none happiness with left grief

The Mallow Fairy, 1934 and The Harebell Fairy, 1925

The Rose Fairy and the Forget Me Not fairy, 1925

1926

The Snowdrop Fairy and the Blackthorn Fairy 1925

1944

1944

1944

The Willow Fairy and the Laburnum Fairy, 1940

The Silver Birch Fairy and the Almond Blossom Fairy, 1940

The Guelder Rose Fairies (1940) and The Greater Celandine Fairy (1948)

Simon is a killer, he's killed as a child soldier with Eden and he was killing members of the C.O.I. up until he was 17 (I think Simon was 33 when he was in the Lung because Mark was 33 at time of filming and there were 16 years of prison in the game). A soldier doesn't get a title because he kills, that would be like naming a dog "Dog" because of it's shape. He became a specialist. He was more than just a killer. He was feeding The Last Tree the bodies of those he killed which means he was not only killing but preparing the bodies.

Just imagine, this traumatized teenager, taking the bodies of adults that he's killed and pulling them, their dead weight, onto a table where he guts and cleans them, looks for parts that can be reused (resources are lacking, how many times has this fake tooth been reused? Are there organs that could be transplanted? Are there prosthetic limbs that can be reappropriated? Any tech? How about blood or skin?), cuts the pieces down, mulches muscles, grinds down bone, mixes it with soil and compost before bringing it to the tree. Some bodies are whole but those had to be special people, those closest to The Father and the higher order of caretakers. I like to believe that, if Simon's Mother was with him on Eden, he wrapped her body in the holy cloth and placed her in the tree's roots himself, only to not be able to say the prayer as he was meant to due to the grief stealing his voice.

But Butchers don't just kill in war, it's a completely different skill set. He slaughtered prey animals for their meat, meaning the sick and frail, the ones who caused too many problems and brought too little to Eden. Simon would be given the names, maybe the room numbers, of the people that The Father chose to be culled. People knew him and feared him, in Eden, because he would kill in their homes and sometimes it was just because they pissed The Father off.

Thank about it. Rocky's a spitfire and bounces off the walls at baseline and they looked at that little autistic, bossy ball of energy and went 'yes. that's them. the creature I want to spend the next 500+ years with'. They have to at LEAST match their energy somewhat. And if you think you wouldn't be a fucking ball of PTSD and bitterness at your culture and society after fifty plus years of not knowing they were alive or dead, you're fucking operating on moon logic. Honestly, Adrian and the other families were probably begging for a rescue mission that never happened for various political and logical reasons; and while it probably would have ended in mass fatalities as well, so thank goodness that figurative and literal ship never got off the ground, the fact that it didn't happen probably burns more than a little, reasonable or unreasonable.

So one day Adrian gets some Eridian diplomat on their doorstep, and they're expecting the formal condolences at long last, but instead they go into this whole spiel of ' so. So! Turns out twenty two of the original crew died, but your mate survived! When did they die? Oh, early on, so your mate was submerged in crippling and literal deafening loneliness for over four decades; and now he's back and acting weird, and he's become codependent with this weird fragile squishy human being that's the only reason he came back at all, and he's refusing to send down the cure unless we make the blob an aquarium. Could you come to the space elevator and tell him to stop being so unreasonable?' If that were MY mate? I'd fucking lose it.

Just throwing things at this poor messenger and shrieking like " Oh! Oh!! So it's somehow Rocky's fault that you're refusing to take a few months out of the several hundred Eridian years we have left to ship the cure we already have to Threeworld before things actually become problematic to make sure one of the two saviors of our entire species doesn't die?! To give the sole survivor of the mission--my mate, who's been alone and in silence, with no one to watch him sleep, for hundreds of years--some sort of solace and peace?! And you're wondering why he's acting erratically?! Maybe you wouldn't be in this position at all if you'd sent the rescue mission for which we've pleaded for years at every single thrum! I don't care if this Grace thing is a literal giant space amoeba; get the fuck out of my house and tell the powers that be to give it literally everything it wants and needs!" And they're all 'be reasonable' and Adrian's like " I've been reasonable for hundreds of Eridian years, and you would not be in this situation if you'd actually sent a rescue mission and not simply wrung your claws and hoped for the best, so fucking live in the nest you made. All I'm going to do if you get me on the radio with Rocky right now is tell him he's doing amazing and give him advice on how to properly parboil the Taumoeba so that you can't even recover even the slightest scrap of DNA if you don't give the flesh blob that saved his life and saved OUR lives PLURAL goddamn vitamins." Like, they think it's bad that Rocky basically stands over Grace's sleeping body and hisses? Wait until they get the MUCH LARGER ERIDIAN doing that for Grace and Rocky. Wait until the much large Eridian leads the families of the dead twenty-two crewmates to the space elevator to riot because this sure sounds like a coverup to them!! This sure sounds like the deflection of blame on the sole survivor!! This sure sounds like the same paralysis that left them to die alone in space because you didn't want to admit failure!! Yes, I know, I'm weaving some sort of political intrigue plot that probably doesn't exist in canon. All I'm saying is that you all are missing the delicious implications of a mission that went radio silent for fifty plus earth years with no word from the government and no obvious attempt at rescue, followed by your partner coming home with the only being that's been around to watch him sleep since the rest of the crew died forty-some years ago, and people are calling him weird and changed. You'd be horrified. You'd be sick.

Just because I am unemployed and low on cash doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun with it!!!

Even if you would not like a drawing yourself, sharing is very appreciated :3