Tashlit

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   <default>Tashlit</default>
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   <label>Alias</label>
 
 
 
 
   <label>Age</label>
 
 
   <label>Gender</label>
 
 
   <label>Status</label>
 
 
   <label>Type</label>
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   <label>Classification</label>
 
 
 
 
 
 
   <label>Affiliation</label>
 
 
 
 
 
 
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   <label>Occupation</label>
 
 
 
 
 
 
   <label>First Appearance</label>
 

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Tashlit<ref name=":6">“Her name’s Tashlit?”

“She doesn’t talk or write, so communication’s tough, but Alpeana and

her get along and Alpeana translated some of it from dreams and some 

questioning.  Sounds like an Other of divine lineage.  Complicated.” - excerpt from Cutting Class 6.6 </ref> is an Other recently come to Kennet.

Personality

She made a so-so gesture when Verona asked if she was an evil baby-eating monster,<ref name=":0">The girl nodded.  Jowls separated from and slapped against the sleek eye-flesh beneath as part of the motion.

“I love this whole thing you’ve got going on, by the way,” Verona whispered, gesturing head to toe on the girl.

The girl made a similar gesture, indicating Verona’s top and hair.  Eyeballs made their noises as they looked.

“Thank you.  Please don’t tell me you’re evil and eat babies or whatever.”

The girl made a so-so gesture again.

“I guess that’s all any of us can say, huh?”

The girl nodded.  Then she pressed a finger to her lips. - Excerpt from Back Away 5.3</ref> but wasn't concerned about Kennet's ban on violence and eating babies.<ref name=":1">“Ye’re a timorous yin, aye?  She said to ask that ye be guid, ‘n to nae tae et the wee’uns, whitever that means.”

[...]

“Tha lassie liked yeh.  Verona did.  If ye’d like to be less lonely, an’ if ye’d be good, we’d have yeh.”

The Other looked between them.

“She hesitates,” Maricica said.  “Because of the restrictions on violence, hurting babies?”

The Other shook her head, false skin slapping against the sleek true body, eyes in the location wincing shut at the impact. - Excerpt from Back Away 5.d</ref>

She likes reading to allieviate boredom.<ref name=":2">The Other blinked.  More slender than a human could be, beneath the sagging skin she was draped in, her sleek body was formed entirely of interlinked eyes, their irises yellow and bright in the gloom.

She had found a place to hole up in, a farmhouse that had been left abandoned, the door left open and the elements and animals having left their mark.  She sat without a book to read, or anything to do, relaxed, and didn’t seem any more or less relaxed as the Other looked down at her from the ceiling.  The windows were boarded up, and the surroundings overgrown, which meant relatively little light got in. - Excerpt from Back Away 5.d</ref>

Like many Others, she was drawn to the jewel Clem found, but was the only one Verona was able to pursuade it was a trap.<ref name=":3">The girl with the eyes rose to a standing position without leaning on anything, and her skin slid around and resettled.  She started walking toward Kennet.

“Hey, hey, no,” Verona hissed.  “No.”

The girl pressed fingers together into a diamond.

“No,” Verona whispered.  “Please be as cool as you look.”

The girl pressed her fingers together to make a diamond again.  She started walking, and Verona nearly tripped over a bush in her haste to get in the girl’s way.

“No.  Really.  Please.”

[...]

The girl with the skin got Verona’s attention, pointed at the same location, then made the diamond shape.

“No,” Verona said.  “It’s some kind of Other-bait.  Why are you guys being dumb about this?”

[...]

The girl with the eyes looked down at him, moist eyes squelching with their simultaneous movement.

“I didn’t do that on purpose.  But that might be the sort of thing that happens if you keep going after this jewel.  They’re pretty territorial down there.  I think they were torching echoes and spirits on sight.”

The girl looked back at the jewel.

“No, really really.  I know you want it, but…”

The girl turned and walked away, opposite direction.  She cut across the path Sharon had been so near, then disappeared into darker woods.

“Good.  Okay,” Verona said, huffing. - Excerpt from Back Away 5.3 </ref>

Despite having once been almost human, she is unfazed by her new lifestyle.<ref name=":7">“So she’s really old then?” Verona asked.

“Old?” Matthew asked.  “No.”

“No?”

“No, her mother is, but she’s seventeen or so.  Hatched from an egg, grew up human with only minor weirdness, until, well, she came of age, essentially.  She seems to take it in stride.”

- excerpt from Cutting Class 6.6 </ref>

Relationships

She and Verona got on pretty well when they first met, both indicating they liked each other's appearence.<ref name=":0"/>

Alpeana and her get along, and Alpy has used her powers to interpret some of her dreams to help understand her better.<ref name=":6" />

Description

She is skinnier and sleeker than a human. Her body is made entirely of eyes of various sizes, from the size of a hand to the size of a fingertip, black with yellow irises which glimmer in the darkness. Her eyes move in unison and make a faint wet sloshing noise when they move. She drips an oily black liquid.<ref name=":4">She almost screamed, jumping out of her skin, when she realized she’d sat down next to something.  It was a girl, with skin that drooped on her like a bulldog, and a few gaping wounds at her chest and limbs, the skin hanging away.  She wore a dress that had probably looked nice, once, but had been stained black with the oily ichor that leaked from her wounds and orifices.

Everything that was inside the wounds, past the eye-holes of drooping eyelids, and inside her mouth, which perpetually drooped open, was as sleek as the skin wasn’t.  it was all black eyeballs with yellow irises, all interlocked together so the corner of one was nestled into others. All eyeballs moved in unison, and the sound of them all moving was like a faint slosh of water.  They flicked over to looking the other way, and again, there was that faint slosh.

The girl held a finger to her lips.  A fingernail was missing, and an eye peeked out from the nail bed, the edges of that nail bed bleeding black ooze. - [1] from Back Away 5.3</ref><ref>Verona looked at the Other sitting next to her.  It sat with all of its eyes, some as long as Verona’s hand, some as big as a thumbprint, fixed forward.  A dribble of black ichor hung from a nostril, growing longer without breaking off as an actual droplet. - Excerpt from Back Away 5.3</ref><ref name=":2" /> Her eyes can close independently.<ref name=":1" />

She wears what appears to be the drooping skin of a girl, with her true form visible through the eye and mouth holes, as well as through gaping holes in her chest and limbs<ref name=":4"/> and some holes where her fingertips are missing.<ref name=":5">The girl waited until the light had moved on, then reached out, in the general direction of Kennet.  She made clutching motions with her hand, opening and closing them.

“You want something?”

The girl nodded, eyeballs moving this way and that.  She brought her hands up, one with barely any skin on it, only two fingertips remaining attached, the hand sleek beneath.  She pressed index fingers and thumbs together and made a diamond shape.

“Diamond?”

So-so gesture, hand wobbling.

“Jewel?”

The girl nodded. - Excerpt from Back Away 5.3</ref> The skin has a dress on over it, stained with her black liquid.<ref name=":4"/>

She gives off a smell of ammonia.<ref>It wasn’t a long wait.  Verona’s sense of smell struggled to recover, and she was increasingly aware of an ammonia smell from the girl. - Excerpt from Back Away 5.3</ref>

She doesn't speak or write,<ref name=":6" /> but she can understand English and communicate somewhat with gestures.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":0" /> Verona speculated at one point that she might be trying to communicate using some kind of code of rapid eye movements.<ref>The girl’s eyeballs sloshed around, moving in what could almost be a language, like Morse code, except there were more things than dashes and dots in there.

“Can’t understand you, and you need to be quiet,” Verona whispered, as a flashlight shone on… not them, but on their general section of forest. - Excerpt from Back Away 5.3</ref>

Abilities and Art

She has yet to demonstrate any special abilities.

Weaknesses

Like many Others, she was drawn to the jewel Clem found, but was the only one Verona was able to pursuade it was a trap.<ref name=":3"/>

Her eyes are sensitive to contact, hurting if the skin slaps against them before they can close.<ref name=":1"/>

She seems to prefer darkness to sunlight.<ref name=":2" /><ref>The day loomed bright and heavy around the three Others of the dark, who stayed within the dark farmhouse, talking. - Excerpt from Back Away 5.d</ref>

History

Before the Story

She comes from a family of Others descended from both gods and humans.<ref>“Child of a divine power and a human?”

The Other tilted her head to one side and blinked once.

“Close?  Child of two such creatures?  Or one creature and a human.”

The Other blinked slowly.

“A line of such.  Mmm.  It’s a lonely existence.” - Excerpt from Back Away 5.d</ref> Her grandmother was a pre-biblical princess transformed by a god into an Other which spawned endless horrors; one of those horrors was a many-eyed sea serpent, which in turn was cursed to have its mind exchanged with a noble lady. Somehow one of them was discovered in one of the hidden places of the world in modern times and had two daughters by a labourer.<ref>Cutting Class 6.6</ref>

Tashlit was hatched from an egg around 2013 (she's approximately 17 as of 2020), and grew up mostly human before transforming into her current form.<ref name=":7" />

Back Away

She was among the Others drawn to Kennet by a magic item that Clementine Robertjon found while she was there, with the Kennet perimeter damaged and allowing a flood of Others in.

Unlike most, she was accepted as a new citizen of Kennet.

Trivia

• The fandom has speculated her to be some relative of Argus Panoptes of ancient greek myth.

Fanart Gallery

• Error creating thumbnail: File missing
  By Ytaro on Reddit.
• Error creating thumbnail: File missing
  By @Pseudopod1 on Twitter.

References

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