#serpentinegraphite

Terran is bisexual. He never really connected the dots until he left home, however. For ages, he’d had a crush on Gemma (or, rather, something he’d interpreted as a crush, much to the towns’ encouragement), but by the time he left for Heliodor he’d mostly grown out of it, and he views her now as more of a sister than anything else. (Gemma, meanwhile…) Terran had noticed the older men around town, though – there was an embarrassing period of his adolescence when he wanted nothing more to do than to hang around Cole’s dad – and he was fascinated by the handsome merchant hands and soldiers who’d sometimes stop into town, bearing tales of faraway places and derring-do. It didn’t actually occur to Terran that men could actually be with men, in that way, until he got out of Cobblestone.  That’s not to say Terran doesn’t appreciate the ladies. He does. He’s just realizing now that he also apparently appreciates the fellas as well.

Terran’s first male crush was… Sylvando. Yeah, I mean. C’mon. Sylvando is just so dashing and handsome and confident and that accent and those tight pants and that wink. He just seems to Know So Much and have Seen So Many Things and… I mean, how could a budding little disaster bisexual like Terran NOT fall in love with Sylv, at least for a hot minute? It didn’t last, of course. Pretty much by the time the Slayer reappeared, Terran was mostly over it. But Terran gets why Sylv always seems to leave broken hearts in his wake; and it’s not because Sylv is a cad, but because he is just so damn lovable. Terran also understands why the young men in Sylv’s parade flock to him like they do. Terran gets it, he respects it, and a not-so-insignificant part of him wishes he just could stay with the parade forever.

Terran can’t cook. He can grill, a little. And he can forage. But cook? Not so much. Veronica teases him about it; you’d think what with all the forging he does, he’d be able to slap some ingredients together to make a meal. But nope. He’s a disaster at the cookfire: He burns most things and undercooks everything else. Even Erik is a better cook than Terran.Much to his regret, Terran never learned how to make Amber’s stew. Serena tried to replicate it once, based on what Terran told her; but it just wasn’t the same.

Terran had a pet slime once. He hates fighting the wild ones. HATES it. Will go out of his way not to fight them, even the metal ones. He sort of justified it to himself on the Tor, that the slimes were acting strange and weren’t themselves; and he didn’t kill them, just knocked them out. But the first time a slime attacked him on the way to Heliodor, Terran cried himself to sleep that night. It was the first time he realized that no matter what happened in Heliodor, things could never really be the same for him again. After the world ends, he doesn’t cry when fighting the Malicious slimes, and he doesn’t hold back. But something inside of him twinges all the same.

Terran is actually a pretty good (partner) dancer. One night on the Salty Stallion, Rab and Sylvando get it into their heads to teach these wayward children how to dance. Rab pairs with Veronica, for height reasons. Serena pairs with Sylvando. And Jade, well, she can’t dance, because she’s seasick. So that leaves Erik and Terran to double up. It’s the first time Terran has ever even so much as held hands with a man, much less dance a romantic fandango. Terran will remember the moment for the rest of his life.

Terran loves to read. I mean, this one isn’t so much as headcanon as it is actual canon, but yeah, my boy’s a total bookworm. After all, there weren’t too many books in the ol’ Cobblestone library, such as it was (mostly it consisted of half a shelf of the priest’s bedroom, mostly with books on subsistence farming and local geology). So when he first arrives in Heliodor, the first place Terran stops – before he goes to visit the king, before he goes to the inn, before he even so much as grabs an afternoon snack – is a bookseller. He buys the first book he sees: a morally-corrupt, melodramatic fribble about a young mermaid who falls in love with a dashing human prince. He keeps it in his side satchel at all times, throughout his adventure, and reads it at least once a year until he is too old to make out the letters any more. 

As a child, Terran was afraid of thunder. The way storms echoed across the canyon walls would freak him out, and Chalky would have to sing him a special song to calm him down.Years later, when Terran entered the casino at Puerto Valor for the first time and, for some reason, found himself humming the song he heard magically piped over the loudspeakers, he realized Chalky must have traveled farther than he’d let on.  

Terran watches out for Blue John. After he helps secures Last Bastion, the first thing he does is get the king to send out a contingent of men to Blue John’s cabin with a crate of (non-poisoned) fish. He makes sure that a fresh shipment will arrive every week for the foreseeable future. Even when he, uh, Act 3′s it up (staying vague for the first-timers on my dash), Terran makes sure that Blue John gets his crate of fish. This very much confuses Act 3 Blue John, who suddenly begins to receive a crate of fish one day for no apparent reason yet never questions it, because, hey: FREE FISH.

Terran first realizes he’s got a thing for Erik in Gallopolis. It happens literally as they’re walking out of the city gates for the last time, after all the nonsense with the Slayer and Faris and the merchant and so forth. Terran turns to say something to Erik, and that’s when he notices that Erik’s ears are sunburned, that the tips of them have gone so pink they’ll probably end up blistering soon, unless Terran Heals him. And then he thinks, well, Serena could Heal Erik too, right? But Terran’s chest seizes at the thought. No, he realizes with dawning horror, he wants – no, needs – to be the one to Heal his best friend; it has to be him, and only him, who gets to trace the shell of Erik’s ear with feather-light fingertips in a gentle, healing caress; it has to be his touch, and his alone, that elicits that soft sigh of relief and a shiver up Erik’s spine. It’s such a small moment, a small realization; but it hits Terran like a thunderbolt; on the ride to the next camp site, he is dumbfounded, riding with his mouth hanging open the entire time.