rose: read all the books ever

[fluthlu]

Comments

[payback]

You'd have to go out to the dead zone if you really wanted to find anything that indicated something like that.

[payback]

Well, I have a friend who thinks that they might have been drawn in too - beyond their history, it seems. You might hear about both of these folks, though. There's a population of spider people called Arachne, and bird people called Giovani.

[fluthlu]

Spider people and bird people.

And in what ways do these people relate to spiders and birds, respectively?

[payback]

Arachne... seem to be able to transform. They're sort of like centaurs, if you've seen pictures, sometimes? Only their lower halves are like... spiders. The abdomens, and eight legs. Except some of them just look like regular spiders, and some can go all the way human...ish.

Giovani... I've only ever seen one, and unfortunately there wasn't much time to look at him or talk to him. He had this long bird face, basically, and he was really tall.

[fluthlu]

Well. That's a touch disturbing. I'd be very interested to know whether they were a creation of the world, or simply a colony of similar victims of the castle, though.

[payback]

You and everyone else. Like I said, my friend theorizes that they're drawn in from outworld just like us - to be honest, I've never been able to have enough of an in-depth conversation with one of them to ask. I don't know if he has either.

There are animals outside the castle zone, too. Buffalo without eyes, for instance.

[fluthlu]

Buffalo without eyes.

Forgive my repetition, but that is certainly an unsettling mental image.

[payback]

It gets better. They're at least partly human inside.

[fluthlu]

... Excuse me while I rummage in my cabinets for my supply of mind bleach.

That skips the tag of "curious" altogether and gallops straight onward to "bizarre".

[payback]

I'm not sure they're sentient... quite in the way humans are. But they're very unusual. There's one in the stables, if you want to get a look at one.

[fluthlu]

I would like to look at it, thank you.

Do they act as normal buffalo? Or does their unusual anatomy have any effect on their behavior?

[payback]

To be honest, I don't know much about buffalo. Someone took a photo of the one we have a while ago, one of those pictures that looks through things? And it gets even weirder, still.

[fluthlu]

An x-ray?

I can't imagine how.

[payback]

Mm, I think that's it. Anyway, you know how bones are supposed to be fused in solid pieces, in most cases?

[fluthlu]

Yes, that does sound about right.

[payback]

Well, their bones aren't like that. They're like... made out of tons of smaller bones, I think - fit together like a puzzle.