Flashback TIME!  Also, so many lives have been ruined by the existence of sock monkeys.  Isn’t it time we fought the real enemy?

So, here’s our first demonstration of Schmookie’s ability to change shape at will.  Scot is understandably surprised to have a twin.

So, first, sorry for the unscheduled hiatus.  Turns out between the 2-5-0 Party, the militarized common cold, and a series of unfortunate events, I sort of lost track of things.  Back on track now.  WIll be finishing unfinished things and adding new things as life progresses.

Not a lot to say about this comic, except that it introduces the idea of the Grandfather, who will not be shown in the comic for another 4 years, and even then, not physically.  The Grandfather is the oldest fae-related creature on earth, and his power and nature helped define for me how the fae exist on CN-world and, by extension, what made Petal Oak and Penny special.

Fae, in this world, are created by the abundance of interactive and chaotic energy given off wherever biomass becomes critically dense.  Thus, you will find fairies, like Petal Oak, in thickets and bogs, dryads in and around certain ancient trees of specific species (mostly hamadryads in live and black oaks) and other varieties in and around other places.

Dragons are an extremely old variety of fae, dating back to the Cretaceous Period (hence their distinctive, saurian shape).  When the CT-extinction occurred, the Grandfather (a more of less amorphous being born in the soft glowing aura of early mosses and lichens) found ways to save a few specimens.

The Grandfather is generally kind-hearted and subtle, but like most old people, he doesn’t have a lot of patience when foolish children challenge his wisdom unnecessarily,

It turns out that everything we think people hate about us is wrong.  Psychologists have a term for this:  projection.  We project our own feelings and expectations on other people and make predictions and decisions based on that.  For big things, like whether the puma down the pathway would like to eat us, this usually works out for the best.

It sort of fails for other things, like whether our significant other will be stupid and weird about that tattoo we got while drunk on Spring Break, or our habit of making a trumpet noise every time someone says “irrelevant”, or the fact that we’re a five-hundred-year-old fairy.

The trick is to recognize when you’re doing it and stop it.  I’ve found that most people are more than happy to tell me what they really think if I give them the chance.  It actually works out a lot better than it does for me to tell them.