sundogs

peregrine returns from a jaunt in an oversized bromeliad. conejita - tochin hunts and peregrine is once again reduced to his symbolic animalform. click for higher resolution.

Fig. 1. Peregrine has returned, spiraling in on the only plane that still makes the trip out here. As I watch it land, I imagine him as the falcon he is named for, wild and steady. His smiling amber eyes as he drops, talons gripping the soft fake flesh of my curled hand. In human form, he hugs me outside the hangar, bird boned and warm even through his parka, gripping me tight. I find him remarkable, alive, smelling dependably of lavender soap.

tochin

tochin is "one of three," an entity commissioned by the military for experimental purposes. ultimately retired due to "willfullness" and for "lacking the desire to cooperate." they didn't bank on their sentient guns wanting a normal life and gave them up after several consecutive failed tasks. tochin is the first, oldest, and most recalcitrant of the three of them. siblings with levy (the youngest, settled somewhere in a northern state), and an unnamed middle sibling whose whereabouts remain unknown. between tochin and levy, tochin is more concerned with the optics of being a living human being but is still adjusting to her assimilation into society. her attempts to pass as People are earnest but lacking. levy is sent on a different, distinctly spiraling path after an accident involving a schoolmate and is almost entirely irrelevant to her sister's life. they don't get along and aren't interested in having a relationship.

because i love robots and nonhuman characters with complicated relationships to humanity, her body is completely artificial but she has a synthetic human brain. we won't get into the science of it because i don't know enough to justify it. she was also built as a faux hivemind meant to facilitate data sharing between the sisters but after they were released it was poorly amputed and now they all have a feature where they'll randomly recieve memory dumps from the others. i find this to be entertaining as a plot device.

I sometimes wonder what they would see from my eyes. The soft Arctic landscape, my hand trailing in the subzero water. Flashes of animals, shale and samples. The labs. My coworkers. Peregrine, again and again. Peregrine here, hunched over a fishing hole in the blank winter whiteness, Peregrine there, wading along the edge of lake in the tundra, finding tiny curled ammonites I still have tucked into a jacket somewhere. Always Peregrine.

she works as a researcher in the arctic alongside peregrine, her first and only true friend. they are unwell about eachother in that they are inseperable and completely dependant on one another to maintain any semblance of normality. tochin has self-isolating tendencies despite her desire to assimilate but somehow imprinted upon peregrine when they first met and now they're forever bonded like some mewling kittens forgotten in a box somewhere. with a healthy dose of autism.

tochin is the only person who really enjoys peregrine's strange and stilted form of connection & conversation. their relationship is endearing but people think they're weird because they assume that in order for them to function as the symbiotic organism that they are there must be some degree of romantic feelings where there are none. their relationship is the result of my fascination with non-sibling sibling dynamics which i then just superimposed over my freakies. one must refer to charlie & leon, silna & goodsir, hunter & luz.

symbolically theyare fun for me to think about because tochin is conejo/rabbit in nahuatl and peregrine is a bird of prey. take from that what you will with what you now know. also lots of horse motifs because i'm just that kind of a guy.

megafaunas your przewalski's horse

peregrine

peregrine is the kind of guy to look like some kind of small, terrified mammal in any given social situation and if it continues in such a manner he will proceed to completely zone out. where you can find him at ease is perhaps wading in a lake looking for cool rocks. tochin isnt scared of socializing because she wants to be percieved as People but she sucks at it so she'll end up happily frolicking with peregrine in the shallows of the lake. its a win win for everyone.

his background is a lot less involved than tochin's just because i haven't really gotten around to thinking about it yet. he's a fruitfly in the way that he kind of just spawned into my little world with no real context. this project was borne of a short story i wrote in april of 2024 about a team of researchers exploring a giant bromeliad in the yucatan. he is introduced in this manner by petlacalco, the narrator:

He strikes me as a rabbit of a man, and by this I do not mean he is cute or approachable. Quite the opposite. He is lean and terrified, doggedly avoids eye contact, his body always pivoted away from the group in a way that makes me think he might bolt at any moment. His free hand twitches at his side in some sort of cryptic rhythm, index-thumb tap, ring-thumb tap, and so on. If you stand too close, you are enveloped in the flowery soap-smell that emanates from him. I find this endearing

to me, peregrine is like a bug to be studied under a microscope. old ladies love him, young people hate him. he doesn't talk right. he won't make eye contact. he has weird selfsoothing habits. he's going gray at 28. his best friend is a disarmed weapon of mass destruction who loves him so so much. he has a castilian spanish accent that everyone makes fun of him for. he lives in the arctic for most of the year. what more could you want from a guy.

imagine you were a man with the disposition of a small prey animal but the name of a predatory bird.

the little brother poem

ultimately

my rather self indulgent horticultural adventure story has officially spiraled out of control. i would like to someday publish it here although i'm self conscious about my writing as it's always been a "secondary" art practice to my illustration. just for fun. i hope i can muster a short comic about them someday in conjunction with whatever writing i can bring myself to share. my sweet and silly little guys. thanks for reading i think about them all the time.

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they love you!