The Changeling

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.

Maybe we'll find each other somewhere else?

And he always has his red watch and red lined converse !

Fated for the petrova like since the beginning

slow down for your disabled friends. thats like a bare minimum kindness that we shouldnt have to ask for. i love that youre so quirky and walking fast is a cool personality trait to you and all that but i bet you can count your physically disabled friends on less than one hand

rocky introducing grace and adrian ft the rygos tuxedo tshirt

i’m projecting my periods cramps onto them

But then one day, later on early in their time on Erid, Rocky and Adrain are watching over him while he sleeps, only for Grace to go ‘hello?’ And it startles him awake, and then for the rest of the day they are trying to convince him that no, Grace, you said hello and woke yourself up! Rocky and Adrian did not wake you!!