It falls asleep in the middle of the game. Startles awake when something touches its arm, scrambling to its feet. Rowan puts a hand on its shoulder, guides it to sit back down, and covers it with a heavy blanket.
“Easy, Cactus. You’re okay.”
It breathes slowly, evenly, but Rowan picks up a brush and starts brushing its hair. Even breaths turn to stuttery, hiccupy things, and it can’t hide them.
It can’t hide them, and its hands just stopped hurting and it—it isn’t fair—
It ran away. It ran away and it’s not at the Aca—it’s not at the Academ—it’s not there anymore, it hasn’t been since— But—
But it shows its hands to Fir. It shows its hands to Fir and she just holds them. Holds them gently. Holds them gently and doesn’t do anything to them.
And Cactus sobs.
Gets another drink, when it tries drinking the wasted water. It holds the glass bottle. Just holds the glass bottle to its chest.
You know what? Making a masterpost for stories about Edgar & the ship. Also renaming it the Iron Compass, because “The Redemption” is too on the nose. (Still think they’d call it that anyway)
Drawings will be. On the setting masterpost. Because this is just for stories.
This is Perry. Perry loves xyr personal space. This is Thorn. Thorn also loves Perry’s personal space.
Click to see better
Perry, a stripy, dragon-centaur thing, curled up around Thorn, a centaur, whose chin is on top of xyr head. Xyr wing is raised so you can see Thorn properly
Character descriptions: Perry is a zenagriff, based on a zebra-centaur and a feathered dragon. Xe has talons, a feathered crest, and a very long tail. Thorn is a pink alien centaur with ossicones, whitish spot splotches, and a couple darker, burgundy spots. They’re missing half their right foreleg.
This one is a sketch remade in our shiny new 2026, so I put my thinking drawings and zenagriff thoughts under the cut. (This is the most accurate one right now)
Behold, the thinking drawings:
Left Image: a drawing of Perry with xyr hands close to xyr chest, ears up, and wings folded. Xyr talons are based on one of those birds with the four toes, so xe has two opposable thumbs on each and and foot. Twelve thumbs. There’s a loose sketch of xem napping, and one of xyr snarling face. And a colour-coded sketch of xem next to Thorn, crouching to their level
Right Image: a drawing of Perry facing the camera, sitting with xyr head titled. Was playing with the underside of xyr wings being blue. There’s a blue sketch of xem stretching, a coloured sketch of xem perched but leaning forward, and the little doodle of Thorn napping on xem with xyr wing folded over them. Because it’s cute
Zenagriffs are a carnivorous species based on centaurs, zebras, and birds. When I was thinking them up, I wanted striped centaurs but didn’t want to let the baseline species have stripes. Also I saw a cool chicken with black-and-white feathers with the little v-shapes and decided to run with that.
So I made a new species, decided they’re used as enforcers on centaur ships, and decided the two species are compatible. Because I’m getting striped centaurs. And if it takes Thorn flirting with an easily flustered bird? Then I guess they have a love interest now. One I struggle to draw.
Punk racehorse who decided if they’re dead they might as well just do what they want vs Old-fashioned bird who gets flustered whenever someone comments on xyr wings
I just wanted to write how they met. also vent my feelings about being woken up by a smoke alarm this morning. this one might be a bit rough. I’m still tired but. want.
contains: interrupted sleep (+ sci-fi time system), pirates, cyanide pill (technically), sci-fi fae, miscommunication, caretaker new master (technically), unwanted touch (brief), and references to/implications of slavery being common & legally enforced
•••
Captain Astrum XVII hates pirates. Hates them. The damn boarding party is lead by an atlantean in black armour and a Pandoran orck in grey.
Boarding his ship is more than suicidal.
But they weren’t dumb enough to board the Redemption, no. They boarded the Lucifer, a B-class ship running an errand.
They boarded the Lucifer at twenty-three standard hours, waking him with screeching red sirens. He went to bed at three. Humans need more than FOUR HOURS OF SLEEP.
“Good morning!” The pirate says, cheerfully. The lights flicker on to full brightness. There’s something wrong with their armour. “Now, are you going to hand us your commanding officer and your cargo, or are we doing this the hard way?”
Every member of his crew reacts by refusing to surrender their captain.
Refusing to surrender him.
Perigrine lunges for them, metal talons prying at their armour. “Fuck you,” xe snarls, swatting a Pandoran orck with an armoured wing. “Some random fucking pirate latches onto our ship and you—”
There’s something wrong with the atlantean.
“I’m only here for your commanding officers,” they say. “The rest of you are free to make your own choices.”
Ianuarius sets his shoulders. Right.
Fine.
Fine.
Gritting his teeth, accidentally cracking open the too-sweet poison capsule, he sighs. Hits his chestplate with a sharp clang. His crew stands down. Perigrine still lashes xyr tail at the pirates. “I’m King-Captain Astrum.”
The pirate Captain stiffens, and one of their arms reacts first. It’s always the same one.
Their armour is wrong. There’s no chest seam or port. Atlanteans get overlapping chestpieces, to put food and water through, and if they don’t, they have a feeding tube, but there isn’t a port for it. The only way for them to eat would be to remove the chestplate.
No atlantean would wear armour like that.
“You’re not an atlantean,” he realizes. “You aren’t a legal sapient, and you boarded my ship to kill me.” They don’t answer. “Am I wrong?”
Someone in the boarding crew curses loudly.
The Redemption warps into comm range, and the Pandoran orck curses louder.
“Let my crew go.” The Captain’s voice is hard, growling. “I’ll stay behind. But let them go, or I’ll detonate the bombs we planted on your ship.”
“Mom—”
“I’ll go with ‘em,” Hawthorn says. “Might as well give them a better bargaining chip.”
“Fine.” Ianuarius waits for—the orck—their kid to deactivate Hawthorn’s chip. “You stay, they leave, we struggle to disarm the bombs for a couple hours in case you’re lying.”
He waits with the other captain until their ship disappears into the void.
They don’t speak, staring blankly into space.
Without their armour, they’re a faerie in very good condition. Better than he’s ever seen. Their exoskeleton is pearlescent white, and the unarmoured skin is a deep, shiny red. The ‘arm’ that always reacted first was their trunk, wrapped around in such a way as to stick out the right way.
Their antennae aren’t cropped, their main arms were hidden inside the armour, their smaller mid-arms are intact, and their wings are perfectly healthy. Useless, compared to a male’s, but they’re several times larger than one.
He touches their left wing, lightly, and it twitches. “Sorry,” he says. “You’re healthy: maybe a little underweight, but that could be a supply issue.”
King-Captain Astrum removes his helmet, peels off his gloves, and examines them. Muttering quietly while their upper armour just sits there.
Yes, their trunk is longer than it should be. It was magically extended to suit their disguise. They don’t want to hear about how weird it is to still have their smaller set of arms.
His fingertips brush over their wing. Wings aren’t intimate, for fae, but touching them without setting proper terms is…. They’re still delicate. Still sensitive.
It’s rude.
“Sorry.” He unlocks their restraints. “You’re healthy: maybe a little underweight, but that could be a supply issue.”
Their wings buzz. Getting rid of that lingering feeling.
“You’re freeborn,” he says, “aren’t you?”
They nod. “Yessir.” It’s a habit they broke so many out of.
They forgot to put a clause in there, where the King-Captain would never go after their people. They forgot.
Their name is gone, though. They made a deal with Theo, that if they got captured, their name would stay with her. For safekeeping.
They liked that name, whatever it was.
“Atlanteans have different armour,” he says, letting them put it back on. “It fits you well enough, but it’s not the best metal, and I’d rather you have something you can properly move in than something that hides your species. But we’ll try both.”
“What?”
“Right. I’m going to be honest with you, Captain. I need a pirate to do what I can’t, and I’d rather ally with someone willing to sacrifice themself to save their crew than someone looking to make a quick buck.”
They take a transport with him. C-class ships are far larger than their B-class one, and even they have public transit. The Judgement is large enough to be self-sufficient if adequately supplied, but any sort of blight is enough to compromise that.
There’s a reason they’re classed as semi-independent.
“So you want me to do your dirtywork,” they say. Being a King’s pet pirate might work in the short term, but it’d be so easy for him to betray them.
“I want you to hunt down slavers, and I want to suggest ones you might be able to kill. I want to get you better armour, better weapons, and transfer you members of my crew who don’t want to stay with me.”
“Do what you can’t,” they say, thinking it over.
King-Captain Astrum runs a hand through his hair. “Yes. I have to be polite to slavers at the markets. You have to hunt them on their ships.”
“But I can’t go to the markets, and you can’t kill them without risking your crew.”
The forge is a massive industrial operation, through the window, but they end up in a simple room.
“I can’t make a binding deal, with you, so I won’t ask you to bind yourself to that agreement through someone else. But… think about it.”
Ianuarius measures the faerie Captain, inspects the armour, and ask where they got the metal from.
“A scrapped ship. My…. My daughter’s armour is better quality. I— She’s more hot tempered, and I wanted to protect her.” He drops a metal ingot into their hands. “That’s….”
“Astral gold,” he says. An alloy of gold and thaumir, but only Astrums and Aurums can make thaumir alloys properly. It’s part of how he makes enough money to run the ship.
High quality thaumir alloys are expensive, and his family has a monopoly.
The mining operations were scaled down, but the simple, consistent form of income is good for them. Well, that, and some of the crew wanted to return to mining when given better conditions.
He sketches out two options. One adapted to suit the Captain’s species, the other based on atlanteans.
They workshop it—the mismatched limbs are difficult to balance, and they’re insistent on the disguise. It needs to be able to fool Ianuarius, so they’ll look convincing enough even if they can’t pull up an illusion.
They’re good in a forge. Of course they are. They worked poor-quality materials into decent armour.
Of course, since their arrangement is highly illegal, they’re working with thaumir-sodium, and coating the inside in astral gold. Cheaper. More believable, and will stop their magic cutting out if they touch a null in a fight.
“King-Captain—”
“Edgar.” Not his business name. “I’d like you to promise to use my middle name or something else. Connecting our agreement to me, is….”
They nibble on their antennae with their trunk, and it takes a while for him to get that they’re grooming their face. It takes him a bit longer to understand that it’s a nervous behaviour.
“Picea,” they breathe. “That’s…. Fuck, I need to comm my daughter and tell her I’m okay.”
“Alright. If you have a forge at home, you can continue working on it. I’ll get you some more metal.”
He can hear their daughter’s furious shouting on the comm while he works on filling a crate. Captain-elect Prometheus, apparently. They sigh. “She melted her comm again. Could you…?”
Astral iron deflects magic, like water off a beetle’s waxy shell. He adds it in.
a bit Edgar-focused, for a Shale episode, but I’ve been digging up lore while writing in this setting. and I wanted to link the two time periods better. also I decided he’s fine with either name for reasons you will find out when I finish writing that one
contains: young living weapon, nonhuman (canine) whumpee, found family, and references to slavery being both legal and encouraged in this setting
•••
The floor of the new training room is a different metal, with a trail of mats the Captain hops awkwardly across to get to the back of the room. To his armour. “Rowan, are you serious?”
The centaur, the very tall centaur who looks like the stars outside Shale’s wind—outside Captain Edgar’s window, shrugs. “Gold conducts mana, and you told me I was going to give Shale a magic lesson while you painted, Yan.”
The Captain sits down, organizes his armour, and puts the colourful metal buckets in order. Keeps them on the big mat. “Sure, and you were so distracted by me willingly asking about magic that you forgot how I stack my armour.”
Magic lesson. The Weapon broke a trainer, and its new one is a centaur bigger than any it’s ever dealt with. All the centaurs on this ship are big.
“Heavies are bigger than standards,” it says. “More expensive, too, so we’re only really found on agricultural planets and astral mining ships. And I’ll be fine, seedling.”
“Look—” he touches the floor with his bare hand, and it feels nothing. No thoughts, no magic, just the nothing of being in an empty room. The blank, empty sense of the Captain spreading to it. “If something happens, you’ll be okay.”
“I—” it doesn’t lick its muzzle. Nods. Keeps its shoulders straight. “The Weapon will defer to your judgement, Captain. Sir.”
“I get what you mean, Captain Astrum, that is definitely uncanny, sir.” It thacks its hoof on the floor. “Fuck, now you’ve got me doing it.”
It looks at the Captain. Steps up to him when he gestures for it to.
A hand lands on top of its head, and the calm silence settles in. “Kid, take a breath. What’s he feeling?”
Pulling away, stepping back onto the floor, it says, “Anger, frustration.”
“And who’s that pointed at?” Rowan asks. “Find the line between you and me, Shale. Tell me five things you can see.”
The Captain is wearing loose, white pants stained with blue and yellow and red and black. It can see purple stripes all the way down his arms and on his chest, not just the ones on his face.
Five things. Five things. Captain Edgar is one thing, but he’s important.
“Kid,” he says. “Five things is to get you remembering who you are, not a summarized report.”
Oh.
It looks at Rowan’s thoughts while he explains what it’s actually meant to do.
The tangled mess of thorns isn’t a wall, or a snare. It’s a tangle, closing in on the things underneath. What’s hiding?
The vines weave tighter—
Silence.
Silence.
The Captain takes his hand off the floor.
“Yep,” Rowan says stiffly, “that’s some concentrated mana. Now, can I show you how to ask for information, or do you want to try something else?”
“Ask?”
He taps at its shields, curious and open. Wanting to know if it’s watching what he’s doing.
All it is is reaching out, offering a thought, carefully watching the edges of someone’s… someoneness and wandering under the cover of the first trees. The first few landmarks of another’s mind.
But some are water, and some are metal, and some are echoed sound. How does it know how far to wander?
‘Who is Captain Astrum? Why did Rowan talk to Edgar the way The Weapon does?’
“Captain Astrum the Sixteenth,” Rowan says quietly, “was the man who owned this ship before him. Captain Astrum the Seventeenth is Ianuarius.”
Yan, he calls Edgar.
Names can be collected. Why does Captain Edgar have so many names?
He doesn’t have to manually scrape off the paint, but stripping red and black and gold off the purplish grey metal is more satisfying. Like the weeks he spent recycling almost all his grandfather’s sets of armour. Stripping swirling, starry patterns away.
Ianuarius sighs. Dips his brush into the right shade of blue.
They serve a better purpose now. The pain they bring is temporary: a gateway to freedom instead of a preview of what’s to come.
And he took a break.
His pirate phase was spraypainted armour and the freedom to kill slavers. Painted like a snake and pretending to be someone else for a change. The next time he sees Picea, he’s buying them a—
Oh. They have a bank account. Fae are legally sapient, now. There’s six? Eight? He keeps forgetting the number. It’s been five most his life.
They still don’t trust the law, but to be fair, they’re a freeborn pirate whose prey is slaver ships, and he doesn’t trust the law much either.
“Captain!” Shale squints at a cup, and it launches into the ceiling. Chattering its teeth at the thing, it tries again, and again, and again, until Rowan tells it to take a breath.
“Magic’s tricky, kid,” Ianuarius says. “Throwing it’s better than what I can do.”
“But I’m—” it looks down at the floor, staring through its paws. “But The Weapon is better than this, sir. It’s supposed to be competent, and—” its voice cracks— “failure is not competence.”
“Not knowing your own strength isn’t failure,” Rowan says gently. “That’s normal enough, and maybe the way I do things isn’t the way that works for you. That’s okay, seedling. We can figure it out. Do you want to try gardening? I heard you like the gardens.”
“Or we can paint,” he says, when it stares blankly. “You can paint with me.” It’s not like he’s doing much more than waiting for paint to dry, doodling blue flowers on the wall.
It paints in blue. The same blue, trying to copy him.
Rowan sits down next to Shale, and picks green. Not the pre-mixed green, but a carefully chosen shade that reminds him of the gardens. “What’s your favourite colour, Shale?”
It tips its head. “Why would a weapon need a favourite colour?”
“Same reason an asteroid miner does,” he sighs. “To remember the world has good things in it, too. To get to the next day.
“The first time I saw green,” he says softly, “real, living green, I was with the Captain.”
Ianuarius closes his eyes.
“I was almost sixty, then, around his age, when he was sick of—” trying to fix the centaur ration issue but the website was still broken and he just wanted to give up and cry but they needed him— “just dealing with the most frustrating thing,” he says softly. It’s such an understatement.
“So I marched right up to him and gave him a solution he didn’t want to hear.”
Shale takes in a sharp breath, claws scraping on the floor. He doesn’t open his eyes to look at it. He doesn’t want to see it scared of him.
He can’t see it scared of him.
“It was the only option—” it was a thing they’d been doing in secret for decades— “and he hated it. So he went to the gardens, and brought me with him.”
“And I agreed with you,” he whispers. “I lied down in the grass, staring up at a rowan tree, and I told you you were right.”
“He listened,” Rowan says. “I thought he’d kill me for it, but he listened. Lying in the green, kid, and there was so much green.”
“Purple,” it says.
“Hm?”
“Captain Edgar has purple stripes,” it says, tapping its nose to his cheek. The paint on his armour is dry enough to cover in white flowers, now.
“I like his purple. Because it’s his,” it says. Hesitates. “Do you like purple, sir?”
He shakes his head, mouth dry. His hands are steady while he paints, though, and that’s what matters.
“The blanket you gave me is purple, and the bracelet beads, and—” it keeps talking.
Purple is a genemod burned into his bloodline. Purple is a history he only learned about because his grandfather died, forcing him to end his studies and meet horrors he was only vaguely aware of.
It is the hair he dyes black and the stripes that still make the old crew flinch, if they’re tired. The main colour in Captain Astrum XVI’s armour, and the old enforcer uniforms.
But it’s good, to the kid. Purple is safety and comfort.
contains: pulling of one (1) tooth, Sharpteeth’s first snowfall, flashbacks, me losing the battle against conlanging all the things, and a story about wolves
Conlang pronouns: ial/iakir/ia^exun (maps onto it/its/itself, healer pronouns) (yes I did change the symbol from [’] to [^] because there is no way I’m managing to put [ʔ] everywhere without getting frustrated)
Chirping, ey touch eir scratched-up neck, squinting eir eyes shut and bumping eir face into iakir hip. The gloves are soft. They won’t let em hurt emself.
Ey sit down, and let ial floss most of eir teeth. The humans brush eir teeth, when they can, but eir teeth still bleed when flossed.
Teeth clamp shut over iakir hands. Whining, ey lick iakir wounds. Let ial look. “It’s broken, pup. I need to take it out, so a new one will grow in its place.”
“Fix?”
Ial opens iakir medicine bag, and checks iakir measurement four times. Five times: pups are fragile. “It will fix it, but you need to drink this first, and let me touch it.”
After drinking the medicine, ey clamp eir mouth shut. Flinch when ial moves iakir hands.
“Sweetheart,” ial says, combing fingers through eir hair. “If we leave that tooth, it will keep hurting, and I’ll still have to take it out. It will be okay.
“Press it, and tell me if it hurts.”
“Fix!”
“Soon.” Calmly, ial lets em whine and tremble and press eir hands on eir neck. The tooth comes out. Ial rinses eir mouth with cold water, to stop the bleeding, and tells em it’s over.
Ey keep trembling until they’re in bed, when ial shows em the sound of a wolf howling. Deathstalker is, apparently, not allowed to stop making sounds until ey’ve heard every animal in the world.
Every animal in the world is a wolf, two insects, and fourteen and a half birds.
Chirping softly, ial closes iakir eyes and falls asleep too.
Snow. Holding open winter mittens until ey shove eir little hands in, and helping em wriggle into eir coat, ial fusses over em. Tugs eir hood up and does the buttons on eir coat. Lets em button eir boots.
Sun-masks have a slit for the eyes, to protect them from the winter sun. Of course, ey take it off eir third step out the door.
Ey stare at the sky.
Stare.
“That’s snow,” ial says gently. “It’s snowing weather. Do you remember weather, sweetheart?”
“Inside. Cold. Bad speak. Bad pup.” Whining, ey reach hands for Deathstalker until ial picks up eir trembling body. Squeezing em, ial murmurs comforting things and tries to remember what helps ial with iakir ilutaziwene.
Counting breaths. Naming their surroundings for em, because ey still don’t speak much. Sharpteeth finds comfort in pressure.
Ial hasn’t had a bad episode in seasons, and guiding iakir pup through one is a heavier burden than dealing with iakir own. Ey’re small.
Ey’re so small.
Crushing ial with little hands, ey beg the flashback to stop. Beg Deathstalker to fix it.
“I can’t.
“I can’t,” ial chokes. Breathes through the memory of choking water.
Breathes, careful not to drop em.
Ilutaziwene has made iakir caretaker-call linger well past iakir seventeenth winter, and it’s that broken sound—that keening, desperate thing—that gets em to understand. “There’s nothing I can do about your memories.
“I’ll get you a mind-healer, and teach you my path through them, but I can’t stop it from happening.”
“Snow.”
“Do you want to go back inside?”
Ey tuck eir face into iakir shoulder. “Let’s get you some warm food, then. And some blankets, and I can tell you the story of the Wolf now that you won’t keep me up for it.”
Senkrrakaraya claims another blanket. A fluffy blanket. Growls, sitting on Teketsaluxone^e’s lap. With a cup. The cup has something sweet and warm and red in it.
“What do you know about wolves, sweetheart?”
It echoes the long, pretty sound from last night. Ial squeezes it gently.
“Yes. Their voices are distance, and ours are memory.
“Auwu^ekawo taught us their call, and we taught them our traps.”
Sipping iakir warm drink—the one Senkrrakaraya isn’t allowed to have even though it’s the same and it wants it—ial says, “At the beginning of the path: when souls did not have clear shapes, when echoes were silent, and the seasons were all mixed up into one….”
Iakir voice is warm, and rumbly, and ial fidgets with iakir shirt until Senkrrakaraya tap-tap-taps at ial.
“Okay, okay. At the beginning of the path, the first of us met auwu^ekrrakawo, and auwu^ekrrakawo met us. They watched us set our traps, and asked what they were. What they were for.” It tips its head. No voice, but it wants to know.
“‘I have your endurance,’ au^axanu said. ‘I have your teeth, and your claws, but I do not have your speed.’”
Teketsaluxone^e leans in, and presses iakir forehead to the top of its head. “Auwu^ekawo can run very, very fast, and walk very long,” ial whispers.
Auwu^ekrrakawo did not understand. “The deer do not have our packs, and we do not have the fox’s nimble form. I have your eyes, but I do not have your voices.”
“This is a trap,” Au^axanu said. “I know where prey goes, so I let my traps wait and catch while I hunt other things.
“This one catches hopping-prey leaving the tunnels. I also have a fish-trap in the river, if you want to check it with me. Sometimes, it catches bears.”
“Do you hunt bears?” Bears are krrakawo, not lewo, so Auwu^ekrrakawo didn’t think so.
“No,” Au^axanu said. “Not if they stay away from my traps, and not if they have pups to care for. But they take my fish, and spoil my traps, if I’m not quick enough.”
There was no bear. But there was a bird, tangled up with a fish in its beak, so Auwu^ekrrakawo ate it. “If I give you my voice, can I use your traps again?”
“Yes,” said Au^axanu. “I will share my traps with you, if you share your voice with me.”
Auwu^ekrrakawo had seen Kīrīlewo^etsu, had seen them mock Au^axanu by flying just out of reach, and have all their voices taken. Some Kīrīlewo^etsu still sing, but they can never speak.
“Share?”
“I want to learn your far-voice, and share it with you.”
So Auwu^ekrrakawo became Auwu^ekawo and Tsakinauwu^ek. Souls were still young, then, and while Tsakinauwu^ek wanted to stay with us, Auwu^ekawo didn’t.
Teketsaluxone^e tries to tell Senkrrakaraya ial isn’t the best storyteller, but it sticks its hand over iakir mouth.
“Auwu,” it says. “Mo auwu?”
Teketsaluxone^e tips iakir head back, and makes a strong auwu sound. Quietly, but it’s still strong when it’s quiet. “If you’re alone,” ial says. “If you’re alone, and you need someone to find you, you make that sound very, very loudly.”
Ial shows it two more: one to say it’s safe and one that says someone is coming to help.
Holding iakir hand, flipping it over so it can see red-black-red-black-red, it growls. Its hands are yellow where iakir are red, and it wants red. Red is Teketsaluxone^e, red is the sweet-drink, and the buttons, and—red is warm and bad things are cold.
But it doesn’t know how to say red.
Axanelelati Words:
ial (ial) / iakir (ia.kir) / ia^exun (ia.^e.xun): healer pronouns. Using this set because I want to and also using ne/nem/nir/nirself means “nem” can either be the conlang word or the pronoun and I don’t want to worry about that (okay, fine, I just want to use my conlang pronouns because some of them carry more meaning that my substitutes can’t capture)
Teketsaluxone^e (te.kets.a.lu.xon.e^e): Deathstalker, “One who stalks Death: who will not lose sight of its path” [tekaksir (catch/stalk) + letsaluxonune (Death) + kekone (path)]
Left image: Edgar, in white armour painted with blue flowers and trimmed in gold, mimicking porcelain/china. He stands nervously, holding a shockstaff like he’s scared to use it. His hair is dyed black, but his natural purple is visible, along with a couple greys.
Right image: Edgar, older and more disheveled, holding the same shockstaff with the confidence of a man who’s tired enough to fight the sun. His armour is deep blue with white flowers, still painted to mimic porcelain. His hair, almost half grey, is dyed like a sunset.
This was mostly an excuse to draw his public armour and think about his training arc. The second version is around the time he adopts Shale.
Edgar’s greying from stress and a ‘faulty’ gene. It’s cosmetic, and I went a little bit overboard because I like the way it looks. He still doesn’t age at a normal pace—physically in his late twenties when he’s chronologically forty—but that perfectly natural gene mutation isn’t what his family bought.
Pottery nerd who’s never touched ceramics, and only seen porcelain in pictures. Art nerd who mostly sews and paints, because one is a practical skill and the other brings life to cold metal. (The gardens do have useable clay, but no one sells kilns to spacers. He’s tried.)
A drawing of Aspen, who belongs to @oldspruceinn, as an alien centaur from my Mageliens setting. She looks down at the original version of herself, as if it’s her reflection. This was left unfinished for a while because I wanted to show off all the patterns I did. But. Clothes. So. She’s wearing a crop top. Mageliens!Aspen is pink instead of red, and neither of them has a mouth.
Flipped image & more words under the cut
(click to see better)
Because my centaurs are completely covered in fur, I had to get a bit creative with matching the pattern. She was also drawn before I decided how long centaur tails would be. I also forgot that Aspen has brands. And I only remembered that just now. So. Uh.
My centaurs can get absurdly tall—Willow, 375cm—so they would not be the same size at all.
(click to see better)
•••
Old Spruce Inn Masterpost <- go here for more Aspen
Primary drawing: Rowan, a dark, alien centaur spotted with white, standing behind Edgar, a human who’s about as tall as his walking leg. My centaurs look blended, so the human half is still furry. Rowan’s white hair flows down from a high ponytail, and his horns are somewhat long. His legs and arms have white fur at the ends, and his stern face is framed with a a few white patterns. His hooves are two-toed, with little spike-toe-things at the back.
Above that, there’s a scribbly doodle of Edgar taking care of his injuries after a mission. His blood is gold. Centaur blood is now gold.
So!! Rowan. And an Edgar redesign that’ll affect the future, mostly because he’s in his twenties here and will be more grey by the time he gets Shale. Which’ll be when he’s chronologically in his late thirties/early forties, I think (biologically still twenty-something because of gene mods). He should be shorter compared to Rowan, here, but I already adjusted his height once when making this.
Rowan is a heavy centaur, since they’re used for things like astral mining and agricultural work. This means he’s about 337cm tall (excluding the ossicones, which are his horn-looking things).
I am doing math about these guys. I have been forced to do math about this. If you want to know how tall he is in a way you can understand, measure your ceiling to see if he could fit under it. “It’s a fun excercise,” I say, knowing full well I am now painfully aware of everything taller than me that is vagely near the heights of my centaurs.
This was made pre-chart. So these are those silhouettes.
Centaur Heights + Bonus Art of Nines, Thorn, and Penlin
(click to see more clearly)
A scale reference of my centaur characters compared to Edgar, all in silhouette, with heights measured from the top of the head. From right to left, shortest to tallest, it is: Edgar, Penicillin, Thorn, Rowan, and Nines. Edgar, in purple, is a 184cm tall human. Penicillin is a short centaur who’s in light pink, is 210cm. Thorn is in magenta pink, major body comparable to a horse, at 275cm. Rowan is in white, at 337cm, and Nines is in purple-black, at 375cm. End of description.
Captain Edgar is about 184cm tall. I don’t normally do properly numbered heights, so everyone thank @oldspruceinn who told me how tall they were imagining him. Thanks to them, I have numbers. Which you will get to look at, but I will not put as numbers in my stories, since I’m not the best at thinking about heights.
EDIT: corrected the chart
•••
Nines (Willow), it/its (it/she)
(click to see more clearly)
Nines, a large alien centaur with dark purplish grey fur speckled with black. It looks down nervously, hair in front of its face, lifting a foreleg like it’s worried about stepping on something. Its hair fades from lavender to the same pink as its hooves, and its arms and legs are dipped in lavender. It wears a turquoise dress, and its left eye is an empty gold socket. End of description.
Nines uses illusions to make its tail look normal when it’s on the ship, and prefers long skirts and loose clothing. Tight clothes that isn’t its standing brace (so it can sleep upright without its minor body slouching) remind it of the harness it wore to haul lumber before Edgar found it abandoned due to injury.
In the kitchens, Willow has a practical uniform. She doesn’t have many proper clothes, since it’s hard to find things that fit her, they have to be custom-made, and she doesn’t mind wearing horse blankets and simple tops (just fabric pinned in place)
•••
Hawthorn, they/them/their
(click to see more clearly)
Thorn, an alien centaur with a gold prosthetic leg, a dramatic puff at the end of their tail, and a punk haircut: shaved at the side and highly fluffy. They’re wearing a spiky jacket, and look a bit smug. Their base colour is magenta, with light pink and burgundy speckles and patches. End of description.
Countergrav magic & non-horse anatomy mean Thorn can wear a prosthetic instead of needing a cloned leg. It isn’t medically reccommended, since cloning limbs is standard practice, but it was an option they had. I will have to figure out how it’s attached and how it comes off. Centaur blood is gold (and magically glittery), so their limb looks somewhat hardcore.
•••
Penicillin (Penlin), xe/xem/xyr
(click to see more clearly)
Penicillin, a dark magenta centaur with a pattern of pale rings that look like mold. Xe wears a medical uniform: a dark blue dress under a white apron with a virus symbol over xyr chest. There’s a panel over xyr major back with the virus symbol at xyr flank. End of description.
Penlin! Xyr uniform symbols mean xyr priority is disease, but xe isn’t hyperspecialized. Medical uniforms contrast their blood colour, so it’s a deep blue, and centaurs wear skirts regardless of gender. Xyr uniform is vaguely based on older medic uniforms, I think. I might make a post showing off xyr moldy pattern, since I drew it in full under the uniform.
centaur blood is a glittery gold, but Edgar can’t see the magical glittery part. also, centaurs with nothing to lose are scary to fight
Warning: darker than my usual. If you’re sensitive to anything in the fine print below, I have other stories which don’t have strong descriptions of mangled limbs
contains: broken bone, amputation, strong description of mangled leg, starvation & dehydration, slavery (discussion of buying), designation numbers, misgendering (he/him & it/its), caretaker new master, a character believing they’re already dead and acting accordingly
•••
Edgar stares. With his nicer armour—his public armour, painted to mimic old porcelain—he looks intimidating, and expensive. Like his family.
Like a slaver.
Standing at his side, Rowan shifts subtly, and Willow copies the motion. They know how to behave, but that doesn’t mean they can’t communicate with him.
Not that they need to.
Not for this.
“You promised a centaur in good condition,” he growls, voice roughened by his helmet modulator. “That thing wouldn’t even be able to—”
“I’m already selling Rose at a discount, and he is in good health for a retired racehorse,” Octaviana says.
Strictly speaking, she isn’t wrong. Racing centaurs aren’t cheap, and even one with a broken leg can be expensive depending on its popularity.
“Right,” he sighs. Sets a hand on his hip. “It is. It just looks worse than the photo.”
Octaviana Pearlver. Astrums are old money, like Pearlvers, but inherently being in positions of command means they can sell handmade art even when technically employed. Horizons, even he used to sell artistic clothing repairs for high prices: the information’s hard to find, and no one bothers to learn the skill.
But pearldivers got their wealth extracting rare gems from organics. Getting their hands wet. This much of a discount means the thing’s more trouble than it’s worth.
Just low enough to legally avoid being called a scam, but still high enough to be annoying.
“Can it read and write—numbers, at least?”
It can.
Of course it can. Racing centaurs often have elaborate signatures, and have to know at least some numbers to do their jobs.
Grumbling, he makes the purchase. It isn’t drugged, for the pain it’s in, and the iron shackles stop it from using magic to keep the weight off its leg. Its mangled leg.
“Nines, carry.” Willow can lift more weight than Rowan, and they can’t remove the iron in public.
The walk back to the shuttle is long. Almost silent, until they’re inside and Rowan gives it a strong painkiller. Until he steps out (to give them space) to do the pre-flight checks. To make sure nothing’s been pried off or tampered with.
In the shade of his shuttle, he finds a child.
A skeletal centling, abandoned in the desert.
Leaning against the therma-shield metal, it pants heavily, trying to keep cool.
Blood stains its bone white coat, but the injuries look like they’ve been healed for a while, and its fingers and ossicones are burnt black. Probably mana burnout. It’s a young thing, so it wouldn’t take much.
He takes a cloth from his pocket, and unclips the water bottle from his belt—
“I…. ‘Msorry, ma’am,” it rasps. “Won’t… again. ‘Msorry.”
Setting the newly-damp cloth on its back, he sighs. “I know, kid. I know.”
Rowan stares at the dying centling Ianuarius brings in. It drinks a liquid ration, and doesn’t resist his magic—not that it could, if it wanted to.
Mumbling hoarse apologies, it lets him comb its tangled hair, and tips its head up when he turns on the shower. “Yeah,” he says gently. “You’re okay, seedling.”
He touches its hand, and its eyes turn a hollow black that has him reaching for the bracelet with the iron clasp. “No,” he says, snapping it shut around its ankle. “That stays on for at least two weeks: until I know you won’t burn yourself.
“I won’t touch your hands, seedling.”
And he doesn’t.
Wrapping it up in a towel, he gets it a cup of water and a little bottle of juice so it stops trying to drink the water from its hair. “You’re not a cactus, seedling, you don’t need to drink water off yourself.”
“Cactus?”
“Those prickly things outside? Those are cacti. They collect all the water they can, and keep it inside them in case they need it.”
It stares, pale eyes round as moons. “Are they food?”
“Centaurs can eat cacti, and safely drink the water inside.” Humans are poison resistant in a completely different direction, and can’t just eat cacti—not without checking the species and preparing it well.
He scoops it up, carrying it to their room. Lies down next to it.
“Can I have a name?”
The floor-bedding is actually soft, now, not just rubber meant to cushion a fall. He uses a mini-mattress for his minor body, because he prefers to sleep on his stomach. Lets the centling rest its head on his major back. “Of course you can, Cactus.”
Willow’s in a standing brace, tonight. She doesn’t need to be, but it helps reassure the others, and she doesn’t want to burn mana to support her minor body. It’s handmade, since the Captain studied multiple Archaic Arts before getting stuck with them.
Which is how he learned about woodworking. And trees, and gardening, and all that mess of things.
Gave Willow its name, even if it rarely uses it.
It’s too anxious to sleep lying down half the time, especially off-ship, so it’s not like she doesn’t like it.
Hopefully, Tracker will be back soon. With her rescue, and the imps; League and something.
“GAH—SHIT— YOU DEFECTIVE SONOFAFUCK—”
Six-two-five jolts awake. Captain Astrum being furious is always a bad omen, what did he see, does he know—
Willow is panicking too.
Willow was brought in by Ianuarius Astrum, not Regulus Astrum.
No one was ever punished for the sabotage.
If he told Ianuarius who was in on it, nothing would happen.
“Are you alive,” Rowan asks, “or should I crack open that champagne bottle you’ve been saving?”
Captain Ianuarius laughs. Curses again, and there’s a loud clatter before he opens the door.
“Every rose has its murderous fucking thorns,” he grumbles. His helmet is on the other side of the room, lying next to the slates it knocked off the desk. His nose is bleeding, he’s got a black eye, and he’s using his chestplate as an improvised shield.
“Your fault for not locking the door.”
Three-sev—they hate the name Rose—jabs at the Captain with the shockstaff—
“Six-two-five, for the love of—” he grits his teeth, visibly considering hitting Three-sev’s injured leg with his backup shockstaff— “Rowan—”
He grabs the shockstaff. “HAWTHORN! Breathe.
“Breathe, take a breath, and look at me.”
They let go, rearing up. It’s too late to change course—he, barely yanked out of the way in time, flinches at the way their leg bends, and the skin breaks, leaving it horribly mangled at the forearm. Shudders at their splintered scream.
“I’m already dead,” they say. Their eyes flicker, but their mana has atrophied to the point where all they manage to do is push the little knife off the table.
“…The seam ripper,” Captain Ianuarius whispers. “Why didn’t I notice my seam ripper?”
Med. Petri barely has to examine Hawthorn’s leg—doesn’t even comment on the patch job—before she knows the result. Still, she gets them an m-ray. Projects the results.
Medical technology is highly advanced, but magic lets results be seen instantly.
“It needs amputating,” she says. “Either we take a genetic sample and clone you a new leg—which will be a perfect match, but won’t look the same—or we get you a permanent prosthetic.”
She explains what would happen if they tried to mend it.
The Captain’s hands are stained in blood. Petri’s hands are stained past the elbows, when she’s unlucky. Neither of them hesitate.
It’s her first centaur amputation.
It’s her first centaur amputation, but she’s worked on drakes before.
