⚠️ Note: account may contain violence and horror themes (e.g., body horror, medical horror, existential horror, uncanny valley) once in a while. Also I don’t do commissions or give donations, sorry.⚠️
About Me:
HELLO I DOODLE AND RAMBLE TOO MUCH‼️I post art & stuff related to my interests (mainly ocs, vsynths, and g/t). Or I complain about school. Feel free to send whatever to my inbox, I like seeing what y’all have to say.
Also if you dm me I advise you get straight to the point instead of only saying “hi” cuz I’ll think you’re a bot and then block. Also cuz I cannot carry a conversation very long….. it is quite scary 😔
HI HELLO mollie and roy have an adoted human daughter now thank you
I think she’s 18 here but i love her as a todler too so ill probably use her in every age. She likes experimental prog rock (and frank zappa) and has a large bottle cap collection. Absolutely hates strawberries and gets nauseus everytime she even smells them.
She is saving up for a motoguzzi motorcycle and I think she is either a bassist or a drummer also she proooobably wants to be a medium when she grows up but i haven't decided yet
Chapter two of Threads and Thermals is up! This one has two hawks, for a total of 50% more hawks!!!
A Tale of Two Hawks
It was another red-tailed hawk. She was larger than him, stockier and well-fed. She was staring directly at him, occasionally glancing at the borrowers as if asking permission to hunt.
He doubted she would take no for an answer.
Tobias matched her gaze and screeched back at her, raising his wings to make him look bigger.
While his cry was enough to warn the family to take cover, their sudden movements spurred the female hawk to dive towards them, trying to catch her prey before they escaped into the safety of their home.
In that moment Tobias leapt forward, anticipating where the other raptor would be with his claws outstretched and ready to intercept. Evidently she assumed that he would be preoccupied with the chance at prey: there were three targets after all, sharing would be easy.
The opposing hawk was therefore caught off guard. She had almost struck Homily, who had been the furthest from the home at the time. Instead, Tobias lodged one claw into the hawk's back and the other into her neck, forcing the female to turn her trajectory and roll with the blow or else take the full blunt impact and risk a crushed windpipe.
He used the momentum to drag her away from the family before releasing her and vocalizing a warning.
Tobias was lucky. The female wasn't desperate enough for food that she would fight him over the borrowers, not with easier prey elsewhere. She flew off, leaving a few bright red drops of blood in her wake.
The whole situation didn't sit well with Tobias. What was to stop a predator who tried to attack the family when he was elsewhere? He couldn't understand how the three had survived up until now. The girl appeared to be sixteen or so, but had she really survived sixteen years in the forest at that size? Maybe they aged faster than humans did?
He'd seen the father fight off lizards and crows using makeshift weapons, but against a bird of prey they didn't stand a chance.
"Father…? Did that bird just save mother? You saw that too, didn't you?"
It was at that moment that Tobias realized he was still circling the clearing, scanning the trees in case the female returned.
He instinctively shot his head back to look at the family and immediately regretted it. Real hawks didn't respond when mentioned in conversation. He made a clumsy turn and disappeared back into the forest.
"Territorial dispute." the father announced, looking between where Homily was standing and where Tobias had been. "Hawks don't like when other hawks hunt in the same area."
"Then why didn't the second hawk try to eat us once it scared away the first one? If they were fighting over food, it's awful strange it would fly off before getting its prize." There was a tremble in her voice as Arrietty spoke, and she stared at Homily as if she had seen a ghost. "If that bird had gotten to mother she would be…"
"She’d’ve been hurt but not dead. Your mother's got her pin on her an’ she knows how to use it well enough. Maybe this’ll finally convince her to keep up with sparring practice." Pod marched up to his wife and lightly cuffered her with the blunt end of his pin. She sputtered indignantly and gave a snorting laugh. Then a sob.
"Oh, I was so scared! I reached for the pin, but I could never have pulled it fast enough to protect myself from that hawk. I’d have died!"
Her husband held her within his embrace. "We’d’ve… we would've done something. There are things we can do now to fortify the home, to make sure the next time something like this happens again we're prepared. It'll be alright. We'll be alright."
All the woman could do was nod halfheartedly. "And if the hawk, either of them come back tomorrow? You really think we can live through it?"
Pod released his wife from his hold, making her meet his eyes. "I'd swear by it."
━━━━━━━━━━
Thankfully the next few days came and went uneventfully. Pod announced that whenever anyone left the house, they would take a bow and sheaf of arrows with them. They built wooden structures like crossbows mounted to the ground: a quick google search with Rachel’s phone revealed them to be ballistas which might have been powerful enough to reach Tobias from where he watched.
He decided to find a perch a little deeper in the forest.
Eventually their focus shifted to the basic homesteading required to survive in the woods. If it weren’t for the wary glances combing the tree line, Tobias would say things had gone back to normal.
━━━━━━━━━━
Arrietty didn't like mysteries. They tugged at her brain like an itch she couldn't scratch. And this one in particular itched worse than her skin when she accidently made an ivy leaf cape.
She had first noted the hawk while out washing the laundry in the creek. A chill had run down her spine indicating someone was watching, a feeling she hadn't experienced since hikers had trampled through the clearing a year ago. At least then she had been able to avoid being seen directly, and the Feeling had been nothing more than a slight tingle. This time it was more of a cold shock, like she had jumped into the water. Something was watching her, hidden in the woods, just out of sight.
It was about a week later she discovered what the something was. A bird, of the fierce sort with a wicked beak and talons, flew overhead before vanishing into the woods, with that terrible shiver occurring once more.
Her fear abated over the coming weeks as the unsettling figure seemed less interested in attacking them as it was in watching them. It still put her on edge, but the sixth week of a strange hawk watching them didn't hit quite as hard as it did the first week.
Then it attacked her mother.
At first she thought it was the same one. However, the second nearly identical hawk made her doubt her own sanity.
Later she would come to identify the second as the one that was watching them. After that day, she had asked her parents about the strange feeling she got whenever it was around. No matter how hard she tried to insist that it was different from the empty stares of crows and foxes, no one believed her.
“Those creatures are smart, but not in the same way you and I are. At the end of the day, it’s still just an animal.”
“The only reason the second one didn't try to eat me was because it wasn't hungry at the time. Just wait until it misses lunch and you'll see that you're on the menu.”
She had hit a dead end. The mysterious hawk hadn't made an appearance since The Incident, and at this point it didn't seem like it was going to. If she wanted to find out more about it, she’d have to take matters into her own hands.
The plan was simple. Her theory was that the hawk had saved her mother, meaning that whatever else, it didn't want to see them hurt. If she could trick it into thinking she was in danger, it would come to save her. But last time it had left once the threat was gone. She needed a way to make it stay. That was where the thread came in.
Of course, she wasn't delusional enough to think that she could trap it relying on her strength alone. This would need to be a more delicate operation. She considered tying the thread to a rock or tree root, something to keep the hawk in place.
The borrower knew it would never be strong enough to hold the huge beast down. It was, however, certainly strong enough to carry her own body weight.
If she couldn't make the hawk stay, she would follow.
She secured the thread around her waist then looped it around each of her legs and over her shoulders, experimenting with different methods to distribute her weight more evenly. She took care to hide the harness under her dress, tucking the excess line of thread into her pack.
She had told her parents earlier that she would be visiting the far end of the creek. They would assume she had gone minnowing and wouldn't suspect a thing.
As she followed the creek southward she felt the familiar prickle of ice running down her spine and grinned. It's watching.
The creek ran downstream until reaching a stone ledge, pouring over the edge like a waterfall with a steep drop. The girl had dived from the ledge many times in the past, and knew it was safe. But the hawk didn't know that. Probably.
When Arrietty finally arrived at the ledge she grabbed a net from her pack, tossing it into the water. She ended up catching a few minnows, each about the size of her arm. The girl put the first in her pack, then let the second 'accidentally' slip from her hands, falling back into the water. She made a show of tumbling after it, running through the knee high water and slipping on the uneven rocks.
"Ahh!" The scream was real enough, as the girl managed to bruise her knees on the stone.
The minnow flopped over the edge, and Arrietty hooked her legs on the stone before launching herself after it. Her upper torso was hanging over the edge while the rest of her lay on the stone, the water from the creek running over her and leaving her sputtering. She subtly tied the extra length of thread to the harness under her dress and took a moment to catch her breath.
"Help!" She yelled, careful not to be loud enough that her parents could hear. Could the hawk even hear? It didn't have any ears, but the day of The Incident she could have sworn that it had noticed them talking about it.
No matter, she could feel its gaze on her, an almost burning cold that carried from the back of her neck to the tips of her fingers. It was here alright.
She readied the thread and slid one leg from its perch. Then she then released the second leg and let herself fall.
Sharp claws bit into her sides, her stomach doing flips as the force of gravity gave way to a rough sideways pull. Arrietty gritted her teeth, forcing back bile and wiggling within the grasp of the talons. She managed to twist her body to the side, freeing her arms and wrapping the thread around the hawk's leg. She tied it and breathed a sigh of relief. Mission accomplished.
It was at that moment she realized she hadn't planned what to do after she fastened herself to it. She could try to ask it why it was watching them, but it couldn't exactly talk back to her.
Maybe she could train it? She grinned at the thought of her riding her own pet hawk, wind blowing through her hair, wide swaths of forest below.
The hawk entered a slow drift, inching her closer to the ground until she was just above a patch of grass. It unceremoniously dropped her and reoriented its wings to gain altitude. She grabbed the line, holding it tight to her chest as she was lifted again.
She got maybe six inches off the ground before it realized it had a passenger. Then it spoke.
... No but seriously this is a short little follow up to that story I wrote a few days ago because the characters wouldn't leave my brain and I wanted there to a less ambiguous ending.
Word count: 700
=====
“Hello? Miss borrower? Can you hear me?” said the human to an empty kitchen, a pleading tone in her voice.
It had been a few days since she had met her little ‘housemate’, a borrower who had set up shop somewhere in her apartment. It was hard to tell based on her actions, but it seemed like she hadn’t heard about The Discovery, when humans finally discovered the little folks living amongst them.
The human was about to give up, and try again tomorrow, when she heard a tiny voice coming from behind her.
“It’s Hazel.”
The human turned around to meet the borrower, who was partially hidden behind a cup. The borrower then repeated herself.
“My name is Hazel. Not ‘Miss borrower’. You know about us… how?”
“Nice to meet you, Hazel. My name is Lucy. And… well…” replied the human, bracing herself for a long conversation.
“... How?” Hazel repeated, still looking incredibly cautious.
“Well, most people do… there was kind of a big thing, um… back when smartphones became big…” said Lucy, although the longer she spoke, the less confident she sounded. Truly, she wasn’t an expert on the story, she just remembered seeing it all over the news.
“Wait…” Hazel said, her voice hitching, “Humans… know about us? All humans?”
Lucy nodded, as Hazel began to speak again, her voice growing faster and more panicked. “But… if humans know about us, they’d… they’d… put us in cages… pets… experiments…”
Lucy noticed Hazel’s speech getting less coherent, and quickly tried to calm down the panicked borrower.
“Woah, woah, calm down, calm down. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Everything is okay,” Lucy repeated in as calm a tone as she could muster.
“No it’s not! Humans… how many… have they hurt? How many… are left?” cried Hazel.
“Lots, please, listen to me. You need to calm down first, though, okay? There are lots of borrowers. They live alongside us. I got advice on how to talk to you from a few classmates who are borrowers. Things aren’t always perfect, I won’t lie to you, but… pets? Lab experiments? Absolutely not. So please, don’t freak out.”
“Don’t freak out… don’t freak out… everything I know is a lie, a human is telling me she knows about borrowers, but okay, I’ll try not to freak out!” said Hazel, as she continued to freak out.
“Listen, Hazel, I know this is a lot to take in, but I promise, everything will be fine. I just… I just don’t want you to be scared of me, or any other human, that’s all,” gently replied Lucy, as she pulled out her phone and began to search for images.
“See, look. These are pictures of humans and borrowers living together. Most borrowers stay in the walls and keep, well, borrowing, but some decided to come out into the open. You don’t have to, of course. It’s up to you.”
“Up to me…” repeated Hazel, as she stared at the photos, calming down a bit.
“Entirely up to you. Like I said, I just didn’t want you to be afraid anymore. That’s all.”
A brief moment of silence overcame the two of them, before Hazel spoke again. “In that case… I should go… and think, I guess,”
“Okay,” replied Lucy. “And if you need anything, I’m right here, okay?”
Hazel didn’t respond as she walked away, disappearing behind a few objects piled up on the counter.
-
It was a week later, and Lucy hadn’t heard anything from Hazel. She almost wondered if the borrower had moved out, as that was what traditionally happened when they were seen. At the moment, Lucy was relaxing on her couch after a long week of classes, preoccupied with watching a mindless show about shopping for wedding dresses as she dug into a carton of ice cream.
Eventually, Lucy heard a small scoff, and when she looked to the source of the noise, she saw Hazel, sitting out in the open on a nearby end table.
As they made eye contact, the borrower spoke up, “Nobody on this show ever has any standards. I mean, I can’t believe she picked that dress, is she kidding? It fits her terribly.”
i cannot get snacks from the kitchen at midnight anymore cuz if i make a sound my bird would loudly say “WOW! 😁😁😁😁” all joyous and happy and like dude i’m trying to be sneaky here
i’m getting much better hang of using this button maker machine thingy my dad bought and i’m lwk thinking about starting to sell g/t related pins online… and mmmaybe even msm and vocaloid related ones
but then again i don’t even know how to do commissions so. Much to consider 🚬
Wowwww just wow this is so cool! The way the singularity appears in sections is mesmerizing to watch actually, I’ve been staring at it for several minutes. And the space backgrounds looking almost like watercolor splotches is such a neat design choice
Aw thank you friend! It IS watercolor; I painted it splotchy to create contrast between the black environment and the black figure!
I’m delighted as well to hear that the sudden section building translated well; I wanted it to feel like a straightforward magic trick from a George Melies film. I’m honored it resonated with you!!
You know the struggles this tiny being before you has faced. Everything is dangerous to them, but most dangerous are people when they don't know what their intentions are. If they trusted the wrong person, you shudder to think of how easily they could hurt them in so many ways. This is why it astonishes you that they’ve chosen you as the one they trust the most.
Not that you’d hurt them, of course. That you might accidentally do something like that has given you nightmares, but they don’t seem to think that would ever be the case. As you sit and watch them, you stretch out your arm toward them and offer them your hand, an invitation to them. You keep it still as they approach, your heart fluttering as they immediately climb on, like it wasn’t even a decision they had to make to do so.
You feel their cold little hands making contact with yours, your fingers twitching as they do. It’s a reaction you tried to fight back once, worried that they would think you were about to grab them before they told you that it didn’t bother them. They said it was nice to see a reaction like that, to know that they affected you in the various ways that they did. So, you let your hand react as you feel their weight crawl towards and settle in your palm.
You know at this point you would be safe to pick them up, but you don’t. Instead, you simply hold them as they are, a grin on your face as you watch them so fondly. This minuscule being puts their life into your hands, quite literally, on a regular basis, but you still sometimes have to stop yourself from going through the motions. You need to make sure you take none of this for granted, that you recognize how important it is that they trust you so much.
You also don’t want to just skip over small moments like this, giving yourself the opportunity to just enjoy how they feel sitting in your hand. You love that they enjoy this as much as you do, it makes it easier to feel less guilty when you want attention from them. You don’t even need to pick them up to just hold them like this, they’re already being held, and you see them begin to take advantage of the fact that you haven’t lifted them just yet.
You feel warmth in your chest as they begin to lay down, watching them curl themselves up right in the middle of your hand. Their head rests just below your fingers, taking advantage of that soft, plush section of your hand to cushion it. They relax completely, and you know the warmth you offer them is something they cherish, and that they can be warmed in such a special way in the first place.
You know how much vulnerability this kind of situation puts them in, even more so in this particular position, and you marvel at the amount of trust and confidence they have in you to keep them safe. They cozy themselves right up against you, and you know your world is all the richer for having them in your life. Despite how small they are, they matter so much to you, and it’s so important to you that they can seek comfort and safety from you like this.
You curl your fingers inward in a bid to make them feel less exposed, to protect them from every threat possible, even though you know none exist at this very moment. You have such an ample opportunity to hold them, and you’re going to enjoy every moment of it. They smile as they nuzzle their face against the soft surface they’re snuggled on, and you watch them close their eyes. There’s no greater trust that they can place in you than that, making themselves entirely dependent on you for safety, knowing without a doubt that you won’t do anything to betray that trust.
They look so happy, so content and relaxed, and you can’t help but want to interact with them a little. Sure, you have them laying in the palm of your hand, but you know they’ll appreciate this gesture. You bring your other hand over, curling your index finger inward and gently brush it across the side of their body. You feel their sharp inhale as you make contact, waiting for the release of that breath that you know is coming. And there it is, a slow exhale as they simultaneously melt under your touch.
Your heart warms as they make themselves so comfortable in your hand. They’re very clearly enjoying this, and you are too. You chuckle quietly, hoping not to disturb them too much as you speak softly to them.
“Look at you…”
As warm and happy as your tone is, you’re unable to hide a hint of bewilderment in your voice, still quite frankly, astonished that you two have made it this far from where you started. If you told yourself the first day you two met that you would end up like this, past-you would have laughed in your face. Nonetheless, here you are, and you’re not complaining at all.
As happy as you are to hold them like this, however, you feel the strain in your arm from holding it in the same position for so long. You pull your other hand away, wincing as you watch them deflate just slightly in disappointment, but you know you’ll be back at it before long.
For a moment longer, you think of the best place to sit to keep holding them like this for as long as they want you to. You then slowly lift your hand, smiling as you see that they don’t move at all, there’s no reaction to being picked up. They’re already cozy, and you know that they trust that you won’t drop them.
You make your way towards a lounge chair, making sure you keep your hand as still as possible to keep your tiny friend feeling safe to stay as they are. Approaching the chair, you slowly lower yourself down into it, bringing your hand close to you to watch them. They haven’t moved at all, and now you can ensure your arm is in as comfortable of a position as it can be for the duration of their stay in your hand, however long that may be.
Knowing now that not only are you holding them, but you now have them closer to you, relaxes you immensely. You don’t have to worry about anything as long as you’ve got them, you just need to make sure they’re comfortable and happy. Your breathing is even as you settle in, and you reach your other hand back over toward them to continue stroking them as you had been before.
You know that you’re a comforting presence for them as well, and that holding them like this gives them a feeling of security, of safety and reassurance. You will always be here if they need you for anything. Whether it’s to seek you out after a nightmare, or to simply be held and stroked exactly like this, you have no problem being that source of comfort for them.
You lean back and close your eyes, focusing on their minuscule weight in your palm, and their soft breaths on your skin indicating that they’ve dozed off. Every now and then they shift, and you feel like you can see their smile growing wider as they do.
They’re so small, but that doesn’t matter. They mean so much to you, and right now, as they doze and occasionally shift ever so slightly, you feel like you have your entire world in your hands, and you couldn’t be happier.
