I don’t know from actual full stories but here’s some brief bits about fuckers Settling, because the brain can’t decide. Mostly the Plumber Brats, but also I put Rook and Anan in here because I had thoughts.
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Pierce & Gemma- “The day their grandpair declared them responsible enough to watch the shop while they went down the street to grab lunch Gemma made herself into a perentie, curled beside the counter ‘to ward off robbers’. Whether it would have worked, a thirty-pound lizard and a particularly small twelve-year-old scaring off anything, nobody would ever know, but it must have been a good shape for something because she kept it.”
Alan & Monarch- “When people hear ‘we got arrested the day we Settled’ they tend to assume that the two occasions were concurrent. Certainly arrest was worth Settling over, especially when it involved getting hit with a car, or at least the fighting and running and taking out a secret alien weather control machine that followed should have been more than just cause for a dramatic Settling. But no, no they didn’t Settle until later that night. Halfway home Monarch had stopped on the side of the road, heaved a sigh like she was dropping the weight of the world, and shrunk from a great moose to a large goat. And that had been the end of that.”
Manny & Teresa- “Until the day they died Manny and Tere would puff out their chests and crow to the sun and moon about how they brute forced Settling. Word had come in that yet another of their cousins back on Khoros had managed it, and being the last of their age group in the family to do so just could not be allowed. So, they’d sat down, picked a shape, and stuck with it until they Settled. The fact they’d been going for a caiman like their grandpair and ended up a baboon somehow never managed to come up.”
Cooper & Raelene- “There were a lot of false starts with Rae. She was known for her lazy nature, taking the rest Cooper couldn’t seem to truly allow himself, loathe to do anymore than she had to, and this had always extended to changing her shape as well. She’d spent three months as a horseshoe bat when they were six, panicked all the adults in their life, only to decide she actually didn’t like being a bat and spend the next four days as a mydas fly. The trend continued like that for the majority of their childhood, with her shifting everywhere from once every few days to once every few months. So, when after nearly five weeks as a wombat she stood up, made some minor adjustments to the shape, circled once, and laid back down on her cushion with a ‘this one’, Cooper felt he could be forgiven for not noticing until she’d said it thrice.”
Rook & Anan- “On the eave of their eleventh birthday Blonko and Anan- then still nameless- had vowed to go off into the wilderness and stay there until they Settled. That ‘going into the wilderness’ in this case meant pitching a tent on top of the cliff overlooking the far field, and that their parents came out daily with warm meals for them and to drop off their baby siblings to be babysat didn’t enter into the matter. It was during one of these sessions that the little shifting bundle that would one day be Salim catapulted herself onto his head, crowing for play in tune with her other half. They were still too young yet to know better, and Anan shifted into one of the livestock guards as she plucked her away, Blonko pulling their brother into his lap, both chuckling in fond amusement.
The celebratory dinner that was waiting at home that evening would be sweet.”
Elena & Celio- “The day Celio Settled was one of those ones that make you worry you’ve been stuck in some dreamscape to hide the apocalypse. Their parents had made their favorite breakfasts, their geography teacher’s baby had come a week early so that day’s test was cancelled, they were- again- serving their favorite at lunch, and the soccer game they’d had after school had been a six-to-one victory. Anything else amazing would have been easy to lose in the crowd, but there was nothing that could’ve drowned out Celio’s quiet voice in Elena’s ear, full of the excited vibrating he was too small to manage properly as he realized he couldn’t change, that this was it, they were Settled-
For the first and only time since he’d started being bugs, she was happy she couldn’t hug him.”
Mike & Ruth- “They’d expected, hoped for, something different. Something showy, or grand, or at least a good story. Instead they got to be curled up on their bed reading together when Ruth ruffled her feathers, going from reds and purples to a drab olive green as they settled back in, and declared this It. Neither was the type to whoop or holler, instead they’d headed right to the computer and started trying to figure out which of the five million green parrot species they were. Just one out a crowd... Still, drab and unremarkable she may have looked, the shape at least felt right. Even as they read about the claims of kea eating sheep alive and Mike’s teeth grated together. As a quick check proved the half of their parents who were ever home still gave no shits and Ruth trilled in the most enraged of ways. The shape felt right, being a kea felt right. No matter what they had going on, or what anyone thought.
They told Elena, Celio, and their siring-pairs, and to hell with everyone else.”
Helen & Bradach- “Their first and for a good long time only trip out on a boat was absolutely miserable. It’d been a small fishing boat belonging to a friend of their grandpair’s, and the owners had offered to take them, Pierce, and Gemma out for the day alongside their own grandchildren. The whole time the boat had rocked and swayed with the waves in a way wholly unnatural to Kinecelerans and the second time Helen threw up over the side- to Gemma’s quips about ‘the worst way to attract fish’- everyone had agreed to just head back in and spend the day doing something else. That, the moment they got back onto dry land, was the moment Bradach Settled, dropping onto the dirt, nestling in, and swearing he would never leave it again. There’d been laughing and teasing, followed by congratulations from pretty much everyone in the vicinity when they all realized what had just happened.
The boat was miserable, but Settling? Plus getting a whole ice cream cake before being dropped off back their grandpairs? Totally worth it.”
