Truth

Truth

CW: gun, swearing, violence, attempted murder, seizure mention, morphine mention, (magical) poisoning, knife, hospital whump, slavery mention, death mention, gag whump

Tatiana

----

Shit, shit, shit. The wolf was swimming toward me.

I backed away and it stopped and tilted its head. I could see its legs churning water, and someone on the opposite shore had a gun pointed at it.

“Shit,” Moon breathed.

I tried to chase it away by splashing water, it only approached even closer. Why? Why would it do this? It was supposed to be scared of people. Unless… 

It jumped out of the water, then sank to its knees and lay on its chest. There were little nubs on its shoulders, threatening to explode.

Ashley kneeled next to it and whispered something in a language I didn’t know, and it responded.

Bramble kneeled next to it as well, twining their tail around the wolf’s front right paw.

“Defend her,” Ashley ordered.

I nodded and got to the very edge of the shore, standing in front of it.

The person with the gun fired a warning shot, and then shot around me, hitting the wolf.

It howled, and practically exploded into the blue dust that had littered the ground after that weird storm. Moon had been spared from the blast, but Ashley, Bramble, and I had been covered in blue, and it cut a bit into our skin and swimsuits. Trees all around us had been covered as well, and small plants had been leveled. 

The wolf stood and ran away, its leg shaking, when it looked back at us and said something to Ashley.

Ashley immediately got into the water and most of the blue dust came off, all but the stuff stuck deep in her curly dark fur and hair.

I got into the water after her, and the person with the gun left, thank god.

The dust came off surprisingly easily.

My phone was on a rock on the banks and lit up.

I got out once I’d gotten all the dust I could, and dried off before checking the text.

‘Hey, you alright?’ Cami had texted me.

‘Yeah. Just saw a wolf! It kinda covered me in dust tho-’

‘Cool. Anyways I got shot again so I’m off to the hospital, yay /s’

‘Again?!’

‘Just can’t stay out of trouble, also someone does have a vendetta against me so…’

‘Who?’

‘Hunter,’

‘Why him?’

‘He blames me,’ she wrote. Then, after a minute, she wrote, ‘We were attacked by a big wolf, and I told him to run and he blames me. It attacked him, not me,’

‘What?!’

‘He’s stupid,’

‘Agreed,’

‘See you in school, I’ll probably be better tmrw. Oh also apparently all my bones are pneumatic lol,’

‘What?’

‘I have bird bones essentially, meaning, if i had wings, i could fly for a short distance!’

‘Cool,’

‘I’m also at risk of osteoporosis but probably not my mom is the exact same,’

‘Osteoporosis?’

‘Brittle bones stuff, its all medical nonsense to me,’

It didn’t seem that way.

‘Well, see you tmrw,’ I texted. Cami replied with a thumbs up, and we didn’t text again that day.

—

I had a strange dream of a giant wolf and a white haired girl, and when I woke, it still confused me.

Cami

----

I hated lying to her. I hated hated hated it, but it was to protect her.

My mom came home the second she found out I’d been shot again, and now I was in a hospital room on recovery, barely thinking, just watching something on the TV. The shot hadn’t pierced bone, just my squishy wizard tissue. 

Doctor’s words, not mine...

…I think.

Tatiana came to visit me and I have barely any memory of it, but she gave me a little gift, a still-hot tin of something she called feijoada. Black beans, pork and rice.

“Thank you,” I think I whispered.

I ate it when I got hungry, and had my tail been out, it would have wagged ceaselessly. Or as close to ceaselessly I could get without my muscles hurting and then some.

“Like it?” I think she asked.

Then came the one part I know I recalled correctly, since I looked it up. About twelve times in two hours because of morphine, according to the search history.

She explained its cultural meaning to her and I listened and told her that I would remember. Lo and behold, I did.

She eventually left, and I felt tired and shut off the TV, but sleep refused to come.

Probably to my advantage.

After a bit of lying on my back, I heard my door open and seven sets of hushed footsteps, then felt something over my face. I struggled and kicked, then calmed a bit and went limp.

They, thinking I was dead, kept the pillow over my face for a few moments longer. My lungs burned and burned and I felt the pillow come off, and opened my eyes as I shot up. Gold reflected on the tiled floor, in one of their eyes as I looked at him and he collapsed. Gold in the reflective blue dust that exploded from my fury.

I screamed as the other six grabbed me, and one made the foolish mistake of covering my mouth. I bit down and he screamed, then collapsed in a seizure. A storm boomed outside, likely my doing, and with each lightning strike, I felt weaker, until the world went black.

Surprisingly, I woke up in brightness. Still in the hospital.

A kenomi man stood over me, his tail puffed up. My eyes were still golden.

I let the gold fade with breathing exercises, before whispering with clear, angry words, “What happened to the people who tried to murder me,”

It wasn’t a question. It was an order.

“They were arrested and charged with first degree attempted murder, assault, vandalism, and trespassing,” the kenomi replied. “Are you alright?”

I nodded and said, “I’m fine,”

I heard a weak, tiny cry for help from someone in my pack, a little girl named Irene, and stood. I didn’t mind the pain. She needed the help more than I needed rest.

“Chamomile, stay seated,” the kenomi ordered.

He grabbed my shoulders and sat me back on the bed.

I struggled against him and eventually snarled, “One of my packmates is in trouble. Let me go, please,”

“No. You are staying here, whether you like it or not. You need rest,”

I groaned and lay back down, then whispered, “What if she dies? She’s only a child,”

“Really?” the kenomi asked, raising an eyebrow. “How old is she?”

“Seven,” I whispered.

“Go then. Four hours. If you’re not back by then, you’re not going anywhere for the next two weeks,”

I nodded, shifted, and squeezed out the window, and jumped down from the second floor. I rolled when I hit the ground and bolted. A car pulled into the parking lot, and I dodged it and bolted to the woods.

About half an hour later, a roar from Thea. A ‘where the fuck are you’ call, if you will.

I howled in response to her roar and bolted to where she was. The pack’s encampment. I was there in two minutes.

A human girl kneeled in the center of the clearing, her wrists bound behind her, blindfolded, and gagged. Her left arm was covered in black and purple spikes, Irene sat on her lap, and Alex held a knife to her back.

I shifted back and looked at the girl, then boomed, “What the hell is this?”

Thea pulled Alex away and glared at him with her cold eyes. “I told you she wouldn’t like this,”

I undid the girl’s bindings, and she immediately blurted, “Don’t kill me! I’ll do anything!”

She broke into racking sobs.

“What happened,” I barked.

“Irene was caught and this one was going to kill her, but decided against it. Silvia killed everyone but this one,”

“And her arm?”

“That was my fault,” Irene admitted, her lip trembling, “I was scared and bit her and the poison that was out did that to her,”

I lifted the girl’s arm, and she winced.

“Can it be undone?” I asked Irene.

“No cure, just prevention,” I heard Silvia reply. The hunter shrank into herself and I saw her eyes bubble with fear.

“I’ve seen this with Helix when he would torture humans before turning them. There’s no cure, and to stop its spread, we either kill her or turn her. Otherwise she’ll be dead within two days. And you’re the only one in the pack who can turn her,”

I swallowed and asked, “Do you want to become one of us? It will be painful, and I assume the hunters won’t be all too pleased,”

Unless they’re the faction working with Helix.

Three factions, one worked with Helix, the Critura before me, and wanted to enslave all of us, one tried to find a way to save werewolves and turn them human. The people who came back from them weren’t ever right, and wasted away with Viper and Olivia and James for weeks to months to years of screaming and begging for everyone to let them die, though they weren’t injured physically, before finally being granted entrance to Voltrip’s domain. Death.

The other one killed mindlessly. The factions were all part of the same group, but it was strange.

“Please. Pleasepleaseplease,” she begged. “I don’t wanna die,”

Her voice broke and she went back to sobbing. 

“Okay,” I said. “It will hurt, but you won’t remember until the full moon, okay?”

One week.

She nodded and swallowed, “Do it,”

I lifted her wrist to my mouth and bit down. She screamed and kicked for a moment, then started shaking in a seizure.

I regretted all the pain I caused, but it was so she would live. She deserved to live.

“Get her to Viper,” I ordered. “Try to dull the spikes so she doesn’t hurt herself. Bye!”

I shifted and ran off, when I saw Tatiana. She was sitting on a rock with a sobbing Moon and trying to offer comfort.

She hugged Moon close, and I shifted into my human form and limped over to her, though it hurt quite a bit. I could spare the time, it took me an hour to get to camp. 

Tatiana gasped and Moon looked at me.

“Oh. Uh- hi Cami,” Tatiana said.

I didn’t expect such a calm response.

“Thought you were in the- the hospital,” Tatiana said. I saw her reach into her pocket and pull out a flimsy knife. 

I raised my hands and said, “I had something to attend to, I’ll be on my way,”

Winter came out of the trees and grabbed me, then pulled me away and started scolding me.

“Showing yourself to humans? You know not to do that!”

And Tatiana had followed us, then threw her knife. Winter threw up her arm and the knife bounced off a wall of solid ice and the blade broke. Winter looked pale and fell, like she rarely used her magic.

“Cami! Who is that?”

“My sibling’s girlfriend, sorry,”

I sat her up and said, “I gotta go back to the hospital so bye!”

I shifted and ran, not minding that Tatiana chased after me. I quickly outpaced her.

She called my name, and I stopped.

“I- you’re a werewolf?”

I dipped my head in a nod, then said, “Gotta get back to the hospital,”

She hugged me and ran her fingers through my fur, and I decided to let her on my back, if she insisted so much.

She declined, hugged me again, and went back to her probably confused friend.

I ran back to the hospital, and still had two hours to spare as I wriggled in through the window.

If you want to be added to the taglist, just ask!

banned wands

oh yeah, its pride month

um...

happy pride y'all and be safe out there

... don't commit arson, unless its in a story, then you can

bye

Happy mermay y'all!

Here's a little chum y'all, take it. These characters may pop up after Mermay but they're little goobers with very little backstory right now. Whumpee is a pilot fish merthing btw pilot fish are my favorite fish

Korryne

---

It put its eerily human-like hand against the glass while it beat the glass with its black and white tail. The small humanoid had been found beside a far larger shark humanoid, and it kept trying to get to the shark. It also had a tendency to bump against the glass while swimming around, seemingly indicating behaviors it exhibited with the shark.

Korryne groaned, and a tiny shock in the fish's water drove it away from the glass and made it scream while it spun in circles and tried to hide in the too-small decor in its tank. No one had expected it to grow so big in such a short span of time.

Eventually, the aquarium opened, and a group of school children watched it being fed. It had been taught to keep its head below the water, and ignored that teaching, and approached the children. Korryne had to go up there to make sure it didn’t do anything drastic, and it went back underwater at the sight of her.

It didn’t even bother to take the rest of the fish with it, it stayed low to the ground until Korryne had left. 

Korryne needed to examine this further.

Arroyo

—

Leech. That was what they were called by the horrible people. They stared at the human that often watched them, wanting to go to Rilla. 

Arroyo beat their tail against the clear wall and called for Rilla. Rilla was going in circles, and Arroyo wished they weren’t the only two in their tiny group. Arroyo slammed their shoulder into the clear wall and the human had the sharp pain go through the water. They swam back to their little area, and realized they were bleeding in the tail when it cut against the weirdly sharp rocks.

They swam around, a trail of blood in the water, and Rilla opened her mouth when she saw it.

Arroyo heard someone get in and saw one of the humans with the breathing mask strapped to their face, and the human had a net. Arroyo tried to swim away, screaming and begging, and the human didn’t understand.

Arroyo understood very little of the human tongue, mostly just the words ‘stop, still, and interesting’.

“Stay still,” the human ordered. Arroyo obeyed and took a deep breath as they were lifted into the air in the too small net. It took three people to carry them, and people weren’t even the size of normal sharks. Sharks were somewhat the same size as Arroyo, about an eighth of Rilla’s size, far smaller than Arroyo’s friend, who was part squid and lived close to the bottom of the ocean.

Arroyo could breathe air, though they hated the taste of it on their tongue, so they often chose not to. The humans eventually lowered them into a crate that was barely able to fit them, and they had to avoid panicking so the water wouldn’t go stale and render them unable to breathe.

They set Arroyo in the white room tanks, where they were closer to the circling Rilla, and Arroyo put their hand on the clear wall and knocked until Rilla noticed them.

Someone let Arroyo into Rilla’s tank after bandaging their tail, and Arroyo swam into it and plucked off the tiny things on Rilla’s skin. Rilla looked at Arroyo with glad eyes and directed them to the places where large numbers of infection was.

Rilla twitched her tail to the side, saying, “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” Arroyo replied, and hugged Rilla, barely able to contain their excitement. Rilla didn’t approve of emotional outbursts unless they were trying to mate, which didn’t work very well out of your own group of merfolk, and it was a banishable offense among the merfolk.

Mating season was soon… Arroyo hoped they’d let the pair in the same tanks for that time.

One of the humans motioned for Arroyo to return, and Arroyo’s dorsal fins flared in anger as they bared their sharp fangs and Rilla swam at the human, then slammed head first into the clear wall.

Rilla swam back, grabbed Arroyo in her mouth, and leaped out of the tank. They rolled for a moment, and Rilla stood up. Arroyo wasn’t sharkfolk, couldn’t stand, only a select few merfolk could.

Rilla took Arroyo in her arms and started running, while Arroyo slowly lost water on their scales. A sound went through the air, and Rilla’s movements slowed. Then she fell, and dropped Arroyo. Arroyo rolled again and someone lifted them, then put them back in the lab tanks, and Rilla across from them, still in her human form, wrists up in the air and legs spread wide. Rilla opened her eyes, then stopped moving, and her rock-black eyes went dim as she drifted to the surface. Arroyo screamed for her, and one of the workers opened the cage and she was dead. Didn’t blink, didn’t breathe. 

Arroyo shrieked and pounded on the clear wall and screamed for Rilla, and the human that normally watched Arroyo threw Rilla in. Arroyo held her corpse close and wished they had seaweed to wrap their body in, but this would have to do.

They hugged Rilla and let her drift away while giving her eulogy. They wished they were in the open ocean for this, but impossible.

They eventually took her from Arroyo, and they sank to the bottom of the cage and didn’t move as they watched them examine her corpse. Then they took her skeleton and her fins and put Arroyo in her old cage, where they could fit between the hard rocks. They sank to the bottom, no longer moving, and the human smiled sadistically.

I'm fascinated by how the formatting of different social media sites affect how text is read.

For instance, a line break on Tumblr indicates a new idea.

HOW TO GIVE PERSONALITY TO A CHARACTER

Giving personality to a character is an essential part of character development in storytelling, whether you're writing a novel, screenplay, or creating a character for a role-playing game. Here are some steps and considerations to help you give personality to your character:

Understand Their Backstory:

Start by creating a detailed backstory for your character. Where were they born? What were their childhood experiences like? What significant events have shaped their life? Understanding their past can help you determine their motivations, fears, and desires.

2. Define Their Goals and Motivations:

Characters often become more interesting when they have clear goals and motivations. What does your character want? It could be something tangible like a job or a romantic relationship, or it could be an abstract desire like happiness or freedom.

3. Determine Their Strengths and Weaknesses:

No one is perfect, and characters should reflect this. Identify your character's strengths and weaknesses. This can include physical abilities, intellectual skills, and personality traits. Flaws can make characters relatable and three-dimensional.

4. Consider Their Personality Traits:

Think about your character's personality traits. Are they introverted or extroverted? Shy or outgoing? Kind or selfish? Create a list of traits that describe their character. You can use personality frameworks like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or the Big Five Personality Traits as a starting point.

5. Give Them Quirks and Habits:

Quirks and habits can make a character memorable. Do they have a specific way of speaking, a unique fashion style, or an unusual hobby? These details can help bring your character to life.

6. Explore Their Relationships:

Characters don't exist in isolation. Consider how your character interacts with others. What are their relationships like with family, friends, and enemies? These relationships can reveal a lot about their personality.

7. Show, Don't Tell:

Instead of explicitly telling the audience about your character's personality, show it through their actions, dialogue, and decisions. Let the reader or viewer infer their traits based on their behavior.

8. Create Internal Conflict:

Characters with internal conflicts are often more engaging. What inner struggles does your character face? These can be related to their goals, values, or past experiences.

9. Use Character Arcs:

Consider how your character will change or grow throughout the story. Character development is often about how a character evolves in response to the events and challenges they face.

10. Seek Inspiration:

Draw inspiration from real people, other fictional characters, or even historical figures. Study how people with similar traits and backgrounds behave to inform your character's actions and reactions.

11. Write Dialogue and Inner Monologues:

Writing dialogue and inner monologues from your character's perspective can help you get inside their head and understand their thought processes and emotions.

12. Consider the Setting:

The setting of your story can influence your character's personality. For example, a character who grows up in a war-torn environment may have a different personality than one raised in a peaceful, affluent society.

13. Revise and Refine:

Don't be afraid to revise and refine your character as you write and develop your story. Characters can evolve and change as the narrative unfolds.

Remember that well-developed characters are dynamic and multi-faceted. They should feel like real people with strengths, weaknesses, and complexities. As you write and develop your character, put yourself in their shoes and think about how they would react to various situations. This will help you create a compelling and believable personality for your character.