etc

yknow when you wake up in the middle of the night & anxiously check on the person next to you to make sure they didn't randomly die in their sleep

warning: blood, and Grace frying the ever-loving heck out of his arm

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a mission he doesn't remember volunteering for. Alone on a ship scaled far too large for a borrower, he has to try to figure out why he's so far from home, and what he's supposed to do. On top of that, he needs to figure out why this mission is so prepared to have a borrower on the crew--standing at only six inches tall, it's easy to think none of this was meant for him. And yet, everywhere he looks he finds evidence that whoever built this ship built it with both humans and borrowers in mind. An impossible task looms over him. A scientific mystery has somehow sent him hurtling through space, impossibly far from any other human or borrower, and it's on him to surpass an extinction-level threat that doesn't care how big someone is. It will end the world all the same if he doesn't do something about it. But, despite what he thinks, he's not alone.

Artwork by the incredible @hailed-marys! Go check them out for some artwork, or even just some fun blogging. Extremely grateful to them for this lovely work ❤️

Ohhhhh my gosh. I'm having about four million reactions at once and had to try to pin them down into words. Thank yoooou I'm so happy you're enjoying my story and I am SO grateful for this fanart omg 😭😭😭

Look at him! He's so not ready to meet Every World Leader but here he is, doing exactly that. Grace is having a time.

I'm gonna stare at this for the next five hours or so

But for a few years (cough, decades, cough), a baby pebble is about as hard as a soft-shelled turtle—or a normal turtle, if they're a bit older. Disadvantages aside, there is an advantage to being able to see your offspring's internal functions. And until their vocal bladders form and they're capable of making multiple complex sounds, being able to see what is hurting is absolutely helpful.

It's a universal experience among parents to lament the day they can no longer hear their pebbles' heartbeats.

That is to say, Rocky knows Grace is an adult, okay? He isn't someone who anthropomorphizes, and he isn't going to start now. Statement.

But when he first heard Grace in all his squishy glory— heart pumping away, lungs filling and deflating, organs digesting food— his brain went full baby-fever mode. Frankly, he was white-knuckling the urge to find the nearest hypothetical cave, bundle him up into a proper nest, and wait for his skin to absorb the surrounding minerals and start hardening properly.

But because Rocky is sensible and proper and not going to infantilize his best friend (he swears to God, stupid fucking instincts, shut the fuck up!!), he won't.

But sometimes the urge to squish his best friend is overwhelming. He just pinches at him through the permeable mesh of his ball. And Grace will screw up his face (so soft) and go what’s up bud? I piss you off or something? (He learns what bruises are and sulks for half a day afterward.)

All of that aside, once again, Rocky has gotten used to Grace's heartbeat, his clumsiness, and his one-tone voice. That's his best friend, and he's smart and just as capable as any other adult. He is also the cutest fucking thing to Eridian hearing. Is he also disconcertingly alien, definitely— His size, the limbs, the head protrusion (and other protrusions), the leakiness detracted maybe. But his cluster-sibling once cooed at and brought home a pet sulphur slug because, oh my spirits, hear his squishy respiratory system and you tell me that's not the cutest thing on the planet! It blurbles, Rocky! It fucking blurbles!

So, as Erid draws closer and Rocky/Grace become more excited and stressed. (The food has yet to run out, and as good as Erid is, they need substantial help from the human side to figure out how to make proper human nutrition. And finding the right informational packs in all of human knowledge is a very big undertaking.)

#TheirGoops