Last week in a post-deleted by the OP, there was discussion about how there is no point in stockpiling antibiotics and any attemps for lay people to practice any form of health care in a widespread grid down disaster was a waste of time
Myself and some colleagues wrote: Survival and Austere Medicine
Edit. New link. in a post below.
We are slowing working on a 4th edition with some new material and minor corrections - but it is taking longer than we thought!
But I thought given the above post, I would take the opportunity to post the introduction - which address the "why bother" question for a major long-term grid down situation. Apologies for the formatting and length
"There is a sense, when considering the issues around survival medicine practice, that everything is overwhelming, that it is impossible for lay people to provide a high level of medical care and maintain a high level of population health.
We don’t think this is the case at all. We believe that intelligent lay people with some basic medical knowledge, skills, and equipment can deliver high quality health care. While it is obviously impossible for lay people to safely and competently deal with every medical problem, and there remain many complicated diagnoses requiring equally complicated or technologically advanced treatments, for 80- 90% of the health problems afflicting humanity, simple things done well are all that is required to preserve life and limb and help alleviate suffering.
Consider the following:
1. Remote Medicine Practice:
Below are the results of one of our author’s experience in the provision of health care in various remote and austere locations (some third world, some first world) to nearly four thousand people over a cumulative 30-month period (spread over 18 years) – with more data there are few minor changes from the 2005 2nd edition, but the list is essentially the same – which is interesting. The record keeping was a bit unreliable at times, but the following summary is reasonably accurate.
Top 20 presentations (representing > 95% of consultations):
1. Minor musculoskeletal injuries - ankle sprains most common, included many minor fractures which didn’t require more than diagnosis and simple care
2. Upper respiratory tract infections
3. Allergic reactions/Hay feveAnaphylactic reactions/Rashes
4. Minor open wounds – included a mix of lacerations needing closure, many needing
cleaning and advice only, and some infected wounds
5. Gastroenteritis/Vomiting/Diarrhoea
6. Mental health problems
7. Sexual health/Contraceptive problems
8. Skin infections/Cellulitis
9. Dental problems
10. Abdominal pain - 4 confirmed acute appendix (2 treated with IV antibiotics and
subsequent delayed appendix removal / 2 required evacuation) + 1 gangrenous gall bladder. Many were "no cause found". Of the remainder with a clear diagnosis the most common were renal or biliary colic)
11. Fever /Viral illness
12. Chest infections
13. Major musculoskeletal injuries (fractures/dislocations)
14. Asthma
15. Ear infections
16. Urinary tract infections
17. Burns – mostly partial thickness within the realms of management in the environment the
patient was in. Several required evacuations. Several required rehabilitation due to location and sub-optimal initial treatment.
18. Chest pain
19. Syncope/Collapse/Faints
20. Early pregnancy problems
Major trauma was uncommon but was seen including several fractured femurs and a dozen cases of multi-system severe trauma resulting in a mix of in-country surgery and evacuations
Top 12 prescribed drugs (representing >90% of medications prescribed):
1. Paracetamol (Acetaminophen)
2. Loratadine (and other assorted antihistamines)
3. Diclofenac (and other assorted antiinflammatories)
4. Combined oral contraceptive
5. Flucloxacillin
6. Throat lozenges
7. Augmentin (Amoxycillin + clavulanic acid)
8. Loperamide
9. Nystatin (and other antifungals)
10. Hydrocortisonecream
11. Ventolininhalers(Salbutamol/Albuterol)
12. Morphine
What is of note here is that the clear majority of problems dealt with are simple and straight forward – there is still potential for serious consequences but there is scope for a well-informed lay person with a basic knowledge and access to a reasonable collection of reference books to provide reasonable care. Equally the vast majority of medication prescribed are from a very narrow well defined list – despite the fact 1000’s of drugs are on the market – the list of core lifesaving or comfort preserving ones is relatively brief.
2. Why children die
The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified the following conditions as having contributed to >75% of worldwide deaths in the under 5-year age group (in no particular order):
Pneumonia Pneumonia is an infection of lungs. Prevention of this condition is somewhat limited – although good nutrition, clean and warm housing, and a reduction in the exposure to respiratory irritants (smoke) all can help. However, the most common bacteria which cause pneumonia are frequently sensitive to penicillin – which is discussed later in the book and can be produced in a low-tech environment.
Diarrhea Death from diarrhea (dehydration) is almost 100% preventable with appropriate use of oral rehydration therapy. Dirty water or poor food handling causes much diarrhea – this can be virtually eliminated by proper hygiene practices and care with drinking water.


Pre-term delivery While we are limited in the direct interventions available in an austere environment to mitigate this problem contributing factors to early labor are young age, malnutrition, smoking, poor maternal health, so there is scope for indirect intervention based on optimizing mum’s health and environment. For babies who are born prematurely the necessities of life are warmth and breast milk. With attention to detail for both things, it is possible for infants as young as 33-34 weeks to survive without high-tech intervention.
Malaria. Prevention is better than a cure, knowledge about clearing stagnant water, mosquito nets and long sleeved clothes can significantly reduce the risk. Equally quinine is derived from the bark of the Chincona tree and the Chinese have been using the herb, Artemisinin, effectively for the treatment of Malaria for years. So, while not as easy to treat or prevent as diarrhea, there is still scope for significant reduction in death rates in low-tech ways.
Blood infection Blood infection or septicemia is rapidly fatal. The ability to intervene depends on the cause of the infection and antibiotics available. Broadly, infections causing septicemia can originate from the skin, the lungs, the kidneys or bladder, and the abdominal contents. While specific treatments for these may be lacking in an austere environment – all have prevention strategies and basic low-tech treatments that can be lifesaving when applied appropriately.
Lack of oxygen at birth Of these problems, this is the one with probably the least scope for impact. Unfortunately, even if foetal distress is detected during labor (with heart beat monitoring or signs of distress like meconium), without the ability to deliver the baby quickly options are limited. That said, a caesarian section is not a massively complicated operation (and discussed in Chapter 10), and in parts of the third world is performed by trained lay people with safety and success.
Measles Again, there is limited scope to intervene directly with the disease. Measles is always around and while vaccination reduced the incidence of epidemics, sporadic cases still occur. In the absence of vaccinations epidemics of measles every few years will be inevitable. There is however some scope to minimize the spread during an epidemic with isolation and respiratory precautions during outbreaks. While some of the serious neurological complications are unavoidable in a
Prevention is better than a cure, knowledge about clearing stagnant water, mosquito nets and long sleeved clothes can significantly reduce the risk. Equally quinine is derived from the bark of the Chincona tree and the Chinese have been using the herb, Artemisinin, effectively for the treatment of Malaria for years. So, while not as easy to treat or prevent as diarrhea, there is still scope for significant reduction in death rates in low-tech ways. small number of patients, basic care such as maintaining hydration can also prevent complications such as dehydration.
Neonatal tetanus The prevention of neonatal tetanus is easy. You don’t let the site where the umbilical cord attaches to the baby get dirty. It is as simple as that.
HIV/AIDS Prevention of maternal infection is the key to prevention of infection of newborns. The steps required to prevent exposure to the HIV virus are widely known: abstinence (not undertaking sexual activity), monogamy (maintaining a single sex partner rather than multiple) and if neither is a palatable option, then safe sexual practices.
Most the conditions above have an element of either preventability or the ability to be treated to some degree in an austere environment and significant improvements in mortality and morbidity can be made.

3. The greatest advances in medicine
Several years ago the British Medical Journal ran a poll trying to identify top medical advances of the last 200 years. The following is the top 12 from that poll:
Sanitation 1st Antibiotics 2nd Anaesthesia 3rd Vaccines 4th DNA 5th Germ theory 6th = The oral contraceptive 6^th = Evidence based medicine 8th Imaging 9th Computers 10th Oral rehydration therapy 11th Smoking cessation 12th =
Just as with our discussion above about the causes of childhood deaths, this list is introduced to show just how much impact a very basic health care knowledge can have in terms of optimising health in a post-disaster or austere situation.
Of the biggest advances of medicine in the last 200 years, between 7 to 9 (depending on your knowledge and available resources) of the 12 can be applied to care in a austere situation. In particular, the knowledge of sanitation, germ theory, oral rehydration therapy, and simple manufactured antibiotics and anaesthetic agents all have the potential to be able to be continued to be applied in a post-disaster situation and to continue to contribute to a high quality of low-tech health care. In the same way that we can substantially reduce childhood death rates in a low tech post-disaster situation, we can still continue to have access to some of the biggest advances in medicine even at the end of the world.
4. Surgery in the third world
A non-specialist surgeon working at a isolated bush hospital in Papua New Guinea published his experience of Emergency Surgery over a 14 month period (similar articles have been published with similar data):
Emergency Surgery 243
Tendon repair 33 Open orthopaedics 32 Dilation and curettage 31 General surgery 29 Incision and drainage 26 Laceration repair 26 Obstetrics 23 Manipulation under anaesthesia 15 Urology 15 Gynaecology 9 Ear, nose and throat 2
Emergency anaesthesia 243
Ketamine – spontaneous breathing 166 Local anaesthesia 33 Ketamine – ventilated 16 Spinal anaesthesia 12 Propofol / thiopentone 10 Epidural 5 Epidural / GA 1
The point of this reference is to help illustrate what someone can achieve in primitive conditions with no formal surgical training and no dedicated anaesthetist. We are not suggesting that the average layperson can safely practice to this extent or breadth of surgery, but it does demonstrate that a non-surgeon can achieve much. It also shows that most anaesthetics for surgery in an austere situation can be done under local or ketamine anaesthetics.
Why this is relevant?
Each of these four references gives you insights, one way or another, into low-tech austere health care. First, it gives you an insight into the likely clinical problems that you may see in a survival situation, and how much can be dealt with in that sort of austere environment. Second, it demonstrates how medically speaking it is the small things and simple knowledge which save lives and some of the biggest killers can be mitigated with these relatively low level interventions or strategies.
In our opening summary – “Medicine at that end of the world”, we describe a pretty bleak medical reality post-SHTF. Will million’s really die from lack of access to modern heath care as we have alleged?
The short answer is yes – many will die much sooner than they otherwise would have, from disease and injury, which currently are not immediately fatal. But the answer is not nearly that simple nor bleak. The reality is that while cancer, diabetes, malnutrition or serious injury may claim many of its victim’s sooner than with today’s health care, most health problems can be treated or mitigated to a degree in a low- tech environment, with a narrow range of medications and interventions – including some cancers, non- insulin requiring diabetes and many major traumatic injuries.
Most medical problems are relatively mundane and not life threatening. Truly catastrophic problems in medicine are fortunately rare. You should focus on learning and preparing to deal with the common problems, and doing common procedures well, and you will save lives, and possibly also improve the quality of those lives.
There will be a significant change to health care but with knowledge and some preparation it isn’t quite as dire as many (including our own opening paragraph) predict. "

If you are a doctor, please help give any ideas for testing of illness/disease/rare conditions. My daughter is 19, she was a perfectly healthy child all her life. The only issue she has ever had is sensitivity to sunlight and hives with a malar rash. Starting in November of 23 she began vomiting. It was severe and continued for 7 weeks while hospitalized. Many tests were ran and no cause could be found. She ended up with a picc line and tpn due to not being able to eat. Vomiting episodes last 1-5 days and then have a 1-2 day break in between. The malar rash almost always appears with the vomiting. She has severe nausea as well. Her gallbladder was removed and did not resolve symptoms. The following are the only issues to note: Nausea/vomiting (always dark green bile) Tachycardia during episodes (resting heart rate 125, walking 150) High blood pressure during episodes (145/99) Elevated alk-phos, alt, ast , GGT, Protein/potassium/blood in urine
All imaging done on livekidneys/etc normal. EEG normal, Ana negative (as well as other labs for lupus)
After 7 weeks of vomiting she stopped and was completely normal for 3 months, then suddenly started again 4 weeks ago. She had to have a port implanted due to not having access to veins because her potassium is constantly very low and the IV potassium causes IV to go bad very quickly. There have been no medications that control the vomiting. All meds for cyclic vomiting have been tried long term without any effect. The meds that help her slow vomiting the most are Valium/ativan and compazine as well as phenobarbital. Any ideas would be appreciated

If you are a doctor, please help give any ideas for testing of illness/disease/rare conditions. My daughter is 19, she was a perfectly healthy child all her life. The only issue she has ever had is sensitivity to sunlight and hives with a malar rash. Starting in November of 23 she began vomiting. It was severe and continued for 7 weeks while hospitalized. Many tests were ran and no cause could be found. She ended up with a picc line and tpn due to not being able to eat. Vomiting episodes last 1-5 days and then have a 1-2 day break in between. The malar rash almost always appears with the vomiting. She has severe nausea as well. Her gallbladder was removed and did not resolve symptoms. The following are the only issues to note: Nausea/vomiting (always dark green bile) Tachycardia during episodes (resting heart rate 125, walking 150) High blood pressure during episodes (145/99) Elevated alk-phos, alt, ast , GGT, Protein/potassium/blood in urine
All imaging done on livekidneys/etc normal. EEG normal, Ana negative (as well as other labs for lupus)
After 7 weeks of vomiting she stopped and was completely normal for 3 months, then suddenly started again 4 weeks ago. She had to have a port implanted due to not having access to veins because her potassium is constantly very low and the IV potassium causes OV to go bad very quickly. There have been no medications that control the vomiting. All meds for cyclic vomiting have been tried long term without any effect. The meds that help her slow vomiting the most are Valium/ativan and compazine as well as phenobarbital. Any ideas would be appreciated

It’s bitter and not enjoyable without help of some sugar. Some were given oranges, lucky them. TBH, after all these years on earth being always the overachieving underdog, the weird repulsive one, I think I learned how to embrace it. It’s DOOM. Be violent, be rash and be however you feel like. If nobody expects good things from you, and any efforts you make to steer the ship don’t register, why bother? Manifest destiny. I’ve turned my life around by accepting it. I now have friends, my character suits the image I was given. I am the brutally sincere and eloquently insulting weapon. I don’t have any good social reputation, might just enjoy the bad reputation. Everyone loves a madman, a bad influence. It’s funny, its useful and you can even toy with your friends lowered guard. You own the group, they need you more than you need them. So my advice is learn to love hate, and like the stupid morons that believe in spirituality… the vibes will take care of the rest. Maybe lessons on magnetism were useful after all, even if polarizing. Be the one they need and learn to exploit it, it’s a good thing nobody expects good things from your ugly self. When you exploit your own group later you also have the perfect excuse, after all nobody would expect anything less than that.

My wife 26F, and I, 27M have been married nearly 2 years. For the most part we've had a fun and happy relationship so far. About 2 weeks ago we got the unfortunate news that my wife had a miscarriage. It was tough on both of us, as we were very excited to become new parents. To try and get past this and "reset", i took her on a long weekend trip to Florida. Vacation was fantastic; until the last night.
We ended the night at a local Tiki bar just across the road. We both had drank quite a bit. I told her we should probably get back to the condo as we were already pretty toasted and we had flights the following morning. She wanted to stay out a little longer, so i said "hey, no problem. i'll see you at the condo. have fun!"
Well an hour went by and she wasn't answering her phone, so i got worried and walked back to the bar. I spot her on the dance floor with a guy draped around her, explicitly groping each other and kissing. When i say i have never felt pain like this, i can't even describe it. i was so shocked and hurt at the same time. My jaw dropped as i watched for what felt like a lifetime, but was probably about 20 seconds.
I went over to break it up, and as you can imagine, it turned into a bit of a scene. I left before security got involved because i was seeing red at this point and didn't want to jeopardize going to jail for doing something rash to this man kissing my wife.
I feel like this is a fucking episode of Jerry Springer. Take my wife on a vacation to reset after we went through a miscarriage, and the whole trip ends with heart break and put us in a worse spot than before.
After talking with my wife today after letting her sober up, she seems remorseful. & she was absolutely blacked out by the time i got back to the bar. she claims she doesn't remember any of that. She knows there's nothing she can say or do to make this better at the moment. Am i in the wrong for letting her stay at the bar? Do i give her a pass as she just went through a lot of physical and emotional pain with the miscarriage? Is it grounds for divorce? I'm heart broken. I want to forgive her, if i can. I'm worried even if i try and forgive her, the image of her and that man will always be burnt into my head. I'm also worried if we try and make it work that i will always be worried about this incident happening again. I want to end this by saying this was completely out of character for her. i never thought in a million years she could do something like this. What do i do in this situation? Thanks in advance.
TLDR: My wife and a man (stranger) were kissing and groping each other on the dance floor at a bar on our last night of vacation after a miscarriage.

Hi all,
Looking at starting GP training next year.
Bit overwhelmed by all the different conditions and treatment guidelines I will need to know, and having to do it all in front of a patient within 15 mins.
Was thinking of just having a set of notes on one monitor and building it as I go to use as a crutch (which hopefully towards the end of training I won't need). Instead of having to look up ETG each and every time and trying to find where everything is, which may be awkward in front of a patient.
Which note taking app do you all suggest?
Requirements:

• Must be cloud based
• Must handle images well e.g. treatment pathways, images of rashes etc
• Good search / ctrl-F function
• Outline or something on the left side like word and google docs
• Be able to export if I ever need to in the future i.e. not be stuck within one program
• Don't mind paying

To date I have used google docs and MS word.

• Google docs I am finding some annoying features like the limited editing options, and stuff like the outline/headings not being collapsible on the outline (e.g. if I have a Heading and subheadings and want the outline to only show the headings it won't let me do that).
• Note sure if one note is still like this but I found the search almost unusable. E.g. if I typed "X Y" it would show me all the results for "X Y" and "X ............. abcbdbeg Y". I.e. it would show me sentences that had X and Y somewhere instead of just the exact 2 words I wanted.
• Evernote doesn't seem to have a document outline either (just installed and tested).

Thoughts on other apps such as Evernote, Notion, One-note for this purpose?
Thanks in advance!

And when the townclerk had appeased the people, he said, Ye men of Ephesus, what man is there that knoweth not how that the city of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter?Seeing then that these things cannot be spoken against, ye ought to be quiet, and to do nothing rashly

We look the same and we always have but we couldn’t be more different from each other. I think that’s the best place to start with this. Some identical twins have a lot in common. They like the same foods, the same things on television, some even spend their entire lives dressing in the same clothes, but we were never those girls. For as long as I remember, it’s been hard for even our own parents to tell us apart were it not for our very different personalities. Our own mother can’t tell the difference between our voices over the phone to this day. We even have the same laugh, but after that we diverge. I’m extroverted and would much rather be outdoors than inside where she is bookish and reserved. As far as personality traits go, Lily and I have always shared very few.
We both have our father’s nose and our mother’s heart shaped face and her high cheekbones. The same raven-black hair falls in waves past both of our shoulders and the same emerald green, almond shaped eyes sparkle with hidden flecks of gold that you can only see if you take a look up close.
Still, there’s a connection between us that can’t be explained. We just feel it. Know it’s there. It’s a thing with identical twins no matter how truly different they really are. Some say it’s a sort of telepathy, if you believe in that sort of thing.
That’s the reason I knew something was wrong before I had proof. I knew when I woke up in the morning that something was happening and that it was big. I even knew when I finally got up the nerve to send her a text, she would reply this time; not right away–but this time–she would. She hadn't been replying to me at all lately, no matter how often I sent her messages. Something was different now. I'd hear back from her but it would be at least a week–possibly a few days more before I did. Sending this text was different. Something I could feel in my bones told me she'd finally tell me what was going on with her. Where had she been? In my heart, I knew the lack of communication over the past several months wasn’t something she had chosen. Somehow I knew she wanted to talk to me but for some reason she couldn’t and that was a very strange and unnerving feeling for a twin to have. In the past, before Lily’s recent radio-silence, she and I had rarely gone for more than a day or two without checking in. In the past year that had suddenly changed and I had no logical explanation for it.
This particular morning, a feeling of unease is everywhere around me and even somehow inside me. I feel it in bed before I even open my eyes. Like an itch you can’t scratch because you know it will just make the rash worse and trying to ignore it altogether will drive you mad. The worst part about the itch was knowing that after months of nothing, I would finally hear back from Lily. It was time. She was ready to talk. I knew it. I don't know how–I just did. Somehow after months of unanswered messages, my next text would finally garner a response and knowing that made me jittery. The itch was made worse by the inexplicable knowledge that the response was going to take days. At least I would get it, but I'd have to wait for it for days. If she hadn't replied to me in months, why should that make me feel so uneasy? I couldn't say. The whole prospect of this scenario made me nervous but I told myself I would send the message right after breakfast because my sister needed me to send it and she needed me to send it today. It was important that I reached out to her this morning.
Whatever happened is bothering me so much that I burn the pancakes and have to start them over three different times.
“Vibes are off today, Emily,” my wife Jasmine begins. She sits patiently waiting for me to serve her a plate of good ones, pancakes that aren’t burnt, at the table in our kitchenette, “I just changed that bag last night you know, and if you keep doing that I’ll have to take it out again before we even get to eat. What’s up with you?”
“Not me,” I reply, “it’s Lily. Something’s up with Lilly.”
“Oh? You finally hear back from her? What’s going on?”
“That’s just it. I haven't heard anything in months but that's definitely about to change. I don’t know. It’s just a feeling, babe. Hard to explain,” I say.
“A twin thing?” She asks.
“Exactly. It’s twintuition. It’s like–”
“–Intuition,” she finishes for me, “I get it. Did you try calling her or texting her yet?” Jasmine asks.
“No, but it’s because I’m afraid she won’t answer right away and I don’t want to have that fear be real.” I admit. “That’s weird isn’t it?”
“Very,” she says getting up from the table. She picks my phone up from the counter and grabs me by the waist, moving me away from the stove and spinning me around. She pecks a small kiss on my lips and lifts one of my hands, placing the phone into it. She gives me a little shove toward the kitchenette table and pulls out the chair for me.
“You’re going to sit here and write a text to your sister and I’m going to finish making breakfast.” She tells me.
I sit here looking at my phone for a while, unsure of how to start. Finally I type:

Anything wrong? Worried about you.

And I hit send.
_____________________________
Eight days pass before Lily texts me back and it’s a flood of texts in the morning from an unknown number. One after the other.

Sorry I didn’t get back to you right away. You were right about Eric. I didn’t tell you a lot because I thought you’d be ashamed of me. Or mad. You’ve always been so much stronger than I am.
I packed and left the night you text me. I was afraid to reply because I thought he might be able to read it somehow. He definitely was tracking the phone so I left it at the bus station that morning.
It took me a few days to get set up, but I’m in Echo Bay now and this is my new number. Just got one of those burner phones from Walmart. It’s nothing special but that’s on purpose.
I’m staying in a bungalow on the beach. Very cute. Just a few miles from you and Jasmine, actually. It’s nothing permanent, just an AirB&B. I figured coming here would be safest for now to figure out what to do next.
I never told him where you were and he’ll try to find me if he can. He’ll follow me to the end of the Earth. I should have told you about him. The whole truth. Now I finally can. If you’re not busy, come by today and I’ll tell you the whole story.

The last text she sends puts tears in my eyes and I call her right after I read it and we make plans…

I’m pretty sure if I stayed he’d have killed me sooner or later. Probably sooner.

I meet Lily for lunch at her bungalow in the afternoon and she’s right, it’s very cute. She, on the other hand, looks like a mess and I find myself both irate and awestruck. I don't understand how the bruises haven’t fully healed or even begun to heal a little. That bastard really did a number on her. It's eight days later and her face and skin is purple and green with bruises in so many places–appearing to be so fresh that you'd think she'd been at the bottom of a three-car pile up just the night before.
“He wasn’t always like this, you know,” she tells me, “in the beginning he was really charming…it took a long time to figure out that person wasn’t real.”
She doesn’t eat much, mostly just moves the food around on her plate with her fork. She goes quiet and drifts away from the conversation a lot which is strange for me because she was always the one with more focus. I’m the daydreamer. She’s the grounded one. That’s how we’ve always been. A few times while she’s sitting silently, she begins to cry. When I hold her hand, it turns into a wailing sob and I reassure her that none of this is her fault. That this sort of thing happens to a lot of women. That they feel trapped and never try to get out. Never try to escape. They don’t make it out. I reassure her that she’s still strong because she saw what was happening and she did something about it. She left. I reassure her quietly that although it shouldn’t be this way, that it shouldn’t happen, this still happens to lots of women anyway. She’s not alone. She escaped it. She’s a survivor.
“We can help find you a lawyer if you want,” I offer at one point, “we have money saved. We can pay for it,” and she immediately shuts the idea down.
“No. I’m not doing that,” she says adamantly, “I just want to be done with it. I came here to heal. I don’t know if I’m staying or not yet…”
She pauses for a moment and then adds: “I just need some time to figure out where I’m supposed to be.”
“But if you let him get away with it, he could do this to someone else,” I say, “you do realize that right? You need to do something. He needs to pay for this.”
“He does need to, but what if he gets away with it?” she asks, “what if I report all of it and he sits trial for it…and what if he gets off? I can't take that chance. It isn't worth the consequences of it. What if I don't win?”
“What if you do?” I ask her. She gets really quiet then, “promise me you’ll think about it.”
“I will,” she says and it’s almost a whisper, “I just need some time. I made it away and I’m safe. I don’t know if I want him to know where I am. If I do this then he knows I’m here and when he does, if I lose, he will kill me. You understand that don’t you? He will kill me. That man operates on some sort of twisted revenge. He won't even consider what would follow once he's gotten it. He'll just think about getting even with me.”
“Jail isn't a deterrent when you're dealing with a human grenade. He'll only want to explode–to destroy. He won't worry about what happens to him after that. He doesn't work that way.” She says.
She doesn’t want to let me take pictures of her bruises but I insist on it and somehow actually win that argument. She tells me she’s been trying not to even look in mirrors right now. She doesn’t want pictures of her looking like this on her brand new phone because what if she decides to take a picture of something beautiful, like a sunset, and she opens the camera and the photo gallery is right there and she has to look at this instead. I tell her that she’s still beautiful no matter what happened to her. All that matters is what happens next. So I take the pictures for her with my phone. She takes off her shirt and there are more bruises everywhere underneath and we take pictures of those too.
I manage to keep my own feelings bottled up for the entire afternoon until she takes her shirt off and now before I realize I’m doing it, I’m crying also.
“Shhh,” she whispers, “you can’t cry. You’re the strong one.”
I shake my head and tell her that we’re both strong and then we’re both sobbing and she presses her face against my chest and I press my head onto the top of hers until she steps away from me and tells me that I have to stop crying on her because I’m getting snot in her hair. We both laugh.
It’s not funny. Nothing about this afternoon has been, but we both laugh anyway and our laughs still sound the same.
I spend the entire day with her and as the sun goes down we leave her bungalow and take a walk along the beach.
“So, can I ask how you ended up falling for this guy? Identical or not we clearly operate on different wavelengths romantically and I just don't understand.” I say, and then add: “forgive me if that's too personal.”
“No. It isn't.” She begins, “and if only we operated on the same wavelength or even similar ones. I thought about you a lot in the past few years. Thought that if only I was a big old lezzie–like you, if I'd just went for girls, none of this would've ever happened.”
“Don't be so sure. Domestic abuse doesn't have a gender. There's shitty, abusive partners in queer relationships too.” I tell her.
“Well, regardless, I've actually asked myself the same question about a hundred times in the last week. What drew me to him and where and when did things change–you know? When did he go from the ideal boyfriend to an absolute monster?”
She tells me that when she met this bastard, Eric Warminster, it was like something out of a movie, and her story begins that way too–like a cheesy rom-com–so corny it sounds fake…I almost tell her how much I hate romantic comedies, I almost tell her to give me some horror flick any day of the week. I think better of it just before I do and don't say the thought aloud. She never went for horror, even when we were girls–and that's what she ended up with despite her aversion to it. That was what her life had become.
She tells me they were both in the produce section of the grocery, neither of them paying too much attention–he on the phone and she looking over her shopping list. They both reached for a pineapple–the last pineapple in the crate. He asks her what she plans to do with it if he lets her have it and she tells him she's just going to cut it up and eat it. He tells her he’s making a pineapple-upsidedown cake with it.
“I've never had that.” She tells him honestly; matter-of-factly and he invites her over to his place later that night to be the judge of whether or not his recipe is any good. Normally, she tells me, she'd never have done something like that. She tells me that she's not the type to just go to a strange man's place on a whim…but he was good looking and had a charming way about him. She fondly describes his smile. It’s out of character and she can't say exactly what makes her drop her guard and give this man her number, but she does…
And the dinner he cooks for her as well as the cake he makes are both excellent.
“That wasn't the only cake he made for me. One day when we were still getting to know each other he asked me a load of questions. What's my favorite color? Favorite flower? That sort of thing. Remember that movie ‘Steel Magnolias?’ I told him that was my favorite movie. He says he's never seen it. Not a week later, he tells me he watched it and asks me to come by after work. Says he's got a surprise for me...” She says.
“No fuckin way.” I said, interrupting her. I told you rom-coms aren't really my thing, but I'd known that was Lily's favorite since we were in middle school. Of course I'd suffered through it and we'd watched it together…her with a tissue pressed against her eyes and me rolling mine.
“He made the Armadillo Cake?” I ask, “you mean to tell me he watched the movie just because you mentioned it and then he made the cake?”
Lily smiles briefly at the recollection and nods.
“He was very romantic…in the beginning.” She tells me.
Eric does all sorts of things to win Lily's heart: he'd make her breakfast in bed, take her on picnics. She tells me he would even sit there calmly while she complained about her co-workers and instead of trying to fix the problem or offer his advice, by the end of the conversation he'd have found a reason to hate the people she said she hated in her story and have his own complaints about them too. According to Lily, he was perfect…and then shortly after she moved in with him, things started to change and they changed fast.
Little things at first…she accidentally buys the wrong type of cereal at the store and is met with: “Frosted Flakes? Really? Not Frosted Flakes! Mini Wheats! Are you stupid or something? Frosted Mini Wheats! How hard is that for your useless, stupid brain to remember?”
She tells me that once she folded the towels the way our mother always had when we were growing up. He didn't fold them that way so he calls her into the bathroom, throws open the linen closet and proceeds to yank each one of them out one by one, unfolding them with a flick of his wrist before smooshing them into balls and leaving them in a heap on the floor.
“Do it the fuckin right away the first time, or do it again, moron.” He shouts at her before storming out of the room.
“He told me all my friends were toxic next. I didn't have any friends except my coworkers so he told me he didn't want me working anymore. Most women would kill to be homemakers. Do the dishes. Spend the afternoon watching soap operas. He put me on an allowance and I couldn't buy anything without telling him I was buying it.” She says. “He told me you were toxic too. Said you didn't love me and the way he said it…how he explained it, it was so convincing. That’s the reason I stopped returning your calls.” After she says this, she begins to cry quietly.
He tells her if she tries to reach me or any other of her so-called “toxic” family, and he finds out, he'll sell the car he bought her and they'd start having everything–all the shopping and groceries–delivered. She becomes afraid if she lets anyone know what’s happening she’ll lose what little freedom he grants her and she'll be trapped in their house for good…trapped there with him for good.
There are a few other anecdotes just like those ones in her story and I find myself getting more and more angry as she recounts all of this to me. Then it hits me: each story is just another small escalation. I'm so mad I could run this man down with my car, then get out and curb-stomp his head before setting him on fire.
I can feel the desire to do that just from what she tells me up to this point…
She still hasn't gotten to the day he begins to put his hands on her and my blood is already boiling.
She gets quiet for a long time and we just walk. I reach out and take her hand, and when I do she puts the thoughts that I was having just a moment earlier into words:
“I can sense how mad you are. I haven't even told you about the first time he hit me.” She says.
“You can keep talking about it, but you don't have to if you don't want to.” I say.
“I don't want to, but I'm going to anyway. I'm ashamed.”
“You shouldn't be. None of this was your fault.” I tell her.
“I know. I am anyway.” She continues, “I feel like I need to tell you. I have to tell someone. I haven't talked about any of this. It's poison and I want it out.”
The first time he hits her, it’s a punch in the face. He doesn't even start off with a slap or something. He'd never hit her before and the first time he does, it's a closed fist. She isn't expecting it to happen. The reason he claims he did it afterward is that she'd overcooked his pork chop. They finish eating and as she collected his plate she askes him how it was. He says it was chewy and then out of nowhere he punches her in the eye.
After he discovers he can get away with something like that, it starts happening all the time…
He throws her against a wall for forgetting to charge his phone for him. She'd forgotten somewhere that she was responsible for every small thing when it came to keeping the household running–even things that she'd never been asked to do. Things as small as putting his phone on the charger for him so he wouldn't have to do it himself.
He didn't want a girlfriend or a partner…he wanted a slave.
If he was leaving for work and she couldn't tell him where his keys were, he'd choke her so roughly and long that her vision would go white–then black–only to stop moments before she was about to pass out.
She’d forget who she was dealing with and speak out of turn and he'd take her by a fist-full of hair and drag her into their guest room where he'd installed a padlock she hadn't noticed before. He'd lock her inside and leave her there for a full day–sometimes two–without anything to eat or drink.
He'd tell her how lucky she was to be so well kept.
He'd tell her that the first time she ever tried to leave him would be the last time she tried that because dead women can't leave anyone–ever.
The awful stories pour out of her. Sometimes slowly like the tears that well in the corner of her eyes, growing like drops at the tip of a leaky tap until big enough to fall… Sometimes in a deluge of rolling sobs as a powerful wave like a wall of water from a burst dam. I don't interrupt her. I don't know what to say so I only listen. I know my sister. She doesn't want me to say anything because nothing I could say would take away the pain of any of this for her.
Eventually the emotions and stories are all spent and she grows silent. When she speaks again, it's to change the subject.
“What’s that out there?” She asks, pointing out at a spot in the water. The sun has nearly set and the only thing we can see is a great dark space on the horizon. The place where I live is old and still has a working lighthouse; it’s more for nostalgia than anything else now. As if on queue, the light sweeps across the darkness revealing a large, not so distant island that mostly exists as an outcropping of rocks.
“The locals call it Mermaid’s Roost,” I tell her, “lots of the old-timers, the superstitious ones, say that’s where the sirens live.”
She smiles at that. I realize it’s the first time I’ve seen her smile all day and it’s an incredible feeling. It’s too soon to call it healing but it’s the beginning of something like it and I can feel it radiating from her. It feels warm. She lifts her phone and opens the camera.
“It’s gonna be my first picture in my new phone,” she says, “I was waiting for something beautiful. I wanted the first one I took to be something beautiful.”
“The Roost is why they put the old lighthouse here in the first place. Supposedly there’s dozens of old ships that sank out there,” I tell her.
“They heard the sirens singing and rammed their ships against the rocks to be closer to them.” Lily says, “The legend is that they’re still out there and you can still hear them if they want you to. If they want you to come out to them…when men hear them from the water it’s because they want to smash the ships. When they hear them from the shore it’s always a trick; a call to swim out to them. Most don’t make it. There's an awful undertow. They drown. If they do make it that far, the sirens just kill them and eat them. They’re not actually mermaids at all but birds with the heads of women. Weird right? They’re from Greek mythology, you know. Surprising anyone believes anything like that out here.”
“That’s right,” I say, struggling to hide my surprise, “but how do you know all that? You just got here.”
“There’s a book about it at the house,” she explains, “I didn't just get here. I’ve been here for about three days. I’ve read the whole thing twice. Didn’t realize it was a local thing. That explains two things…why it was in the house to begin with, but also why it wasn’t written very well. I thought it’s probably self-published or a vanity press sort of thing,” She shrugs and says, “I didn’t realize why it was at the house until now. I like it anyway. It’s just about the only thing there is to read in there.”
I’m flabbergasted, “Three days? You got here and waited three days to text me?” I heard the rest of what she said but that’s the only thing that registers.
“I was scared,” she says, “scared to tell you about any of this stuff.”
“I get it. I’m not mad or anything but Jesus, Lily, you’ve been this close for three days? I’ve been worried sick about you for over a week!”
“I know,” she whispers and grabs my hand, “I’m sorry.”
“We should probably get back before it gets too dark,” I say.
“Stay with me tonight? Say you will? Call Jasmine and tell her you’ll be home in the morning?”
I say I will and that we need to start to head back to her place. We’ve walked about a mile so it will take us a while to get back and this isn’t the kind of beach that’s made of gentle slopes of endless sand. There’s sand of course, but it’s also full of rocks to trip and bust your head open on in the dark.
When we’re halfway there and the sky is a deep, dark purple, like the color of wine when it's still in the bottle, she stops and looks back at Mermaid’s Roost. The shadow of it still looms on the dark violet horizon, like a giant sleeping in the sparkling black blanket of water. Her eyes grow wide and seem to fill with tiny golden diamonds, like flecks of light reflected by the stars. Her face glows with an uncharacteristically innocent wonder.
“Emily,” she whispers, “do you hear them too?”
And I think she’s fucking with me so I say “sure” and tell her to hurry up because I’m starving and I want to order us a pizza and call my wife to let her know I'll be staying with her in her bungalow. Also that my feet hurt. The truth is that I can barely hear her when she asks the question in the first place.
“It’s beautiful,” she says quietly and I agree because I think she’s talking about the town or the beach or the moon or the stars or anything else–anything real–and not some local legend that she can hear over the sound of the waves and wind that I can’t.
When we get back to the little beach house, she pauses in the doorway and stares for a long time back at the island of rocks. It’s distant, but big enough to still see, if only just barely when the light from the lighthouse sweeps across it in the dark.
_____________________________
The house is awash with the chill and the sounds of the sea wind when I wake up. We went to the master bedroom around 11:00pm to watch a movie. The plan was for us to stay in the same bed like we used to do sometimes when we were little girls. The house has a guest room and I could have slept in there, but Lily begged me to stay with her, so I did and the truth is that I wanted to.
It’s 3:00am and the cold is what’s roused me from sleep but it’s panic that pulls me fully awake now. She’s not here with me. I know she’s not in the house. I know this the same way that I know she turned the TV off when she left. She did this so a loud commercial didn’t wake me. I know this because it’s what I would have done if I was trying to sneak away and I didn’t want her to stop me. I know all of this the same way I knew she was in trouble but I didn’t know how or why over a week ago. Twintuition.
I’ve never had a feeling like this one before. It’s strong and clear but also deep and dark like the water outside. I know from the moment I wake up that I won’t see her alive again, but I search the entire house for her anyway. I go from room to room checking every closet, beneath both the beds and even behind the shower curtain in the bathroom. When I get to the living room I see the reason the house is so cold; she didn’t shut the door behind her when she left.
“The Legend of Mermaid’s Roost” is laying open on the counter and she’s used seashells to hold the pages open to where she’s circled a passage in black marker.

“When men hear the sirens singing, it is always without a doubt an attempt at temptation. Their beautiful and deadly song is said to be a lure calling sailors ever closer to the rocks of Mermaid’s Roost to smash their ships along the stoney shore, but the sirens don’t stop there. Their singing has not only been heard by men at sea, but by those who walk along the shores after dark. They call out to the men on the mainland trying to convince them to swim out to the Roost; a distance just over half a mile. According to the legends, most of those that attempted to swim the distance to the island would get caught in the undertow and drown. If they managed to make it the entire way, the sirens of Mermaid’s Roost would rip them apart with their talons and eat them alive while they screamed for a mercy that would never come. Death is always the fate of men who hear the song.”
“According to the myths, women almost never hear their enchanting calls from across the bay, but for those that do the call is never a deadly temptation, but rather an invitation to join them. To sing with them and lure men to their untimely ends. Those women that do hear them may choose to join their deadly flock if they wish to do so. According to the local histories this is rare and the women that choose to join them are never seen nor heard from again.”

At the bottom of the page, a note in her handwriting simply reads: “Figured out where I’m supposed to be. Thanks for today. I love you always.”
I rush outside knowing there’s no reason to hurry because I’m already too late. She’s already made her choice and I don’t need my twintuition to tell me that because I can hear her.
She’s singing…Mermaid’s Roost is over a mile away and I know it’s her voice because it sounds so much like my own. It’s quiet from this distance but the preternatural nature of her chorus spans the space between us with ease and clarity…but this song is not my invitation to join her…
It’s her last request.
When I offered to pay for a lawyer so she could make him pay for putting his hands on her, she was afraid she wouldn’t win but that fear is gone now. She’s found a whole flock that’ll be willing–that lives for the sole purpose of picking better men than him apart, and they will, as they’ve done to so many before him…that is if he even survives the swim.
He’s too far from here to hear her song but he’s not too far for me. I don’t know exactly how to reach you, Eric Warminster, but I know where you live and there can’t be more than one man with that name where you are. In the morning I’ll make a few calls until I find you and when I do, I’m pretty sure that Lily was right when she said you’d try to kill her if she ever left. I'm banking on her fear that you'd follow her to the end of the Earth. I’m also pretty sure you won’t know the difference between her voice and mine, especially not over the phone…our own mother can’t most of the time. I don’t even have to face you and I already know what I’ll say to get you out here too. I’ll taunt you and belittle you just like you did to her. I'll be laughing the entire time. You’ll come. It should be easy enough…our laughs sound the same…
…All I have to do is tell you to meet me at the beach after dark. I know by the sound of the song she's singing that she's changed so much already. I wonder if the transformation was instantaneous or if it takes time for her feathers to grow in and fully form. I wonder if that even matters. I wonder if she must complete her change before she can do what she means to do to you and something about her tone tells me, no. She's ready for you now. The words of her melody aren't in English anymore, but in a vernacular that up until now, I would have believed impossible. The sweet song seems to originate from a great creature both mythical and feminine and beautifully deadly. Birdlike, the calls drift out from the newly-formed and massive beak. I see her face has shifted and grown it already with my mind’s eye. The sound reaches out over the water for only me to hear. Lily sings in a language so musical and ancient now that the words themselves have long been forgotten. Yet, despite their foreign nature, I don't have to understand the tongue to understand the meaning of her song. The sound of the music of Mermaid’s Roost fills my mind. Entering my ears, it surges though my head before seeming to flow and tread before my eyes. I can see what she wants me to do in images that hover barely visible like an ethereal painting before me. She wants me to get you to this beach and I will. That’s her last request–her only request. Get you to the shore and she’ll take care of the rest.
ss

While the mother fussed over the child - their son as they found out soon enough - the father profusely thanked the human, who politely accepted his thanks, but gently refused any monetary compensation, stating that treating the child to a snack would be all the thanks they needed. After the family left, the Ambassador offered to treat everyone to lunch, to which the suun’mahs had to refuse, as his shuttle was leaving soon; after bidding him farewell, the human scooped up his pup, and simply *jumped* over the railing, landing easier than one might expect; but, considering his natural gravity is a Class *12*, it shouldn’t have been so surprising. The other humans followed suit, and they entered the eatery.
They must not have been in there for very long - as they didn’t seem to have eaten yet - when the A.I. that traveled with the Ambassador proclaimed that a ‘Kah’Ri’ was stalking him. This soon turned out to be another drahk’mihn, a beautiful purple woman who seemed just as entranced with his makeup and hair color as everyone in the bar was with her. As she crawled up on the table and over to the human, she had one of the drahk’mihn’s and suun’mahs’s - and apparently *humans* as well, it seemed - signature smiles that flashed her teeth; which for everyone else was a sign of aggression.
At one point, one of the humans made what appeared to be an offensive joke, as the Ambassador wouldn’t even let him finish it, and the other humans looked at him in clear disapproval. Some time after that, they all engaged in a song, with the Ambassador leading. The one who tried to make the joke earlier got up towards the end of the song, after which it was revealed he walked off towards the restrooms. That was when Kah’Ri checked the wrist-mounted monitor she had, and her face fell. After showing the Ambassador, he got up, heading straight for the restrooms, while the other humans convinced her to show them what was wrong. It was apparently a rude message that was blurred out, but the humans reacted with disgust upon reading it - even calling the other man names - so it was pretty easy to guess what it might be about.
About the time that the human Ambassador was having a tense standoff with the other human in the restroom, a brown galan’zhee walked into *his* bar, a mischievous grin coming to the ursid’s face as he saw what everyone was watching; he sat down at the end of the bar farthest from the monitor, ordering a drink and turning his attention to the screen. As he turned his own attention back to the show - after a quick scan to make sure no one else wanted anything - he saw a predatory grin come to the Ambassador’s face as he backed out of the - slightly larger - other human’s face, pulling up his wrist monitor, stating he was calling ‘Vera’, which was the first A.I. they discovered, if he remembered correctly.
After a brief discussion between him and the hologram of a human-looking woman, the other man was instructed to pack his things and leave immediately. After he left, the scene cut to the Ambassador standing outside the restrooms, looking visibly quite angry; he motioned to Kah’Ri that he was going to get a drink at the bar, and had just sat down to wait for the barkeep to get done with their current customer when a large brown-furred hand planted itself in his midsection, forcefully throwing him backward off of the stool, as a familiar-looking galan’zhee took the now-empty seat.
But the human was already back on his feet, hands balled into fists at his side, when he suddenly lunged forward, wrapping his arms around the galan’zhee’s waist, obviously trying to pull the larger man off the seat as well but obviously not really getting anywhere with his efforts. That was until he kicked the connecting bar between two of the legs of the stool, providing just enough leverage to start the galan’zhee to fall; and though he grabbed for the bar to steady himself, he just issued it, toppling over backwards, his head hitting the ground after the rest of his body, but still enough to visibly knock him out for a few seconds.
The human was on his feet immediately, having taken the fall with the ursid, and when the latter didn’t try to move, he turned away dismissively, angrily righting the barstool, and climbing back up. Just as he was gaining his seat, the galan’zhee behind him began stirring, slowly rising to his feet. The human visibly tensed up, obviously ready for a fight, though the other man simply asked,
“What *are* you?” There was no real heat in his voice, it was mostly genuine bewilderment, mixed with a bit of amusement, though before the human could answer, the voice of Kah’Ri spoke up behind him, methodically listing off the stats of the human home world, and how it was 12’s across the board; she finished it up by stating quite clearly that he belonged to her and - stalking past the towering ursid as if he weren’t several feet taller than her - climbed the stool to sit by her human, rubbing the back of his head, and asking if he was alright.
The galan’zhee repeated himself, only with much more amusement, to which the human replied that he was quite lucky, ‘considering’. The barkeep warily came up to the group, where the human ordered drinks for the two of them, and even bought him food, offering the larger man to even come sit at their table. He accepted, and they all made their way over to where the rest of their group were sitting, where the ursid received a rather warm welcome from the humans, considering that he’d basically just attacked their Ambassador; the others at the table were rightfully wary of the larger alien, but welcomed him well enough, seeing as the humans weren’t reacting negatively to him.
And so they sat there for a while, obviously enjoying each other’s companies, when a white vell’prah approached their table, flanked by two suul’mahr bodyguards. After addressing everyone, asking what was happening, the smaller man had one of his guards show security feed from inside the bar which showed their earlier altercation; to which the human denied that it was even them. That drew a few laughs from his *own* patrons as the others at the Ambassador’s table struggled to disguise their laughter on the monitor. The vell’prah asked for the human to join him in private, where he basically pleaded with the larger man to let him arrest the galan’zhee; to which the human was flippantly dismissive about, though the vell’prah was obviously too full of himself to notice the dangerous undercurrent that subtly hid beneath his calm demeanor. Finally admitting defeat, the station leader - as he identified himself - let the Ambassador get back to enjoying the company of his friends.
Later, the scene cut to him talking with the human doctor that had come aboard the station with the others, and he mentioned the Ambassador’s genetic modifications, which were apparently commonplace for humans. They went aboard the ship right then, giving the human and drahk’mihn their own genetic modifications, while uplifting the canine to sapience. During a timelapse video, the ‘blaschko's lines’ he had requested showed up on his skin, a light peppering of brown spots showing up on his face, while his arms had what almost looked like healing injuries, some old scrapes up and down his arms, though they didn’t look particularly unsettling, as they weren’t *exactly* the same color as dried red blood; his stomach and back presented an interesting swirl pattern however, as if they were being ‘drained’ into his core from the outside in.
From there, it showed the now-famous, *unedited*, though still censored version - that had already been released, of course - of his marooning on the primitive planet with his team, and how he readily sacrificed himself - and the team - telling the Captain to get out while they could, and to leave them behind. His team members didn’t voice their objections, which showed either extreme trust in their human compatriot, or their utter terror at the prospect.
Once they got further into the atmosphere, they began picking up a distress signal from an escape pod, which they landed nearby, in a clearing. Once they were down, the human ordered the others to stay in the shuttle while he went to check the pod, leaving his now-sapient canine to protect the others. At the crash site, he found a trok’lade who was quite panicked, and obviously thought he was there to harm her. After a quick standoff, the uncommon ‘explosion’ of a sonic boom - as no one entered atmosphere at such great speeds anymore, after getting the technology to *enter* an atmosphere, instead of simply *falling into* it.
Looking up, he told her to get back into her pod, and made his way back to the clearing, where he dispatched the slavers - with the help of his canine friend - and then ordered them to go hide in the escape pod. He then went into the shuttle, where the vell’prah tried to enter his mind, and was killed. Then to the call between himself and the slaver captain, possibly not having to act *too* hard to seem as insane as he did. Then… nothing. There was no attack, no ‘invasion’; the slavers seemed to have left. So, coming to the same conclusion, the human on screen moved back to the shuttles, where he first washed his face and hands, then went to retrieve his friends.
It was here that they received a massive shock, one bigger than the fact that the humans didn’t have a Gift; they *did* have a Gift, and it was to absorb the Gifts of others. That was how he’d killed the vell’prah in the shuttle, and he stated that he could feel the slaver’s Gift within himself. After clearing the bodies away from their campsite, they went to bed, and the next day he and his canine companion were attacked by a large reptile that the human named a [dragon]. He and the canine were stuck in the trees, until he made a spear out of one of the branches and his knife. The battle which followed was one for the ages, with the human delivering the final, killing blow on the dragon, though he lost his eyes in the process.
After the shuttle landed and he woke up - having passed out from shock - he instructed the A.I. to transplant the dragon’s eyes in place of his own ruined ones, which she was able to easily do after they made it back to their camp. He woke up in the middle of the night, the healing gel he’d stolen from the mahn’ewe enhancing the natural healing process immensely, so that his eyes were already usable, though the gashes in his flesh were still healing, colored black from the soot he’d added long before. After discussing the problem with ratios, they heard a commotion outside, where the Ambassador quickly dispatched another of the ‘dragon’s that was trying to enter the other shuttle, him having claimed the slavers’ shuttle as his own.
They cleaned the dragon, and got it smoking, or preserved in cold storage, after which the canine - Cheshire, he recalled - offered to let the human see if it was possible to receive the Gift of someone without killing them, which proved to be possible. And though he was tired for the entire day, the process seemed to have no ill effect on Cheshire, with his ability to shapeshift returned to full strength by the time he had his general energy back.
Though, they soon had to deal with the problem that they didn’t have enough sugar to feed the trok’lade, with the human stressing over it so much that at one point he snapped at her for offering to skip a meal or two, stating that he was ‘already starving’ her, asking her not to make it worse; though, his guilt immediately attacked him, and he walked away to get a handle on his emotions. It wasn’t long after this that he got the idea to search the entire planet for *some* kind of sugar that the A.I. Kay’Eighty could process into a usable foodstuff for the trok’lade.
Unfortunately, their search turned up fruitless - or ‘*sugar*less’, in a more general sense - and so after a quick rest at their base camp, he went to the other habitable planet in the system, using the slavers’ shuttle, which - being a military vessel - had minimal subspace capabilities. Upon reaching the planet, they immediately found a large hot spring that the A.I. stayed behind to test for acidity - of which they also couldn’t find a trace on the other planet, which would have helped them convert cellulose to glucose - while the others went to examine the crystals that were growing not too far from that location.
Upon getting there, they discovered crystals that apparently amplified the strength of one’s Gift, while also being nearly indestructible. Along with this, they found a cave that the Kay’Eighty reported contained a crystal of solidified light, the intensity of which would literally be blinding to biological races with no eye-coverings. They took samples of both new crystals, and continued their search for sugars, Kay’Eighty informing them that while the geyser was acidic enough to be used if needed, they still had time to search the rest of the planet if they worked as quickly as before.
And so it was that they eventually did find a sugar to use, a thick syrup produced by a flying insect that they determined was on the verge of sapience by a few centuries, at most. Working out a deal with the queen of the hive, he had Kay’Eighty construct a hive out of the white wood that they’d discovered on the other planet, complete with a cage around the crop out of which they made the sugary syrup. They even made a compartment where any overflow would be directed, so as to not bother the hive in their day-to-day dealings. After they had moved the majority of their hive into this new structure, the human was allowed to take what was left in the tree that was their previous home.
From there they left the planet, where the Ambassador took a huge - comparatively speaking - bite of one of the [honeycomb], as he called it; and though Kay’Eighty tried to stop him, she saw him too late, having already taken a bite. After about an hour, his eyes took on a vacant appearance, and he was near-catatonic for several hours, the THC that was present in the ‘honey’ being at equal levels to the sugar contained, as well. But luckily it didn’t prove to be fatal, though many of his patrons expressed a desire to try some of that goop.
They made it back to the original planet with no more incidents, Kay’Eighty processing a good amount of the honey to filter out the THC for the trok’lade to have a normal meal, sealing the pure THC away into vials that she hid within her mass of nanobots. Upon landing, the human was still high, though he had become ambulatory enough to walk out of the shuttle under his own power, having been obviously annoying his companions, shown through a timelapse of him gaining ‘consciousness’ on their trip back.
It was later on that they began discussing uses for the crystals they’d found, and what they suggested had everyone in the bar muttering in excitement: suits made of the enhancement crystal, run on stellar-spheres made from the ‘light-crystal’. It wasn’t long before Kay’Eighty began working on said suits, with the intention of them enacting a self-rescue, and though the time lapse showed that it took several days, all of the biologicals had suits, leaving only Kay’Eighty to construct a full-sized body of her own, the Ambassador firmly stating that it didn’t matter what the rest of the Federation thought of her, the humans would stick by their A.I. brethren against anyone.
It was -of course - during the time that she was constructing her own body that the ship that had been forced to leave the team behind returned, with human and suun’mahs military ships as an escort. The reunion was short and sweet, after which was a quick communication with the Federation Council wherein they merely relayed that they had survived, and the Ambassador informed them of having found the trok’lade. The clip then cut to the Ambassador making a call to the ory’lagus in charge of the black hole mining company, wherein he informed her that he’d found the original pendant of their company. After a brief explanation as to the history of said pendant, he was invited to return it.
Before he was able to get around to that, however, he was informed by the human Admiral that had been with him every step of the way since arriving that a mahn’ewe had been found, alone, and before he could say any more than that, the Ambassador interjected with,
“Bob?”
Apparently he knew this one, and it had helped him to escape captivity; he gave a brief description as to how he was able to slip that fact past the so’jahl who’d interrogated him. After a quick clip of them seeing the smaller alien in the interrogation room, the to Admiral went into a side room - that the Ambassador had declined wanting to go into - where they saw security footage from the mahn’ewe ship of the Ambassador’s captivity, and escape.
Around the time that this was ending, the Ambassador decided to go into the room with the mahn’ewe, speaking with him like old friends. At one point, the mahn’ewe mentioned something about gravity, causing the human to go very thoughtful. After bidding a quick farewell to the smaller alien, the Ambassador went out to the Admirals, describing his plan to use the ‘crysthril’ to help the ory’lagus enhance their Gift, to then follow the gravity trails from pretty much anyone in the Federation to find the slavers’ homeworld. This could also - of course - be used to find the mahn’ewe, since ‘Bob’ wasn’t giving up the location of his home system, but his main concern was in finding the slavers.
From there, it cut back to the suun’mahs presenter, who announced that the Federation had indeed - through a joint effort of all species having been directly affected by the slavers, with the humans adding in their support, as well - found and successfully invaded the slavers. The people who had been rescued had been sent to the second planet that the Ambassador had been a part of surveying, and which he had donated to a joint effort by all species to help rehabilitate those who needed it. The presenter announced that while all peoples involved had agreed to keep it quiet for the time being, they had found extensive lists of all the Federation traitors who were supplying the kath’loo with slaves, and no longer needed to rely on them slipping up and revealing themselves, one way or another.
The way he said that last part kind of ominously, after which the scene cut to a human space station, in which a gah’rahtoe and a suul’mahr walked down a hall, discussing something about children working. It soon became clear just what kind of ‘massages’ theses children were to give, and he couldn’t deny that it actually looked quite appealing; their nimble little fingers were working their ways into the cracks where the backs of their ears joined their heads, a rather troublesome spot to try to scratch - unless you had those tiny, flat-’clawed’ fingers to work with. Indeed, it didn’t take long for the suul’mahr’s leg to give occasional twitches, an involuntary muscle twitch from their ancient ancestors.
Though the alarms soon started going off, and after the gah’ratoe - ambassador, it seemed - and her husband were rushed to a safe room with the children and their caretakers, they all found out why: pirates had come to take as many humans as possible to the auction block. As the ambassador’s husband was given permission to be part of the defense, they saw the humans gearing up for war, a hard expression mirrored on every primate face in the complex. And then the attack happened, completely one-sided in a way the slavers had obviously never experienced.
Their anti-Gift darts had no effect on a race that had lived their entire *existence* without ever feeling it in the first place, but as stated in its description before, the ‘crysthril’ overpowered that effect, making it so that when they made direct contact with the slavers, they would go down almost instantly, most left unmoving as their human counterparts decided not to hold back, and took it all from them. It didn’t take long before they had subdued - lethally or not, but mostly *not* - the slavers, and had launched craft of their own to board the slavers’ vessels, freeing the people already captured, and taking the crews prisoner; those that *lived*, anyway.
The presenter came on to announce that they would leave on a lighter note, so would show a series of clips from the official First Contact between the humans, and the Federation. First was their actual meeting, a pleasant, formal affair. Then was a trip through the human space station they had landed on, with images of bustling ‘streets’ lined with shops and restaurants the likes of which seemed little different than what one might see anywhere in the Federation.
There was a quick clip of the group playing with one of the human domesticated animals they called a [dog], which ended with a declaration of a dinner. This wasn’t shown, but what *was* shown was the suul’marh’s day at the beach, wherein the humans - most of them young children, by the size of them - practically *flocked* to the aliens, the children even wanting the hulking canine to throw them far out into the water. After some time of this, there was a buffet of food laid out for them all, coupled with music and alcohol. It looked like a good time, and it was easy to forget that these little primates were a Class 12 aggressor species.
Until the last clips, which were of the competition the suun’mahs loved to challenge other races with, the humans obviously taking them up on their offer of hand-to-hand fighting. Though he wasn’t sure what to expect, he was somehow both surprised, and not surprised when the human female effortlessly dispatched her opponent, making use of her feet in a way that - though she couldn’t actually *grip* with them - hinted at her primate ancestry. The way the suun’mahs woman’s arm was twisted couldn’t have been all too pleasant, which was probably the reason she began tapping the mat with such force.
The next match between the men lasted much longer, the suun’mahs obviously having watched the round prior, taking note of the human’s agility and quick reflexes, doing his best to not make any rash actions. This fight actually timed out, both combatants trading heavy blows, and massive slams to the mat. But it was the suun’mahs who won in the end, the human officials agreeing that he landed slightly more blows than the human. And so - as the trophy was being presented - the human stepped forward to take it, only to turn and present it to his opponent, giving an admirable show of respect, and sportsmanship.
As the program ended, he noticed the vell’prah at the bar trying to get his attention, which turned out to him wanting to settle his tab; as he went about that transaction, the galan’zhee spoke up.
“*Heh*,” he started gruffly, though his amusement was obvious, “Yeah, those humans can be pretty crazy, sometimes. That was me, by the way, that Kyle - sorry, *Ambassador Redding* - threw to the ground in that bar. Obviously he had a bit of leverage in kicking the stool out from under me like that, but he didn’t hesitate to take the problem head-on, or in deploying the ‘if I go down, I’m taking you with me’ approach. And as you saw, they’re also quick to forgive, given the right circumstances. I’m proud to call that little ape my friend, and that was before he gifted me and my crew some of *this*.”
Here, he held up his left hand, around who’s wrist was a band of what looked like crystal, colored a gunmetal gray.
“‘*Crysthril*’ as he named it; you saw the effects on the screen, but allow me to give you a demonstration here: observe.” With that, there was a loud explosion of glass as all of the alcohol on the shelves behind him destroyed the bottles they were housed in, all rushing to surround the vell’prah who was almost to the door at that point, and then they did the impossible: the alcohols all froze into deadly spikes, all pointing at some point on the vulpin’s body.
“You *really* should’ve paid more attention to the *planets* of that backwater ‘shortcut’, rather than the ships flying through it; then you would’ve been privy to a prize worth more than you could get for an entire *planet* of drahk’mihn, no matter *who* you sold it to. But instead, you gave it away to Ambassador Redding - who sends his regards, by the way. But don’t worry, I believe that the humans want to put you on trial, rather than kill you by draining your Gift from you, the way Kyle did to *your brother*.” This last part he said with vindictive pleasure, and as he did, many of the other patrons began reaching for their weapons… only to stop with surprised looks on their faces. At the confused one springing up on the vell’prah’s face, the galan’zhee laughed.
“*Enhances*. *Gifts*. So that people who would normally need to make direct contact to utilize their Gifts, can now do so remotely. Like you; like the *keen’yhong*…”
As he said that last part, a good many people became visible around his bar, and not just one per person who had reached for their weapons before; the galan’zhee seemed to have three people for every one that seemed to be working for the vell’prah, and only three of the galan’zhee’s crew were keen’yhong.
“They entered with me,” the galan’zhee continued in a breezy manner, nonchalantly inspecting his claws as two other vell’prah - one solid black, the other of the slightly smaller, tan subspecies - each pointed what looked like smaller copies of the human’s rail-rifle, “Been scoping you and your crew out the entire time. And don’t worry: we already took your ship into our custody; wouldn’t want to skimp out when completing my first job for a new species - first impressions, and all. *Alright everyone*,” he called out, looking around the bar, “Cuff ‘em and stuff ‘em: get this trash to the brig.” As his crew began filing out, he tossed a credit-transfer chip to Par’Lo, who caught it easily; even as this happened - and the vell’prah was being cuffed - the alcohol all flowed back to the shelves behind him, still frozen, but in the shapes of the bottles they had occupied before.
“That should cover my tab, plus the damages, there. You should pour those within the next hour, or so; don’t know exactly how long it’ll last. Just pour ‘em out like you normally would, and they’ll unfreeze as needed. Until then, *drinks are on me!*” He called this last part to the bar in general, which was met with resounding cheers; and after he checked the amount on the credit chip - which contained more zeros after a solid number than he had ever seen actually *coming his way* - he put on his best service smile, pouring drinks out to all the people suddenly crowding the bar. And as the crowd closed in, he saw the bounty hunter and his crew filing out of his bar.

this is a long read i know but anyone who takes the time to read it and reply will be so greatly appreciated but if not that’s fine too!! i just needed to vent a bit
it’s been over a month since my ex broke up with me. its been hard to get over, we were young but i did love her and i was so committed to her, but she left just over a month ago to talk to a boy she had been cheating on me with. the same boy that treated her like shit for two years before we began to speak. the signs were there that she still liked him, he was constantly brung up even if she was insulting him, she followed him on tiktok to ‘stalk his reposts’ when i said he would get the wrong idea (i never explicitly said yes or no because i trusted her to make the right decision and it’s also her own life and i trusted her with my heart). i found out from her friend that despite her original reasoning for us breaking up, she actually broke up with me to talk to him.
its been hard, ive struggled with mental health in the past and it got bad whilst we were dating mainly due to a reaction to my medication that caused my skin to rash all over, and alongside with her health issues it was a tough time for us both. but we made it through and despite having arguments a lot, things were improving massively. i never started the arguments and any time i was the cause of it was because of my mistakes which i take full responsibility for. i had broken promises to hide my mum being a drug addict which only i knew at the time and i still regret it to this day. i always tried to make up for it and regain her trust but i wasn’t allowed to live it down, anytime i done something it was brought back up. it’s ruined my image of myself, despite talking to my friends and even people on here and being called a really good boyfriend for what i did for her, i still feel like i could’ve done better. i did tear myself apart for her, i always bought her flowers every single month, i spoiled her with gifts and compliments, i took her out on dates as much as i could, i always did little things to take interest in her hobbies/interests, i was always there emotionally for her i let her be at her weakest when she was with me, i gave her space when she needed it and i was there for her to lean on when she needed me. i tried so hard to help with her health aswell, i spent nights searching up ways to help her when only a doctor could, and when i tried to give suggestions i would be told she already tried or that i wasn’t looking or putting in the effort enough. a lot of my self esteem in terms of being a boyfriend was ruined at times because of this, i just didn’t realise it yet. a lot of my friends don’t like her, even some of our mutual friends that have heard about us from my friends, i put up with a lot of abuse especially psychologically, she hit me on one occasion when she was upset and she had a tendency to throw her phone, i tried to ask for it because i could tell she was going to throw it so i wanted to keep it safe whilst i reassured her and she slapped me across the face. she openly admitted to guilt tripping me and trying to make me shout at her by saying hurtful things about my medical condition when i had promised her from the start that i woukd never raise my voice at her and any disagreement would be calmly talked through, i stayed true to that promise for the whole duration. its been a hard month or so, ive unfollowed her on social media because she just seems so unbothered in her posts, but i know that’s partly because she’s distracted with the other boy. im going to therapy soon to help with my anxiety and depression that have gotten a lot worse since the breakup. i am really proud of the progress ive made and some days have been really good and sometimes i take dips but i know healing isn’t linear. it’s just the moments that replay in my head that hurt the most, when she broke up with me she told me that little things i done were starting to annoy her, and the day i was at hers before this all happened she called me attention seeking for asking if i was doing a good job as a boyfriend. im a lot to deal with mentally ive always known that, not because im crazy or anything or like that but because of the baggage i come with especially with anxiety and depression, before her i had never opened up to anyone, she was the first person i told about my mom and about planning my suicide in 2022, i felt so safe around her and it felt like i could finally talk to someone and feel comfortable, but now i just feel as though im too much to handle, i took a dip before our breakup and i was struggling to go out as much but i still tried, and now i wonder if that’s why she left. my ex before her left just after i had a breakdown one night, i couldn’t keep it in any longer and i told her it all and the next morning she ended things but she never meant it because of me, she was struggling again too. like i said it’s the little moments i keep replaying in my head, when we had met to hand each others things over, i asked her to please not go back to the boy (they had gotten back in touch a week before we broke up and i trusted her as she said to him that she was committed to me and she loved me) i didn’t mean it in a forceful way, i just said that she has so much to offer and she knows her self worth and to not waste it on him, she just laughed and said ‘im sorry that’s so funny’, it just hurt when i finally pieced it all together i stood infront of her in tears and i could barely stand and she said it to my face. i think what hurts aswell is the lying she did at the end, she promised me we’d be on good terms and there was no bad blood between us, and ive stuck to that promise aswell, all my friends have called her names and i refuse to, i still have respect for her and i forgive her for all she did but i will never go back to her. but she said that only for me to see reposts directed at me on tiktok a few days later. it’s the guilt that eats at me every night for the mistakes i made, even if they weren’t big ones i still feel so guilty for it all, and i don’t even know if she cares about what she did. ive learned that i need to stand up for myself more, it’s always something ive struggled to do as i give the person in the relationship too many chances, even when she hit me i stayed the calm one and reassured her and held her while she cried and apologised. she shouted at me a lot and one night she screamed at me for a few minutes demanding i breakup with her and shouting at me to just do it, i feel pathetic for it now but i cried in that moment because i couldn’t understand why she was telling me to. even at the end when she was breaking up with me, she told me she was having all these thoughts about the boy and questioned what would’ve happened if they dated instead of us, and when she told me that she wanted to break up because i hadn’t bought her her favourite flowers yet or i hadn’t taken her out on a date despite us being at the start of exams and her working weekend shifts from 4-12 and having school and the gym during the week, she told me i wasn’t putting in effort and that i wasn’t making an attempt to see her anymore, but i had planned two sleepovers the week prior and both of the times she cancelled a few days before or the night of. i still didn’t get upset i didn’t even raise my voice at her, when we last saw one another she told me how frustrating it was that i wasn’t shouting at her or that i wasn’t even mad, she said it jokingly but it just reminded me of everything, i had wished her luck on everything like exams and uni but to her i should’ve gotten mad and shouted. i felt under so much pressure sometimes to do more, whenever im in a relationship i always give it my all, i date to marry the person not to have fun for a few months, but i think at a point she realised that i was always willing to put everything in and she took advantage of it whenever she wanted more attention i don’t know for sure though. she hated my bestfriend aswell, despite never meeting him she was jealous of him, and constantly insulted him, those were the only times i stood up to her and when she told me she was guilt tripping me on purpose to get what she wanted. she told me at the end that she felt as though her and my best friend got the same attention, i saw my bestfriend in school and spoke to him at the weekends but only late at night online, she was my person and i told her this, she was my best friend and i put her first always, i did this because i loved her and because she had never been somebody’s best friend before, she had never been anyone’s person so i wanted her to know what it felt like and to truly be treated well by someone but by the end, she was getting popular in school and invited to parties like she had always wanted, she had a girl bestfriend who was really sweet and nice, and she didn’t have anyone who didn’t like her, it just feels like as soon as she had that, she got rid of me as if i was the last problem? i guess that’s what really puts the doubt in my mind that i did a good job. i think she left for the excitement of talking to someone again and the idea of the ‘chase’ even if it was with the boy who insulted her interests and made fun of how she spoke, i just don’t understand why him and not me? if it was any other situation i would understand like if she didn’t go straight to talking to him but she did do that and i keep asking myself, what does he have that i don’t? he was popular too but so am i, i got invited to parties but i prefer to stay home, my anxiety stopped me from going out sometimes like i said but i always pushed myself since that’s the only way it got better, but on the last time i was over at hers we were gonna go to the shop for snacks but we never ended up going because i got too anxious, usually i would’ve pushed myself but i felt safe enough with her to tell her. she just seemed fed up with me, and she told me she was annoyed because she wanted to go, i completely understood her and i apologised. the worst part of it all is that i know she’ll come back, when her and that boy stop talking, she’ll text me, she still has my number and follows me on every social despite me not following her, i dread it because when she comes back so will all of this. i just want her to be be treated well and i know that when that boy doesn’t give her the attention or the love and care and patience that i tried to give, she’ll come back and i hate to think about it. i really tried to be the best person i could, i changed the way i dressed for her because she said she would be embarrassed if i wore what i used to wear infront of her friends despite it being sweatpants and a tshirt, i gave her my all and even more when she asked, i know her friends don’t like me because ive been painted as the villain and i understand why, i made mistakes and im actively trying to fix them by bettering myself, but not even the friend that connected us likes me anymore, it hurts to know that they might not know anything she did but everything i did. i don’t miss her but ive just been left with a lot to deal with, anyone’s opinion on this would help its a long read like i said but even just one person would be so greatly appreciated, thank you

graphic images⚠️⚠️⚠️ this is my boy Yukon. He is a five year old bully mix, and he doesn’t have control of his ureter, never has never will. So he has to have diapers on when he’s in the house if he’s not being crated well five years of diapers has made him grow some growths and some pretty gnarly rashes. Any advice on what I could put on these to make him stop licking himself in pain, he don’t deserve it

[FIRST][LAST]
After Action Report - Venlil Colonial Defense Force
Subject : Captain Farva
A gentle giggle rose from the foot of my bed. I curl up in my blankets at first not willing to be woken by the kids; Whatever they were up to; my mind still foggy from morning dreariness. I heard chief Donu exchanging excitedly with someone not far away in engineering speak, my tired brain could not parse. The tones of synthetic beeps, and electrical humming slowly entered my awareness. I raised my paw to wipe the morning dew from my eyes but I felt some kind of resistance to my paw. I sit up confused, I am not in my bedroom, or my quarters aboard my ship.
I am on a soft bed, with a soft blanket made of a finely woven material draped off my form. Around me is a curtain wall hung off of a curved metal pole which encompasses the entire bed, and I am flanked on both sides by medical equipment. Boxy screens display what I assume to be my vital signs accompanied by a strange blocky alien script. Inspecting my arm I notice an IV drip is inserted into the vein. Feeling a fading headache I reach up to my forehead where I feel a bandage covering a tender wound. Where Did I….
A sharp meep escapes my mouth. I am on the predator ship!
I quickly begin to tear at the IV line, not wanting whatever poisons the predators are feeding me to further enter my body. The room goes quiet, the curtain wall is disturbed, I focus on tearing away the bandage, panicking my coordination falters but I almost have it out when a paw reaches out to stop me. A cream colored venlil has rushed to my bed frantically batting at my arms in an attempt to stop me from saving myself.
“Captain, please let me help. I don't want you to hurt yourself!”
Not thinking, in full stampede mode I back hand the interloper with my paw.
A startle meep escapes her lips.
The IV is ripped out with the sudden motion.
Orange Blood begins to drip from the improperly removed IV.
This site further raises my heart rate.
The Venlil Recovers and I recognize her.
“Nurse Fila, What are you doing? what's going on?!”
“Farva you need to calm down, your going to be alright let me look at that arm”
“NO!”
I pulled my injured arm away. Jumping up to stand on the bed. Why was Fila working with the predators? What had they injected into my body?
“What are they holding over you! Why are you working with the predators! Where's Nyan?!”
“Captain Farva please calm down, These predators are different, they don't want to hurt us, you need to believe me”
It must have been some mind altering drug, these predators clearly have her under their spell! I needed to get out of here. I couldn't force her to come with me. I needed to escape and regroup, and pray to whatever gods will listen that I could get off this ship somehow.
I bolted from the bed crashing through the curtains, they did not move out of the way fast enough and my mass caused the curtain rods to be hoisted from their housings. I collapsed upon the floor, my movement hindered by the tangled mass of predatory linens. I struggled against the vile curtain entrapment. I had to use my claws to tear my way free of them. I looked up, predatory growls of surprise, and startled meeps echoed out from all around me.
My peripheral vision was filled with images of both predator and prey alike, I was surrounded on all sides. Nurse Fila was behind me stunned by my sudden actions. Donu looked towards me with concern, and I looked to the far end of the room to see Nyan, In the clutches of a blond haired predator. Digging her claws into his young flesh.
Donu gets up gesturing with her tail in a placating motion. “Easy now Farva, don’t do anything rash!” Donu speaks.
They have her too!
I bolt past her and the massive predator standing next to her. I go to grab Nyan, but he is pulled from my reach! The large predator turns her body to shield me from her catch.
“Hey easy now!” It barks, holding Nyan away from me.
Nyan reaches his paw out past the predator. A horrified look in his eyes.
With only the frantic strength a mother could conjure, I grasp his outstretched paw and pull him from the predator's grasp. With him once again in my arms I see the door to the pen we are in begin to open. Wasting no time, I bolt full sprint from the door. Only to be met by a large black mass. A tall impenetrable wall of muscle, cloaked in foot to shoulder black artificial pelts. Holding a colorful pink box, no doubt gaining that color from being caked in the blood of innocent prey animals. I raise my paw not holding Nyan to swipe at him, to rip my way past him. But before I can make contact my arm is grabbed by the predator's meaty digits. It holds me tight just below the paw where the wound from the ripped out IV sits. Blood dripped from the wound, no doubt triggering its bloodlust. I drop Nyan to free my other paw, I go to swipe the predator to free my arm but again I am stopped. I look to my right to see Donu restraining my arm.
“Donu let go!” I scream. “You're not of your own mind!”
“My mind is fine thank you!” She replies.
I turn to kick her away, striking her twice with quick kicks. Desperately trying to free myself from her deranged clutches. I wind up to kick a third time only for Nyan to wrap his whole body around my legs.
“Nyan Stop” I cry, my heart beating at a million light years per hour.
“Please…Don't hurt Teal’c and Donu” Nyan pleads.
I frantically wiggle my body desperately trying to regain autonomy from my traitorous captors.
“Im going to sedate her” proclaims my former ship nurse Fila.
Grabbing a Needle she stalks towards me, eager and willing to deliver me into the jaws of her captors.
“That will not be necessary” says the large predator holding my arm. He sets his package upon a nearby bed, and grabs my other arm from Donu, and then easily flips me around. And holds my arms behind my head, he then proceeds to kick my legs out from under me and forces me to the ground in a vice-like headlock.
“BE CALM CAPTAIN FARVA” It bellows “Further resistance will only cause more harm to yourself, and more worry from your crew, listen to them”
“Captain please just relax your safe, if they wanted to hurt you they could have a long time ago” Donu almost seems to try and trick me to the predator's side. But I see her glancing nervously towards the cut on my arms. Deep down I think she knows what that means. Nyan also pleads with me to listen. It's at this I begin to tear up at the hopelessness of it all. I wail out in despair frantically thrashing to free myself from the predator's death grip but to no avail.
I sit here once again, bested by predators, having failed those I love, but instead of rotting in a cattle pen or in the belly of an Arxurs stomach. They lie in a different kind of pen, their minds’ no longer theirs, as they fall victim to the predator's spell. Brainwashed to serve as the perfect compliant cattle.
Nurse Fila approaches a needle in her hand.
“I'm going to sedate her I need to look at that wound”
“Hold up a second” speaks the blond predator, she seems to be calming down.
The truth is I have no will left to fight, I have been bested time and again, there is only sorrow left and self pity. I only wish for a swift end now. I don't wish to live with the weight of this long string of failures weighing on my mind any longer. I go limp in the predator's arms.
“Please just… make it quick predator” I manage to say, sobbing making it hard to talk as I get out the words between snuffling breaths.
“It's okay Farva, please don't be sad” Nyan pleads as he clings tightly to my waist.
The predator holding me growls quietly into my ear. “I am going to release you now, do not attempt to harm nurse Fila as she is trying to help you now, do you understand?”. I tilt my ears in the affirmative, nothing happens for a moment until Donu signals to the predator who I guess whose name is Teal’c that I responded in the affirmative. My arms are slowly brought to my side. My left arm is released but not the wounded right one. Teal’c displaying some knowledge in medical etiquette seems to be intentionally applying pressure to the wound to prevent bleeding, I am led back to the bed.
Nurse Fila is about to attempt to fix my wound but is stopped by the blond predator.
“Allow me, this should go a lot more smoothly with this.” The blond predator produces a strange golden metal device, it appears like a strange wiry gauntlet, with metal claws and a strange crystal in the center. It emits a strange pulsing sound that I cringe at, but I am held firm by nurse fila, I can't look away as the strange glow it emits passes over my arms. The curtain of despair lifts for a moment, replaced by incredulousness as before my eyes the wounded artery in my arms miraculously seals itself, as elegantly as a flight suit being zipped up. My arm is left feeling slightly warm which soon fades, any sign of the wound is gone.
Fila speaks in an incredulous tone.
“It is endlessly baffling how your medical bay is stocked with simple alcohol based disinfectants and primitive bandages and sutures. Like something I'd see in a primitive yotul field hospital, while simultaneously containing healing tools so advanced they would make the finest Zurulian theoretical medical engineers sell their own tail.”
The blond predator lets out a high pitched broken chortle, which my translator pings as laughter. “I don’t know what a Zurulian is but compared to what we've seen this is nothing, this is a miniature version of the same technology used in a Goa'uld sarcophagus, which can reanimate dead tissue, bringing people back to life even after complete brain death.”
“Fascinating” Donu replied “what is the nature of this radiation”
“That technology itself is actually derivative of an ancient healing device created by our distant primordial ancestors the Alterans, which emitted subspace based healing radiation. We currently have the original device back in our home dimension being reverse engineered back in area 51” Spoke a third predator, who was standing up against the far wall.
He seemed to be holding onto himself quite fiercely, perhaps he struggled to hold in his bloodlust, unlike the two predators currently at my side.
“For predators they have such wondrous technology Farva” Donu says as she takes my paw and massages it gently in an attempt to ease my anxiety. “I almost wouldn't believe it if not for what they have shown us so far. Tell me, do you know how they got us off of our ship?”
A wave of realization washed over me as I sat dumbfounded in the bed. How did they get us off this ship? My brain had been in nonstop flight mode since the battle. I had been so occupied with survival I never stopped to contextualize my mere presence, on this ship, in one piece, why had we all seemingly awoken in this ship's hangar bay. No wait we didn't awaken, most of us were standing. Maybe we were drugged and removed, with no memory of the lost time. But that couldn’t be right. I was looking at the countdown to the core explosion. It had hit zero. I saw the flash myself.
“I was on the bridge holding Nyan in my arms, but after that I remember being in that hangar bay, with Nyan, in the exact same position.”
“The humans have a technology that allows them to break down matter at the atomic level, transfer it via an electromagnetic molecular confinement beam, and reassemble it at a different location completely remotely!” Donu excitedly proclaimed.
“You were teleported directly from the bridge to our ships hangar bay with your crew, and Donu to our infirmary due to her severe radiation poisoning.” Commented the blond predator.
Nyan finished crawling up the bed and snuggled into my side. “They fixed Donu, Samantha fixed her with her healing glove!” Nyan excitedly brayed, his tail wagging uncontrollably.
My stomach dropped, how had I forgotten, how did I let that slip my mind, Donu was subjected to at least 3.6 standard units of gamma radiation. Her presence here was a miracle. I hugged her tightly, my guilt for my actions only increased, how could I neglect the damage done to one of my oldest friends. Was I so predator diseased that I forgot to think of my herd?
The predator whose name was Samantha spoke ”Yeh sorry it took us so long, we cut it a lot closer than we wanted, but we had to adjust our transporter lock to account for the radiation flooding the ship, the levels experienced were harmless for the most part, but enough to cause problems.”
The fear chemicals were slowly draining from my mind, my head became clearer as I started to consider the actions of these predators so far. They had offered to help my ship while risking their own vessel, they had tried for peace before throwing themselves into battle, they had little reason to help us and little reason to try and take our technology as their capabilities seem to surpass ours in many ways so far.
I looked towards the blond haired predator, towards Samantha.
“Why did you help us? What do you hope to gain?”
She responded ”Well now we would like to maybe get some intel about this local region of space, we are not from around here and frankly we could do with some help securing some parts. But with that in mind we didn't really expect anything out of you when we first got your hail. We helped because you were in trouble, and your situation sounded dire.”
“And I'm just supposed to believe that! Prey ships would be waging pros and cons before even thinking about helping another ship under attack, especially with not knowing anything at all about the other ships capabilities”
Donu squeezed my paw and interjected. "These humans aren’t like normal predators, they are pack predators, they are very social, and even appear to feel genuine empathy, they even eat plants, they have been feeding us from their own reserves!”
“How is that possible?” I ask, having never heard of such a thing.
“Well where we come from” Samantah responded ”Omnivorous life is extremely common, not just on our home planet but nearly every one of the thousands of habitable planets we have visited contain omnivorous life in some form or another, It is an incredibly beneficial evolutionary trait.”
“Thousands! How can that be, our scientist have never encountered such a thing”
“That's the thing, they're not from this galaxy Farva, they're not even from this dimension!”
Donu gets into explaining the technical aspects of the Daedalus's faithful journey to our dimension, while Nyan, an always hungry growing boy, runs off during her explanation, to approach the large predator known as Teal’c.
“Can I have another donut?” he asks, pointing to the box that I now realize is not covered in blood but instead merely painted a gaudy pink.
“You may, but only after you have completed your grooming rituals, it is important for little ones such as yourself to learn and maintain proper hygiene practices” Teal’c spoke, his growls almost seeming to take up a fatherly aura.
He looks disappointed slightly but then his ears and tail perks up as he runs behind Samantha and out of sight, he remerges with a hairbrush and plops himself down on the predator's lap. To which she responds by snarling at him intensely.
“Donu” I shriek, interrupting the third predator's speech on the volatile nature of fourth dimensional space. Shocked at how quickly the predator could go from civility to volatility so rapidly. I was quickly calmed by Donu and Fila assuring me that this was merely an odd habit of the humans. The upturned teeth baring signaled happiness to them. Samantha made it clear to me that since her jaw was not clenched it did not indicate aggression. Her explanation sounded dubious, but after further observation, her following actions did not seem to indicate she wanted to harm the boy. Nyan offers her the brush once he sees that I am finished panicking.
She gives and odd closed mouth smile. "You have an almost PHD level knowledge of physics! don't tell me you don't know how to brush your own fur”
His tail gives a meek wag. ”I like when you do it, you have such nice flat nails and warm fingers!”
He makes his eyes go wide like a pup pleading for attention. The predator’s resolve immediately falters. ”Awh how could I say no to such a cute little angel”.
Samantha begins to help the boy detangle his fur, running her long grasping appendages through his fur in combination with the brush to gently pull apart the knots. He’s already clean from the grime that was present on him from when we were back on the heavily damaged ship, speaking of which I gesture to nurse Kila.
“Kila, how is the crew? How are they holding up? why aren't they here?”
“17 survivors including yourself, the humans have set up a triage center in their hangar bay, keeping the crew together and trying to give them some space, their stable but many of them are bedridden. They're quite scared naturally but,“ nurse Kila gives a look towards the humans “but I think we are going to be alright.”
“So what happens now?” I asked, “you aren't from this dimension and you said you were having drive problems, can you fix those? What are your plans for this dimension?”
The third predator stalked out from his isolated corner to address the room in a posture that emphasized the obvious restraint that was required to contain his instincts around us. “Hi ummm.. My name is Doctor Rodney Mckay, I think I can help with that question, simply put, our drive system uses a specialized quantum subspace field generator to warp 4th dimensional space in a way that allows us to track and catalog dimensional eddies as we call them, and track their specific frequencies which allow us to…….”
------- one long boring explanation later ------
“Ah So I see, you came to this dimension by mistake and need a replacement part that you cannot manufacture yourself to return home, but you think we might be able to manufacture a replacement with our industry?” I asked for clarification from Rodney.
“I discussed with your chief engineer earlier, we should be able to reproduce the part we need at what Donu described as a hyper fabricator, the meta materials available in your dimension you use for warp travel should be sufficient to recreate the part we need”
“In exchange I believe we can help you with your little arxur problem.” Spoke Samantha, running her grasping appendages through the fur of a contented Nyan, who was happily munching away at the strange circular Staryu-like treat the human Teal'c had presented him. Samantha proclaiming it to be sourced from his personal stash.
I was taken back by the revelation that they wanted to offer further assistance, when the predators first mentioned their damaged drive system, I thought they might try to leverage our place as rescued survivors as a means to get access to the part they needed to repair their damaged vessel. But now they were offering further assistance in exchange?
“I don’t understand, you've already done so much? Why would you help us more and risk more damage to your vessel?”
“Well if you want the reason we are going to put on paper, “Samantha said, ”it's to gather intel about a potential threat, and to ensure trust and cooperation of the locals to better expedite the procurement of mission critical drive components. If you want our real reason, its that no one deserves what has been done to you, we can't stay because we have responsibilities in our home dimension, but we don't see why we can’t help you while we are here.”
“So wait, are you proposing what I think you're proposing?”
“I am, from what we learned from your crew the arxur take a large portion of their abductees as cattle, we can track your subspace trails quite quickly and we think we have a good chance of hunting down the arxur transport ships.”
Nyan angled his head to look at both me and the human. Hope in his eyes, the idea of getting my family back would normally seem like an impossible dream, but here I was being comforted by predators, offering to risk their lives for a very lopsided trade in our favor. An ember of hope for the first time in many claws went alight in my chest.
I looked to Donu, who while trying to hide it, looked forlornly in Nyans direction. He was so happy to hear about a rescue plan and excited by all the predators' incredible technology, but while my family was young and fertile enough to be taken as cattle and potentially rescued. I had little doubt that if his family wasn't eaten, or killed in the bombing of the colony, the arxur would have no reason to hold a couple of such advanced age as cattle.
While I myself was a meek prey and a hopeless failure of a military officer, these Humans, despite obviously being fierce predators, had shown off an odd compassion. If anyone could; stand up to the arxur, and hunt them in return it was them.
I would help them anyway I could, they were unfamiliar with our foe, but they have shown themselves to be quite adaptable so far. Working together, we just maybe had a chance at making up for my failures. To set things right, and to save innocent prey from a fate worse than death.
“I think I may have to take you up on your offer kind predator”
Officer Report - Captain Caldwell
CLEARANCE LEVEL 5
Our interim chief engineer Dr.Mckay has successfully clamped open the 4th dimensional hole in space ; as he calls it; so we are clear to jump through this dimension freely without losing our path back to our home dimension. While my first impulse would be to jump to Earth, Unfortunately it seems that this dimension’s earth cold war went hot and it is currently a bombed out waste land. That being said carter and Mckay have struck a deal with the captain of the destroyed venlil defense frigate, in exchange for aiding in the rescue of captured civilians, they are willing to grant us access to the advanced manufacturing equipment needed to repair our Quantum drive.
While the antagonistic cannibalistic arxur are certainly an intimidating foe, they are not invincible and our ship stacks up favorably against theirs when specialized techniques are employed. The problem they cause for us is more unique. Carnivores are rare in this dimension and seemingly more so are omnivores. The Herbivore species known as the venlil are quite afraid of us, having dealt with these arxur for so long, and also due to a seemingly quite intense biological fear response, have been very wary to deal with us. Fortunately due to our admittedly unusually charismatic crew, and their admirable diplomatic efforts, we seem to have gotten them to calm down a lot since we initially transported them onto our ship. I am going to check up on the venlil crew and captain in the Medbay now, as they will be the most essential venlil to our efforts going forward.
As I walk in it seems that captain Farva is fast asleep, while Rodney appears to be using a Donut to explain the workings of a stargate to the aliens engineers.
“Okay so the stargate, you see this donut, imagine it's about 10 venlil tall, and made of metal” Rodney picks up another donut and hands it to the Child named Nyan. ”Okay first off don't eat that, secondly imagine you are a ancient alien race, and you want to get to point A to point B as fast as possible. Ftl isn’t quite fast enough so what if you could instead skip the trip and skip to the end. The stargate network allowed the ancient alternans to simply walk from planet to planet” Rodney used his finger to gesture from donut to donut in his explanation of the stargates, speaking about their functions as well as their dangers, mentioning some notable accidents associated with their use, like unwanted time travel, stellar poisoning and dimension hopping, the ladder being a large part of why we were here in this dimension to begin with. Most concerningly however, the venlil Nyan took a bite out of the donut when rodney finished his explanation.
Samantha was working quietly with nurse Fila and looked up from some chemical diagrams when she noticed I had entered the room. I asked if I could have a word, and took Her, Rodney, and Teal'c aside to have a meeting with them. We left the room due to the venlil’s exceptional hearing, as we had previously discovered when various medics made some inappropriate comments on how the venlil were “cute enough to eat '' thinking they were out of earshot.
Having taken them aside I spoke up. “I have already told this to Shepard and our medical staff in the hangar bay, and I would like to congratulate you on your remarkable progress on bridging the gap with the venlil. Going from shoot on sight in the hangar bay to literally eating out of your hands in a matter of hours represents some major diplomatic prowess.”
“Thank you captain” Samantha Said.
“There behavior is indeed most unusual” followed Teal’c
“But seemingly quite understandable given what they have been through with the wraith, Sorry! Arxur, Freudian slip.” chimed rodney.
“I would love to look at the biosphere of one of their planets, their ecology seems preposterous judging by the way they describe it. But they are a space faring species so they presumably know what they are talking about.” added Samantha.
“I myself am curious based on what you reported general, their dimension is quite odd but I suppose ours would be weird to them as well, but we have responsibilities back home.” I responded curtly. “I do have a question for you all though, The Venlil are a herbivorous species with intense emotional reactions and societal values pertaining to the consumption of meat, including animal products correct?”
Samantha answered ”We have been avoiding the subject of meat consumption as much as possible, focusing on our plant based foods for the venlil’s comfort, and they have been happy to keep that topic to a minimum after the initial introductions, but I don't believe they would respond well to the idea of consumption of…..” Samantha trails off with a worried look. “Oh god wait, please don’t tell me”
Teal’c looks confused, Rodney facepalms.
“You do know that donuts have eggs in them? Don't you.”

Ok sorry for the incoming rant but...
I have been struggling with this itchy rash for about 12 years. It's affected my mental health, day to day life, self-image, self-esteem, what I can wear, etc. I'm so tired of it. But I'm angry too. Angry enough to put my foot down and say enough is enough. I'll be honest and say that while I eat GF, I will still go to a regular restaurant, order something that shouldn't have gluten, and just hope there is no cross-contamination. Stupid, I know. But in those moments I just don't use my judgment. Because I want to be normal, eat out with my friends, etc. Well, that stops today.
I have a bridal shower to go to next weekend, and 3 weddings this summer, one of them being my own. I am simply not going to eat at any of these events. For everyone else's event, I will eat beforehand. At my own wedding I will just bring my own food from home. I'm a really socially anxious person and haven't done this before because I'd rather not have to explain to people why I'm not eating. Again, this stops now. My health is more important.
I am also not gonna go out to eat. The weddings are mandatory but besides that, I won't even step foot in a non-GF restaurant. Heck, this will save me money, too.
I'm over, over, over it. I will heal my skin. I will stand up for myself. I will take my life and mental health and self-image back.
ETA more thoughts: Today I got sushi after my dance class because I was really hungry. Wrong move, it was cross-contaminated. I will also have to be mindful and bring snacks whenever I go out, so that I always have something GF to munch on and don't pass out from hunger.

Hi, 27M here, live in Norway. Few days ago I suddenly developed red rashes on the far right side of my chest, it was a bit swollen and slightly ichy. It had very bumpy feeling on touch. Today at work I had a sharp burning sensation. And when I came home it became very itchy. I do not have access to my GP due to long appointment queue and public holidays. Can anyone please tell me what this might be and what can I do until I get an appointment?
Image url: https://imgur.com/gallery/3bR6EGa
P.s. : I recently started weight training, though with low weight(8-10 kg for arms and chest), increased poties intake.
Ps.ps. : there is also few single red bumps on my belly(same side).

28 Female Medication:Wellbutrin and progesterone only bc 104kg, 5'7 Medical conditions:pcos I have a small rash on my leg. It looks like tiny spots of blood. I don't think it's petchiae because when I press down with my finger it dissapears then slowly reappears again. It looks like tiny spots of blood though. I've had it for several months and it never changes or goes away.
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