Just as long as there are no experiments done on souls, please, Jesper.
*~Edited to fix typos- thanks Jezz!
Comic- Lesley
F#17: Seafoam Dragon
Seafoam dragon (Draconis Nausicaa)
Aquatic fauna
The seafoam dragon is native to the Mediterranean sea, but this one showed up in Revery Harbour after a massive storm- she must have been blown off course.
This small aquatic dragon has long webbed forefingers, perfect for breaking open tightly closed shellfish and mollusks. They breathe both underwater and out of it, and lay their eggs in the sand like turtles. A clutch normally consists of five, one to three of which are expected to hatch. Once all the surviving eggs hatch, the parent leads the hatchlings to the water, and they stay in the sandy shallows for a few days before venturing further out.
Entry compiled by: Jesper Beattie
Archive16: Aftermoth
‘Whatever you do,’ Lesley said, announcing her presence in Evelyn’s office doorway, ‘don’t touch Jesper’s sample jars. He damn near tore my ears off.’
‘So that’s what the racket was about.’ Evelyn looked up from her desk for the first time in what felt like hours, and was possibly even longer. She had to blink a few times before Lesley came into focus.
‘What a mess.’
Was she talking about Jesper? The mutating moth corpses? The undercurrent of tension? The political fallout from their open day disaster?
Maybe it was just the state of her desk.
Lesley cleared a space amongst the scattered papers and receipts, and gently plonked a steaming mug of coffee down in it.
‘You need a fuel break,’ she said. ‘Did you even go home last night?’
‘Vale is putting us through the ringer over this,’ Evelyn said, neatly sidestepping the fact that yeah okay, she slept in her office. ‘He wants to get us shut down. He might even succeed.’
‘Pfff,’ Lesley snorted. ‘He’s tried before.’
‘Yeah well, the mysterious disappearance of our guy full of moths might just cinch it for him. They don’t believe he even existed. Without a body…’
She ducked too late as Lesley cuffed her cheek with a gentle hand.
‘Chin up Evie. Henry Vale might be holding your soul hostage, but we’ve got his balls in a vice. If he gets us shut down, he’s got to foot the bill for his own occult special unit. And that means less money to slip into his own pocket.’
From upstairs came the sound of raised voices. Lesley rolled her eyes.
‘Damage control to the first floor,’ she said into an imaginary walkie-talkie. ‘Seriously, love. We’ll be okay.’
Evelyn hoped she was right.
F#15: Imps
Name: Imp
Classification: Fauna
Designation: Neutral
Description: No more than a couple of centimetres in length when fully grown, the imp comes in a variety of colours and markings. Their young are born with spotted fur, which begins to fade into their adult colouring at six weeks old.
Notes: Imps are widely considered a pest, eating fruiting crops and raiding food stores- it is said that just one imp can decimate a larder of a large family!
Imps live in family groups, and have a short lifespan of at most five years. They reproduce, on average, twice a year; with litter sizes of one to four implets.
Entry compiled by: Keeley Claremont
Archive15: Open Day Part 2
(Warning: This post contains horror elelments)
Bartholomew was showing a disinterested audience how to feed a mottled bee-eater, and getting progressively more irritable about it.
‘Eat the nice, crunchy bluebottle please!’ he said through a forced smile, waving said snack, dead and impaled on a cocktail stick, under the bee-eater’s nose. The creature was far more interested in escape, or maybe rifling through the visitors’ bags to see if they had any actual bees.
‘I guess she’s not hungry!’ he said, trying to be heard over the chattering group. ‘I’ll put her back in the cage and… ‘
Honestly, why were they even here if they didn’t want to listen? He rubbed his brow, trying to banish the beginnings of a headache.
‘Okay, come on,’ he said, when the noise just increased. ‘Chanting, really? Is now the time—‘
Okay, in hindsight? Perhaps he should have been a bit more alarmed by the chanting.
He caught a brief glimpse of the chanter before everything went to hell: young man, gaunt, sickly looking, eyes bloodshot, black sweater with a red decal on the front.
Their eyes made contact. Bartholomew was going to say something witty about not needing a note to leave his class.
But instead the guy’s chest burst open and a swarm of moths emerged, which changed the mood considerably.
The sheer force and volume of the moths knocked everyone off their feet. He could see nothing but a whirl of bloody wings, soft fluttering bodies knocking against him all over. His mouth and nose burned with a smell he couldn’t begin to identify.
He hardly noticed the bee-eater claw herself from his hand and, with a delighted shriek and a gaping mouth, dive into the fray.
Bartholomew covered his face with his arms, and tried to move to where the door should be. Maybe. He thought? He tripped on something- on someone, nearly losing his balance.
A man stared up at him, a cut on his forehead and unfocused eyes, wheezing for breath against the godawful stink. His hand grasped at his shirt pocket. Probably where he kept his soul, Bartholomew thought, coughing as he hauled the man up onto his feet. Protecting their soul was normally the first instinct in a situation like this.
Bartholomew touched the locket hanging against his chest beneath his shirt. It was little comfort.
Bartholomew shoved the man in front of him, hoping he was steering in the right direction. The moths made it hard to tell what way was up, even, with all their swirling and diving and black spots yawning like mouths coming to eat…
Hmm, no. That part was probably him losing consciousness? And that would explain why the floor was suddenly under his back instead of his feet. It helped with the spinning for a moment, but then he realised the moths were landing on him, on his face and his mouth and the smell, the smell…
Continue reading “Archive15: Open Day Part 2”
F#14: Tuft
Name: Tuft
Classification: Fauna (insect)
Designation: Neutral
Description: A fluffy green winged creature with a leafy face and shiny black eyes.
Notes: The tuft is possibly of fae origin, and is found in places where the skin between worlds is at its thinnest. When capture of one is attempted; the tuft appears to be able to manipulate its own corporeality, literally slipping through the fingers of its would-be captor.
Entry Compiled by: Evelyn Morris
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Archive14: Open Day Part One
As she did every year, Evelyn spent most of open day waiting for something to go wrong.
The flow of people coming through the doors was steady, but not overwhelming. Evelyn had done her welcome talk, and lead two of the hourly tours. She’d made a hundred teas and coffees, nipped out to the bakery next door to replenish the biscuits, and so far had only had to apologise to one visitor for Jesper’s… abrupt demeanour.
Ruffled feathers had been soothed, and Evelyn was feeling rather good about it all.
It was then she noticed the smell.
‘Oh my- Lesley, do you smell that?’ It snagged on the back of her tongue, she fought back a cough. On second thoughts, it was less of a smell and more of a hand shoving something rotting down her throat and squirting lemon juice in her eyes for good measure.
Around her, other people started coughing.
Lesley grabbed her shoulder.
‘Get’emout,’ she told evelyn between hacking coughs. Out of the corner of her eye, Evelyn saw that Thursday was already herding visitors to the front door.
‘The others,’ Evelyn said. ‘Jesper. Barty—‘ as she spoke, she heard footsteps on the stairs, then Jesper appeared in the doorway, shirt pulled up over his mouth and looking more pissed off than usual.
Keeley should be out in the greenhouse, and she’d hopefully have the good sense to stay there. Which just left Bartholomew, who… was currently running the feeding demo in the archives.
Downstairs.
‘The cellar!’ she said to Lesley, who nodded and as one they pushed through the panicking bottleneck of people to the stairwell.
As they went down, the smell got worse. Like old blood, curdled milk and piss and… superglue.
Trust her little brother to end up in the middle of the chaos. Typical Barty.
Lesley came to an abrupt stop at the bottom of the stairs. In the poor light, Evelyn thought at first that the archive door was shut. But no, it looked wrong- like it was rippling, heaving, wriggling.
She switched on the light, and it caught silver on a thousand twitching wings.
The doorway was full of moths.
Archive 13: The Owl with Two Tongues
Jesper hovered in the hallway like an anxious buzzard.
‘Elion’s using my desk,’ he hissed at Evelyn.
‘Yes,’ she said. When Jesper was in a snit, it was best to smile and nod and let him get on with it.
‘My desk! with my stuff on! Which he moved,’ he wrung his hands.
‘it was just a mug. A mug that was supporting life, but…’ Jesper looked so het up about it that she patted his shoulder. ‘You can put it back?’
‘I could always use a hand,’ Elion said, more a polite reminder that the walls were thin, than a genuine request.
F#12: Puffmote
Name: Luminous Puffmote, Airbag Salamander*
Classification: Fauna
Designation: Neutral
Description: A Fully-grown male puffmote measures from 2-5cm long (nose to tail) with a dark coloured body and lighter, bioluminescent markings.
A Female or ‘Queen’ puffmote has a longer, snakelike body. She is typically white, with darker markings, and a more defined crest or ‘crown’.
*Misnomer, puffmotes are unrelated to salamanders
Notes: puffmotes emerge from sleep in the late afternoon; often to be found hovering around flowers in sun-warmed places. The ones you’ll see in the daylight are typically the males, collecting nectar which is then stored in an internal pouch.
The puffmote Queen anchors herself to a plant stem, and is much harder to spot during the day. However, at night she is far more noticeable.
Often mistaken for the light of a glow worm or firefly, puffmote have bioluminescent markings. Males have a small glowing crest, and markings down to their tails. Queens have a bright crown and body spots, which they use in a ‘dance’ to attract mates.
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Entry compiled by: Thursday Madaki
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