Tashlit[1] is an Other recently come to Kennet.
Personality[]
Despite all she's been through Tashlit is essentially a normal young women. Still interested in having friends and having interesting experiences. She likes reading to alleviate boredom,[2]
Because of her heritage however she has trouble communicating she made a so-so gesture when Verona asked if she was an evil baby-eating monster,[3] but wasn't concerned about Kennet's ban on violence and eating babies.[4] She doesn't eat babies of any kind of course but couldn't communicate that especially because she is a 'monster'.
Despite having once been almost human, she is unfazed by her new lifestyle.[5]
Relationships[]
Verona Hayward[]
She and Verona got on pretty well when they first met, both indicating they liked each other's appearance.[3] Like many Others, she was drawn to the jewel Clem found, but was the only one Verona was able to persuade it was a trap.[6] Afterwards the two of them became friends, helped by Verona's innate ability to understand Tashlit's made-up sign language. Verona eventually offered to perform the familiar ritual with her.
Tashlit turned Verona down given the different life paths they were likely to take,[7] but did give Verona one of her only keepsakes of her father.[8]
Alpeana[]
The Mare and her get along, and Alpy has used her powers to interpret some of her dreams to help understand her better.[1]
Maricica[]
Thanks to the Fae's command of body language as well as other senses there was some communication between the two. Persumably she now considers her an enemy.
Sabita[]
Tashlit's only full sister, the two of them had a difficult relationship due to Sabita resenting Tashlit getting a normal childhood, they reconnected after Tashlit started changing only to drift apart again.[9]
Father[]
Loved her dad but did see his flaws with a clear eye, when she transformed she felt bad about how it affected him.
Cherrypop[]
She brought a rock from Cherrypop, agreeing to pay her later.[10]
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 that glimmer in the darkness.[11] Her eyes move in unison and make a faint wet sloshing noise when they move. She drips an oily black liquid.[12][2] Her eyes can close independently.[4]
She still wears her old skin as a human girl, with her true form visible through the eye and mouth holes, as well as through gaping holes in her chest and limbs[12] and some holes where her fingertips are missing.[13] The skin has a dress on over it, stained with her black liquid.[12]
She gives off a smell of ammonia.[14]
She doesn't speak or write,[1][15] but she can understand English and communicate somewhat with gestures.[12][13][3] Verona speculated at one point that she might be trying to communicate using some kind of code of rapid eye movements,[16] It is possible that her family can understand such communication.
Abilities and Art[]
She gets a 'trickle' of 'grace' just by existing, she can use this for various small feats such as healing,[17][18] or powering diagrams.[19]Overdrawing her supply can damage her.[20]
She's stronger and more durable than she looks,[21] and can spend some of the 'grace' for extra strength and probably other attributes.
She's at home in water, which seems to rejuvenate her and the skin she wears, and she causes the water she touches to hiss and pop.[22] She can spend some of her 'grace' to raise the level of bodies of water.[19] Swimming is made easier by the fact that she doesn't need to breathe.[23]
She claims that she will continue changing throughout her life. Has a working knowledge of Knotted places[24]
Weaknesses[]
Like many Others, she was drawn to the jewel Clem found, but was the only one Verona was able to persuade it was a trap.[6] Further her variety of Other can't stand cats or images of cats,[25] nor can she benefit from a Glamour disguise.[26]
Her eyes are sensitive to contact, hurting if the skin slaps against them before they can close.[4] She can close all her eyes though and isn't in danger of being blinded should she get an adequate warning.[citation needed]
She seems to prefer darkness to sunlight.[2][27] Moving around more freely at night, she can operate in the day without any major issues, it seems she wants to avoid the karmic backlash of revealing herself to innocents as such she finds herself much more able to move around in the Kennet Undercity and persumably Kennet Found.
History[]
Before the Story[]
She comes from a family of Others descended from both gods and humans.[28] Her grandmother was a pre-biblical princess transformed by Deity level Others into a Monster 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, a would-be rescuer tried to break the curse but only resulted in the couple having two daughters.[29]
Tashlit was hatched from an egg around 2003 (she's approximately 17 as of 2020),[5] she was essentially an older toddler at that point and had what Innocent people would consider learning delays.[30] Besides that she grew up mostly human before transforming into her current form.[5] In the time since her transformation she spent her time walking the world to visit various siblings.[31]
Fall of the Perimeter[]
She was among the many Others drawn to Kennet by a magic item that Clem a Gilded Lily found while she was there, with the Kennet perimeter damaged and allowing a flood of Others in, Verona was able to persuade it was a trap.[6]
Was found by Maricica and Alpenia who discussed the rules for living in Kennet.[4]
Settling in[]
Unlike most, she was accepted as a new citizen of Kennet and represented the newcomers who only get one vote.[32] She dealt with some threats in the area but felt like she could do more.
She came with Alpena to the Blue Heron Institute to help the Trio to survive the clash between two tyrants.
Vacation Time[]
She went off with Verona when the girl took a vacation with her mom.[33]
During the fight outside Kennet Arena Tashlit managed to take down Nova Aquila with Verona's help[34] but was injured by Abraham Musser's trench coat wearing familair.[35]
Post contest[]
Tashlit and Verona went to the Kennet Undercity in order to rescue an innocent that had wandered in by mistake. Whilst their Verona suggested the the two of them perform the familiar ritual together.[36] She also later helped Verona apprehend The Resident.[37]
When Verona approached her about the familiar ritual again she said she wanted to wait a few more years and that she was worried that she might be unable to travel.[38]
Trivia[]
- Before her proper name was revealed she was nicknamed Eyeris/Iris by the fandom.
- While parts of backstory are in doubt, as it is known that gods sometimes pretend to have cursed individuals who are in fact their own mutated offspring, Tashlit confirmed most of her backstory however.
- Tashlit's name has been linked by the fandom to the Tashlikh ritual, where ones sins are cast out to the sea, practiced by some Jewish sects.
Fanart Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 “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.”
[...]
“She’s an Other with a neat aesthetic and a great backstory,” Verona said, smiling. - excerpt from Cutting Class 6.6 - ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 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 - ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 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 - ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 “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 - ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 “So she’s really old then?” Verona asked.
[...]
“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 - ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 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 - ↑ - Excerpt from Left in the Dust 16.5
- ↑ A copper fishhook.
“Is that your-”
Tashlit brought thumb close to her other four flattened fingers and made a motion like she was stroking the brim of a baseball cap.
“Your dad’s. Thank you. That means a lot.”
Tashlit thumped her heart, then made a claw shape near the heart, pointing upward.
“Same. You can consider my door always open to you. This is a place you can stay.” - Excerpt from Left in the Dust 16.10 - ↑ “I think Sabita always resented me, she was bitter I got a childhood and she didn’t. I just wanted to be with my big sister and I was a bit jealous she got to go on a long ocean-traveling vacation with mom. At first. Then I just felt bad. When I started changing we had this brief period where we got along so well. It almost made up for how scary it all was.”
“Only briefly?” Montague asked.
“I think she liked that she had stuff to teach me and that was cool, but then the lessons became all about mindset, and how to think about it all, and that was mostly about being bitter. I said no thank you to all that and she started resenting me again. Then I went traveling.” - Excerpt from Shaking Hands 9.z - ↑ “She can pay you after!” Verona called out.
“I made a sale, aaa!”- Excerpt from Fall Out 14.3 - ↑ “Wallace would have to have responded to my messages at least once this last week for me to bring him here… and I don’t think we would, if we could.”
“Hmm,” Verona made a sound, glancing at Tashlit.
They sorted themselves out. Bags down, things arranged. Tashlit’s eyes glowed in the gloom, and Lucy knew that Verona had her own message that she’d sent out that hadn’t got a response in a week. She’d asked Tashlit to be her familiar. - Excerpt from Left in the Dust 16.4 - ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 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.
[...]
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 - ↑ 13.0 13.1 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 - ↑ 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
- ↑ “Did you guys manage to get a means of communication going?” Lucy asked.
“She doesn’t write, I think she lost the ability when she changed. But we were working out some ways. Alpeana said if she could finish her rounds here instead of dipping back home, she’d try to bring me and Tashlit together in dreams so we could have a conversation.” - Excerpt excerpt from Gone Ahead 7.2 - ↑ 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 - ↑ “You’re a healer?” Lucy asked.
Tashlit held her fingers close together. ‘Small’.
“A bit,” Verona said. “You know how Amine can do favors for his god, and that gets him credit he can spend? And he never knows exactly how much credit he’s got? So he’s gotta guess or make sure he has a surplus? Tashlit can’t really do any favors or anything big, but you could say the sink fills up at a trickle, and if there’s enough in there, she can do little things.” - Excerpt from Gone Ahead 7.2 - ↑ The irises of the eyes across Tashlit’s body began to glow.
Verona could feel those eyes looking inside her hand, looking with an intensity that cut through the pain.
“Doesn’t fix it,” Verona said.
Tashlit shook her head. Then she gestured.
“It does help, yeah,” Verona said. She smiled, and flexed her hand. It hurt, but the hurt was now only the pain of having squeezed and strained her hand. The twinges had subsided for now. - Excerpt from Left in the Dust 16.7 - ↑ 19.0 19.1 However she was able to do some healing and helped power the perimeter one evening. We also discovered she can spend power to raise and lower the water level of the river and while not useful right now it gives us options.- 8.7 Spoilers, New Other Correspondence #2
- ↑ “Hmmm. Maybe we could go get Tashlit?”
“I think she’s spent, from what Verona said. Or it’s like… she doesn’t know how much god-juice she has to spend, so she has to guess. And if she gets it wrong it really hurts her.” - Excerpt from Gone Ahead 7.5 - ↑ Yeah, plastic-bag head was getting a few inches taller each ’round’. A bit harder to budge, a bit stronger. The difference from one time to the next was subtle, but the difference from the first time she’d seen him to the most recent was drastic.
He wrestled with Tashlit, holding her against a wall as he walked. Tashlit struggled to find a way to arrest that.
[...]
Tashlit found a grip near the top of the wall, where the concrete was jagged, and instead of feet sliding and failing to get beneath her, flesh and eyeballs being ground against the rough concrete and stone walls, she found enough leverage to stop him from dragging her. One hand at the top of the wall, the other at the Other’s throat, she strained, and lifted him off his feet, slamming him into the wall in a single motion. He bounced off, stumbling, and John kept shooting out the knees as the Other recovered. - Excerpt from Gone Ahead 7.3 - ↑ Avery’s head turned as she saw a splash downriver. Tashlit, fully clothed, rose up out of the water, skin not nearly as loose, eyes brighter where they peered through gaps. The water hissed as it touched her. She spat out a geyser of water, and it hissed and popped as it splashed down into the water.
“Feeling more yourself, Tash?” Verona called out.
Tashlit nodded, dipping her head in for a second and re-emerging, to fix her hair. - Excerpt excerpt from Gone Ahead 7.3 - ↑ Tashlit strode forward, unbothered by the momentary lack of air. She didn’t need to breathe here any more than she needed to underwater.- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.1
- ↑ Mom found knotted places for them to reside, so you can only find them if you go looking.”
“So you know something about knotted places?” Verona asked. “Because that’s something that sounds like it might be happening here. Some place getting so twisted around by whatever’s going on that it gets cut off from the rest of the world, becomes hard to get to, can be darker or inverted from reality? Is that right?”
Tashlit nodded. “Right.”
“Might be useful,” Verona said. “I’m glad I recruited you. I mean, I was glad anyway, but that’s a bonus.”
“I’m glad you recruited me too. Good timing. I was starting to get tired of wandering, I was looking for something to look for, and a glimmer of light on the horizon got my interest. Except when I got closer, a very cool teenager told me not to go after it.”
“And you listened, which… I really needed someone to listen to me,” Verona said. The smile on her face fell away, and something more serious settled on her expression. Tashlit met that expression with concern. Verona spoke, and forced a bit of a smile. “How did those sibling visits go?” - Excerpt from Shaking Hands 9.z - ↑ “Well, we have a project then,” Verona said. “We’ll get you set up with a phone and you’ll have the whole wide internet to occupy you. Cat videos and-”
Tashlit’s eyes widened. She shook her head.
“No? What, the cat video thing?”
Tashlit widened her eyes again.
“You don’t like cats!?”
“I met an Other similar to her, once, overseas,” John said. “It didn’t like cats either. The common cat was anathema to the Other. Inborn.”
“Well, nobody’s perfect,” Verona said. “What a shame. I’m curious what that’s about.”
Tashlit shrugged.
“I think there was something about that in one of the books I took out of the library,” Avery said.
“Was it a thing before you, uh…?”
Tashlit nodded, still fishing in the bag. - Excerpt from Gone Ahead 7.1 - ↑ “The second one. We could try glamour,” Verona suggested.
“You could, but it doesn’t work,” Edith said. “The Faerie tried. It doesn’t sit well with Tashlit.”
Tashlit nodded. - Excerpt from Shaking Hands 9.7 - ↑ 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
- ↑ “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 - ↑
- excerpt from Cutting Class 6.6 - ↑ “Don’t be sorry. With a reptile mom- or, well, that’s not right. Our mom is human, just stuck in a body that’s about two hundred feet long, leaks acid from the mouth… she hates that-”
“Understandable,” Lucy said.
“-but we hatched, skipped the baby phase.”
“See, to me, that kind of makes sense,” Verona said. “I suspect babies are Nature playing a dirty trick on humanity. Leaky and noisy and helpless.”
“Bit of a developmental delay,” Tashlit said. “I started walking right away but I was slow with speech and I was behind my classmates for the first few years in school. Mostly my dad was just happy I seemed normal, I think.” - Excerpt from Shaking Hands 9.z - ↑ Then I went traveling. [...] I visited other siblings. Our whole deal, I’m not sure if anyone’s explained, Montague, is we’re like the bloodlines of Echidna, or Minos of Crete, or Jormungandr. Sometimes you get a girl who has snakes instead of bodily fluids, sometimes you have a boy with sapphire skin who kills anyone who hears his voice, and sometimes that egg hatches and you have two dragons sharing one mind. [...] [The visits] went really well. Really, really well. I was prepared for my visit to some of them to be me checking in, peering in from a hiding spot, and I didn’t have to. They recognized me and they were hungry. So I helped my dragon brothers with grooming and dealt with some colonies of mites that were settling in their scales, took three trips. You could have filled a swimming pool with these little bugs the size of pencil erasers, practically. - Excerpt from Shaking Hands 9.z
- ↑
- excerpt from Cutting Class 6.6 - ↑ Shaking Hands 9.z
- ↑ Tashlit faced the woman with black hair and ivory skin, both of them with hands raised. The woman flinched as Verona pelted her with flaming spell cards. Tashlit rushed in, grabbing the woman by the wrists.- Excerpt from Summer Break 13.13
- ↑ the trenchcoat Other had left Tashlit lying on the ground and now went after Matthew.- Excerpt from Summer Break 13.13
- ↑ I can’t think of a place that’s mine yet… but if you wanted to be my familiar, after a bit of consideration, I’d be down.”- Excerpt from Fall Out 14.3
- ↑ - Playing the Part 15.1
- ↑
[...]
Years, time, in a few years…
[...]
Tashlit nodded, but Tashlit still wanted to explain. She had other reasons, something about home, about being a traveler… being a familiar might mean being stuck and unable to travel. Which wasn’t exactly true. - Excerpt from Left in the Dust 16.5