Son of a fish

like some hunter dude goes into the city and is like

hunter: hello king gilgamesh. I have a problem. there’s this super hot and muscular feral man in the woods and he is Getting In The Way of my whole hunting gig since he is protecting the deer and spooking me

gilgamesh: huh! neat! you should ask this super hot priestess shamhat to help I bet she could pspsps him out of the woods ;)

hunter: …

gilgamesh: with sex, I mean

hunter: no, uh, that was clear. thanks.

and clearly shamhat was like “sure, why not. road trip (:”

please know that I am picturing “brought him down” like she fuckin. grabbed Enkidu by the antlers and wrestled him to the ground btw. shamhat has the body of a WWE wrestler to ME

anyway so she and Enkidu have marathon sex for “six days and seven nights”

and after this marathon sex she’s just like. hmm. what if I, shamhat, was the ultimate wingman ✨

shamhat: hey you’re super hot and muscular. so I know this other super strong guy -

enkidu: for me to punch ? (:

shamhat: … not quite! though if you wanted to wrestle him I think he’d be into it

enkidu: ?????

shamhat: aww. you will learn. please let me take you to the city and introduce you to a hot guy who you are the dream guy of (literally) ;)

and this is why when enkidu is having his breakdown about impending death and cursing everyone involved in taking him from the woods, even shamash the sun god was like “woah bro, why would you curse shamhat??? she literally wingmanned for you and introduced you to gilgamesh ???

and enkidu was like. shit. you’re right. actually shamhat deserves all the nice things. bless her. @ shamhat I hope everyone forever thinks you’re so hot they’re throwing themselves at you or at least throwing gold and jewelry at you 💕

Wanted to draw a book Rocky myself.

Obviously, the goal of this experiment is to grow the lobsters until they’re big enough to settle to the seabed and then release them, because they have a much higher likelihood of surviving to adulthood when they’re able to hide. Ideally, captive lobster hatcheries can boost the wild population and keep things stable, so we don’t have a major crash in a decade or two.

The first year we tried this was pretty bad. We had a lot of eggs, but very few babies. It turned out that the CO2 levels in the building spiked as more guests visited throughout the summer, and that settled into the water and threw off the pH and caused a chemical reaction that prevented a lot of the eggs from hatching. I think we ended up releasing three baby lobsters (which is still better than their wild survival rate but not great).

The second year was a little better. We added a de-gasser to the aquarium and got a ton of larval lobsters, but right as they were settling to the bottom we had a disease outbreak that killed most of them. We ended up releasing four babies at the end of the season.

But this year? Oh boy. We have so many lobsters that we had to release the first round early (usually we wait till September or October so guests can see them). We just released a total of FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE baby lobsters, and we still have over a hundred who haven’t settled to the bottom yet. I genuinely don’t even have words to explain how cool this is. OVER FIVE HUNDRED. We just added hundreds of lobsters to the wild population that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

Immediately thought of them

--

I looked at the readout for my latest blood test and sighed.

"New problem, question?" Rocky asked. We were about ninety days out from 40-Eridani's heliopause, and it seemed like new nutritional problems were popping up every day. Probably from me mixing more taumoeba into the coma slurry to make it last longer.

"Yes," I said. "Apparently I'm becoming anemic."

"New word, question?"

"Anemic. Means my body isn't getting enough iron."

"♪♫♪♩♩♬!" he said, his carapace shooting up. "I fix!" He scampered off down toward the dormitory.

I stared at where he disappeared into the floor. That... sounded a lot like him giving me his word for "anemic". But that couldn't be it. We haven't discovered any overlap of nutritional needs of humans and Eridians, besides a base need for glucose and proteins. And what did he mean by "I fix"?

In retrospect, I really should have seen what was about to happen. However, the brain fog from my various nutritional deficiencies was really starting to settle in, so I just continued to stare in confusion.

I was startled out of it by Rocky yelling. "Grace! Come to airlock! Grace!"

He continued to call my name and pester me even as I moved toward the ladder, and I know he can see me moving. "Alright, alright! I'm coming!"

As I got down the ladder, Rocky became even more frantic, tapping on his side of the airlock. Inside was what looked like some sort of pouch. "Take, take!"

"It has to cool down first!"

"Is cold. You take!"

How long was I staring at the wall, that whatever it was had already cooled nearly two hundred degrees? "Alright, I take!"

I took the pouch from the airlock, and opened it. Inside was a bunch of... metal chips? Each one was about the size of the tip of my pinkie finger. "Rocky, what is this?"

He tilted his carapace in a way I've come to recognize as pride. "Is Eridian supplement. Cannot make you vitamins on Hail Mary, but have iron. Eat, before react with oxygen in you air!"

It took a second before things clicked into place. "Wh- Oxidation doesn't happen that quickly-" I shook my head, dislodging the errant thought. "Rocky, I can't eat this."

"Why not, question? Does not have thallium, or mercury, or any other 'heavy metals'," — yes, he did the air quotes, with three hands — "is just iron."

"Just because it won't poison me, doesn't mean my body can use it. It needs to be in... certain salts... I think." That sounded right, but information recall was becoming extremely difficult these days. I picked up one of the chips; it's very thin. "I might even have to worry about this cutting up my intestines..."

Rocky was uncharacteristically silent for a moment, so I looked back up at him. He was staring at me (don't ask how I know he was staring, I just do) in disbelief. Then he threw up two arms in exasperation. "Human body useless!"