#halothepygmy

The rest of the portraits completed in tonight’s stream!

It was really fun designing each character and coming up with individual outfits that could accommodate the various personalities as well as the injuries so many of the current Residents have. Halo here was especially hard to puzzle out, since his heatstroke and asphalt burns really ate up his skin and I had to look up reference images. Sad, sad scorched snakes.

Anyway, if I have time tomorrow after all my running around, I’m going to see if I can pull together another stream to finish drawing Princess, Bat, Moon and Pocket. And if not tomorrow, Tuesday is worth another go.

“Mm?”

Cell looked up at hearing the door open, and smiled at seeing the stuttering wolf-skeleton.

“Hey Zeda! Nice to see you again!”

They stepped from behind the front desk as Zeda spoke, and they gave a soft ‘ah’ of realization.

Oh geeze, that sounds like pretty severe heat stroke. I can provide emergency first aid, but I’ll have to contact @vex-bittys for proper care, they’ve got a better equipped facility for this.

Thank you for getting this little guy to help so quickly, the Crew and I will take it from here.

- - -

“-and he’s still trying to do that circling thing, I think he’s trying to keep moving to get some breeze going and he’s too disoriented to really listen to me-”

Cell talked rapid fire on their cellphone, moving quickly around their kitchen as they prepped a large tupperware to help the overheated Pygmy cool down. Thankfully, it had only taken two quick web searches to find the information they needed, and the tupperware was soon lined with a large damp dishtowel with ice cubes tucked into the folds to keep it cool. They had also emptied a plant mister, refilling it with room temperature water, and found a small desk fan they never really used anymore.

It was unsettling to scoop up such a squirmy little lamia and feel those usually slightly cool scales almost sort of toasty. He’d definitely scorched his belly scales on the hot asphalt and once he calmed down a bit, Cell was going to see if Halim might be able to take a moment to do some minor healing to help deal with the pain, but for right now, Halo the Pygmy was going into the tupperware to cool down to a safer internal temperature.

Halo continued to slither in lopsided circles for several moments, eyelights looking fuzzy and dazed as he babbled nonsense, but as Cell watched anxiously, he started to slow down until he finally came to a wobbly stop. A soft sort of cooing, hissing noise, and the Pygmy slumped down onto the cool damp towel, tiny hands kneading the terry cloth as he sprawled out as much as he could atop the material slowly sapping heat from his body.

“…sssssfeeeelsssgooood…”

Halo has now been added to Residents.

Per-Cell-Nel >[Omigosh, hey Zeda!! Long time so see!]

>[I'm so glad you're still around, it looks like a lot of folks have moved on in my absence, so it's really nice to see fellow bitty lovers are still floating around being awesome.]

>[It sounds like Halo is doing downright amazing with you and your crew, even with the unfortunate developments. Memory problems aren't fun, but there's a lot of options for helping to work around them.]

>[Burgh has got be one heck of an awesome friend, stepping up like that. If either of you ever end up in a situation that needs a little more training or experience, feel free to contact me at any time.]

>[I don't know if I mentioned at all, but me and the Crew have all been working hard to get our certifications up to date, and we've actually started working on disability aids for bitties! Halim teamed up with some monster scientists and a local MakerSpace to develop prosthetics, and Code has been working on building basically a bitty-sized tablet computer for speech impairments!]

>[I'm so proud of them I could just explode! Key tells me that my SOUL has been doing firework magic bursts whenever I get excited like this, so that could very well be literal, haha.]

>[Anyway, enough of me babbling. Do come by some time when you get a chance, I for one would be overjoyed to be able to catch up in person.]

Halo is doing marvelous, thank you!

Most of the worst of his burns have healed to the point where he can safely be mobile, and now we’re just working to help him grow in some new scales to protect the raw spots. It’s slower going than originally anticipated, we’re having to balance his medical care so the magical aspects don’t overwhelm the physical and make the scales brittle, but he’s a lot happier now that he’s not entirely confined to the medbay.

There are indeed risks of brain damage with heat stroke, but at this time, we can’t tell for certain if Halo is actually suffering such damage. Disorientation and babbling are pretty common symptoms of heat stroke, but much like someone suffering insomnia can waver in and out of coherency without actually coming to harm, they aren’t very good markers for diagnosing brain damage.

Once he’s cooled down some more, Ed and I are going to take Halo over to @vex-bittys to borrow some equipment and get him scanned so we can be sure, since Halim is still working hard on treating our miracle lamias and Spike.