In the long-read about Esmeralda in the modern-AU I mentioned Djali in passing. Well, here she is, in all her glory.
Actually, not all of it – most of Djali’s glory is destruction. She’s a goat, after all, which means that she’s a menace to society. But for Esmeralda she’s the bestest girl ever and the loveliest companion of all.
Two more sketches and some info under the cut
Djali lives with Esmeralda in the slums that house the Court of Miracles. She grazes on the neighborhood weeds (not out of hunger – she’s provided food, but a goat is still a goat and can’t be kept indoors the whole day!), wrecks a little havoc now and then and is often found on roofs or somewhere else where she was NOT invited. When Esmeralda is around, Djali follows her. The pair have a very tight bond and one can often be found by locating the other.
As it supposed to be with accordance to the law, Djali has proper ear tags. Bu-u-u-ut they are not exactly her ear tags: if someone should check, they would find… actually, hard to tell what exactly, but they wouldn’t find information on Djali, that’s for sure.
That’s because Djali isn’t registered properly, or at all.
She was stolen as a yeanling without a tag from abattoir by a member of the Court if Miracles who worked there. The intention was to raise her for half a year and then eat, finally have some good meat. But for a day adorable little creature was handed to a 12-year-old Esmeralda, with instructions to watch over it and feed it and without any information about its future fate.
Really nobody should’ve been surprised when by the end of day it was HER goat with a NAME who couldn’t be eaten anymore because ‘she’s my friend!’
So she later received some ear tags from a slaughtered goat, while Esmeralda took it upon herself to raise Djali and even teach her some tricks (since Esme herself can outstubborn even the goat, training was surprisingly successful). This not-quite-legal goat hasn’t gotten her in trouble just because none of the social workers had bothered to make it their problem. The slums where Esme lives have, in their opinion, way more bothering things to worry about. The goat is already there, it has ear tags, nobody complains about it and therefore the potential can of worms of ‘where did this animal come from?!’ is NOT worth opening. Not for their salary anyway.
From time to time Djali appears in Esmeralda’s tiktoks – with stickers plastered over the numbers on her ear tags for safety. Those appearances bring about like 80% of revenue from her channel, taking it from ‘basically nothing’ to ‘decent’. And, unfortunately, those videos with Djali are exactly the reason Phoebus got a way to contact her.
Esmeralda is very careful not to put her personal information online, but for those who already know her face (ahem-ahem Phoebus ahem-ahem Claude) it’s not really a barrier, is it?
But that’s a story for another time
