Gladio: No, but seriously. I can’t focus lately.
Ignis: Is anything the matter?
Gladio: It’s you.
Ignis: Not again.
Gladio: When I’m with you I can’t think straight.
Ignis: Omfg, Gladio, I really don’t have time for this.
Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7
Another opening of an unfinished story for 1M Words Week! This one I had ENTIRELY forgotten I’d come up with until I found it in my files last week. Not sure if this particular iteration of the story will go anywhere, but I love the premise. It’s a bit of a twist on the normal daemon rules, as you’ll notice.
Connor always feels guilty when he makes Escal change forms. She used to do it all the time when he was younger, of course—she barely went an hour in the same form, and when she watched his hockey games she would take a new form every few seconds, snake bear to mouse to wolf as Connor got the puck and lost it and ducked and wove through opposing players. Then he turned twelve and she started shifting less and less often, until finally he woke up five days in a row with a songbird perched on his pillow next to him.
He didn’t expect the songbird, particularly. Birds were supposed to be cool—everyone agreed that an eagle was a super awesome daemon, all broad wings and curved beak and sharp talons—but Connor didn’t think a sparrow really fell into the same category.
It felt right, though. It made him feel light, when she took off—like there was something buoyant in his chest that nobody could see. He needed that, sometimes. Needs it.
“Probably just means you’re flighty,” Dylan says at one point when they’re lying in his bedroom in his billet home, Escal perched on Arolin’s back and grooming his fur.
Connor snorts. “Yeah? What does that make you?”
“A dog-like servant of authority, obviously,” Dylan says, and Arolin barks at him, a short, sharp sound. He runs a hand over her russet fur in apology.
It’s easier for Dylan and Arolin at team events, Connor knows. Arolin says it’s the fur: otter fur is shorter and a different texture than her usual, but it’s still fur. And otters are smaller than Irish Setters, but not by that much, and she still has four legs and a tail and all her normal body parts.
Connor and Escal don’t need to talk about what makes sparrows and otters so different. It’s obvious every time she shifts and he feels the otter’s heaviness settle into his bones. It’s like there’s something tugging him, a weight draped across his shoulders that isn’t usually there. It messes him up on the ice for the first few games, until he gets used to it.
“It’s not that bad,” Escal says at a team banquet in their first year with the Otters. It’s the first time she’s had to take the form for more than twenty or thirty minutes at a time, and she’s been scratching at her fur for the last hour. “You have to wear a suit.”
“Yeah,” Connor says, even though he knows it’s not the same. But there’s nothing either of them can do about it, so they might as well pretend.
Her foot inches back up to her haunches, scratching. Connor slides his hand into her fur to soothe the spot.
***
They start practicing the other mascots a couple of months before the draft lottery. It’s pretty obvious what teams are going to be in contention for the first spot, and it’s been obvious to everyone for months—no point in denying it—that Connor’s going to go first. But he practices all the mascots anyway. It would be so embarrassing to go up on that stage and not have his daemon be able to shift correctly.
It’s not hard to get the right general animal type. Escal doesn’t shift a lot these days, but most of these are animals she’s done at some point: bear, lion, duck. The penguin is funny: Escal waddles around for five minutes before she stops laughing.
“I wouldn’t mind that one,” she says. “Ridiculous bird, but it feels a little bit the same, you know?”
“Your bill is the wrong shape,” Connor says, and she uses it to bite at him a little.
That’s the tough part: these teams always have a specific look they’re going for with the daemons. The Bruins, for example—on the rare occasions Escal’s been a bear, she’s been a black bear. Getting her into a grizzly form takes the better part of an afternoon, and she hates it when she gets there, sulking hulkily in the corner and picking her teeth with her claws. Connor kind of feels like he’s hanging out with the monster under his bed.
The cats are the worst, though. “I feel like I should be hunting myself,” Escal says when she’s trying out the panther. The fur over her shoulders ripples.
“Think of it like Halloween,” Connor says. “Being something totally opposite.” But they’re both uncomfortable until she turns back.
The Preds’ cat is the hardest. “I can’t,” Escal says after the fifth time she tries to turn into a saber-tooth and ends up as a house cat. “It just doesn’t feel real.”
“Well, it’s not anymore,” Connor says. But a whole team of guys manage to do it multiple times a week, and they eventually do too: Escal stalking around the bedroom like an illustration in a natural history museum and turning back as soon as she feels like it’s solid.
It’s a tiring few weeks. Connor always comes away from their practice sessions drained and itchy, like he’s wearing the wrong skin, and Escal is worse. She takes off flying for longer than she ever does normally and then sits on his shoulder and preens her feathers for the rest of the night.
By unspoken agreement they leave the Red Wings for last. Escal sits on his hand, and Connor barely feels anything when she shifts from a sparrow to a cardinal. It’s still wrong—sparrows and cardinals are very different birds—but it’s like looking at himself in the mirror with a different haircut, rather than looking at a picture of a stranger. This one actually is the equivalent of wearing a suit.
“They’re not in the bottom eight, though,” she says after she spends two hours as a cardinal and turns back without either of them being bothered.
“You never know what will happen,” Connor says, and then he feels bad about it, like maybe she’ll think he’s lying to himself about how likely it is.
The thing is, this is his dream, not hers. Connor knows that’s how it works: humans live their lives, and their daemons are part of that, but humans call the shots, really. It’s not like daemons are off pursuing independent careers. But most people don’t pick careers that ask their daemons to make this kind of sacrifice.
Escal rubs her head against his ear, feathers tickling. “It’s just like training,” she says. “This is my kind of training.”
He runs a finger along her wing. It’s all the response he can make.
These don’t actually work particularly well for RoL because the preponderance of police characters means you get a lot of “lawful” types, and there really aren’t that many you can chuck in the “evil” basket either - the series is a little more nuanced than that. But while we’re here:
Lawful Good - Peter, Nightingale, most of the police major characters (Seawoll, Stephanopoulos, Guleed, Jaget, Reynolds, Dominic). You could quibble about Peter because he doesn’t believe that rules are more important than people, but he does believe in laws to protect people, so I think it’s a toss-up. Peter’s mum. Dr Walid.
Neutral Good - Beverley, Abigail.
Chaotic Good - Zach. Peter’s dad.
Lawful Neutral - Lesley, Lady Ty, Oberon. Probably Mama and Father Thames.
Neutral - Varvara is somewhere between here and Neutral Evil. I’m tempted to put Molly here but mostly I don’t think we have enough information to make that call. Most of the Rivers (up and downstream), although varying to both sides.
Chaotic Neutral - Hmmm. Maybe Simone and her sisters?
Lawful Evil - Gosh. Maybe Richard Folsom? I don’t think any major characters fall into this category. Unless Ty turns out to be a villain as well as an antagonist, but my money isn’t on that.
Neutral Evil - The Faceless Man; he’s orderly but he doesn’t think the laws apply to him. Henry Pyke.
Chaotic Evil - Punch; maybe the fae from Foxglove Summer? But I suspect they’re operating under a different set of rules (more Blue and Orange Morality.)
If anyone has strong opinions on characters I left out or wants to make an argument for digging some people out of that ridiculously large Lawful Good pile, please suggest away!
