Annie's Nest

Grace decided to have a type of field day with his students and explains the two games to them. They tell him they already know how to play, since they have basically the same games on Erid. They choose to play tag first per flip of coin. Grace is “it”, and the pebbles immediately start going in all different directions. They are fast in the beginning, but it doesn’t take long for them to lose stamina and slow down. Grace easily catches up to the slow students and chase after them until they practically collapse. They are a bit terrified by his stamina. The pebbles who are it, however, find it almost impossible to get Grace. How is he able to be so fast for so long? They give up on him after a while and go after the other Eridians instead. Grace notices that the pebbles play tag a lot slower than children on Earth do in order to keep their energy. How intriguing!

Next is hide-n-seek. Grace is “it” again, per the pebbles’ request. They are playing in a very rocky area in the biodome. He counts to 20 and opens his eyes. Grace looks around and sees about three students immediately, but only because they are wearing the clear xenonite suits. They are perched up against the rock formations, almost perfectly laying themselves over them in a way that they become part of the rocks. If they didn’t have the suits on, Grace doubts he could’ve found them as easily. It was a bit scary how well they blend in. Later on in the game, he finds all the pebbles, but not without extreme struggle. God, they are pros at hiding effortlessly! Grace now gets to hide, and he is found immediately. He guessed as much, but it was as fun to try.

Grace goes home after their field day and yaps to Rocky about all his observations on the persistence hunter humans and ambush predator Eridians. Rocky tells him that as Eridians get older and larger, they can barely play tag anymore. Also, it is so hard to find pebbles during hide-n-seek that there have been occasionally been children who just get forgotten. Eridian echolocation(?) doesn’t pick the hiders up, and instead “sees” them as part of the rocks. Their hard carapace blocks any sound of their insides.

They also happen to be Grace's assigned therapist

Imagine, after decades of your world becoming colder and colder, you are saved. A single Eridian, the only one of twenty three to survive, arrives in an alien ship, accompanied by a creature you can barely conceive.

Everything about the alien is so loud, hinges formed from tissue thumping and stretching in constant movement, even while unconscious. Completely organic, reliant of oxygen and hydrogen. Instead of a protective carapace, it regrows its damaged tissues. It has senses you do not, and technology so unlike your own, both able to utilise a force you have never heard of. The same force that killed almost your entire mission team. Highly adaptable, able to teach itself how to fly its ship in under a week, able to become fluent in the engineer's dialect in less than four years.

And if Erid's best engineer is correct (and there's no reason it wouldn't be), this creature not only managed to breed a predator of the warmth-taker to survive in various atmospheres, including Threeworld's, but also turned around to provide aid when it discovered that the predator could escape xenonite.

And you think: Surely, this creature which protects itself without a carapace, which sleeps so lightly and knows so much and learns so quickly, which saved two planets at the cost of ever returning to its thrum, surely, a creature so extraordinary must have a name to match

And you think: Perhaps it is strength, Mountain-Base or Lonsdaleite-Carapace. Perhaps it is intellect, Diamond-Claw or Lockpick-Mind. Perhaps it is courage, Song-Through-Silence or Path-Carver

And you think: None of these names hold the true weight of what this creature is to them. How do you describe something like that, which aids without expectation of anything in return, which risks its own life for the sake of a species it cannot touch, which performs miracles simply because it was asked.

Was inspired by the wonderful post by @hailed-marys so me and @sam-i-am-27 got possessed by the demons and came out with this. (NEXT)

HC list under the cut

Guards! Put the blond man in spandex in situations!

- Eridian scientists and doctors doing their best to help him when they first get to Erid. A few weeks in, he's in and out of consciousness but doing better, a doctor (in a xenosuit obviously) comes in to check on him, sees he's asleep, so goes to examine him closely, because, you know, alien. Grace, who was only dozing, jerks away so fast it gives poor Dr Limestone a heart attack.

I took inspiration from this post

Bonus photo under the cut

"How do you say goodbye back home?" "We don't. We do this."

Trying to make grace jealous but it backfires

(designs from my swap au lmao)

he just needs some time to adjust LAKSDJKLADJ

And Grace is so excited to show his best friend how colorful the universe is! Look, Rocky, this is the ocean you made for me, isn't it beautiful? Look at the colors of the sky you made for me and the sand you made for me-- I'll show you pictures of trees so you can see how green they are. And you have a bit of green on your body, too, right here-- Look at yourself in this mirror! Look, it's you! I have to show you how the stars looks like, how Erid looks like-- If we go up there again I could show you how we can see Tau Ceti all the way from here. Can you believe it? We can see the place where we met all the way from here!