#slyk

Kyle and Slyk, getting into the holiday spirit! Slyk springs a surprise after a nice big meal! :D

I haven’t posted too many details on them because I’m still trying to figure out their backgrounds and how exactly their universe is set up, but since you’ve asked, here is an introduction to slime biology! (This got a bit long, oops)

Slyk’s species reproduces asexually; they periodically produce batches of eggs that were, for the majority of their history (and pre-history), incubated in another species. It’s a symbiotic relationship - the slimes protect the host and keep it well-fed, and the host provides a prime hatching environment. As their civilization developed, their infant mortality rate plummeted but their birthrate stayed the same, so they developed birth control very quickly to prevent a population explosion. Like most lifeforms whose reproduction method is based on high-output-low-survival strategies, they tend to have very little parental drive compared to humans. It is common for most individuals to take birth control their entire lives and never reproduce, though enough still choose to have kids that their population continues to slowly grow. They also use artificial incubators nowadays for their greater efficiency and reliability compared to living hosts.

But Slyk is in a bit of a special situation. He is alone on an alien planet with only a tiny spaceship - essentially the equivalent of a small camper-van - surrounded by amazingly complicated aliens called humans. And because he wants to stay hidden from most people for now, he can only access it rarely. Normally that’s no issue, since he can eat human food and Kyle is happy to get him anything he needs, but there are a few things he just HAS to get from the mini medlab on his ship - like birth control medicine. One time he forgets to refill his stock and runs out between trips… and before he can make an emergency trip to his ship, he’s got eggs. And with eggs come hormones - really, really strong ones. He can’t just toss the eggs in the trash, his body physically won’t let him; he HAS to incubate the eggs, but there are no incubators or host animals on Earth. And the longer Slyk waits, the more his body will try to overpower his mind, and eventually he’ll lose control of himself.

So Kyle volunteers. At first Slyk is resistant - they have no idea if the eggs will hurt Kyle, or if Kyle can even be a host, because of his weird alien biology - but he has to admit that human stomachs do provide a very similar environment to the original host animals’ stomachs. With Kyle on board and his own body increasingly insistant, Slyk lets Kyle swallow the eggs. The pair of them keep track of Kyle’s health, and the health of the eggs, and find that the eggs get along very well indeed with human stomachs. Thanks to, essentially, “programming” from Slyk’s body (based on Slyk’s studies of human biology) while they were being formed, they even produce the right chemicals to make Kyle’s stomach the perfect home, like hormones to make him hungry enough to eat all the food they need and stretchy enough to hold them as they grow.

The eggs are very soft and easy to swallow and start out small, about the size of marbles. At first Kyle doesn’t even have a noticeable bump. Over about a month, the eggs absorb nutrients from the food Kyle eats and grow to the size of softballs. Their growth is slow at the start, speeds up in the middle, and slows down at the end. Once the eggs are fully developed, the baby slimes will dissolve the outer membrane and wiggle about on their own. This also triggers the targeted release of muscle relaxants at Kyle’s esophagus to make it easier for them to climb out (with the side-effect of mild heartburn for the rest of the day). It can take a few hours for all the eggs to hatch and for all the babies to find their way out, and all the wiggling makes those last few hours the most… interesting. :D

(art by @animalkingdxm)

Age: Roughly early twenties

Height: Entirely variable, but he usually keeps to within a few inches of Kyle’s 5′8″ when they’re hanging out - taller when he’s being assertive / big spoon, shorter when he’s trying to look cuter / innocent

Weight: Varies somewhat based on how much he’s eaten recently, but usually around ~90lbs (~40kg)

Appearance: A big blob of transluscent goo the color of lime jello. Not sticky unless he wants to be. He keeps himself mostly humanoid when awake, mimicking Kyle’s general body shape and putting a good amount of detail into his face and hands, but rarely bothering with legs. When deeply asleep, he relaxes into a blob, but he can maintain his shape during a light nap. He tends to wrap onto anything anything he touches, especially while asleep, which makes him a very good blanket.

Personality: Cheerful, curious, creative, but panics under pressure. Likes drawing, cooking, and sculpting. Very good at spatial reasoning and has a natural grasp of applied chemistry and math, but not very good at their symbolic forms. Big on hugging, cuddling, and physical contact in general. Also likes trying any and all new foods, and is a very good cook.

Slyk is an alien who sneaked onto Earth without the knowledge of his or our governments. He is unusually curious, energetic, and adventurous for his species, who as a rule tend to be laid-back and pretty cautious about new stuff. His species discovered ours, the first intelligent species they'd ever encountered, several years ago, but has been putting off making contact due to their caution and a lot of uncertainty over how we seem to behave. Young Slyk decided he wanted to meet the new aliens as soon as the news of Earth's discovery was released, and was disappointed when the decision was made to hide and observe until more was known about us. When Slyk was old enough to go out on his own, he managed to arrange access to a single-seater spacecraft with which he secretly traveled to Earth.

On Earth, Slyk managed to sneak his ship in without being noticed and hid it near a smallish city in the northern hemisphere, where he planned to observe and record whatever he could about humanity. Unfortunately, even though he has the curiosity to be a great scientist, he doesn't have the training or patience and quickly became bored sitting in his ship watching stuff through remote sensors. So he left the ship to try and watch some humans first-hand, which lead to him accidentally meeting Kyle on a hiking trail one morning. By falling out of a tree. Luckily Kyle took the sudden appearance of a large green blob landing in front of him pretty well.

Slyk, who had already been trying to pick up the local language from observation and had also figured out that humans used their faces and hands to communicate, learned very quickly with Kyle's help. After meeting a few more times in the woods, Kyle agreed to show Slyk where he lived, and that night Slyk wound up moving into Kyle's apartment. Neither of them had intended for the visit to be permanent, but Slyk was too fascinated by everything to leave - particularly access to the internet - and Kyle enjoyed Slyk's company enough he didn't mind having a new roommate. After living together for a year, the two have become close friends.

Though Slyk can imitate human speech decently, it requires a lot of focus and effort, since he essentially has to create vocal cords to do so, and that amount of fine control over his body is difficult for any long period of time. Because of this, he and Kyle have been learning American Sign Language to make communication easier. While still complicated, hands are much larger and easier to shape and maintain than functioning vocal cords.