#animal vocalisation

[birgfan]

A phonetic alphabet for sperm whales proposed by Daniela Rus, Antonio Torralba and Jacob Andreas.

The open-access study published in Nature Communications titled 'Contextual and combinatorial structure in sperm whale vocalisations', has analysed sperm whale vocalizations and as part of that, a phonetic 'alphabet' has been proposed for them.

So cool. Dolphins next please.

MIT news also did an article on this

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Midshipmen and menhaden are fish I've heard of, but want to know more about.

In that case allow me to shed some light on the former!

Daily fish fact #576

Plainfin midshipman!

There are two types of males, Type I and Type II! Type I males build nests where females will lay eggs. After this the Type I males will protect and care for the eggs, fanning them out and supplying them with water if low tide strikes and leaves them under threat. Type II males are much smaller than Type I males (Type I males can be nine times as large), but they have a different tactic: they sneak into the nesting sites of Type I males and attempt to fertilise the eggs there. They're so dedicated to the strategy that Type II males have gonads so large they can appear like egg-carrying females!

[meirimerens]

they need to make a song that's exactly like dakhabrakha's na dobranich but different so i get to enjoy it again the same but different

[rebellum]

Okay I do recognise it's kinda funny that when a close friend whos autistic told me she thinks I have autism my response was to spend a period lasting several weeks researching experiences of autism among women, trans people, and some people of colour, reading dozens upon dozens of comics and articles and text posts discussing the autistic experience, and taking several online questionnaires to see if my experiences closely match up.

(I'm not autistic though)

[mindblowingscience]

Elephants call out to each other using individual names that they invent for their fellow pachyderms, a study said on Monday. While dolphins and parrots have been observed addressing each other by mimicking the sound of others from their species, elephants are the first non-human animals known to use names that do not involve imitation, the researchers suggested. For the new study, a team of international researchers used an artificial intelligence algorithm to analyse the calls of two wild herds of African savannah elephants in Kenya. The research "not only shows that elephants use specific vocalisations for each individual, but that they recognise and react to a call addressed to them while ignoring those addressed to others," lead study author Michael Pardo said. "This indicates that elephants can determine whether a call was intended for them just by hearing the call, even when out of its original context," the behavioural ecologist at Colorado State University said in a statement.

Continue Reading.

[kondensaduhhh]

honestly, i think we'd all benefit as a fandom if we let Sniper as childish as Scout is.

like imagine Sniper going merc to merc just to watch them, or to just lounge around, or even use/do certain thing in each merc's room, like going to Medic's lab to shave bc 'the lighting there is better', or going into Engie's space to get a tool even though Sniper has his own but says that Engie's 'has better tools'

or Sniper just straight up using the other mercs' clothes bc 'he'll give them back anyway' (and he does, only until they start looking for said article of clothing ((heavy knows where one of his long sleeves has gone, and no he will not be looking for it)) )

or Sniper getting excited for rain (or as excited as a Certified Professional can get) bc animals start coming out due to the disturbance. Sniper grabs a frog and chases Scout with it (outback kid vs city boy)

or Sniper doing that fake punching thing where none of the punches actually land and he vocalises the sound effects

like ffs, if yall are gonna baby Scout bc hes the youngest, might as well Sniper too, they are literally, AT MAXIMUM, 4 years apart

[illwilledomen]

Adults n’ babies.

Info below.

Villagers (and all Testificates)

- Children have tufts of hair, and bald during puberty.

- The darker pigment in their proboscis occurs during puberty. They also grow into their noses.

- Kids are kind of scrunkly and wrinkly, like Sphinx cat kittens. They’re also very small, and have huge growth spurts once they hit their teenage years.

- Adult villagers are incredibly tall, and lack much visible hair aside from fine body hair, light facial hair (like stubble) and eyebrows, which are bristly and whisker-like. Another noticeable feature is their short philtrum and near lack of a visible upper lip. Their noses are as sensitive as human lips, and are typically used in the same way for affection and gesture. Villager proboscis can scrunch, wrinkle and twitch, moving to follow scents like the noses of elephant shrews.

- Villagers have much keener senses of smell than humans, and can produce a wider range of sounds.

Piglin

- Much like villagers, piglets start fuzzy and bald into wrinkly adult piglin.

- Piglets learn to vocally emote first, then sign phrases later on. Piglin use vocalisations as emotional context cues for the more complex sentences they sign.

- Piglin sows have litters of up to six piglets. Most of these piglets will die, particularly if it’s a nomadic horde, so they only receive proper names at one and a half nether years, or when they begin to grow out of their camouflage stripes.

- Piglets are born with stripes and an earthier pigment to help them hide from Infernal predators.

Endermen

- Endermen give birth through their mouth. They do breed asexually, though some Endermen do recreationally partake in what is possibly intercourse. It’s hard for Enderologists to tell.

- The offspring spends ten years inside of a nutrient sac before emerging as an Ender-child. The Ender-child will slowly develop features like limbs and a complex digestive system, though it begins with only a torso, a brain and a pair of eyes. These eyes are non-functional as psionic communicators, which is their secondary purpose in adults.

- They excrete an oily substance that repels Endermites and keeps them moisturized enough to move. As the larvae matures, it will develop the velvety exoskeleton of an adult Enderman. It will also begin to omit psionic frequencies, though these begin as nonsensical bursts of information.

- They mature at 100 years old. Most of this 100 years is spend engorging on chorus fruit, stem and endstone mineral salts. They have no emotional connection to their parent, as eventually they will develop enough to join the Chorus and become one conscious Being. Alternatively, they can worship a void God and become an Endersent.

Players

- Players were primarily constructed by Rana of the Elphar Senate of Builders, or artificers under her command. Most players were raised either in the Garden, an enclosed sterilized “meadow” next to the Senate building, or within the ancient city.

- They have three brains. The Animal, aka a normal human brain, the Purpose, an information tablet which dictates their robotic instincts, Basic Information and function, and the Soul, which enables emotion and sapience.

- Steve was constructed as The Builder, Alex was constructed as The Hunter, and Hero was constructed as The Friend, but is commonly referred to simply as the first. Hero destroyed two other players before he was supposedly decommissioned.

- Players begin existence as entirely androgynous beings, and may transition into genders upon discovering them. Gender is not encoded onto the Basic Information tablet, so they may struggle to understand it. Steve has adopted a masculine identity, enjoys it, though expresses confusion at being called a “male”.

[everwalldigan]

Ok so the popular consensus is that the bat brood will absolutely terrorise any guests any of them have over but what if we take that concept and tweak it a little bit.

Instead of them doing weird shit openly, how about they act totally normal HOWEVER they do weird little unsettling things that suddenly disappear if you do a double take. The guest leaves really unsettled but with no tangible reason they can name to explain it. Allow me to provide some examples:

Dick: has spent an obscene amount of hours practicing “delayed speech glitch” where his mouth moves, sounding out words before he vocalises them.

Duke: manipulates the lights to shine like a stage light on whoever is speaking at that moment, sometimes douses any family member who has pissed him off in darkness until the guest notices and immediately retracts it when they look back. (This backfires sometimes cause they enjoy pretending to brood in the shadows. Its genetic)

Damian: makes his animals appear in random corners and then disappear just as quickly. (His best feat was when he successfully pulled it off with the batcow and Wally left so fucking confused)

Cass: utilises her body language reading skills to give the guest what they want before they have the chance to ask for it. They spend the entire evening carefully monitoring their thoughts cause they’re 100% convinced she’s a mind reader

[arminreindl]

Mooing crocodiles

Some interesting news on croc vocalisation I completely forgot to talk about. A recent paper on the West African Dwarf Crocodile (Osteolaemus tetraspis) revealed a before unknown diversity in noises it is able to produce. By recording captive animals and comparing the noises made by them to recordings suspected to be those of wild individuals, researchers could identify FOUR new types of calls not seen previously in crocodilians.

These calls range from low frequency sounds like "drums" (short) and "rumbles" (long) to more higher frequency sounds like "gusts" and what the scientists refer to as "moos".

Though the paper itself didn't include sound files (to my knowledge), you can hear the "mooing" sound and some others around the 16 minute mark in this here podcast Podcasts | Weekly: Antimatter falls down; Virtual healthcare comes with a price; What’s causing Europe’s insect apocalypse? | New Scientist

Croc vocalisation is a generally underappreciated field of research that usually gets little attention, no doubt because many pass of crocodiles as silent animals when really they can be quite vocal and have a surprisingly broad range, small forms like the dwarf crocodiles especially. This can even be seen in this study, as the wild sounds were only recorded on "accident" by a study focused on elephants.

Also for those unfamiliar with dwarf crocodiles, here's an image of one.

[artemisia-black]

What do you think a person would have to do for Sirius to lose respect for them (petty to serious)?

Sirius is someone who really respects those who know their own minds, stick to their principles, aren’t deferential, hold boundaries and are intelligent.

The times he talks admiringly of people and animals it is centered around one of these traits (for example he defends Crookshanks when Ron calls him mad by saying he’s the most intelligent of his kind lol).

And in the instances we see him showing contempt it ranges from his contempt of Bertha Jorkin’s lack of intelligence and boundaries, right through to Peter’s deference and lack of principles .

IMO the scale of Sirius’s lack of respect would start at people he deemed stupid. At school this would be anyone with terrible grades, the remedial students or anyone who was stuck working with him who didn’t immediately get something the way he did (I never said he wasn’t a bit of a prick).

The next level up would be people who drooled over him (even his preferred gender). IMO he is standoffish at best with this group and just hopes to ignore them out of doing it.

The 3rd level are people who are deferential because of his last name. He cannot abide deference and he will vocalise his contempt (whereas with the last two it was more of a silent thing that his RBF takes care of).

The 4th are blood supremists and he’ll actually be cruel here.

The 5th is Peter and he’ll roam a castle with a 12 inch knife on the off chance he can stab him.

[fence-time]

False and ren for the dragon au :D

Info:

.ren is a cowdragon a breed that played a similar role to sheepdogs but instead herded cows and horses, the spots and hooves on his hind legs are to help the cows feel more at ease

.false adopted him when she was visiting extended family who owned a farm and instantly fell in love with tiny baby dragon ren

.ren is an extremely fast flier due to his breed needing to herd fast animals and chase off predators, false and ren often compete in tournaments and fairs

.due to winning many of these tournaments false us extremely well known within the area

.ren can make similar vocalisations akin to a wolf howling

.ren doesn’t have any notable powers but does have an extremely strong bite, coupled with false’s fighting prowess they make a wonderful team in battle

[macleod]

Elephants call out to each other using individual names that they invent for their fellow pachyderms, according to a new study. While dolphins and parrots have been observed addressing each other by mimicking the sound of others from their species, elephants are the first non-human animals known to use names that do not involve imitation, the researchers suggested. For the new study published on Monday, a team of international researchers used an artificial intelligence algorithm to analyse the calls of two wild herds of African savanna elephants in Kenya. African elephant populations stabilise in southern heartlands The research “not only shows that elephants use specific vocalisations for each individual, but that they recognise and react to a call addressed to them while ignoring those addressed to others”, the lead study author, Michael Pardo, said. “This indicates that elephants can determine whether a call was intended for them just by hearing the call, even when out of its original context,” the behavioural ecologist at Colorado State University said in a statement. The researchers sifted through elephant “rumbles” recorded at Kenya’s Samburu national reserve and Amboseli national park between 1986 and 2022. Using a machine-learning algorithm, they identified 469 distinct calls, which included 101 elephants issuing a call and 117 receiving one.

Source: Agence France-Presse via The Guardian (June 10 2024)

[homunculus-argument]

Finnish metal is the stylistical opposite of anime music. Anime songs can be so clear, crisp, and polished to the point where it seems like the artists could not make something rough and jagged if they tried, and the music itself is so cheery and upbeat in such a delicate way that you aren't even compelled to dance, as much as just quietly sit there and have your heart gently filled with vague spirited hope for the future. And then you look up the lyrics and it's shit like "the situation is so hopeless that at this point it would just be pointless to commit suicide."

And finnish metal is, in general, scrungly as hell as a deliberate stylistic choice. Jagged, aggressive low growling and the kind of high vocalisations that literally get referred to with the same word as the call of a rooster, all the aesthetics of what would happen if you crossbreed 1970s UK metal with nordic grim determination to joylessly survive out of pure spite, and then let it inbreed with itself for several generations. Bass that hits the marrow of your bones and a drummer that sounds like a fucking machine gun. And the lyrics are so fucking goofy that you can only take it seriously if you don't understand finnish.

[celestialprincesse]

Gunslinger Ghost & Rancher!Reader🏜🐎

The Southern sun is almost unpleasantly hot against the skin of your neck, beating down through the thin linen of the shirt at your back, sweat dripping into the arch there - the perks of spending all morning trying to wrangle goats into a new pen, whilst simultaneously trying to fix said pen on your own. You've a hammer in one hand, nails digging through the pockets of your jeans into the skin of your upper thigh whilst you sling a lead rope over your shoulder with a huff of frustration. The nicker of horses and cluck of chickens is the only thing heard on the breezeless air, no sound of truck tyres crunching on the gravel or mindless chatter. Just the way you like it.

The empty feed trough seems to glare holes into your back despite the lack of eyes, but if the warm metal were able to vocalise, or think, for that matter, it would undoubtedly be grumbling to you about not being such a hermit and actually making the short trip to the feed and supply store in town, and with a sigh, you recognise that your imaginary feed trough dialogue is probably correct. The truck engine rumbles to life with protest, which you manage to quell by turning the keys just right, giving the ignition the little push it needs to really get going in spite of the lazy haze which settles over this side of the world when the sun relents its mercy.

The problem with a town like this, you tell yourself, is that everyone knows everyone, knows their secrets and their families and their homes. People come in, but they never leave, don't even realise they've been sucked into the simplistic ease of quiet town living until they're too comfortable to give it up. The strong, chirpy drawl of Marlene snaps you from your reverie, bright blonde curls and a brighter smile invading your vision as she stands before you squealing about how she's hardly seen you and how good you look, in spite of your somewhat dishevelled appearance and work clothes which you didn't bother to change from before coming to the store.

"You heard about the new guy moved in town?" She bounces excitedly from foot to foot, grinning wickedly when she catches your attention and the inquisitive look you don't bother hiding.

"Walk and talk." You mutter in response, cocking your head to one side as you move over towards the animal care section, loading a bag of feed into your cart, muscles straining under the weight, all whilst Marlene chats away off topic, talking about some guy with a mohawk at the bar until you shoot her a sharp look which tells her wordlessly that you don't care about mohawk, and are very much only interested in the new guy in town.

"Apparently he's military or sum'n, according to Dean. Saw him at the body shop when I was droppin' Frank his lunch. Man's huge, scary lookin'. You'd like him." She chuckles with a roll of her pretty eyes, never quite having understood your penchant for people as equally, if not more closed off than you.

"Not looking for anyone." Your grunt causes her to sigh dramatically, grabbing you by the bicep to keep your attention, her pretty eyes meeting yours with a sharp look.

"You gotta try." She groans pleadingly, giving you a little squeeze for emphasis. "It's been over a year, and he might be nice!"

"You said he looked scary." Marlene groans at your lazy deadpan tone. "You like scary! You're scary too-" She huffs when you go to protest, flattening her palm over your mouth to stop you from interrupting her. "C'mon - we all know everyone in town is terrified of your RBF."

"You're not-"

"Yes I am."

After checking out, Marlene follows you to your truck, standing there like a lemon as you heave animal feed into the bed, too used to her less than helpful nature to complain.

"C'mon! Just go have a look! Bring him your casserole!" She whines, tipping her blonde head back into the sunshine. "You could get a man on one knee with that."

"I'll think about it." You huff, and she squeals joyously, wrapping you into a hug before striding off to go peddle some more gossip no doubt - and when you get home, you can't help but root through your cookbooks.

[fictionalmenxyn]

What it’s like to Date, ¡Price!

He is very open to things, he is an open minded man in relationships. You got questions he’ll answer them.

If your nervous, he’ll reassure you and tell you that you can take this relationship slow.

Once it’s been a while he is a gentleman. He’ll open doors, pull your seat out and push the chair in he will help you whenever he can see you need it.

His type of love language would probably be gift giving and words of affirmation sometimes quality time; it just depends how long he’s been gone. He likes to vocalise the relationship (take that comment as whatever you want/think of😉). But he likes to know how your feeling and if you need to talk.

If he has to leave for the military, he’ll give you one of his hoodies and he’ll buy a extra bottle of his after shave or his cologne so if he’s gone longer than expected you can still make his clothes smell like him.

He loves buying small things that remind him of you or things he knows will light up your face or make your day. Like if he went shopping to grab some small things like snacks or stock up of water; he’ll grab you a small cake for you or something you enjoy.

Although he loves firing you things he does love when you get him a box full of new cigars. His knees are weak when you buy them, he loves how you know the exact brand even if you don’t smoke or know much about cigars. It’s even better if you didn’t ask him what brand he used or likes most.

Like Soap and gets you to give him a trim. But he gets you to do his beard cause to him you are thee only person to ever get his mutton chop style to a perfection that he likes. It’s like you have a talent not even a professional barber has. You think it’s because your his partner but it’s not that, it’s because your actual good at it.

He may be your partner but he is definitely a role model in your life as of other lives too. Even if your not in the army he is still a role model and he is proud of it.

He enjoys it when you go and sit in his office. You would be on your phone or talking to him, it didn’t matter what you did but your presence being there as he write away with military paper work he enjoys it. He gets through the paperwork quicker when your there.

He likes to take you out, wherever whenever he doesn’t mind. If it’s shopping it’s fine, wherever as long as it puts a smile on your face it puts a smile on his face.

Price loves giving you nicknames. He’s a bit old fashioned with them though but it’s not bad. He tends to use “dove, love, darling, flower” and such. But if you prefer to be called something else he’ll call you it.

Every morning if he’s up before you, he knows you won’t be too far behind. So he’ll go downstairs put on the kettle and puts the news on for a quick reminder of what’s going on in life. Then as the kettle finishes he’ll make you and him either a coffee or tea. Then when your downstairs he’s sat on the sofa watching tv with a brew in hand and eating for you to join him.

In the mornings when he feels like staying in bed a little longer though; he gives your forehead a kiss and feels you snuggles your face towards his neck. He smiles to himself knowing your safe in his arms.

In the night, every so often he likes to watch a documentary on animals especially David Attenborough’s shows; or he’ll watch a bit of crime watch (idk why he just comes of as the type 😂)

Hope you enjoyed!

Make sure to request/message me if you want

Have a good day/night!🫶

[mothiir]

eyes full of stars

the reader is a diplomat working with roboute guilliman to try and broker peace with the local craftworld, and she has a somewhat strange moment with one of her aeldari counterparts.

cw: finger sucking and lewd thoughts.

—

“Hush,” Taleath says, fingertips coming up to rest on your mouth, and you lapse into silence at once, completely thrown by the unexpected contact. “The actions of Cato Sicarius have no bearing on your life, nor on mine. His tumultuous emotions are his own storm to bear, and their rain will only chill you if you get too close — which, as you are uncommonly intelligent for your kind, you will not.”

He keeps his gauntleted fingers resting on your lips, the metal chilly against your skin, smoother than silk. You are very rarely lost for words — it is, after all, an integral part of your job as diplomat — but the physical contact has shaken you. Aeldari do not touch humans, unless at war, or under considerable duress; Taleath’s actions, to another Aeldari, would be obscene as a human bearing his genitalia at a conference table.

The corners of his smile curl up into a smile, and your cheeks burn: in your confusion, you momentarily forgot that your companion can read minds. And then, you recall that Aeldari are at great pains to state how they must shield themselves from the ‘brutish, ugly, loud wailing animal thoughts’ that humans emit almost constantly. And then you realise that if he read your thoughts, it was because he did so deliberately, and —

“It is far more complicated than that,” Taleath says mildly. “A mind is not a book to be opened at leisure and perused. And yet I understand your meaning — you cannot help the limitations of your language, after all.”

You are in one of the many libraries aboard the Macragge’s Honour: this is one of the smaller ones, designed to house books on cartography that are more works of art than useful tomes. It is rarely visited, because despite Roboute Guilliman’s best efforts to encourage a variety of interests in his sons, most Astartes prefer to study strategy or to read great historical epics, rather than study stylised images of long-vanished constellations. You, however, adore it here. It is a circular room, the shelves coveringthe walls, the ceiling painted deep rich navy blue, with stars picked out in shining gold. There is one window, circular and high, that shows the endless void of space beyond. It feels like a fairytale room, something plucked fresh from a different, gentler time, when space was full of promise, and the shadows held nothing more sinister than cobwebs.

“I appreciate that my language is limited to your ears but —“ You are normally very good at countering Taleath’s arrogant asides with a witty riposte. Sometimes, you wonder if he riles you up intentionally, simply because it amuses him to see you frustrated — certainly his teasing has led to some serious issues of your own, long nights practicing hiding your thoughts, wondering if that would even work. Your a celebrated diplomat, pride of the Ultramarines, reporting to the Primarch himself — and yet a pointy-faced smirking knife-ear has you thinking things. Heretical, shameful things.

Taleath lifts the gauntlet to his own face, and — tentatively, delicately, like a cat trying a new food it is unsure of — runs the tip of his tongue along the tips of his fingers.

He makes a strange, bird like chirrup. You’ve studied Aeldari vocalisations, but in that moment everything you have ever learned about them seems to have exited your head via your ears. With the same effortless, leisurely grace that he does everything, Taleath shucks his gauntlets off, setting them down on the desk beside him. Then, with a tremendous amount of care, he removes the silk gloves beneath, revealing a pair of pale, spidery hands.

Imperial propaganda describes all Aeldari as scrawny anaemic mutants, with limbs stretched to ridiculous disproportionate lengths. The decidedly heretical texts you studied as part of your diplomatic education waxed lyrical about their ethereal inhuman beauty and grace. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Some bits of Taleath are disconcerting to say the least: he moves too swiftly for your eyes to track, giving him the uncanny appearance of a glitching cartoon come to life. His expressions are almost-human-but-not-quite; something about his smile seems to suggest that he knows exactly when the world will end. His hands remind you of knives. And yet there is an uncanny beauty to him, like a glacier viewed under moonlight, or a distant star burning in the black flank of night.

“Come here please,” he says, and you — knowing better, knowing so much better — obey. It has been months of negotiation with Iyanden, in which you have built up a civil relationship with Taleath (not friendship; you have to remember that; it is what your training drilled into you. Aeldari are not to be trusted; they play games with human lives, and even the kindest knife-ear will gut you like a fish if it is to their advantage).

You are allies only because of the mutual peril you face, from a galaxy that would see you burn, from factions who care little for the petty squabbles of xenos and human — what is the point of humanity’s supremacy, or Aeldari arrogance, if Chaos eats you all?

And yet. And yet. You stop one pace from Taleath, heart thrumming like the wings of a held bird, and the Aeldari reaches for you. His palm presses against the small of your back, urging you forwards that last little bit, so his robes brush against your bare arms. He’s so much taller than you; you have to crane your neck to look him in the face, even as he bends over.

His thumb runs across your lower lip. You always thought Aeldari would be colder than humans, their skin as chilly and perfect as ceramic, but his flesh is fever-hot. He rubs the digit back and forth until you open your mouth, your eyes fixed on him the whole time. His breathing is still slow and calm, and part of you resents him for that — so you rebel in what small way you can. You part your lips, but you don’t chase after his thumb with your tongue like a dog begging for a treat. Instead, you wait — wait so long that it starts to feel vaguely ridiculous, that you are just starting there open-mouthed and panting — and then — oh —

He slips two fingers into your mouth, sliding them first along the blunt edges of your teeth, then onto your tongue. He’s curious, explorative, stroking over the slick muscle, before prodding delicately at the roof of your mouth, where textured skin gives way to your soft palette. You try very hard not to gag as he pushes deeper, rubbing at the velvety insides of your cheeks, bulging them outwards. He utters that bird like chirrup again, and you wonder if he’s even aware he’s doing it. He looks utterly transfixed on you.

It’s just a trick, you tell yourself, it’s what they do, it’s what they do —

“Do not insult me,” he says, his voice lower. Rougher. “I would not need to resort to such — such base measures to trick you, if I wanted to, if —“

You hollow your cheeks and suck, drool starting to gather at the corner of your mouth. Taleath’s breath catches, and you feel an absurd swell of power.

“Don’t read my mind,” you say, the words coming out in a slurry of sound and drool around his fingers. “Jush — keep doing this —“

You start to move your head, keeping your hands loose at your sides despite the overwhelming desire to grab his wrist, to encourage him to keep going, to fuck your throat with his fingers, to prepare you to take —

Taleath chirrups again; this time the sound fades into a constant burbling coo. He pulls you closer, hand splayed on the small of your back, pulling his fingers out of your mouth — and this time you do chase after them, saliva strung between his fingers and your lips.

“I should not be doing this,” he says, half to himself, the words blurred and distorted by the constant vibrato coo. You lick at his knuckles, dopey with passion. All that time fighting down your absurd schoolgirl crush — all that time wasted. “You are human,” he continues, his voice strained. You kiss his palm.

“Yes. And you want me,” you sing-song — only for the world to blur as Taleath moves with a warrior’s swiftness, his hand sliding down to cup your thighs, lifting you up and pressing you into the wall. Bookshelves dig into your spine as he wrenches your head to the side, your hair pulled taut, your scalp singing pain. His teeth graze your jugular, his body presses between your eagerly spreading thighs and —

Then he’s gone. You collapse to the ground in a heap, panting for breath, reeling. Taleath stands on the other side of the library, clinging to his gauntlets like a safety blanket as he stares at you with open, flagrant hunger. Prey-animal fear sparks up your spine, even as your cunt slicks with arousal.

“Taleath —“

“No. Stay there.”

His mouth is red. Why is his mouth red? You suddenly become aware of an ache in your neck, of warmth on your collarbone. You reach up, and your fingers brush a deep bite mark. Taleath licks his lips clean as you probe the damage carefully.

“I — I hope this is not a diplomatic incident,” you say, attempting levity, and he offers you a thin smile. It sits oddly on his face; at odds with the ravenous look in his dark eyes.

“No. But it could be. My kind do not engage in carnal pleasures casually — “

“—and not with mon-keigh,” you say, wondering if this is when Taleath will treat you to yet another lecture on the shortcomings of your species.

“Not often. Not usually. I do not want you to be hurt,” he says.

“I’m fine. It barely stings — it will heal up soon enough,” you say, holding up your bloodied fingers. Taleath licks his lips.

“You do not understand. I do not want you to be hurt by anyone who is not me.”

You know you should retreat; every instinct screams at you too. But even if Taleath was not standing in the only exit, you wouldn’t attempt to flee.

”You…you want to hurt me?”

“Typical human — reducing complex feelings to such banal sentiments,” he says, like you weren’t just parroting his own words back. “I want to consume you. I want to own you. I want every cell in your body to remember my name.”

You — you should not find this attractive. You really should not. And yet all your life you have been told that you serve a greater purpose; that your duty is to others. You have never had anyone look at you with such naked desire and tell you that it is you they want — you alone.

Aeldari lie, you tell yourself. Aeldari lie.

“I would not lie to you, you stupid little prey-thing,” he snaps, and this time it isn’t just his voice; his accent changes, sliding from the polished vowels of an Aeldari into something more jagged, something that you don’t recognise. He visibly gathers himself, and when he speaks again it’s with the voice you are used to: “I mean — human. Girl-child.”

“I’m not a child.”

“You are more than five hundred years my junior — hush. I — I need to go. And meditate. And — and think on things. And meditate. And you need to go and stop bleeding before I do something that we both regret.”

With that, he vanishes, leaving nothing but the throb of arousal between your thighs, and his teeth marks carved into your throat.