Take this low quality doodle I cleaned all day but I still wanted to draw

Bonus

-Names all have a base, but how they are said varies by context and person. One Eridian might refer to Rocky as 'Rocky-engineer-mated,' while Adrian refers to him as 'Rocky-mate'. This often shortened for quick communication, but mates usually refer to one another with the '-mated' modifier like a pet name.

-Baby Eridians/pebbles struggle with spatial orientation and proprioception develops before their their ability to truly process allothetic cues from hearing. They utilize idiothetic navigational cues as their cognitive map of a space grows and they're able to navigate easier—it's common for pebbles to be at home for the first few years of life as they hone this skill. Lots of bumping into things and distress if a parent isn't within reach!

-^ Some Eridians never fully develop this skill from either neglect, illness, or birth defect, leading to disability. These Eridians have specially fitted "shoes" or xenonite jewelry on their feet that help create a larger contact area with the ground. They often prioritize a modified tripod gait (aka three legs on the ground at all times) and extend at least one arm forward to act as collision detection. They may prefer to be in close physical contact with other Eridians to feel oriented, but they're otherwise adaptable and can live alone.

-When one half of a mated couple/part of a mated group dies of old age, their mate(s) may increase time between meals to slow their metabolism. Eventually, they are able to slow themselves down to the point where stasis after opening their orifice is final. They enter final-stasis next to their mate and watch the other sleep forever before their bodies are taken to a burial site. This isn't seen as suicide in Eridian culture, but instead a high honor from living a long, happy life.

-^ Eridians usually bury one another at a place their family has used for generations. This site also used to to function as a place to bury eggs with the idea that the genes of parents would help strengthen genetic outcomes, but that's since become a myth. Those places now function as cemeteries with the sentiment of watching the other family members sleep. (Side note: this is why the incident with Blip-A and the Taumoeba-82.5 is particularly tragic—the 22 Eridians never got to come home and final-stasis with their families.)

-Jewelry has a function beyond aesthetic. The sound of certain xenonite necklaces acts like wind chimes and can signal things like friendship, proposal, promotion, or courtship-intent. Certain pieces that are worn for celebration and correlate with tones for festivals (think of wearing a bracelet that makes Christmas sounds).

i think the blanket of "childhood worker" works better for him! i think grace starts out just being a middle-big (a literal translation from eridani; it's their version of human 7th-9th grade) teacher. he does his science class and teaches them about things like relativity, color, etc. to share information between species.

but then grace settles into his life on erid. parents love him and going to the village where mr savior grace and his mates live is a field trip for many classes. he writes down his lesson plans and they're distributed to other teachers, but mr savior grace is an alien and his body makes weird sounds. if you're a ~70 year old eridian that shit is hilarious, okay? everyone is hyped for the field trip to learn about colors.

grace becomes eridian—even if he looks weird to their standards. he continues doing lessons on science, but those are slowly phased out as he becomes fluent in their language. he just incorporates his original lessons into a broader curriculum. his older students are there for a few hours for proper instruction before going home.

grace's younger students have developmental needs and it takes collaborating with other teachers to recognize developmental mile stones he needs to sponsor. when he's finally ready to be a proper eridian teacher he feels like he has an entire other degree.

hatchlings spend the most of their lives in small, confined spaces with a parent watching over them. they're soft and crack easily, and they need to develop their spatial orientation. their ability to map spaces grows and they branch out more and more. sentient, vibrating meatballs that roll around and are bad at being alive <3 they usually spend all of this time with a parent or family member.

eventually they're grown enough where they can actually go out safely and go to school. these classrooms usually have one teacher and are basically a rec center. the place to go if you need to learn numbers and how to not run into walls. pebble preschool if you will.

the next class up becomes grace's youngest. grace essentially has several layers of primary school (kindergarten-5th) in one room; imagine the chaos and needs of a 2nd grade classroom but if the kids has the calculation ability of a high school student. it's grace job to put core concepts in their still developing crystalline brain as they grow—things like how the ecosystem works, but also how to walk in a line, get along with others, and fine motor skills. getting them to be bilingual is another bonus for their brain development!

pebbles need a lot of energy to learn, so grace spends a lot of the day watching over them while they sleep. this a challenge when a lot of the pebbles have anxiety over being in stasis away from home or struggle to get themselves into stasis to begin with. rocky helps build a traditional rest area for pebble classrooms—a circular conversation pit with a cushion for grace in the middle where the human can watch over everyone. there's smaller dips within the rest area that pebbles can settle into and get cozy.

i am OBSESSED with neuroplasticity (or lack there of) of eridians (also epigenetics of eridian worker cells but that's a different post). it's hard to imagine how exactly their inorganic brains would work and form, but i like to imagine that concepts learned when the brain is still smaller helps establish larger association areas to begin with. eridians' perceived information is etched into their brain so they don't have synaptic pruning—there's no downsides to learning a lot all at once, but strengthening those pathways to create a strong base as their brain grows is always a good thing.

and there's the opportunities for things to go wrong with you have such a hardened structure. i already talked about rocky with the eridian version of ocd—worker cells stuck in a loop, trying to repair damage that doesn't exist. what about eridians who can't make as many connections or don't do it as quickly as they should? eridians with hyper-binding who don't connect the right things—they can think 5 things at once and things get crossed up. give me an eridian brain with hyperconnectivity who has incorrect reactions to things and links wrong concepts!!