#cryptids from nepal

[daily-cryptids]

Abarimon

Origin: Himalayas The Abarimon are humanoids with backwards feet that can run at extreme speeds, they live alongside wild animals and were vicious themselves. Alleged attempts at capturing them failed because they were so savage. They only breath air from their own valley because of the special quality

[broken-clover]

🍓🔪🍬🦴🥤 :D

Wheeeee

🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction? 

Tbh you think I'd remember but I really don't. I have vague memories of making Pokemon OC's but wasn't really introduced to the concept of fanfiction until my older sister got me into Hetalia and I found out about it while looking up fanart. I think I've discusses it before, though, that I didn't feel confident writing full-on fanfic for the longest time because I was too terrified about writing characters OOC. Idk what exactly made me get over it, maybe GG just instilled enough brainrot I couldn't help it

🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

See I dunno about 'weird' but I've done a lot of random shit I never thought would be relevant until I had to go look for it. Hard to objectively say what was the oddest so I'm just gonna make a list of some off the top of my head

-(I've repurposed a surprising amount of my learnings from mortuary for anatomical and medical reference)

-Giraffe/horse autopsy

-Introductory guides to Jamaican Patois

-"Can bats get polio"

-"Common clothing of Nepal"/"Common clothing of Tibet" (notable in that it ended up being relevant for half a paragraph)

-"Cheeses of Bhutan"

-"What is the highest proof alcohol you are legally allowed to buy"

-Profanities of numerous languages, including sign

-"How old are children before they can pronounce 'x'"

-Brazilian cryptids

-"least flammable bed fabrics"

-Treatment and recovery time of a PCL tear

-Step by step guides for kimono-wearing

-Bone throwing as a form of divination

-Adult clubfoot treatments

-"what type of video is security camera footage"

-"autoimmune diseases caused by stress"

-psychogenic stuttering

-how to replace/modify a clutch disk for a stick shift

-French homicide law

-Pyretic drugs

-LOTS of fish biology

🍬 ⇢ post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character

Probably in part due to oversaturation, but Bridget is just...kinda boring. I find her concept and story endearing and sympathetic, of course, but she doesn't have the same kind of complicated themes and bizarre lore that engages me like a lot of the series' other characters to the point where I can delve into it and get on that level of brainrot.

🦴 ⇢ is there a piece of media that inspires your writing? 

Can't simply say 'a.' I feel like I take a lot of bits from a lot of different stuff! I find I like to try and find 'weird' media frequently, though, I like seeing the bizarre concepts people can cook up and wonder if I'm not thinking outside the box hard enough. Likewise for horror, to a lesser extent

🥤 ⇢ recommend an author or fanfic you love

hweeeehhhh why do you always give me the tough ones. There's some really obvious picks, you and Jim and Roy and Crow, but I've probably done you all like three times already! Easy picks

Lemme see, if I wanna try and do something a little different than the obvious, I do have a couple recs! For anyone that's into Psychonauts, I totally recommend BabyCharmander (ESPECIALLY 'Cavity,' do not read anything else before you go into it, reading it for the first time hits you like a truck to the face) and The_Angst_Alchemist (Particularly if you're a Thorney Towers fan, they write the inmates with such panache and easily some of the best interpretations of Fred) It's a little more niche, but if you're an ARMS fan I recommend anything by MeltyMetroid, for a series that has such little lore they've written several incredibly fleshed out and well-constructed longfics (I'd recommend 'DisARMed' and 'Broken Mirror' for the plot-heavy jaunts and 'The Brass that Saved Christmas' if you want a good laugh)

Admittedly in general I don't pay as much attention to specific writers as I should, or the series I look for stuff for is so niche it doesn't really have dedicated writers

[xtruss]

How Nessie And The Yeti Birthed A Global Cryptid-Chasing Industry

From the Mists of Loch Ness to the Wilds of Australia, Fantastical Beasts are Spawning a Lucrative—and Controversial—Form of Tourism.

— By Ronan O’Connell | Saturday June 24, 2023

Loch Ness, a deep freshwater lake in northern Scotland, is one of several destinations that draws tourists with rumors of cryptids, or mythical creatures. Stories of a long-necked, swimming monster, nicknamed “Nessie,” have been circulating this lake for nearly a hundred years. Photograph By Jonathan William Cohen, Getty Images

They supposedly lurk in remote lakes, hide in dense forests, and roam snowy mountains. Yet despite being refuted by science, cryptids—fantastical beasts that probably don’t exist—have awed and terrified humans for centuries.

West Africa has the swamp-dwelling creature Ninki Nanka, Japan the monstrous Akkorokamui octopus, and Ireland the carnivorous Dobhar-chú dog-otter hybrid. But the mythical beings that seem to intrigue travelers the most remain Scotland’s Loch Ness Monster, the Himalayan Yeti, Australia’s Yowie, and North America’s Bigfoot. The last, a Chewbacca-like man-ape, helps generate over $140 million annually for the U.S. economy, according to the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

These cryptids have inspired festivals, movies, podcasts, and a niche field of study called cryptozoology, the search for magical creatures. They are the focus of boat cruises and wilderness excursions and lend their names to bars, hotels, restaurants, and even an airline. Just before the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, one Scottish company spent nearly $3 million on a new visitor center linked to the legendary serpent of Loch Ness.

Whether people believe in cryptids or not, cryptotourism offers travelers the opportunity to explore under-the-radar destinations from a unique perspective. Here’s how communities from Europe to Australia and Nepal are leaning into their mystical appeal to help their tourism industries recover from the pandemic.

A Modern Legend Emerges

The world’s best-known cryptid is probably “Nessie,” the massive marine creature rumored to haunt the 800-foot-deep waters of Loch Ness. Since its first alleged sighting some 1,400 years ago, the Loch Ness Monster has stirred perpetual ripples of controversy.

This 1934 Photo of the Loch Ness Monster drew worldwide interest to Scotland. Despite the image being exposed as a hoax in 1994, hundreds of travelers visit the loch each year in hopes of spotting the alleged beast. To date, more than a thousand people have claimed to have seen Nessie. Photograph By Keystone, Getty Images

Irish missionary St. Columba first wrote about the mythical beast in 565 A.D. Allegedly, Nessie injured a swimmer and was poised to harm another when Columba intervened and berated the beast until it retreated into the lake’s gloomy waters. Nessie spottings occurred from time to time over the following centuries, further feeding the myth.

In 1934 this local legend went viral when an English doctor captured a photograph of what he claimed was Nessie, its long neck and bulbous head seemingly protruding from the lake. The image triggered a string of events that turned Loch Ness from a little-known location into one of Europe’s most famous lakes.

Monster tours of Loch Ness began soon after, says Gary Campbell, who runs the official Loch Ness Monster sightings website, on which he’s logged 1,143 encounters in 26 years. By 2019 Nessie tourism was a $47 million industry.

The pandemic hasn’t diminished Nessie’s allure. In the first eight months of 2022, 149,000 visitors took lake tours with Loch Ness by Jacobite, according to Freda Newton, the company’s managing director.

“Everyone wants to believe in Nessie. We see it every day on the faces of visitors,” she says. “There is palpable excitement when people board our boats that maybe, just maybe, they’ll get a glimpse of our most elusive friend.”

Gordon Menzies, who runs Castle Cruises Loch Ness, estimates more than 70 percent of his customers visit because of Nessie. He has spent a lifetime pondering this legend. “I think it highly unlikely that a prehistoric creature still exists in here,” Menzies says. “But given the dark peaty waters of the loch, I see no reason to consider it is impossible for something which we have not yet identified to exist.”

Lore vs. Science

Though Nessie has become somewhat kitschy, Australia’s most prominent cryptid, the Yowie, is embedded deep in the lore of one of the world’s oldest communities, the Australian Aboriginals.

This drawing depicts the Yowie, an ape-like creature from Aboriginal folklore said to inhabit the remote reaches of the Australian Outback. Photograph By Chales Walker Collection, Alamy Stock Photos

After the British colonized the country in the late 1700s, the Aboriginals delivered them an eerie warning. The verdant forests they stole camouflaged hairy, 10-foot-tall, 800-pound bipedal monsters. “Yowies are respected but also avoided by Aboriginal people, because they can be dangerous,” says Tony Healy, coauthor of several books on Australian cryptids. “The [Aboriginal] elders I spoke to see Yowies as something like a guardian spirit of the landscape.”

The earliest rumored Yowie sighting was in the 1830s, when a European man fired his musket at one of these beasts on Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia. There have been hundreds of supposed encounters since, according to Australian cryptozoologist Gary Opit, who has researched the Yowie for 50 years. They were concentrated on the Great Divide, a 2,300-mile-long series of mountain ranges and plateaus that runs north from Victoria through New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland.

An environmental scientist, Opit leads Yowie tours into this wilderness. About 90 percent of participants are foreign tourists keen on exploring the isolated locations of reported Yowie sightings, like Mount Warning in northern NSW, and nearby Springbrook Mountain. Despite being discussed for thousands of years, Yowies only became a tourist draw in the past decade, he says.

Some 5,000 miles away, in Kathmandu, Nepal, cryptotourism is better established, reaching back to the 1950s. It centers on the Yeti. Up to six feet tall and similar in appearance to the Yowie and Bigfoot, this legendary creature allegedly prowls the snowy peaks of the Himalayas and is a prominent figure in the folklore of Nepal, Bhutan, India, and Tibet.

Several Southeast Asian countries use the Yeti, similar to North America’s Bigfoot, in their destination branding, as in this 2014 Bhutanese stamp. Photograph By Doreen Fiedler, Picture Alliance / Getty Images

Its tale is 6,000 years old, says Ram Kumar Panday, a Nepali geographer and author of multiple books about the Yeti. But the furry beast was a regional fairytale until British explorer Eric Shipton claimed to have photographed a 13-inch-long footprint, hominoid in appearance, in the snow of Nepal’s Menlung Glacier, west of Mount Everest, Panday says.

This image haunted newspapers and televisions worldwide. Explorers soon inundated the Himalayas, competing to detect the cryptid. The deluge of foreign visitors prompted the Nepal government to issue strict regulations on Yeti hunts, which required those involved to only photograph and not harm any creatures they encountered.

Over the following decades, the Yeti became a powerful tourism brand in Nepal. This beast’s foot forms the logo of the domestic carrier, Yeti Airlines, while hotels, restaurants, cafés, and tour companies profit off its name. In early 2020, the Nepal government made the cryptid a centerpiece of its tourism campaign, placing dozens of Yeti statues at key attractions.

As an intrinsic part of Nepal’s lore, the Yeti is a worthwhile tourist draw, Panday says. Travelers intrigued by the beast should trek to Mahalangur Himal. This wild Himalayan region, home to several of the world’s tallest peaks, including Mount Everest, Lhotse, Cho Oyu, and Makalu, is the Yeti’s key habitat and the location of most of its sightings, he says.

Visitors to this region can learn dozens of Yeti legends from its Sherpa communities. Ancient scrolls kept in Himalayan monasteries reveal the tale of how the Yeti was born to a Tibetan mother and a Mahalangur giant ape, Panday explains.

Mahalangur Himal, best known for some of the world’s tallest peaks, is said to be a popular site for spotting the Yeti. Photograph By iStock, Getty Images

Other Nepalis are more skeptical. Veteran Kathmandu tour guide Sushil Nepal says even as a child he viewed Yetis as a sham. Now, when his customers ask about the monster, he tells them it’s widely considered a myth. Nepal says he dislikes cryptotourism, which steals focus from the country’s remarkable architecture and ancient traditions.

“I don’t think the Yeti is a valuable tool to promote Nepal tourism,” he says. “We have a lot of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Nepal should focus on its rich natural diversity.”

Many researchers are similarly dubious about this cryptid. In 2017, DNA analysis of alleged Yeti teeth, hair, and fur, published by Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found this mythical beast may have been inspired by real animals—the Himalayan black and brown bears.

Academics have also offered scientific explanations for Australian cryptids and the Loch Ness Monster, yet these legends persist. “People have always been fascinated by things in nature which confuse us, things which we just don’t understand,” Opit says. “That’s not going to change any time soon.”

— Ronan O’Connell is an Australian Journalist and Photographer who Shuttles Between Ireland, Thailand, and Western Australia.

[majesticnerdynerd]

For the questions: 14, 28?

Hello Summerfly! :3 There are such good questions tbh!

14. Would you want to be reincarnated? - This is something I’m pondering at least once a month. There are moments in my life I loathe and those that I love and like to revisit in memories and think that maybe this life is enough of an experience. But. I guess I’d be curious what I’d be reincarnated as. A horse? A man in Nepal? Or something completely different or alien? I mean, there’s so much to life 1 person won’t get to discover in their lifetime, the world’s that big. Hmm. I guess yeah, I’d like to be reincarnated. Despite the trouble I may go through at times, it’s a learning process I know I can get out of one day, hopefully, and there’s so much to do and enjoy that for a while, I can forget all about the past and enjoy the moment~ and I also really like eating food and watching TV shows while ignoring the dumpsterfire of global politics! heh  I think I’d like to reincarnate again into the next life, yeah :D (I won’t be opposed to being a dragon, tho, note to self)

28. Would you want to live forever? How about for a billion years, a million, a millenium, a century? - This question had popped up in my mind a few times. I mean, the idea of immortality as a whole seems nice, doesn’t it? You don’t age or succumb to sickness or injuries, if we’re talking full-full immortality with no ‘but’s’, and you get to live and experience everything you desire, possibly. But at the same time, while you don’t age with time, time moves the rest of the world forward and you can’t stop that from happening, can you? I think the psychological drawback would be quite impractical, because if you’ve been born into human society, you crave that close contact. And if you’ve grown up with friends you’re close to and have known for all your mortal years, it’s quite hard to watch them wither, isn’t it? Sure, you can make new connections as time goes by, but will it ever be the same? The cycle will only repeat, and unless you meet another immortal, you’re pretty much stuck alone, in a way. (but you could also be stuck with a frenemy/arch-nemesis that grinds your gears to infinity and beyond because they just can’t FUCK OFF, yes, I’m looking at you, Jim >:I)

On one hand, immortality sounds cool as fuck, and lemme tell ya, to live long enough to see space travel become possible? I’d sign up, an immortal could be beneficial in some way for sure. But on the other hand, it seems incredibly lonely. And I don’t wanna tag on the journey with only Jim hounding my ass. Which brings me to this trope I read some time ago that immortals could perhaps choose 1 companion the whole time. Welp, guess to whom I’d give it to? Either a dog, a cat, a ferret, or, uh, idk, yeah, pets.

A billion years somehow sounds scarier than forever, I can’t exactly explain how. Maybe it’s this existential fear that the Sun is going to implode in a couple billion years and this hits too close to home (and I also saw the DW episode, idk what year it was but was in billions and the last human was a stretched skin saying ‘moisturize me’?? Yeah i got fear). 

A million years gets me a meh vibe. I kinda connecct millions of years to dinosaurs and well, extinction? Not my cup of tea, even though rn we are going through a big-ass wave of species going extinct (free depression!). Don’t ask me why I feel this, my brain works in mysterious ways~

A millenium sounds plausible to me, enough to fuck around with history and become a local cryptid for sure. That would be fun, heh. I’d sabotage some corrupt ppl or factories and try to make a silent impact maybe. I mean, you could do this over longer periods of time with immortality or more time, but a millenium is enough to fuck up locals and corporations, perhaps!

A century is achievable even without having a deal like this, minus the young bod, I feel :D a century feels long and short at the same time, but compared to the rest it is very short. However, you wouldn’t stay along for long, huh? 

Overall, I think this is very dependent on the social circles, and mine are quite small irl, which I don’t mind. My view of living for long is a bit obscured, because if someone offered me immortality or something longer than a century, I could take it if I were asked at 3 a.m. Or if they promised me an immortal cat and provide me a way to piss of Jim, yeah. 

In conclusion, I’d most probably take a millenium, just t fuck with people. I don’t know how much sense I make, so I hope the answers are coherent :D I am writing this between online classes, so hopefully I didn’t babble too much!

Thanks for asking!! <3 :3

[kitfoxart]

Another wee cryptid from beautiful Nepal. I’ll never foryeti you!

[bloomingjellies]

(Sorry a couple more) Giving a lesson of humanity (not everything is black and white) with Orisa and Efi's understanding Talon's recruitment(closure with Bisi's choices), finding peace with himself if he ever ventures to Nepal and interacts with Genji and Zen. MORE NEEDED DEPTH IN HIM AND SOMBRA'S RELATIONSHIP. Like it's not a joke, Baptiste has so much fluidity and compatibility with the roster and world building potential. I get so much more from this hero alone than the fan favorites, *SIGH*

I have hard headcanons that Baptiste & Satya would get along really well. They both know what it's like to leave bad organizations that were fundamentally all they knew/like a family. She genteelly roasts him over his silly Hawaiian shirts & he makes it his mission to find one classy enough that she'd wear.

I think him & Genji have a lot in common too (I also ship it so hard so I'm prolly biased here). I've talked about this with robo-cryptid before in relation to how my OT3 parallels Leverage OT3 of Parker/Hardison/Elliott (idk if you know that show but you should watch it it's so good!) how both of them have these shitty pasts where they had to do shitty things for survival (Genji w/ deciding to become cyborg/everything he did in Blackwatch) and how they often feel like they still have to do those things, even in OW, so that the other "better/purer/innocent" people won't ever have to.

I desperately want to know more about him & Sombra like I drew a piece once that was both of them like two sides of the same coin (which idk if I ever even posted here)--they have such similar backgrounds but took such different roads & I am so curious about their continued friendship even after he leaves Talon.

And yet we don't have ANY in-game interactions for him except for like two with Mercy (which I love how much respect she shows him). How can he have been out for a year & we don't even have any between him & Sombra??

[mythicallore]

Cryptids Proven to be Real Give Us Hope for These 5 Others

Cryptid Monsters Proven Real

Cryptid monsters are known to terrorize and typically reported by a significant portion of a population, or at least a large enough group to confirm that it is indeed an anomalous creature. In earlier years, these animals were brutes fought by hunters and fishermen on outings, and were exaggerated to prove their machismo upon returning home. But eventually these tales became backed by hard evidence, and today we know them well.

The Giant Squid

19th century Scandinavian whalers spoke of the Kraken; an enormous squid whose appendages were found in the bellies of whales and said to be as thick as a ship mast. Fishermen continued to report attacks by these tentacled monstrosities, to the disbelief of landlubbers back home. But eventually they returned with specimens, or found their carcasses washed ashore.

In 1853, a large squid with a horny beak and large throat washed aground in Denmark, baffling local scientists. Johan Japetus Steenstrup, a professor of zoology from the University of Copenhagen, identified the creature as a giant squid.

Today, the giant squid is a scientifically accepted animal, reaching lengths up to 40 feet long. Their enormity is attributed to something called deep-sea gigantism; a tendency for deep sea invertebrates to be larger than their shallow-water relatives. But the giant squid isn’t even the biggest mollusk of its kind, that title is reserved for the colossal squid, which reaches up to 46 feet in length.

The Platypus

The platypus is a rather bizarre looking creature and if you attempted to explain it to someone before its discovery, they’d almost certainly believe you were mad. So, it’s an egg-laying mammal with the bill of a duck, the tail of a beaver, the webbed-feet of an otter, and the venom of a snake? Sure.

But now the platypus is a well-known creature, lending credence to the possibility of other cryptids that seem to be an amalgam of disparate species. When it was first presented to British zoologist George Shaw, he attempted to rip off its beak, believing it had been glued on. Eventually, he took scissors to the deceased animal, before he realized it was genuine. That particular specimen can be found to this day in a British museum.

The Frilled Shark

Sea serpents have stoked the fears of sea-farers for centuries, tormenting sailors and swallowing ships whole. From Texas to Norway, reports of sea serpents sprang up in local and national publications during the 19th century, depicted as gargantuan snakes devouring unwitting mariners while they innocently roamed the sea.

Today, the frilled shark could be considered the closest animal to these horrific serpent tales, appearing much like those descriptions written in antiquity, though comparatively smaller. The frilled shark was discovered in the late 1800s by German ichthyologist Ludwig H.P. Döderlein, and later described by Samuel Garman as, “such an animal as that described is very likely to unsettle disbelief in what is popularly called the ‘sea serpent.’”

So, it’s a shark, but a frightening one at that, with 25 clusters of 300 sharp, serrated teeth, the Chlamydoselachus africana is one of those relics from the days when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. It’s also one of those deep-sea dwellers, which is part of the reason they are so rarely seen.

Cryptid Creatures With Real Potential

The Jersey Devil

The Jersey Devil, a.k.a. the Leeds Devil, is one of the more popular cryptids of modernity, appearing to thousands of residents, since its first official recording throughout several New Jersey towns in 1909. Scores of people in Trenton, Woodbury and Swedesboro reported a giant winged creature flying through the night, emanating a horrible scream. But as it turns out, Native American tribes in the area had been seeing the Jersey Devil centuries before.

One of the old wives’ tales of the devil comes from a woman named Mother Leeds, who became pregnant with an unwanted 13thchild, whom she cursed. The child was born normally, but then became a horrendous monster. To this day, it resides in the Pine Barren forests, over a million acres of land preserved on the state’s coast.

Described as a cross between a bat and a horse with a long spaded tail, the Jersey Devil has terrified residents of the state, who claim to have found maimed animals and other birds after hearing its cry. Some have written it off as a large bird of prey or a certain type of crane, but others say it is a surviving Pteranodon, a pterodactyl from the Cretaceous period.

Enter the hammerhead bat, a.k.a. the Big-Lipped Bat. The hammerhead bat falls into the megabat category which are exactly what you think they are – massive bats. Hammerhead bats can be found in mangroves, swamps, and forests at lower elevations, usually in Africa. Could the Jersey Devil be an invasive, or transported, Hammerhead bat population that established a home for itself in the Garden State? Ok, so it’s not a new species, but it would validate thousands of local residents’ sightings.

The Orang Pendek

Sumatra’s apeman cryptid, the Orang Pendek is thought to possibly be distant human relative known as Homo floresiensis, sometimes referred to as the real-life hobbit.

In the Indonesian language, Orang Pendek translates to “short person,” and it is believed to be an undiscovered primate species, that could potentially be of the genus Homo. Over the years there have been a number of Orang Pendek sightings by travelers, locals, and researchers who have come in search of the cryptid or stumbled upon it by chance.

The most common characteristics confirmed by these numerous sightings depict the Orang Pendek standing between 30 and 60 inches in height, or about 2½ to 5 feet tall. These cryptids are described as being covered in golden, brown, or grey hair and are bipedal, walking erect in the same manner as humans. But what’s even more bizarre is that they are said to have human-like facial features, differing noticeably in appearance from monkeys.

The Megalodon

Not just because they’ve recently made a Hollywood sci-fi horror about it, but the chance that a Meg could exist might be better than other cryptids who call the ocean their home. First off, the Megalodon actually existed as recently as 2.6 million years ago during the Early Micoene period, to the end of the Pliocene. It was essentially like a Great White Shark, but two to three times larger. It wouldn’t be too hard to imagine a surviving species of shark with deep-sea gigantism twice the size of a Great White. In fact there are other sharks that live at significant depths, including the Goblin Shark and the aforementioned Frilled Shark.

Bigfoot

Almost every culture has its version of Bigfoot; in North America it’s Sasquatch, the Chinese have the Yeren, in Nepal it’s the Yeti, in Australia it’s the Yowie, and in just about every other region of the world you can find a regional ape-like cryptid.

So where is the hard photo and video evidence? There isn’t really a good answer to that question, as Bigfoot is probably the most elusive cryptid there is. But why would so many disparate cultures describe the same type of creature over the course of centuries?

One could say that we have a predilection to create archetypes of mythical creatures that resemble versions of ourselves. There are also a number of other primate species that inhabit the world’s jungles, including one discovered just last year. Is it so hard to believe that a more sentient humanoid branched off from the many other ancestors Homo sapiens diverged from, like an evolved, surviving ancestor of Gigantopithecus?

Bigfoot is by far the most popular cryptid while also the most divisive, so we’ll leave it to you to decide. Are you a believer?

[nitewrighter]

Gency Week Day 6

Forget-Me-Not

A little late but here’s some Genji and Mercy reminiscing with photos!!!

----

Genji stood in the doorway of the apartment--their apartment--well, it was about to be their apartment, before, it had just been her apartment, but now with Genji staying over practically every night, they figured they might as well make things official. 

“...You have to have more than that,” said Mercy, putting her hands on her hips.

“I... lived with monks and was raised by ninjas,” said Genji with a shrug as he adjusted the duffel on his shoulder. There was a single box in his arms with some of his things as well. A handful of the things in the box were just things he had picked up since answering the recall and coming to the Watchpoint. There were some wooden frames of his disassembled sword stand sticking out of the box, but not much else.

“I mean, I knew you were always a bit of a minimalist, but...” Mercy trailed off.

“You’re minimalist too,” said Genji.

“I... I decorate! I have my relief tchotchkes!” said Mercy.

“I love that you travel and save lives all over the world and people pour their heart outs to you and give you heartfelt gifts for your relief work and you just call them ‘Relief Tchotchkes.’” He craned his neck to look into her office, “Most of them are in one place though, anyway.”

“...I just... this is going to sound weird and obsessive, but if we’re both living here, I.... I want this place to feel... lived-in, you know?”

“Your office is definitely lived in,” said Genji, smugly.

“Har-har,” said Mercy, rolling her eyes.

“We could do the college dorm thing--hang up christmas lights, get some tacky movie posters...” Genji walked past her with a smile in his voice, “You like ‘They Came From Beyond the Moon,’ right?”

Mercy huffed and snickered. “...Pictures,” she said after a few beats.

“Mm?” said Genji.

“We should put up pictures--like, in frames.”

“Like an old couple?” said Genji. 

“Athena can make some high-quality prints--we have pictures of ourselves, right?”

Genji paused and put his box down on the table. “Do we?” he tilted his head.

----

“Agents--It’s been a while since you’ve made your way back to my primary terminal,” said Athena.

“Well you are everywhere, technically,” said Mercy.

“I do like having you take the time to come here, though,” said Athena.

“We like the big screen,” said Genji.

Athena giggled. “What can I help you with?”

“This is going to sound odd but, do you have pictures of us?” asked Mercy.

“Many Overwatch agents dump their photos into my data stores when they run out of storage on their own comms but won’t delete them. I can run a cursory facial scan?” Athena suggested.

“That would be wonderful, Athena, thank you,” said Mercy.

“Scanning,” said Athena, the screen blipped for a few seconds, “Excluding official and bodycam footage, I have 249 image results for Agents Shimada and Ziegler. I can filter it by photos containing both of you where you are among the center subjects?”

“That works.”

“Right. I have 45 photos from the ‘general’ folder of other agents, and 11 photos from a file recently dumped by Agent McCree titled, ‘Watchpoint Cryptids.’”

“...’Watchpoint Cryptids?’” repeated Mercy.

“I believe it’s a joke on how difficult it is to get a photo of either of you,” said Athena.

“Well.. scroll through what we have?” said Genji.

“Understood,” said Athena.

There were very few photos from Genji’s Blackwatch days--both for the obvious reason that Genji was in Blackwatch, and the fact that back then Genji didn’t like having his photo taken. Mercy looked frazzled and overworked in nearly every photo of the old days. There was the old lineup of Winston passing the physical for active agent duty with Tracer cheering next to him, but both Mercy and Genji were practically on opposite ends of the photo there. From there photos of both of them seemed to be taken more frequently, no doubt thanks to being put on a strike team with Tracer, who tended to take a lot of photos to deal with gaps in her memory from Chronal disassociation. 

There were a handful of group photos. There was a photo of the first time their strike team was all suited up---Genji seemed more confident in this photo than almost all the other previous photos combined with his new prosthetics. They agreed to frame that one. There was one photo of Mercy and Genji sleeping on each other’s shoulders on the orca with Tracer in the foreground holding a marker. Then there was a blurry bluish selfie of Tracer, still holding the marker, with Genji chasing her in the background with a crudely drawn mustache on his faceplate and Mercy chasing after him. There was a photo of Winston and Tracer victoriously holding up empanadas after the Havana mission (it would have been a nice photo to frame if it hadn’t caught Mercy mid-chew.) Then there was another selfie--apparently taken by Genji given the angle of his arm, taken within Mercy’s lab. Mercy had dark circles under her eyes and was dramatically posing at a petri dish.

“...I don’t remember that one,” said Mercy.

“You don’t remember that one? You were half-crazed from caffeine overdose and what must have been 30 hours without sleep. You had just cracked a new compound that would reduce the number of individual nanobots in the biotic tether without sacrificing healing output and you had me take this photo for posterity.”

“You remember that?” said Mercy.

“You passed out two minutes after this was taken,” said Genji, “I had to carry you back to your on-site apartment.”

Mercy reddened a little. “Oh...” she said quietly, “Sorry about that.”

“I didn’t mind. You’re carrying the team half the time, someone ought to return the favor now and again.”

Mercy smiled, then looked up at Athena’s screen. They scrolled through a few more---Reinhardt grinning with his arms wrapped around them both, easily dwarfing them.

“I like this one,” said Mercy, “I could see it framed.”

“I think he cracked a rib of mine when we took that,” said Genji.

“I healed you,” said Mercy, “Let’s frame it.” Genji just chuckled.

“What was the first one we ever took together?” said Mercy, scrolling back through the archives.

“This one’s from you, Agent Ziegler,” said Athena bringing up a photo of Mercy looking sweaty and frazzled in a sweatsuit with Genji’s arm strung over her shoulders. Genji had his very first prosthetics, rudimentary leg blades and a somewhat omnic-looking prosthetic arm. Genji’s face was covered by a surgical mask and several bandages. Both were giving a thumb’s up. It was clearly a clumsy selfie being taken by Mercy.

“...Your physical therapy,” said Mercy.

“I can’t believe I didn’t make you delete that,” said Genji.

“It was your first steps since the--since we met,” said Mercy.

“I was on so many painkillers...” muttered Genji.

“Oh you can tell,” said Mercy. She looked at Genji and smiled.

“What?” said Genji.

Mercy nodded her head at the photo on the screen.

“That one?” said Genji.

“It’s our first photo together!” said Mercy.

“I look like a disaster,” said Genji.

“We both look like disasters!” said Mercy and then she said, with deep ache in her voice, “It’s our first photo together!”

“’Greasy topknot and sweats’ is a very different disaster from ‘freshly tenderized pork loin wrapped in metal and bandages.’” 

“Genji...” Mercy squeezed his arm slightly. 

“...we’ll make one print, but that doesn’t mean we’re framing it,” said Genji, folding his arms. He gave a glance to Athena, “What about something more recent?” asked Genji.

“This one was... 5 months ago. In Nepal,” said Athena, bringing up a photo of Genji with Mercy next to him, Zenyatta on the other side, and several Shambali monks behind them. Genji’s mask was off and his scars were crinkling with his smile.

“Oh that one’s much nicer,” said Mercy, “We can frame that one.”

“It will be nice to have a piece of Nepal in our home,” said Genji with a slight smirk in his voice. 

“Our home,” Mercy repeated the words and looked at him. She couldn’t really place last time she called a place ‘home’ let alone said the word ‘our’ in front of it.

“And this one,” said Athena, bringing up a photo of just Mercy and Genji, also a selfie, being taken in front of one of many of Nepal’s mountainous vistas.

“That one’s beautiful...” said Mercy.

“That one’s my comm lockscreen,” said Genji.

Mercy snorted. “So we’re framing that one,” she said with a smile.

“I can live with framing that one,” said Genji. He started counting on his fingers, “So there’s the group photo with our strike team, the photo with Reinhardt, the physical therapy photo---which, we are not putting that one up in the living room---and the two pictures in Nepal. I’d say that’s plenty!”

“That’s only five,” said Mercy, folding her arms.

“Well... we’re going to take a lot more, and so many of these are just work-related. We should take pictures of us on dates, on vacations, pictures at parties, holidays, wedding photos--”

“Wedding photos?!” Mercy sputtered.

“...hypothetical wedding photos,” said Genji.

“You’re just moving in and now you’re talking about wedding photos,” said Mercy with a smirk. 

“Hypothetical wedding photos,” Genji said a bit more insistently, “What if we get married and I say, ‘Oh Angela, I want to put this picture of us at our wedding up, but then where will we put this photo of our Strike team eating empanadas?’”

Mercy snickered. “You’re thinking very far ahead.”

“I’m a ninja. We pride ourselves on being prepared,” said Genji.

Mercy just smiled and looked back at the screen. “I suppose home is a thing you build, then--we shouldn’t just push everything out there all at once...”

“Well, yes,” agreed Genji, “At the same time, looking at these photos... you’ve been home for me for a long time, Angela.”

Mercy blushed and tucked her hair back. “You’re home for me too,” she said quietly. There was a beat and then she elbowed him. “We are not putting the empanada picture up.”

“No we are not,” said Genji with a chuckle in his voice.

[ironychan]

WEEK 1: YETI FOOTPRINT

A few days ago, I wrote down the words ‘cryptid-themed geek-a-long blanket’ as something that would be worth looking into. The Geek-A-Long is a blanket created by the ladies at Lattes and Llamas, a mix-and-match assortment of double-knit squares celebrating movies, tv shows, science, and all kinds of other geeky themes – but sadly, no cryptids!  As a knitter and a lover of all cryptids, from the biggest high-finned sperm whale to the tiniest flying rod, I knew then it was up to me.

A word of warning: these are not patterns.  For information about double-knitting and suggestions about needles, gauge, and so on, please visit Lattes and Llamas at the link above.  They have a whole section on how to knit and finish the Geek-A-Long, and they even sell a beautiful yarn specifically designed for the blanket.  These are just charts.  My test squares are knitted with sock yarn and 3.75 mm needles, because those are what I had lying around.  It takes about a week to knit a square, but since I’m designing these from scratch it may take me longer than that.  And so without further ado:

This famous photograph was taken by Eric Shipton, a member of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s 1951 Everest expedition, at Menlung Glacier on the border of China and Nepal.  Skeptics say it’s the print of a known animal, distorted by the snow melting and re-freezing, and Hillary and Norgay both denied believing the prints were those of a Yeti.  Still, cool picture.

[cryptid-quest]

Cryptid FACT of the Day: The Yeti Scalp

A monastery in Khumjung, Nepal claims to have an authentic scalp of a Yeti. The scalp was first recorded in the 1960′s by explorer Sir Edmund Hillary and journalist Desmond Doig. Hillary made a deal with the woman who possessed the scalp that he could bring it back to the west for scientific analysis, he would donate a large sum of money to the monastery, and a guard from the village would accompany the scalp, to make sure no harm came to it. After analysis, it was concluded that the scalp was a hide formed to look like a scalp (the hide probably came from a hoofed animal). Still, the monks proclaim its authenticity, and state that no one will change their mind over the status of their cultural and religious icon. 

[patronusofthepugs]

Team Mysterion Head Cannons: Kenny

Head Cannons About The Main Team Part One!

Kenny: Powers: Regenerative Ability, literally can not die. He can still get hurt and it’s still painful but his body will began the healing process at supersonic speed so he can recover quickly. Serious injuries such as decapitation or impalement takes longer. 

He is like the poor version of Batman minus the fancy tech. He is an avid practitioner of martial arts and even went to Nepal once to live with the monks. Well, he was forgotten in Nepal, really after an adventure gone wrong but he made the best of it. 

He gets up early to meditate on his roof and then will literally cram ten pop tarts in his mouth because he’s always late to the bus stop. Has a dry, sardonic sense of humor but is the first to giggle at immature jokes. 

He keeps his hero persona away from his civilian persona. When he is Mysterion, he is much more serious and guarded. He also deepens his voice because he thinks it makes him sound authoritative. No one has the heart to tell him that he sounds like a chain smoker gargling a couple of screws. It just comes across weird and raspy. 

Is the first to throw himself in danger, no matter what. He often thinks of himself as disposable. He also doesn’t hesitate to save someone and is usually a little extra about if. Every mission gets the same level of importance even if it’s just saving a cat stuck in the tree. 

His parents are former henchmen to some villain named Cthulhu. Kenny doesn’t fault them for it because he knows that was the only way that they had to get out of their neighborhood. But he is also determined that no one in his family will need to resort to a life of crime. He works at City Wok as a waiter on the weekends to make extra cash. 

He is more easy going with his friends. He goes along with their dumb ideas for the laughs honestly. He feels that since Kyle is also the serious one, Kenny is able to lighten up. Even when he knows that Cartman’s scheme is a stupid ass idea, he’ll still go along with it just to see what will happen.

 Is a lot more observant than his friends realize. He’s the first to realize that Kyle is madly in love with Stan but  doesn’t say anything. It’s not his place and secretly he doesn’t want their group dynamic to change. He’s super bummed when he’s separated from the group for the teams. He doesn’t mind Butters but he fights a lot with Wendy. She’s used to being in charge and Kenny refuses to let go of the reins. They fight A LOT in the beginning and poor Butters is always caught in the middle.

Butters finally has enough of their fighting and locks them in the training room together. Wendy challenges him to a spar, the winner will be the leader. He accepts and they spend the next hour beating the shit out of each other.

 In the end, they both pass out on the mat, bloodied and bruised but for some reason they can’t stop smiling. Kenny and Wendy are matched in skill and they both love the challenge. There isn’t a clear winner but Wendy concedes the match to him anyway. He argues back that she should be the leader. They fight for ten minuets about it before realizing what they were fighting about. 

When Butters goes to let them out, he’s confused on why Kenny and Wendy are just laughing hysterically on the ground. They inform him that he’s the new leader. Butters is horrified until he realizes that they’re joking. In the end, the team rotates on who’s the leader during missions. After that day, Kenny and Wendy are a lot more closer. 

Kenny trains Butters a lot for the physical stuff. They often meet up before school to run through drills. He is the first to defend Butters from any bullies. He sees Butters as a valuable asset to the team and is constantly reassuring him. He also lets Butters crash at his place when Butter’s parents are being awful.

Butters and Wendy think that Kenny is some sort of cryptid since every picture they try to take of him always comes out blurry. He likes to joke that their eyes can’t handle his final form. 

He still hates his power but he tries to make the best of it. He does still get super pissed when he hears someone complain about their power. He knows he shouldn’t compare but he would love to fucking have the ability to fly rather than getting impaled. 

He is pansexual but isn’t too concerned about relationships right now. He  considers himself to be married to justice and any time he begins to develop feelings towards anyone, he tries to squash them down. Is still absolutely devoted to Karen and is ultra protective of her. She is like his Robin although he keeps her away from missions. 

Is less conflicted than his friends. He’s actually the most stable one of out them. Everyone usually goes to him to vent or talk because he’s a great listener. Granted, he’s probably going through his drills but he can still listen about how shitty someone’s parents are while doing 100 push ups. 

Appreciates and respects women and will 100% call someone out every time they’re being sexist to women super heroes. He’s quieter in large groups but won’t hesitate to speak up if someone is being shitty. 

Usually gets good grades in school although his media personality class points out that he’s too blunt during interviews. Kenny rarely tries to draw attention to his heroic deeds and so hates talking to the press. He’s not in it for the glory but because it’s the right thing to do. 

[buddhasaves]

Reposted from @tsemrinpoche - NEW Bigfoot cafe in Malaysia! Food is delicious! https://bit.ly/2VxdGau #science #supernatural #creatures #mystical #scary #discovery #mystery #mysterious #paranormal #sasquatch #curious #tibet #nepal #kathmandu #mountains #himalaya #yeti #trees #lake #story #unsolved #creepy #california #willowcreek #monsters #cryptid #bigfoot #snowman #himalayan #everest www.tsemrinpoche.com www.dorjeshugden.org https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxqpe_UhUGb/?igshid=1ntwz9stsyboi

[qtcomicsblog]

There is a secret organization that monitors cryptids all around the world.

The Yeti or the abominable snowman is a cryptid hominid primarily from the Himalayan mountains of Nepal, Tibet, China, Bhutan and India, as well as much of central Asia including Russia and Mongolia. A distant relative of the Sasquatch, the Yeti stands out as being depicted as more aggressive and dangerous as they are bigger and stronger the regular sasquatch.

Although by far not the most dangerous of cryptids the Yeti is nevertheless often a creature that is best left alone. Yetis live in family groups like gorillas do in villages hidden in the mountains. Yetis excellent eye sight able to see in the harshest of blizzards and even use echo location to find each other. Like the sasquatch some yetis have the ability to transform to appear human, such as a female yeti love interest for henry.

This yeti girl in her human form also has big feet like henry but her feet are covered with thick white hair that resemble fur snow boots.

[metalalia]

Mythological Throwback Thursday: Yeti

Welcome! It’s time for another Mythological Throwback Thursday, and this week we venture into the sacred peaks of South Asia, the Himalayas, in search of the elusive yeti. Don’t hold your breath-- the air’s pretty thin.

The word ‘yeti’ is a loanword from Tibetan. The Tibetan term is a compound of the words for ‘rock’ and ‘bear’. Other Himalayan people know the yeti as Kang Admi-- ‘snow man’, or mi-go-- ‘jungle man’. The appellation ‘Abominable Snowman’ was coined in the 1920s by a British officer on an expedition around Everest.

Early anthropologists were told that the Lepcha people native to the Himalayas worshipped a ‘glacier being’, a god of the hunt that looked like an ape and carried a large stone as a weapon.

Most local cultures agree that the yeti is a rare and secretive creature, that leaves little trace of itself behind. Many footprints in the snow believed to have been left by a yeti have been photographed, but these make for unconvincing evidence, and trophies like scalps or hairs have been analysed by experts and identified as belonging to other creatures native to the Himalayas. In 1959 an expedition claimed to have found yeti faeces: on analysis an unknown parasite was discovered within them. Cryptozoologists, who study creatures thought by the wider scientific community not to exist, claim that this is an indication that the yeti may well exist.

In Pangboche, a Nepalese village nearly two and a half miles above sea level, a Buddhist monastery claimed to possess the hand and forearm of a yeti. The story went that a monk seeking to meditate in a cave stumbled across a resting yeti. When he returned to the cave later in life, the yeti had died, so he took some of the remains. The hand was stolen and smuggled out of Nepal by Westerners, and though most of it has disappeared into a private collection, those primatologists who had access to fragments of the sample claimed it is Neanderthal in origin.

In more modern times, explorers and experts have settled upon the explanation that the yeti of legend is nothing more than one or more species of local bear, known to be bipedal at times. In particular, the Asiatic brown bear spends its early life in trees to avoid aggressive older bears, which gives its feet a peculiar shape that means its footprints can be mistaken for human or ape-like tracks.

Regardless of what the truth may or may not be, the yeti remains one of the world’s most famous cryptid legends. The search for the yeti has led to conservation efforts in Nepal and Tibet, protecting the Himalayas for other native species.

Join us next week for another Mythological Throwback Thursday, and follow us in the meantime if you’d like to see more myths, legends, folklore, fairytales, and other fantastic content!

[glitter-lisp]

Based off of this lovely piece of art by @randomslasher​. Is there more to come from this? Who knows! Not me! Anyways here’s the longest fic I’ve written in months!

If asked, Logan Sanders would not call himself a cryptozoologist. He was simply a biologist who happened to have a more... open mindset than many of his colleagues. So yes, maybe that did result in him flying off to Scotland or Nepal in search of these so-called "cryptids," but he was simply examining evidence and forming hypotheses the way any sound scientist would. More often than not, what he found was nothing more than stories and folk tales and, occasionally, proof that someone had been deliberately fooling the locals.

Sometimes, however, he found himself here, in places like this: an isolated warehouse owned by a private corporation, fully of high-tech equipment and computers and a single enourmous tank that took up most of the room. Inside the tank was a perfect fascimile of the Atlantic Ocean a few miles off the coast of Florida. Logan and an oceanographer had consulted on the exact amount of sand, silt, and salt that were to go inside. Looking at the murky water now, it was almost as though they had somehow cut a piece of the ocean away and transported it several miles inland.

The water did not hold Logan's attention for a second.

What he was staring at was the creature inside. There were several large rocks piled together in a way that formed a natural cave (or as natural as it could be, with Logan and his colleague carefully designing every last detail of the tank's contents), and the creature was hiding inside there. Logan could just make out the gleam of its eyes. It seemed to have a mostly humanoid torso, though were legs should be, its body melted into a large, fish-like tail. Large spines spouted from its back down the tail, and although there were no other markers or any other members of its species to judge by, Logan would guess by their size that the creature was male. Its scales were sleek and black, and its eyes were the same. It had not come out since being put in the tank.

That was all that they knew about it.

"And the fishermen that found it signed the non disclosure agreements?" he asked the man next to him, who nodded.

"Yes. They both seemed eager to forget about it and take the money we gave them. Even if it did get out, we took all the evidence. They don't even have pictures any more. No one will ever believe them."

Logan hums, narrowing his eyes at the creature thoughtfully and deliberately quashing the slight guilt he feels at the thought of the two people who might have become rich and famous, had Logan's boss not gotten there first. The creature had been caught in the net a couple fishing a few miles out from the shore, presumably while hunting for its own dinner. It was pure chance that his boss had happened to be nearby on his own boat, enjoying the weather - he had always been fond of storms. The whole exchange had taken place before anyone made it back to land. The people who had found the creature left with no fish, no nets, and a check for a ludicrous amount of money.

His boss left with the creature.

Two days later, they had retrofitted an old sea life rehabilitation center and the creature had been transferred. And here Logan was now, head of the project, having signed his own papers to keep quiet about it and tasked with discovering everything he could. About a creature that was, by all rights, a mermaid.

"It's an ugly bastard," his boss said, voice reverent. "Ugly as hell. Absolutely stunning."

"Sea creatures are unlikely to have a concept of- oh. Yes, I see what you mean. It is certainly a unique specimen."

He grimaced when his boss clapped him on the back. "Damn right, it is. All right, everything is taken care of. You've got two interns under you, very well trained, extremely curious, and extravagantly well paid. Half a dozen guards to keep an eye of you, the facility, and the creature. If anything happens, you tell them, and then you call me immediately. I'll stay out of your hair as much as possible. You have the key code and an actual, physical key. This place is yours, Doc."

"I really prefer Dr. Sanders," he said, and his boss clapped him on the back, harder than before.

"You find out everything you can about this thing," he said in a low voice, leaning in close. "Is it intelligent? Is it dangerous? More importantly, are there more of them?"

"What do you hope to gain from this?" Logan asks. "There is only so much information that can be gathered from observing a single member of an unknown species in captivity. It's hardly going to behave in its normal manner, whatever that might be. You would gain more from tagging it and releasing it. Or, if you're that worried about being unable to track it, you could always just dissect it."

He knew the creature couldn't hear him. But that didn't change the fact that its dark, unblinking eyes looked somehow more terrified than they had just a few seconds before. Beside him, his boss gave an affected shudder.

"And kill such a beautiful thing?"

"You called it ugly," Logan mutters, and the man keeps talking as though he hadn't heard him. Probably a good thing for both of them.

"No. This is the scientific find of the century. Hell, of the millennium. The only reason I haven't already gone public with it is because I don't want it getting snatched out of my hands and carted off to people who would treat it less delicately than you and I will. Eventually, I will release it, with a tracker. Assuming I can't find any more of the creatures; I've got boats out trawling for them right now."

Logan hummed quietly. "All right. In that case, I need to get my supplies. Is this room equipped with cameras? However many there are, I want more. We're going to need to keep the creature under constant surveillance if I'm to learn anything about it."

Constant surveillance did absolutely nothing. The creature never left its cave; even when they dropped fish in twice a day for it to eat, it waited until one swam close enough for him to reach out with one long, sinuous arm - fin? - and snatch it up. Logan tinkered with camera angles and tripods. He attempted insert one into the tank itself. It was the most he saw of the creature in the first forty-eight hours, when it darted out of its cave, snatched the camera out of the water, and smashed it against the glass of the tank. Logan did not try again.

As frustrated as he was by their lack of progress, he couldn't help but understand. The creature had been stolen from its home and thrown into a strange tank, surrounded by strange creatures. It could hardly be expected to be swimming around and displaying itself and its natural behaviors for the benefit of the scientists observing it.

On day five, Logan was standing outside the tank at three in the morning, staring until his vision went blurry. He blinked several times and kept staring, until his eyes actually crossed, and only then did he reach up to rub at them with one hand, groaning. His glasses pressed uncomfortably into his forehead, and he spun around on one heel and leaned back against the glass, slowly sinking down until he was sitting. He was the only one there, save for two guards. One was outside of the room, patrolling the rest of the complex, and the other was in the main office watching the security tapes.

No one was watching. Logan pulled out his phone.

It was horribly unprofessional. It was, perhaps, slightly illegal, or at least very deeply frowned upon. His boss let Logan get away with a lot, they had worked together too long for anything other than that, but he would hardly be happy about this. Careful of the cameras that he himself had helped position, Logan ducked his head and tucked his phone in close to his stomach. He wouldn't have gotten service out here anyways, and there was a cell scrambler on the premises to make extra sure no one was sharing confidential information from the facility, or leaving themselves open to any sort of a cyber attack. That was the last thing they needed.

Instead, he pulled up one of his half a dozen puzzle and brain teaser applications, and set to work finding anagrams for the word "holiday." The graphics of the game were rather annoying; he didn't need bright colors and a vague, never fully explained plot about sentient food items to hold his attention, but the actual game play was engaging enough that he was able to look past the application's faults. He had, at the very least, disabled the sound, so it no longer played cheerful eight-bit music in a major key that got stuck in his head for days at a time.

Some time later, he had just finished his fourth word of the night ("multiplex," resulting in over fifty other words, some of which he really had to wrack his brain for) when, as the screen went black while loading the next level, he saw his reflection in it. More importantly, he saw the reflection of the creature in the tank, floating behind him and looking over his shoulder at his phone.

He would like to say that he stayed calm and did not let on that he had seen it, that he simply stayed still and waited until he could check the tapes the next morning so as not to startle it. But the fact was that he was so startled that he yelled and scrambled away from the tank, flinging his phone somewhere off to the side in his surprise. He wound up some ten feet away, having stumbled to his feet and run a few steps before his brain caught up with his body. He heard a wild splashing in the tank, and whipped around just in time to see the creature's tail disappearing back into its cave.

His heart pounding in his throat, Logan cautiously walked over to where his phone was lying abandoned on the ground, not taking his eyes off the cave as he slowly bent over and picked it up. "I, ah, I'm sorry for startling you," he called, then scoffed at himself. The creature obviously didn't speak English. And even if it did, it wouldn't hear him through the glass and the water. "Stupid," he muttered, shaking his head and pocketing his phone with, he was embarrassed to notice, trembling hands. The thing had really startled him.

He caught the briefest glimpse of its eyes staring back at him from the depths of its cave before it wriggled back into the shadows.

Reviewing the tapes back in the office, Logan watched as, exactly seventeen minutes after he sat down outside the tank, the creature emerged fully from its cave. It had stuck its head out twice before, and its whole torso once, but each time had darted back inside. Logan never even noticed. It spent another four minutes swimming back and forth between him and the cave, inching closer to him each time, and finally spent another three simply floating in the water right behind Logan. Observing him.

He copied the video clip to the file on his computer, then set to work taking several still frames from the video so he could see the creature more clearly. Fortunately for him and his research, it had spent some time staying relatively still, and he was able to make it out in much more detail than any of them had managed before. Up close in the photos, it looks almost human, with a few notable and somewhat disturbing differences. He tried to remember that it wasn't. Scales covered its head. Although its mouth and eyes were both on the front, similar to a human face, they looked almost horrifyingly wrong. The eyes were perfectly round and big and perfectly black, too far apart and angled outwards in a way that probably allowed the creature to see to the side and in front of it. Its mouth was lower on its head than a human's, and the lipless edges stretched back along its jaw, nearly twice the width of a human's.

He wasn't sure why he was so surprised by this. Of course it wouldn't look like a human. Just because its top half was roughly human shaped didn't mean it had to share any other resemblance. But the fact remained that it was just close enough to human to make it look horribly deformed, even though all evidence would suggest it wasn't. That was just what it looked like. It shouldn't be any stranger than looking at any of the other creatures Logan had studied over the years.

But that didn't change the fact that something in him simply rebelled at the creature's appearance. Something about it was wrong.

"Everything about this is wonderful!"

That was what his boss had said when Logan showed him the pictures and the video, claiming that he had pretended to pull his phone out as a distraction. His boss had been unsurprisingly thrilled, and did not seem to feel any of Logan's discomfort with the creature's appearance.

"Try it again, okay? See if you can get it to come close, just without screaming and running away from it this time!" He laughed and - Logan braced himself - slapped Logan on the back. "Keep up the good work. This is the closest we've gotten this whole time. It's all uphill from here!"

"Going uphill is more difficult," Logan said flatly. "Which is generally the way this work progresses so yes, I suppose it is all uphill from here. I'll come by tonight again, when the interns are gone. They're good scientists, but I don't want to spook the creature by having too many people around."

"Whatever you think is best."

"Everything I think is best," Logan snapped. "That's why you hired me."

Over the next two weeks, Logan was able to coax the creature out nine more times. The second it thought he was looking at it, though, it would bolt back into the safety of its cave. Logan had taken to pacing around the perimeter of the cave, because as much as he tried, he was having a difficult time adjusting to coming into the facility at night and leaving during the day. He wasn't sure if the creature was nocturnal or not, but it certainly seemed more willing to come out whenever they turned the lights down low and kept as many people out of the room as they could. So Logan, too, became more active at night, much as his body protested the change. More than once in the last few weeks he had fallen asleep while sitting by the tank. His neck had ached for hours afterwards.

In those two weeks, he had learned not nearly as much as he would have liked. The creature seemed to have no preference for any particular kind of food; it would eat whatever they dropped in its tank. No more of its kind had been found. Logan had gotten a few more detailed shots, but because everything was simply a screenshot of a video, they still weren't as high resolution as he would have liked. It was impossible to point any sort of a decent camera at the creature without it bolting.

Also, the interns had named it. Interns were idiots. They couldn't even come up with something decent, any sort of binomial nomenclature. No, they called it Annie. Because it was "an anxious little fish." As though that made any kind of sense.

Now, he simply paced around the perimeter of the tank. The creature kept pace with him, swimming almost leisurely alongside. Logan made a show of flipping threw his notebook as he walked; this game only worked if they both pretended he couldn’t see the creature. Halfway around the tank, however, it suddenly slammed both of its webbed hands agains the glass, resulting in a loud, reverberating gong. Logan jumped and stared at the creature which, for the first time, simply stared back at him. And then, slowly, it turned its head to look at the ground in front of him.

There was a puddle. It must have splashed out of the tank, or perhaps someone had spilled something. The how didn’t really matter; the important thing was that, distracted as he had been with deliberately ignoring the creature, he almost certainl would have slipped and fallen. The creature had stopped him.

“Thank… you,” he said. He kept looking at it, and couldn’t help the wondering smile that came to his face as it only looked backt him without fleeing. “You’re not an anxious little fish at all, are you?” he asked, shaking his head at himself. “You’re just… careful. And protective. Vigilant, almost. You’re not Annie. You’re Virgil.” 

Almost without thinking about it, he put his palm against the tank and, to his shock, the newly named Virgil did the same, webbed fingers lining up with Logan's. He stared at them, fascinated. They were much longer that his, dark blue with translucent webbing connecting them. Fanned out the way they are, Logan could see the color of the webbing much more clearly than usual, and he was surprised to see that, while the creature- while Virgil had always appeared to be entirely black and gray, the scales along his arms and the skin on the underside of his hand was actually a dark and shimmering shade of violet, and when the light shone through the webbing on his hands, it turned it into a soft, silvery lavender.

Logan was so absorbed in looking at the colors that he didn't even think to examine the rest of Virgil. He finally looked up, wondering if he would be able to make out any new details in the scales of Virgil's face, when he shouted in surprise and scrambled backwards. Virgil flung himself back from the glass, arms pinwheeling wildly and an expression of shock and terror on his suddenly familiar face. It would seem that Virgil had, unbeknownst to Logan or any of the other researchers, the ability to mimic appearances. Logan immediately started running through possibilities and examples in his mind, examining and dismissing possibilities and theories before he could even fully process them. Mimic octopus. Various species of snakes and insects. Perhaps even-

Virgil swam cautiously up to the glass, placing his hand back where it was. He looked ready to swim away at any second. His hand looked smaller now, and even as Logan watched the color faded from dark purple, to pink, to beige, until it was the same color as his own skin, lit a strange greenish tint by the lights in the water. The webbing between the fingers was still there, still a soft pinkish blush color. Logan took a deep breath and pressed his own hand against Virgil's, and tried not to recoil when the creature smiles at him. He was smiling with Logan's face.

It wasn’t an exact match. There were still patches of scales along his cheeks and forehead and gills on the sides of his neck. His ears were long and pointed, and his hair, longer and darker than Logan's, floated gently around his face. His eyes, too, were darker, and seem almost sunken into his skull. It takes a few moments for Logan to realize that they aren't just pits or shadows beneath Virgil's eyes, but darker markings, almost like bruises or birthmarks. Curious, Logan reached up with a finger and traced the shape of them onto the glass. Virgil followed his finger with one of his own, then touched his own face, apparently realizing what Logan was looking at. An excited expression crossed his face and bubbles streamed from his mouth as he traced the shapes himself, then mimed drawing circles around his eyes. Logan stared, baffled, and Virgil repeated the movement more slowly before pointing at Logan's face.

"My... my glasses?" he asked, adjusting them. Virgil grinned and wriggled in place, tail slapping against the glass in his excitement, and Logan surprised himself by giggling. "You... you tried to copy my glasses. Because you want to look like me." Virgil couldn't hear him and probably couldn't understand him, anyways (just because he looked human, looked like Logan, didn't mean he spoke any human languages), but he kept smiling, now touching his own face. He seemed curious to know what he looked like, and so Logan gathers that Virgil has never copied his appearance before. Even if Virgil hadn’t seemed so curious, Logan still would have known. He had watched ever second of the tapes; it was the first thing he did when he arrived at the facility each night and the last thing he did when he left each morning. So what changed? Why was he suddenly staring at his own face?

“You helped me,” he mused out loud. “You warned me about the puddle. You let me look at you without fleeing. I gave you a new name.”

Virgil, the creature mouthed at him, smiling with a mouth full of canines. Logan’s eyes widened, his jaw dropped, and Virgil’s smile disappeared, replaced with a worried expression.

“You… can you hear me?” Logan asked. Virgil stared back at him, silent and unmoving except for the slightest swishes of his tail to keep him in place. “Virgil?”

Virgil.

“All right, so you know your name,” Logan said, cocking his head to the side thoughtfully. He finally took his hand off the glass to point at his own chest. “Logan.”

Virgil rolled his eyes. Lo-gan, he mouthed, moving his lips in an exaggerated point. If Logan didn’t know any better, he’d say that Virgil was being sarcastic.

Of course, he clearly didn’t know better. He had no idea the creature could change its appearance, or that it possessed this level of intelligence. It was, it a way, conversing with him. It knew his name. It knew its own name.

“Did you already go by Virgil?” Logan asked, placing his hand against the glass and drumming his fingers thoughtfully. “Did I just happen to guess correctly? Or do you just like that better than Annie?”

Virgil gave Logan’s hand on the glass a disgusted look and mimed slapping his hand away. Logan paused his drumming, and Virgil looked satisfied. The vibrations must have carried more strongly through the water that Logan expected. How sensitive were Virgil’s ears? Or was he feeling the movement of the water physically? Maybe they should-

This, time, Virgil did actually slap the glass, grimacing. Oops. Logan had started drumming again without realizing it. Virgil kept his hand where it was, though, and Logan uncurled his own fingers to press against it.

“Virgil,” he breathed, and Virgil smiled back at him.

Logan.