Poem: "Telltails"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This is today's freebie, inspired by a prompt from rhodielady_47. It also fills the "balance" square in my 10-1-17 card for the Fall Festival bingo.


"Telltails"


It's there in the instincts,
pouncing on a sudden motion
or else shying away from it.

It's there in the desires,
a yearning for sushi
or bloody-rare steak
or even wheatgrass.

It's there in the body language,
turning ears telegraphed into
a certain tilt of the head,
or tail wagging butt.

It's there in the thought patterns,
in the dynamics set to herd or pack
or solitary instead of troop.

It's there. It's there.

It's true, even if nobody else
can see it for what it is: Otherkin.

It's there in the telltails, and
it's true, even if it isn't real,
as inescapable as skin.

It takes time to find the balance
between Human and Other, and
it's not always easy, but then again,

balance is what tails are for.

* * *

Notes:

Otherkin are people who identify with a species other than Homo sapiens.  The differences can be subtle or downright dramatic.  Some Otherkin get along fine in human society, but others pass for human only because most humans think everything that looks human must be  human.  Here are some clues that someone might be Otherkin.  In my experience, the best way to handle this is to try it out.  Does treating yourself or your friend as a wolf/dragon/sidhe etc. make life easier?  If so, continue and look for more such accommodations.  If not, look for some other model that works better.

Tails are common throughout much of the animal kingdom.  They serve many purposes, including balance.

Comments

[redsixwing]

<3333 tailytailytaleoftails

...hokay. Lemme see if I can words a bit more. I LOVE THIS. It's great to see a positive piece of 'kin focused art, and one with nothing in it about "but a REAL-" anything.

Thank you!

You're Welcome

[ysabetwordsmith]

I'm just writing what I've observed, and what I've lived.

I'm a devout empiricist. When you're living in a body with a large kitchen junk drawer, it's silly to argue about the "isness" of DNA; and when you're living in a universe made of little whizzing bits of energy pretending really hard to be solid, arguing about the "reality" of anything is even sillier. I know most people don't mix quantum physics with psychology, but I'm just looking for models that make life easier to navigate. I care fuckall whether other people "believe" them or not. I only care how well they work.

So then you get things like this.

[gingicat]

Girlochka is most definitely the cat who yearns for petting so badly that she claws people. Knowing that helps a lot

[technoshaman]

I find that taking weirdness at face value seems to work far better - *faster* - than trying to science the hell out of it. Besides. Science? Magick? The difference is in the advancement... and if it's PFM that means you ain't ready to science that hard. Maybe not this lifetime.

I don't know how to blow a hole in a thunderstorm. That takes a *shit-ton* of energy, by the science we have today. But I have seen the gorram radar traces. Three times at least. Separated by *years*. Believing yonder gorgeous woman is faerie? Pales in comparison.

The Universe is not only weirder than we imagine, it is weirder than we *can* imagine. Thanks Be to "{{ deity }}"....

(in my work, "{{ variable }}" means "If this is a singular, do it once. If it's a many, do it as many as there are. It's a useful construct. :) )

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I find that taking weirdness at face value seems to work far better - *faster* - than trying to science the hell out of it. <<

Often true.

>> Besides. Science? Magick? The difference is in the advancement... and if it's PFM that means you ain't ready to science that hard. Maybe not this lifetime. <<

*laugh* To me it's all one torc. They face each other across the gap. Or a mala, if I can ever find an amplituhedron to put in the middle.

>> I don't know how to blow a hole in a thunderstorm. That takes a *shit-ton* of energy, by the science we have today. But I have seen the gorram radar traces. Three times at least. Separated by *years*. Believing yonder gorgeous woman is faerie? Pales in comparison. <<

:) I'm not as adept as I used to be, now that the climate has gone barking, but I can work around that to some extent by going through the ground spirits to talk to the sky spirits who are pissed enough to keep whacking at the two-legs. At least it buffers the damage somewhat.

>> The Universe is not only weirder than we imagine, it is weirder than we *can* imagine. Thanks Be to "{{ deity }}".... <<

Occasionally I run into things I would not have imagined, but it is very rare. I think I'm a part of the Universe that does the imagining. I mean, something has to.

>> (in my work, "{{ variable }}" means "If this is a singular, do it once. If it's a many, do it as many as there are. It's a useful construct. :) <<

That is brilliant. I'll try to remember it.

Re: Thoughts

[technoshaman]

The "{{ variable }}" construct comes from a tool called - get this - Ansible. Which in this 'verse isn't a distance shrinker, it's a force multiplier. You want to do similar things to 200 different machines? Easy.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Wasn't the original ansible a point-to-point broadcasting device, though? You could send a signal from one to many. Though I've seen paired versions too, much less useful.

Re: Thoughts

[technoshaman]

I don't remember the one-to-many aspect, but then I'm not that familiar with it, especially the *original* version... still. Backreferencing to a SFnal device... :D

Re: Thoughts

[mdlbear]

Ansible - Wikipedia

In the original version any ansible can talk to any other, but only one other at a time.

ETA: ... which is pretty much the way ansible uses ssh.

[chanter1944]

Not Otherkin myself, but some of this - and you can likely guess which bits - resonated with me just the same. I'm told I have a few certain horselike quirks, though I've never been inclined to ID as such.

<3 this poem, in other words.