Original The Verdant Ones

[love]

The Verdant Ones

Ren occupies a coyote's body, but he's never felt like one.

Spoiler: Content Warnings

Death, brief mention of blood and injury and implied suicide

A young Coyote winced at the crunch of bone between his teeth, but at least the squirrel died quickly. Buckbrush and manzanita snagged on his fur as he retraced his steps through the sparse chaparral, trying not to inhale the scent of blood. His prey was still warm when he reached the small cavern he called home. He paused for a beat, savoring the sunlight on his back, then stepped into the darkness.

“Hey, Ren,” his father greeted. The softness of his voice made it sound like an apology.

“Hey, Pops,” Ren said, voice muffled by his prey. He dropped it between his father’s paws.

“Actually, Ren, I think you should eat it. I know it’s not your favorite, but you’ve been looking skinny as of late.”

“But you’re sick…”

He shook his head, chuckling. “I’m always sick, aren’t I? You get to be my age, that’s just how it is.”

Ren’s throat rumbled. He withheld the other reason he didn’t want to eat prey—because it made him feel savage.

But, then, so did his hunger.

The crunch of the squirrel’s bones nauseated Ren, but he tried not to let it show. Once finished, he plopped down beside his father. Sickness had tinged his scent with decay, but Ren did his best to ignore it. With his eyes closed, familiar phantom sensations arose: scaly furlessness and something cool and waxy swathed around his neck. As long as he didn’t look, he could pretend these sensations were real.

“You still don’t feel like a Coyote, do you?”

At the question, Ren raised his head, ears flicking nervously. His eyes darted away but found nothing to distract—just the cavern’s jagged walls and the sun-bleached hill beyond. The dry grass looked like it might crumble to dust.

Ren’s father’s voice softened to little more than a whisper. “Relax. I’m not trying to give you a hard time. I’ve been thinking, if you still feel that way after all this time, then it’s probably just who you are. Really, I wish I’d accepted it sooner.”

Ren leaned against him, sighing. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. You know, if the stories are true, the Verdians don’t stray far from home. There should be a colony around Lily Valley, close to where you saw that individual. If you want to look for it, you have my blessing.”

“Well…” Ren scratched the ground. “I do want to, but I can’t just abandon you.”

His father threw his head back; his laughter reverberated spectrally across the cave and made Ren shiver. This didn’t seem, to Ren, like something one should laugh about.

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Ren saw the irony the next day, when he found his father’s broken body speared by the shadow of the cliff above, blood seeping from his head like tears, fragments of juniper and manzanita hanging from his mangled arm. He must have tumbled on the way down. Ren tried not to visualize it and did anyway.

Later, with the clarity of hindsight and a half hour spent crying, Ren had to admit that this outcome made a brutal sort of sense. Staring at his father’s body, he saw bald spots, sunken eyes, and protruding ribs. If he hadn’t killed himself, his illness might have, which would have been more painful for both of them.

As Ren calmed, the phantom sensations arose once more. Sunlight always intensified them, made him long to shed his fur.

And there was nothing stopping him now, he remembered. Just a few weeks of walking.

He licked his father’s head one last time and set off.

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After days of cresting sun-scorched peaks, Lily Valley felt like a lush dream. Lupins plumed between scarlet-berried wax myrtles; grapevines twined up the trunks of scattered strawberry trees, their fruits’ fragrance blending with the sagebrush underfoot; milkweed and mariposa lily fed kaleidoscopes of butterflies. The foliage swayed synchronously in the breeze, as though it were a single mass.

Something green and coyote-shaped emerged from the brush not a meter away from Ren. He started and turned to face it—then realized that “it” was a “she,” a creature that reified five years of fantasy. An ancient verse shot to the front of his mind:

The sun unfurls on waxen scales and kindles honeyed eyes
and dewdrops cling and sparrows sing upon a mane of vines
her clawless feet tread heedfully ’round sprouting lily leaf
and jade lips part to offer him an everlasting peace

“Is everything alright?” The concern on her face was apparent even without eyebrows.

Ren’s heart hammered in his chest, and his breath whistled through his nose. “S-sorry, it’s fine, I just…” He faltered. “…You must be the queen of this colony, right?”

Her expression did not change, but she answered. “Yes. Did you come here to join? Or are you just passing through?”

“The former. I think. But first, I need water and sleep.”

The queen nodded. “There’s a good place nearby. I’ll show you.”

Ren followed her. Bent grass tickled his belly, and moths danced around his legs. At the northern edge of the valley, a rivulet tumbled down the rocks and into a narrow channel, passing beneath a broad olive tree. A hummingbird’s head gleamed grapefruit hues as it sampled clusters of scarlet paintbrush. The scent of mountain mint cooled the air.

“There you are,” the queen said. “Water, shade, and quiet. What do you think?”

“Perfect.” Ren drank from the rivulet until his stomach hurt, then plopped down beside the trunk of the olive tree. The soft earth cooled his fur. He almost didn’t notice that the queen was still there; her scales camouflaged her against the shrubbery.

“Do you need anything else?” she asked. “Do you want me to lie beside you?”

“Uh, lie beside me?”

“For company. It must have been a long trip getting here. And you came alone.”

Ren’s pulse quickened again as he blinked back tears. He nodded wordlessly.

The queen’s flank felt cool against his. If she noticed his nervousness, she gave no indication. Gradually, the gentle breeze, and the buzzing bees, and the steady rhythm of her breathing lulled him to sleep.

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Golden clouds flecked the morning sky. Ren blinked the sleep from his eyes and glanced beside himself. He found a Verdian lying there—but its subdued, grassy scent differed from the queen’s. They met eyes, and then she licked his cheek.

“Um, good morning…”

The drone swiveled her head slowly, brown eyes wide, beholding the valley as though for the first time. Then she casually lay her head atop her paws. Ren waited for a few breaths, but she didn’t move.

Cautiously, he rested his head on hers. She sighed deeply, and her tail swished through the grass. Ren kept expecting her to object, to revert to some sort of feral state and snap at him… but gradually, as the sky lightened, and the gnatcatchers mewled in the trees, and the sweet scent of bricklebush floated down the breeze, he relaxed. His chest warmed along with the morning air.

“I see you’ve made a friend.”

Ren glanced up. The queen emerged from the grass with a dead rabbit wrapped up in one of her vines. When she dropped it in front of Ren, the scent made him wrinkle his nose. The drone looked at it with mild curiosity.

“I caught this for you while you were asleep. You look awfully hungry.” She glanced at his protruding ribs.

“Thank you,” he said, and bit into the rabbit. Hunger made it easier to ignore the queasiness from eating an animal, but the act still felt embarrassing. Especially in front of the queen.

“So, did you want to resume our conversation from yesterday?” she asked once he was done.

Ren lifted his head. “Are your lives as easy as the stories say?”

Without hesitating, she said, “Yes. We drink from the stream; we feed on the sun; we shelter beneath the rocks. We want for nothing. Does that reassure you?”

“Yeah. Mostly.”

“Then what else has you worried?”

Surely it’s obvious, Ren thought. He glanced at the drone beside him, who had been following the conversation with her eyes but showed no sign of comprehension. “Losing my intelligence.”

“Why does that bother you?”

Ren recalled his father’s words. You won’t be Ren anymore. You’ll lose your laughter, your love.

But he already didn’t feel like himself, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed, and he’d already lost the last Coyote he cared about. He supposed he could seek out another pack, one that would tolerate his eccentricities. He could keep pretending meat didn’t sicken him. He could ignore the sunny warmth in his heart when he thought of growing scales. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

The queen spoke up, interrupting his reverie. “If you need to think about it, that’s okay. There’s enough fruit and prey here to last a while.”

“Thank you.” Ren stood. “I think I’ll forage now. That rabbit really whet my appetite.” Really, he just hoped some fruit would flush its taste from his mouth.

The queen nodded and turned away. “If you need me, just call.”

Ren stepped forward, then turned back. Before he left the shade of the olive tree, he gave the drone a quick lick on the top of her head. She responded with a nuzzle and a wag of her tail. Her breath smelled sugary, like cream bush.

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Ren spent the next two days observing the other drones—and found there wasn’t much to observe. They spent most of their time lying in the sun, often beside one another. They played occasionally, but if they got up, it was usually to drink or to cuddle with the queen.

As an experiment, Ren approached one of the drones and rolled onto his back, mouth open, tail wagging.

The drone hesitated for a moment, then opened her mouth and tentatively reached for Ren’s neck. Ren withdrew at the last moment and sprang to his feet, head still low, then nipped at the drone’s legs—she reared up and pounced. For a while, the two dove and twisted. The drone’s strength surprised Ren—she won the bulk of the exchanges—but her gentleness surprised him more: her bites were painless, and she let him spring back up as fast as she pinned him down. She didn’t snarl once, either, and hardly bared her fangs at all.

Once Ren had tired, he shook the pollen from his fur and headed to the eastern side of the valley. Beyond a copse of white alders, a stream plunged from a v-shaped notch into a glistening pool. Dragonflies ferried sunlight across the water. As Ren drank, he noticed a small rock shelter tucked away behind the waterfall. Thinking it would be a good place to cool off, he crept around the bank and entered. Moss and lichen coated the walls inside, and scarlet flowers blanketed the ground, slender petals overlapping like a network of veins.

“I never actually showed you the Verden flowers, did I?”

Ren jumped slightly at the queen’s voice. He peered to his right and made out her figure sitting by the wall, gazing down. Her face looked wistful—was it just the because of the shadows?

“This region is so dry, they’ll only grow in little nooks like this,” she continued. “Where I was born, you could find fields full of them. There were many of us.”

“…Why did you leave?”

“To spread hope. Because others deserve the chance that we’ve had.”

Ren let the splashing of the water fill the momentary silence. “Becoming a Verdian… what’s it like?”

“If you mean the transformation itself… It is uncomfortable. When it happened to me, I felt sicker than I ever had. And I was in pain for most of it.”

Ren swallowed, his throat tightening. “How long did it last?”

“Almost two days.”

Ren let out a shaky breath. “Okay. That’s not so bad. Two days isn’t so long.”

“I agree.” Her gaze solidified as she lifted her head. “It’s nothing compared to a whole life as a Coyote. If it’s what you want, then I know you can get through it.”

Ren’s eyes moistened; he looked away to hide it. The spray beside him cast rainbows across the valley. A pair of drones walked side by side beside the plunge pool, gaits relaxed, almost slack.

“It is what I want,” Ren whispered.

“Then follow me.” The queen’s wet scales brushed against his flank as she stepped past him.

Ren wondered, as they left the shelter, why her pace was so agonizingly slow—until he realized it wasn’t, and he was just nervous. He forced himself to slow down and take deep breaths.

The queen led Ren into the shade of an alder. She gestured for him to lie beside her. Sagebrush cushioned his belly.

“The flowers you saw obviously haven’t fruited yet. For convenience, I’ve taken to storing seeds inside me.” She unfurled one of the vines around her neck and lifted it to Ren’s face. Something thin and black poked out from the tip, like a bee stinger. “You could ingest them, but injection makes for an easier transformation and doesn’t require as many. Is that alright with you?”

Ren nodded shallowly, not trusting himself to speak.

The queen crossed her neck over his. “First I want you to calm down. There’s no rush.”

The queen’s warmth soothed Ren as he silently cried. She smelled of lilac and sage, sweet and clean. Towhees chirped carefree song in the branches above; crickets thrummed sleepily in the brush nearby. Gradually, Ren relaxed. “I’m ready,” he breathed.

“Okay. Give me a moment to find the vein. You’ll feel a little sting—just stay relaxed.” She wrapped one vine around his arm, just below his elbow, and squeezed. With a second vine, she palpated the inside of his forearm. When the sting came, his breath caught, but he didn’t flinch.

His arm ached dully for a moment, and then the queen withdrew her vine. Ren looked at her expectantly.

“All done.” She smiled gently. “You’ll feel the effects within an hour. Feel free to stretch or walk around, but you should stay close to the pool. If you get hot, I can splash water on you. Make sure to drink a lot. If you need anything at all, just ask.”

Ren sighed, letting his head fall. “Thank you.”

She nuzzled the side of his head. “I’d like to thank you too, for trusting me. I promise I’ll keep you safe and happy, just like all the others.”

Ren relaxed into her touch and let himself believe her.

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An itching pain had subsumed Ren’s body. By the evening, it had so exhausted him that he could barely even wince, let alone scratch. He lay on his side, panting, surrounded by clumps of fur. Small jade ridges had emerged all along his body. The queen gently ran her claws along his back, dislodging flakes of dead skin, and licked the blood away from the places that bled.

Ren spent the night in a twilight state, drifting in and out of sleep. Drones made frequent visits, helping groom and keep him warm, and the queen never left his side. By dawn he was lucid again, and his scales almost completely covered his skin.

“You’re beautiful,” the queen said, eyes wet, head pulled back to admire him.

Ren’s attention drifted as he tried to respond. The valley seemed different, as though there were twice as many leaves on the trees. And he couldn’t remember if the birdsong had been so intricate before, or if the wind had so densely ruffled the water.

He must have been losing his ability to think, but it didn’t feel that way. It just felt like thinking wasn’t important anymore.

Before the queen could comment on Ren’s silence, the sun breached the side of the valley—and Ren gasped. The light tingled sweetly on his scales. His head slackened as a frisson passed through him, sore shoulders relaxing…

“It feels good, right?”

The queen’s voice, though soft, still retrieved Ren’s attention. He beheld her face; her honeyed eyes magnified the sunlight, and her smile shone. He closed his eyes as he approached, touched his nose to hers, and let that touch linger.

 

[Pen]

Hi love, here for Catnip. I see that instead of a leafeon protagonist, this time we've got a coyote that wants to be a leafeon. Well, a green-scaled drone leafeon. I see familiar themes from your other stories of discomfort with a carnivorous body, a desire for oblivion, and a dream of dominant nature. I continue to enjoy your descriptive work. The contrast between the stark world of Ren's home and the lush valley is very strong in the prose, and your nature descriptions are a treat to read.

I don't have much to say about Ren as a character. His main problem in life is the almost dysphoria he experiences as a coyote--his solution is becoming a Verdant drone. It's interesting that there's no real conflict to the decision. Ren's father politely offs himself, removing Ren's only reason not to give up his mind. The counter-arguments presented against becoming a Verdant felt very half-hearted--they clearly have no weight for Ren, particularly since he's alone in the world and the Verdants promise a complete and unthinking acceptance of him.

"Are your lives as easy as the stories say?"

Without hesitating, she said, "Yes.

And that seems to be the final answer. Despite the potential sinister vibe of the Queen's stinger injection and the drug-addict vibe of the drones, with their sweet breath, I didn't get the sense that the narrative wanted me to view the ending in that light. I do think that lack of conflict left the story with a bit less impact for me. Ren is a character who wants something and gets what he wants, without any real internal doubt, struggle, or consequence. His lack of an established identity beyond caring about his father and wanting to be a Verdant means that there doesn't appear to be as much at stake narratively in his losing his identity.

I enjoyed the scenes where Ren transform, particularly in how his senses become magnified. It captures something that feels, mmm, not supernatural, but extra-natural. How things we take for granted in nature, if the intensity is dialed up, can be viewed as still themselves, and yet awe-evoking and foreign.

Spoiler: Line-by-lines

A young Coyote winced at the crunch of bone between his teeth, but at least the squirrel died quickly.

I wasn't sure why Coyote was capitalized throughout this whole fic.

It may be personal preference, but it felt odd to me to start with "A coyote" rather than "The coyote" when Ren is both the narrator and story focus. "The" seems to put us inside his head more.

He retraced his steps through sparse chaparral, buckbrush and manzanita snagging on his fur, until he reached the small cavern he called home.

If this was anonymous, right here is where I'd know it's a love fic from the specific naming of the plants. I do think the commas phrase here is a bit confusing. The sentence reads initially like chaparral, buckbrush and manzanita are the sparse things he's retracing his steps through, so realizing the the buckbrush and manzanita are actually a separate clause that's snagging his fur made me stop and reread. You could shift that phrase to the start of the sentence to split it up, perhaps.

Remorse tugged at his heart as he abandoned the reassuring sunlight for darkness.

Remorse and abandoned both in the same sentence felt a little melodramatic to me for someone entering a cave.

He shook his head, smiling. "I'm always sick, aren't I? You get to be my age, that's just how it is."

Ren creased his brow.

I suppose coyotes can do something like smile, but the body language in this exchange felt very human.

He withheld the other reason he didn't want to eat prey—because it made him feel savage.

But, then, so did his hunger.

This reads very smoothly.

The crunch of the squirrel's bones nauseated Ren, but he tried not to let it show.

You mentioned the crunche arlier. Is that the only part that naueseated him? What about the taste? The blood? Is it cold now or does it retain some of the warmth of life?

His eyes darted away but found nothing to distract—just the cavern's jagged walls and the sun-bleached hill beyond. The dry grass looked like it might crumble to dust.

Lovely stark description. His feeling that the outer world is lifeless and crumbling is a nice externalization of what he's feeling about his father.

Ren's father's voice softened.

A particular point was made at the start of the conversation that his father's voice was soft. Has it gone even softer here?

There should be a colony around Lily Valley, close to where you saw that lone individual.

"lone individual" is quite clunky.

His father threw his head back; his laughter reverberated spectrally across the cave and made Ren shiver. This didn't seem, to Ren, like something one should laugh about.

The aggressive comma placement in that second sentence really worked for me. It made Ren's indignation and lack of understanding come through.

Ren tried not to visualize it and did anyway.

Really nice.

After days of cresting sun-scorched peaks, Lily Valley felt like a lush dream. Lupins plumed between scarlet-berried wax myrtles; grapevines twined up the trunks of scattered strawberry trees, their fruits' fragrance blending with the sagebrush underfoot; milkweed and mariposa lily fed kaleidoscopes of butterflies.

Ah, you always do this so well. I can almost close my eyes and smell it.

Among sparse clouds, pockets of shadow hid from the morning sun.

I didn't quite follow the image here. The shadows are in the clouds?

The queen emerged from the grass with a dead rabbit wrapped up in one of her vines.

This image felt striking, since Ren associates the Verdants with not hunting.

Her breath smelled sugary, like cream bush.

Mmmm. I get vibes of sweet-smelling things that may or may not be harmful.

The drone hesitated for a moment, then opened her mouth and tentatively reached for Ren's neck.

All the drones we've seen have been female, is there any reason for that? The Queen suggests a beehive set-up, but there drones are male.

Beyond a copse of white alders, a stream plunged from a v-shaped notch into a glistening pool. Dragonflies ferried sunlight across the water.

The idea of dragonflies ferrying sunlight is a delightful one!

Ren's attention drifted as he tried to respond. The valley seemed different, as though there were twice as many leaves on the trees. And he couldn't remember if the towhees' and thrashers' songs had been so intricate before, or if the wind had so densely ruffled the water.

The impact of the transformation comes through really well here.

beholding the valley

The drone beheld it

He beheld her face

There's quite a lot of beholding going on in a sub 3k fic. Behold isn't just a synonym for look at, and appearing so many times it stands out. I think the last usage makes sense; the second seemed particularly gratuitous.

 

[love]

Response for @Pen

Thanks for your review. It's nice to have a fresh perspective on this story and some helpful pointers on the prose.

I have lately been wanting to write stories with less tension, in which characters kind of just have what they want or get it easily. But maybe there's a more fulfilling way I could have done it. I think Resting Place sort of achieved this by giving the mc things to leave behind (i.e. things at stake, as you mentioned) but also by giving her more relatable struggles. I think making Ren more relatable might have made the reader reflect more on how they personally would feel about becoming a verdian, which would be interesting. At the same time, I kind of like his weirdness and how deeply rooted his dissatisfaction is. I guess developing him more would be one way to strengthen the story, but I never felt compelled to, partly because I personally felt content with him and partly because I didn't want to write more suffering. Maybe I should request feedback on whether others were able to empathize with Ren and see how much the answers confirm my suspicions.

Spoiler: sentence stuff

I wasn't sure why Coyote was capitalized throughout this whole fic.

Initially, neither coyote nor verdian was capitalized, but it was suggested that I change it. In a vacuum, it seems natural to capitalize verdian and not to capitalize coyote, but having them capitalized differently in the same story seems strange to me. It kind of implies that verdians are superior or in a different category, doesn't it? But maybe they are, in Ren's mind.

It may be personal preference, but it felt odd to me to start with "A coyote" rather than "The coyote" when Ren is both the narrator and story focus. "The" seems to put us inside his head more.

Saying "the coyote" makes me feel like I'm supposed to have prior knowledge of him. "'The coyote winced at'—what do you mean, you don't know him? He's *the* Coyote!"

You mentioned the crunche arlier. Is that the only part that naueseated him? What about the taste? The blood? Is it cold now or does it retain some of the warmth of life?

Well gee these are some pretty interesting ideas

I didn't quite follow the image here. The shadows are in the clouds?

That is what it is supposed to mean. This sentence is so troublesome...

All the drones we've seen have been female, is there any reason for that? The Queen suggests a beehive set-up, but there drones are male.

I somewhat arbitrarily decided that, for the purpose of narration, coyotes would retain their original pronouns after transforming. I then arbitrarily chose female for the ones we see. I never really considered how this clashes with the apian terminology.

I pretty much just agreed with everything else. I will try to implement some fixes in the very near future.

 

[K_S]

Here's a reaction review...
part for the blitz and part to unjam the review tag post again...

EDIT: Yeah blitz starts tomorrow so nevermind on getting points on that...

(word count 476)

I was initially wondering why you capitalized "Coyote" at the beginning. Since the character doesn't have this word as his name.. and for example, Human isn't capitalized when one describes people. I think this was a one-off error so I suspect auto-correct reared its cheery head... Anyway moving one...

You know Ren makes a fairly bad coyote if he's harboring a guilt complex for going out to eat. I'm getting whiffs of species dysphoria right out of the gate here... If not a bad reincarnation jumble...

Whatever this is, whatever Ren is... he's not going to do well if that holds up long-term... Though he might be able to live off of vegetables/fruit for a bit, coyotes aren't wholly carnivorous after all.

Though it's interesting how the pack/familial dynamics are playing out here. From what I remember coyotes are rather matriarchal, so two males much less a father/son team is a bit out of character but this is a fantasy setting so certain breaks from reality make sense...

Wince...

Well, that's one way to nudge the plot forward. Though "tumble" seems less likely and jump more probable. something Ren confirms later on...

I've something of a word choice suggestion, as Ren's a coyote at the moment I'd recommend dropping the half-hour tidbit. It's not like he has a clock, cell phone, or whatever to know how long he actually cried. And while it's possible to gauge time via how shadows move, sun position, etcetera from what we know of his life and the naturalistic slant of the setting I'm not thinking he's got that clock ticking away somewhere that he can gauge time with or that he can compare natural events to time and compute it as minutes. I know it's small, but it was a bit jarring. substituting with "the shadows had shifted" or the sun was lower than when he'd started... might be good substitutions.

His subtle testing of the queen, drones, and whatnot was interesting and I'm surprised he didn't push harder or longer though considering the end result is a whole species shift... granted there's a sense of quiet desperation and basic disgust with his own species/sense of self... shown well when Ren's weighing the risk of loss of intelligence and how he seems to shrug it off as irrelevant.

It's curious how a few twitches to tone, or even perspective, and this whole story could have been classed as a horror one-shot. Queen/drone system could have been considered a false seduction/lure, with manipulating dreams and whatnot to lure the outcaste and swell her ranks, etc. Anyways it's interesting to see how it isn't/wasnt used in that way.

Did you have any intents on continuing/further plans to expand on this world you're working on here?
Regardless thanks for sharing what you've done so far.

KS

 

[love]

A response to @K_S

Wowee thanks for your review. I have no plans to write sequels or prequels to this story. I think "seems like a horror concept but is unexpectedly positive" describes quite a few of the concepts I've come up with. Sometimes things actually work out okay. Sometimes the stranger giving out candy really is just giving out candy.

(The half hour will stay as it is for now on the basis that it's never bothered me in similar fics.)

 

[bluesidra]

Hello love,

heh. The grass is in fact greener on the other side, ain't it? This is a curious story you have here, about a coyote who never felt like on and, at the end, turns into a plant-like being.

I've seen Pen and K_S address the cult- and drug-like vibe of the Queen and her 'drones' already, so I don't need to go into too much detail. It does in fact give me some "I destroy my integrity willingly by taking in a dangerous substance that alters my body and my mind, while living in a highly hierarchical group with one central power figure" kinda vibes, but hey. As long as he's doing so on his own free will and not hurting anyone along the way, I'm cool with it. There's an issue that he can't consent in the state of mind he finds himself in, but eh. Not going too much down this rabbit hole. Real life cults are way too scary and dark to think about at such an early hour.

At first I thought this was an allegory on being trans, especially how Ren experienced bouts of dysphoria and the way he thought about himself. But the father into the valley we got, the more I realised that this is less about rejecting the body he was born in and more about rejecting the society he was born in.

Big kudos on the dad. He was so understanding and kind. Also, I like how there seems to be that mythos of the Verdant Ones among coyotes, which ups a level as a civilisation as a whole. Though, the dad possibly committing suicide should have gone into the content warnings.

I could understand Ren's reasoning well enough most of the time. He did come across as sound of mind and able to make this life-altering decision. Though, only his fear of loosing his intelligence was kinda handwaved. That was the only one I felt kinda sus about.

There are a few instances where Ren scratches his paw with his other paw, which took me out of it for a brief second. That is not something canines do. It's rather a self-soothing gesture of humans. When canines don't know what to do with themselves, they usually yawn or gulp or lick their chaps. Everything else felt perfectly canine.

And again, big big big kudos on your environmental descriptions. This had some "Earth at Peace" level of painting with words, but with the added benefit of a story to go by. I love how many different kinds of plants you know. I don't know half of them, but just mentioning them makes the scene in my head a tad bit more colorful.

So thanks for this lovely read! There remains only one thing left to say:

Reject coyote, return to plant.

 

[kintsugi]

reject humanity become plont

(I think if you were feeling particularly liberal in your tagging you might want to change the "death" to "suicide" since that is, at least, how Ren sees it)

Structurally this is an interesting story--the conflict is that Ren wants to live a life free of conflict. The character arc is that Ren doesn't want to keep having a character arc. It's kind of like the storytelling definition of a paradox, in that Ren's goal is basically to never have goals again. In that sense I think it's less of a story and more of a character study, and I would almost argue that it's a character study of the queen/Verdians rather than Ren, since they're the ones who change (at least to us/our perceptions) throughout the course of the story.

And there's a couple ways to go about this--a different, though not necessarily better, way to approach this would be to make the earlier parts of the conflict more visceral and gut-wrenching to Ren; he really doesn't want to leave his father and his father doesn't mosey out of the plot/isn't on the cusp of dying anything; there are things attaching him to the coyote lifestyle that he's hesitant to leave behind, or something. I think structurally to me I hiccuped a little because it appears to be building towards Ren's choice to become a verdant one, but it's not really a choice so much as the only option that makes sense to him.

(but as I type that out I find myself returning to the first paragraph--if the goal of the story is to have no conflict, then there not being conflict kind of self-fulfills. I'm not entirely sure. I don't think the story fails to work on its own or anything; I did just find the shape of it kind of uncommon in a way that I couldn't quite peg as intentional/for a specific purpose)

Re: your author's note: I think sympathizing with Ren is really easy; PMD is a really good lens for poking at dysphoria, and while this isn't strictly "i'm a human who would rather be a lizard", it's pretty much just one step down the line, and you do a good job of characterizing the visceral discomfort of (how I imagine) it feels to be in a body that isn't your own, how even a loving parent or a normal day can still make you feel ashamed.

Ren recalled his father's words. You won't be Ren anymore. You'll lose your laughter, your love.

But he already didn't feel like himself, and he couldn't remember the last time he had laughed, and he'd already lost the last Coyote he cared about.

All this to say it's not an ineffective story--it's just that for me the much more interesting character/elements of it was the change in how I viewed the verdant ones. Which I think ties back into the original sense--Ren's always wanted this without regrets, so it's less of an arc for him and more of us just understanding the deeper meaning of his desires. The line above was where I think it sunk in for me; I've played with a few stories that utilize hive minds as a metaphor for depression subsuming/assimilating your thoughts, and I think as a concept this is a really good way to drive the point home. I entered the fic being wary of the hive mind concept in general for much the same reasons Ren's father does--and I leave it with the same wariness, but I do think couching it in these terms helps me understand the appeal of it in a visceral way, and why this for me felt like the more major character arc of the story; I'm able to see why some people, especially Ren, find this to be the preferred alternative, even if I find myself disagreeing with Ren's conclusion.

As always the environmental descriptions really slap. I think perhaps they'd be a little more effective if saved/weighted towards the end, to emphasize the change in Ren's outlook (or perhaps the point is that now he no longer feels the need to categorize/classify plont now that he is simply able to revel in the joy of being plont).

some very minor line edits:

Spoiler: some very minor line edits

A young Coyote winced at the crunch of bone between his teeth, but at least the squirrel died quickly.

I wasn't quite sure why we do capital C Coyote here?

She swiveled her head slowly, brown eyes wide, beholding the valley as though for the first time. Then she casually lay her head atop her paws. Ren waited for a few breaths, but she didn't move.

I had trouble picturing this exchange and had to reread a few times--I think the idea is that she's sitting down the entire time, although I initially thought she'd be doing something, walking, etc (and it totally tracks that she wouldn't, since she's a drone, but reading through the first time that wasn't entirely known to me).

 

[love]

Responses for @bluesidra and @kintsugi

Spoiler: bluesidra

Wow, thanks for your review. Will examine the body language.

Though, only his fear of loosing his intelligence was kinda handwaved. That was the only one I felt kinda sus about.

A lot of people are resistant to this idea, and I think it's an interesting discussion point.

The Verdians might resemble a cult, but the queen notably lacks any sinister or selfish ulterior motives. I'm not sure what you could compare them to in real life.

I love how many different kinds of plants you know. I don't know half of them, but just mentioning them makes the scene in my head a tad bit more colorful.

I didn't know what half of the plants were before I started writing this story. Part of the appeal of having a chaparral setting was that it gave me a reason to learn about new plants and animals. The description in this story is a result of several days of research and notetaking. Don't tell anyone, though.

Spoiler: kintsugi

I kind of said this to Pen, but I've been thinking about how to write stories that don't center conflict/tension. About how to convey peace. Because a lot of ideas on story structure revolve around conflict, a story about a perfectly peaceful species seems bound to be unorthodox. I want to be careful about using that as an excuse for ineffective writing, but I tentatively feel like I did an alright job with this story. I am glad that you felt able to understand Ren and the Verdians. I don't think there's much more I could have asked for.

Saving the environmental description for the end is something I've considered a bit, and I am kind of torn because I see where you are coming from. It could be more impactful, but description that includes a lot of species names or intelligent observations could backfire, since he's not supposed to be thinking/classifying at that level (maybe I shouldn't have even included "towhees and thrashers"). And moving too much description to the end means less scene setting early on, which would feel like a shame. I'm sure you've noticed I tend to really like firmly establishing a setting even before characters start interacting with it. In conclusion: tricky.

I've played with a few stories that utilize hive minds as a metaphor for depression subsuming/assimilating your thoughts

This is very interesting; I love me a good hivemind. Would you tell me more sometime?

 

[K_S]

(I think if you were feeling particularly liberal in your tagging you might want to change the "death" to "suicide" since that is, at least, how Ren sees it

Or honestly, use both? I mean he does roundabout (death of the personality etc) and then there's the scene with the dad and it's alluded to be suicide but we do see the "body" as it were.

Both tags seem fair and both can be heavy triggers.

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya, can’t say that I’ve reviewed too much original fiction before, but you put in a request for this story in particular to be looked at as part of PMDWU’s Review Tag, and given that it’s a bit bite-sized, I figured that I’d oblige.

Though a story about a coyote with bodily dysphoria? Or at least I think that’s what the tagline is alluding to? Not sure where that one is gonna go, so let’s find out:

A young Coyote winced at the crunch of bone between his teeth, but at least the squirrel died quickly. Buckbrush and manzanita snagged on his fur as he retraced his steps through the sparse chaparral, trying not to inhale the scent of blood. His prey was still warm when he reached the small cavern he called home. He paused for a beat, savoring the sunlight on his back, then stepped into the darkness.

"Hey, Ren," his father greeted. The softness of his voice made it sound like an apology.

Oh, so Ren doesn’t enjoy hunting, huh? Since he sure had very little satisfaction at that lunch he just caught.

"Hey, Pops," Ren said, voice muffled by his prey. He dropped it between his father's paws.

"Actually, Ren, I think you should eat it. I know it's not your favorite, but you've been looking skinny as of late."

… Wait, but isn’t squirrel meat sufficiently lean to cause protein poisoning? Or is that more a rabbit thing? ^^;

"But you're sick..."

He shook his head, chuckling. "I'm always sick, aren't I? You get to be my age, that's just how it is."

That’s… not a good omen for pops making it past the end of this story alive, really.

Ren's throat rumbled. He withheld the other reason he didn't want to eat prey—because it made him feel savage.

But, then, so did his hunger.

Yeah, I called it about Ren not enjoying hunting. Like just the first paragraph along gave off that kind of vibe about him.

The crunch of the squirrel's bones nauseated Ren, but he tried not to let it show. Once finished, he plopped down beside his father. Sickness had tinged his scent with decay, but Ren did his best to ignore it. With his eyes closed, familiar phantom sensations arose: scaly furlessness and something cool and waxy swathed around his neck. As long as he didn't look, he could pretend these sensations were real.

… Is Ren a lizard reincarnated into a coyote’s body or something? Since those phantom sensations felt very “lizard”-y there.

"You still don't feel like a Coyote, do you?"

… Wait, pops knows about this? .-.

At the question, Ren raised his head, ears flicking nervously. His eyes darted away but found nothing to distract—just the cavern's jagged walls and the sun-bleached hill beyond. The dry grass looked like it might crumble to dust.

Ren's father's voice softened to little more than a whisper. "Relax. I'm not trying to give you a hard time. I've been thinking, if you still feel that way after all this time, then it's probably just who you are. Really, I wish I'd accepted it sooner."

That… is a worrisome implication for how these two’s dynamics were when Ren was younger, really.

Ren leaned against him, sighing. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it. You know, if the legends are true, the Verdians don't stray far from home. There should be a colony around Lily Valley, close to where you saw that individual. If you want to look for it, you have my blessing."

"Well..." Ren scratched the ground. "I do want to, but I can't just abandon you."

… Wait, the what now? Like I get the feeling that these ‘Verdians’ are going to be important, but I kinda wonder if there ought to have been a bit more about what they are or how they’re seen by Ren and his father indicated here. Like are they parsed as fearsome monsters and Ren tenses up over them? Effectively fairies that aren’t definitively agreed on to exist given that they are figures of legend?

Dunno, maybe I’m overthinking it, but assuming that it doesn’t undercut later moments, grounding the readers into what’s going on with the characters and their world as soon as possible in a shorter work like this feels like something that would be a net positive rather than a negative.

His father threw his head back; his laughter reverberated spectrally across the cave and made Ren shiver. This didn't seem, to Ren, like something one should laugh about.

… Wait, do coyotes actually do this IRL, or is this meant to be evocative of coyote myths where they’re trickster figures?

Ren saw the irony the next day, when he found his father's broken body speared by the shadow of the cliff above, blood seeping from his head like tears, fragments of juniper and manzanita hanging from his mangled arm. He must have tumbled on the way down. Ren tried not to visualize it and did anyway.

… Oh, there’s the implied suicide from the content warnings. Guess Pops decided waiting for illness to claim him was worse than just getting things over with.

Later, with the clarity of hindsight and a half hour spent crying, Ren had to admit that this outcome made a brutal sort of sense. Staring at his father's body, he saw bald spots, sunken eyes, and protruding ribs. If he hadn't killed himself, his illness might have, which would have been more painful for both of them.

I… did not realize that Pops was in that bad of shape. Though I suppose that’s why you withheld that information from the readers in the first scene since we’re finding out this realization as readers alongside Ren.

As Ren calmed, the phantom sensations arose once more. Sunlight always intensified them, made him long to shed his fur.

And there was nothing stopping him now, he remembered. Just a few weeks of walking.

He licked his father's head one last time and set off.

Feeling pretty good about that prediction of Ren turning out to be a reincarnated lizard or something like that. Since he’s definitely giving off a major “bruh, I’m supposed to have scales” energy right now.

After days of cresting sun-scorched peaks, Lily Valley felt like a lush dream. Lupins plumed between scarlet-berried wax myrtles; grapevines twined up the trunks of scattered strawberry trees, their fruits' fragrance blending with the sagebrush underfoot; milkweed and mariposa lily fed kaleidoscopes of butterflies. The foliage swayed synchronously in the breeze, as though it were a single mass.

Ah yes, it wouldn’t be a @love fic without a lovingly described vegetation sequence. Are you a botanist by profession offline or something like that? Since I’m now 3/3 reading stories from you with lovingly described vegetation sequences, and they always have a lot of care and attention to detail put into them.

Something green and coyote-shaped emerged from the brush not a meter away from Ren. He started and turned to face it—then realized that "it" was a "she," a creature that reified five years of fantasy. An ancient verse shot to the front of his mind:

The sun unfurls on waxen scales and kindles honeyed eyes
and dewdrops cling and sparrows sing upon a mane of vines
her clawless feet tread heedfully 'round sprouting lily leaf
and jade lips part to offer him an everlasting peace

So… it’s a flower coyote? Since I’m not fully sure what I’m looking at here, other than “everlasting peace” is making me uneasy there. Since… uh… death technically offers that to people.

"Is everything alright?"

Ren's heart hammered in his chest, and his breath whistled through his nose. "S-sorry, it's fine, I just..." He faltered. "...You must be the queen of this colony, right?"

Oh, so this is a Verdian, huh? Though I kinda wonder if given that this is rendered from a coyote’s perspective if we should’ve seen more of Ren’s scent and auditory perception of this whole thing, since those are pretty important senses for canids in general.

… Though then again, the entire point is Ren doesn’t feel like a coyote even though he’s biologically one. Perhaps that lack of emphasis on those senses was deliberate.

The look of concern didn't leave her face, but she answered. "Yes. Did you come here to join? Or are you just passing through?"

"The former. I think. But first, I need water and sleep."

The queen nodded. "There's a good place nearby. I'll show you."

Wow, so the Queen just lets Ren in on her territory just like that, huh? Well, you can’t say the Verdians are like coyotes even if their rough proportions are alike, since I’m pretty sure that most coyotes would get into a fight over such an intrusion right off the bat.

Ren followed her. Bent grass tickled his belly, and moths danced around his legs. At the northern edge of the valley, a rivulet tumbled down the rocks and into a narrow channel, passing beneath a broad olive tree. A hummingbird's head gleamed grapefruit hues as it sampled clusters of scarlet paintbrush. The scent of mountain mint cooled the air.

"There you are," the queen said. "Water, shade, and quiet. What do you think?"

Ren:

Queen: “Yeah, this place tends to have that effect on visitors.” ^^

"Perfect." Ren drank from the rivulet until his stomach hurt, then plopped down beside the trunk of the olive tree. The soft earth cooled his fur. He almost didn't notice that the queen was still there; her scales camouflaged her against the shrubbery.

Yeah, I figured.

"Do you need anything else?" she asked. "Do you want me to lie with you?"

I’m presuming that the Queen meant that in the sense of “lie down beside you” since if not… boy is she forward there.

"Uh, lie with me?"

"For company. It must have been a long trip getting here. And you came alone."

Ren's pulse quickened again as he blinked back tears. He nodded wordlessly.

… I still can’t tell which meaning of “lie with you” the Queen means there, but I think she means the one that that’s less hot and steamy? If the ambiguity wasn’t deliberate there, you might want to consider “lie beside me” as an alternative.

The queen's flank felt cool against his. If she noticed his nervousness, she gave no indication. Gradually, the gentle breeze, and the buzzing bees, and the steady rhythm of her breathing lulled him to sleep.

Ren: “...” O///O
Queen: “Just relax a bit, traveler. You’ve clearly been through a lot lately.”

Golden clouds flecked the morning sky. Ren blinked the sleep from his eyes and glanced beside himself. He found a Verdian lying there—not the queen, but one of her drones. They met eyes, and then she licked his cheek.

"Um, good morning..."

… So they’re eusocial like bees. Bee plant coyote… things. That’s definitely a trippy concept to wrap one’s head around. Though I’m now curious. Do they draw inspiration off of entities from folklore? Or are they wholecloth creations for this story and its setting?

She swiveled her head slowly, brown eyes wide, beholding the valley as though for the first time. Then she casually lay her head atop her paws. Ren waited for a few breaths, but she didn't move.

… Wait, does the Queen also have those too, or just her drones? Since now that I think about it, there wasn’t a whole lot described of the Queen’s face such as what her eyes looked like.

Cautiously, he rested his head on hers. She sighed deeply, and her tail swished through the grass. Ren kept expecting her to object, to revert to some sort of feral state and snap at him... but gradually, as the sky lightened, and the gnatcatchers mewled in the trees, and the sweet scent of bricklebush floated down the breeze, he relaxed. His chest warmed along with the morning air.

"I see you've made a friend."

Oh, there’s the Queen now. I think.

Ren glanced up. The queen emerged from the grass with a dead rabbit wrapped up in one of her vines. When she dropped it in front of Ren, the scent made him wrinkle his nose. The drone looked at it with mild curiosity.

"I caught this for you while you were asleep. You look awfully hungry." She glanced at his protruding ribs.

Ren: “... Don’t those cause protein poisoning?” ^^;
Queen: “Yes, for humans. You’re a coyote. You’ll be fine.”

"Thank you," he said, and bit into the rabbit. Hunger made it easier to ignore the queasiness from eating live prey, but the act still felt embarrassing. Especially in front of the queen.

Wait, but the rabbit was literally explicitly stated to be dead two paragraphs ago. Isn’t that definitionally not ‘live prey’ there?

"So, did you want to resume our conversation from yesterday?" she asked once he was done.

Ren lifted his head. "Are your lives as easy as the stories say?"

Ren, if you have to ask the question, the answer is most likely going to be ‘no’.

Without hesitating, she said, "Yes. We drink from the stream; we feed on the sun; we shelter beneath the rocks. We want for nothing. Does that reassure you?"

Oh, so they really are flower coyotes. Since they get their nourishment from photosynthesis there.

"Yeah. Mostly."

"Then what else has you worried?"

Surely it's obvious, Ren thought. He glanced at the drone beside him, who had been following the conversation with her eyes but showed no sign of comprehension. "Losing my intelligence."

… Wait, coyotes can turn into Verdians in this setting? Though ‘losing your intelligence’ seems like one hell of a catch there, especially if coyotes take after their folkloric incarnations in this setting where their wisdom and guile is what makes them who they are.

"Why does that bother you?"

Ren: “Because who on earth ever heard of an unintelligent coyote?”

Queen: “Loony Tunes?”
Ren: “... That doesn’t count.”

Ren recalled his father's words. You won't be Ren anymore. You'll lose your laughter, your love.

That… sounds like a good reason to turn around and run away, really. Since there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to go back to being a coyote if you regret this transformation. .-.

But he already didn't feel like himself, and he couldn't remember the last time he had laughed, and he'd already lost the last Coyote he cared about. He supposed he could seek out another pack, one that would tolerate his eccentricities. He could keep pretending meat didn't sicken him. He could ignore the sunny warmth in his heart when he thought of growing scales. He wasn't sure he wanted to.

I guess Ren won’t be long for being a coyote. Guess we’ll find out whether or not he enjoys the other side, or if he winds up developing regrets in short order.

The queen spoke up, interrupting his reverie. "If you need to think about it, that's okay. There's enough fruit and prey here to last a while."

"Thank you." Ren stood. "I think I'll forage now. That rabbit really whet my appetite." Really, he just hoped some fruit would flush its taste from his mouth.

Queen: “... You look more like you’re struggling not to gag right now.”

Ren: “Wh-What, that? Th-That’s just how I look when I’m hungry, really!”

The queen nodded and turned away. "If you need me, just call."

Ren stepped forward, then turned back. Before he left the shade of the olive tree, he gave the drone a quick lick on the top of her head. She responded with a nuzzle and a wag of her tail. Her breath smelled sugary, like cream bush.

Ren: “... Would it be the end of the world if I wasn’t me? I mean, no more feeling sick from the food I need to eat to survive… No more weird mornings waking up feeling like I’m covered in fur that isn’t supposed to be there…”

Ren spent the next two days observing the other drones—and found there wasn't much to observe. They spent most of their time lying in the sun, often beside one another. They played occasionally, but if they got up, it was usually to drink or to cuddle with the queen.

… Why do those drones hang around anyways? Since the fact that this colony has a queen and drones implies that the drones are needed for labor of some sort that the queen cannot provide, but I’m not really sure if we’ve seen them do anything just yet.

As an experiment, Ren approached one of the drones and rolled onto his back, mouth open, tail wagging.

The drone hesitated for a moment, then opened her mouth and tentatively reached for Ren's neck. Ren withdrew at the last moment and sprang to his feet, head still low, then nipped at the drone's legs—she reared up and pounced. For a while, the two dove and twisted. The drone's strength surprised Ren—she won the bulk of the exchanges—but her gentleness surprised him more: her bites were painless, and she let him spring back up as fast as she pinned him down. She didn't snarl once, either, and hardly bared her fangs at all.

I am not convinced at all that Ren would’ve gotten this treatment were he parsed as a genuine threat. Like everything about this just feels a little too perfect, as if it’s a deliberate “sales pitch” of some sort.

Once Ren had tired, he shook the pollen from his fur and headed to the eastern side of the valley. Beyond a copse of white alders, a stream plunged from a v-shaped notch into a glistening pool. Dragonflies ferried sunlight across the water. As Ren drank, he noticed a small rock shelter tucked away behind the waterfall. Thinking it would be a good place to cool off, he crept around the bank and entered. Moss and lichen coated the walls inside, and scarlet flowers blanketed the ground, slender petals overlapping like a network of veins.

"I never actually showed you the Verden flowers, did I?"

Ren: “The what now?” .-.

Ren jumped slightly at the queen's voice. He peered to his right and made out her figure sitting by the wall, gazing down. Her face looked wistful—was it just the because of the shadows?

Narrator: “It was not just because of the shadows.”

"This region is so dry, they'll only grow in little nooks like this," she continued. "Where I was born, you could find fields full of them. There were many of us."

… Oh, so those flowers are where these Verdians germinate from when younger, huh?

"...Why did you leave?"

"To spread hope. Because others deserve the chance that we've had."

Ren let the splashing of the water fill the momentary silence. "Becoming a Verdian… what's it like?"

Yeah, I figured that that was where things were going to go in this story.

"If you mean the transformation itself... It is uncomfortable. When it happened to me, I felt sicker than I ever had. And I was in pain for most of it."

Well, at least the Queen’s being honest about these things and not trying to sucker Ren into things with sugarcoating?

Ren swallowed, his throat tightening. "How long did it last?"

"Almost two days."

Ren let out a shaky breath. "Okay. That's not so bad. Two days isn't so long."

There’s going to be more to this explanation that will give Ren pause, won’t it?

"I agree." Her gaze solidified as she lifted her head. "It's nothing compared to a whole life as a Coyote. If it's what you want, then I know you can get through it."

Ren's eyes moistened; he looked away to hide it. The spray beside him cast rainbows across the valley. A pair of drones walked side by side beside the plunge pool, gaits relaxed, almost slack.

"It is what I want," Ren whispered.

Five words spoken seconds from disaster. Since I’m not fully convinced that this is going to end happily for Ren.

"Then follow me." The queen's wet scales brushed against his flank as she stepped past him.

Ren wondered, as they left the shelter, why her pace was so agonizingly slow—until he realized it wasn't, and he was just nervous. He forced himself to slow down and take deep breaths.

I mean, you’re only about to make a life-altering decision based off a few days of consideration that I’m not fully sure you fully understand what you’re getting into, Ren. I would have butterflies in my stomach myself.

The queen led Ren into the shade of an alder. She gestured for him to lie beside her. Sagebrush cushioned his belly.

"The flowers you saw obviously haven't fruited yet. For convenience, I've taken to storing seeds inside me." She unfurled one of the vines around her neck and lifted it to Ren's face. Something thin and black poked out from the tip, like a bee stinger. "You could ingest them, but injection makes for an easier transformation and doesn't require as many. Is that alright with you?"

Yeah, I’d be a hard ‘no’ at this point. But I don’t exactly like getting stung in general.

Ren nodded shallowly, not trusting himself to speak.

The queen crossed her neck over his. "First I want you to calm down. There's no rush."

… Does Ren really have a choice right now given that if the Queen really wanted to, she could just sting him right then and there and put him on track to becoming a drone?

Like on the one hand, everything about the Queen has outwardly seemed like she’s encouraging voluntarism and respects the wishes of those who approach her, but something has felt “off” about the Verdians this entire time and I can’t fully place my finger on it.

The queen's warmth soothed Ren as he silently cried. She smelled of lilac and sage, sweet and clean. Towhees chirped carefree song in the branches above; crickets thrummed sleepily in the brush nearby. Gradually, Ren relaxed. "I'm ready," he breathed.

Narrator: “He’s not ready.”

"Okay. Give me a moment to find the vein. You'll feel a little sting—just stay relaxed." She wrapped one vine around his arm, just below his elbow, and squeezed. With a second vine, she palpated the inside of his forearm. When the sting came, his breath caught, but he didn't flinch.

His arm ached dully for a moment, and then the queen withdrew her vine. Ren looked at her expectantly.

Ren: “Wait, that’s it? Just that little prick there?” ^^;

"All done." She smiled gently. "You'll feel the effects within an hour. Feel free to stretch or walk around, but you should stay close to the pool. If you get hot, I can splash water on you. Make sure to drink a lot. If you need anything at all, just ask."

Ren sighed, letting his head fall. "Thank you."

She nuzzled the side of his head. "I'd like to thank you too, for trusting me. I promise I'll keep you safe and happy, just like all the others."

Ren relaxed into her touch and let himself believe her.

D’aww… how touching. Though why do I keep getting a persistent suspicion that this isn’t going to age well at all?

An itching pain had subsumed Ren's body. By the evening, it had so exhausted him that he could barely even wince, let alone scratch. He lay on his side, panting, surrounded by clumps of fur. Small jade ridges had emerged all along his body. The queen gently ran her claws along his back, dislodging flakes of dead skin, and licked the blood away from the places that bled.

Well, that’s more than a little unsettling there.

Ren spent the night in a twilight state, drifting in and out of sleep. Drones made frequent visits, helping groom and keep him warm, and the queen never left his side. By dawn he was lucid again, and his scales almost completely covered his skin.

"You're beautiful," the queen said, eyes wet, head pulled back to admire him.

I mean, at least Ren has enough intelligence to hear and process this? So… positive signs? ^^;

Ren's attention drifted as he tried to respond. The valley seemed different, as though there were twice as many leaves on the trees. And he couldn't remember if the towhees' and thrashers' songs had been so intricate before, or if the wind had so densely ruffled the water.

He must have been losing his ability to think, but it didn't feel that way. It just felt like thinking wasn't important anymore.

I… see that Pops’ warnings weren’t far from the truth. Boy are those some creepy undertones there, even if Ren genuinely seems happy right now.

Before the queen could comment on Ren's silence, the sun breached the side of the valley—and Ren gasped. The light tingled sweetly on his scales. His head slackened as a frisson passed through him, sore shoulders relaxing...

"It feels good, right?"

The queen's voice, though soft, still retrieved Ren's attention. He beheld her face; her honeyed eyes magnified the sunlight, and her smile shone. He closed his eyes as he approached, touched his nose to hers, and let that touch linger.

This… is going to be the last thing that Ren retains enough sapience to understand and remember, isn’t it?

Alright, onto the recap:

I’m… not fully sure how I should feel about this story, honestly, which given the vibes of the other stories of yours that I’ve read, might be the intended effect. On one level, we have a touching story of Ren at long last finding happiness after a lifetime of hardship and dysphoria, but on another it comes from him functionally killing off who he is as a person. Like by the end of the story, he can’t even think about whether or not he has any regrets since he’s become a being that has no desire to think for himself. It’s an overall dynamic that I can’t decide for myself if I find it uplifting or sinister, especially since we see things through the eyes of Ren, who isn’t exactly a reliable and unbiased narrator in this story, so it prevents a definitive judgment as to whether or not this was a good thing or not.

The atmospheric descriptions and scenery were very well done. And I thought you did a decent job of selling the sense that we were seeing things through the eyes of a coyote, even if a couple parts felt like they’d have benefitted from further playing up Ren’s senses as a coyote impacting how he parses various scenes. The one thing that I felt was a little iffy on this front were the Verdians themselves, who could be a bit hard to get a read on for how they looked at points, particularly if there was any discernible difference between the drones and the queen for appearances, which is the case for most eusocial insects with such a dichotomy.

Aside from that, I’m not sure if I have a whole lot of criticisms. It’s a strange, dreamy, kinda happy while kinda chilling story that’s a good companion for nights where you don’t have a lot of time or energy and just want to get lost in something. I didn’t expect just about any of this going into this story, but I’m glad that I gave it a chance, and I hope that the feedback was fun and helpful for you to read.

 

[love]

We've got a response for @Spiteful Murkrow

… Wait, do coyotes actually do this IRL, or is this meant to be evocative of coyote myths where they’re trickster figures?

It's more just, they can talk, so they might as well be allowed to laugh too.

… Wait, the what now? Like I get the feeling that these ‘Verdians’ are going to be important, but I kinda wonder if there ought to have been a bit more about what they are or how they’re seen by Ren and his father indicated here. Like are they parsed as fearsome monsters and Ren tenses up over them? Effectively fairies that aren’t definitively agreed on to exist given that they are figures of legend?

Maybe "chronicles" or "stories" is better than "legends", because the Verdians are known to exist, they're just rarely encountered. We can probably infer they are not fearsome since Ren wants to find them.

Ah yes, it wouldn’t be a @love fic without a lovingly described vegetation sequence. Are you a botanist by profession offline or something like that? Since I’m now 3/3 reading stories from you with lovingly described vegetation sequences, and they always have a lot of care and attention to detail put into them.

The voice's garden in A Solace That Endures is based on permaculture gardens that I have studied and visited. Those Who Will Inherit the Earth has some plants I am familiar with IRL and some that I am not. My past experience with plant ID and agriculture were not relevant for The Verdant Ones because I've never been in a chaparral biome, so I had to spend longer (around 3–4 days, I think) researching and taking notes on which animals and plants go where and what they look and sound like. I am glad the attention to detail is apparent. Thanks for noticing.

I’m presuming that the Queen meant that in the sense of “lie down beside you” since if not… boy is she forward there.

Oh boy, here come the Ren x Verdian queen shippers

… So they’re eusocial like bees. Bee plant coyote… things. That’s definitely a trippy concept to wrap one’s head around. Though I’m now curious. Do they draw inspiration off of entities from folklore? Or are they wholecloth creations for this story and its setting?

I just made them up. They're probably more inspired by grass-type pokemon than anything else.

… Wait, does the Queen also have those too, or just her drones? Since now that I think about it, there wasn’t a whole lot described of the Queen’s face such as what her eyes looked like.

The queen's eyes are honey-colored, so a bit different from this drone, but there may be variation between individuals. There isn't much physical difference between the drones and queen, but I could mention that they smell different, which would also help give scent a little more focus.

Wait, but the rabbit was literally explicitly stated to be dead two paragraphs ago. Isn’t that definitionally not ‘live prey’ there?

Yeah I guess not.

… Why do those drones hang around anyways? Since the fact that this colony has a queen and drones implies that the drones are needed for labor of some sort that the queen cannot provide, but I’m not really sure if we’ve seen them do anything just yet.

They just chill, mostly, and in theory defend the queen from predators. In practice, I suspect most predators know better than to attack the colony. Drones also provide the queen with valuable cuddles.

Ren: “The what now?” .-.

Yeah that's right it's magical flowers again.

Yeah, I’d be a hard ‘no’ at this point. But I don’t exactly like getting stung in general.

What if she gave you a lollipop afterward?

On one level, we have a touching story of Ren at long last finding happiness after a lifetime of hardship and dysphoria, but on another it comes from him functionally killing off who he is as a person.

Yep, that's the story's central quandary. Is your personhood worth your happiness? The goal, which I think I have achieved, is to show why Ren makes the choice he does. I cannot control whether the reader agrees with his reasoning.

I am glad the description—at least the visual and aural aspects—holds up.

I had fun reading your reactions. I'll be making a couple small changes.

 

[Poivron]

Gotta admit it took me several attempts to get into this story. A few times I read the opening paragraphs and stopped. Something about the concept, the almost but not quite pokemon setting, put me off. It feels like it's a PMD story that's been turned into an original story, but it still keeps PMD aspects like the sapient animals and capitalizing the word "Coyote" as if it's a Pokemon species. I think the combination of Ren's human and animal traits, plus capitalizing Coyote, must've put this into the uncanny valley for me or something.

Anyway, I'm sorry for mentioning this because when I actually read the whole thing, I loved it. The tradeoff Ren makes is a tradeoff I've wished I could make myself. Sometimes you feel like the things other people value have always made you unhappy anyway, and you would give them up if it you could. Especially in exchange for a life of comfort. What Ren goes through is personality death, but the good kind. The good kind of death. I think the crux of the story is how things that are supposedly bad, like giving up your intelligence and free will, can actually be better for everyone involved.

It's that mix of comfort and creepiness that gets me. The comfort: what if you could have everything you wanted, what if you could be at peace, what if you could be happy for once? The creepiness: you become a "drone", never a good word right, and you basically cease to exist as you are. And yet. Is it really that bad, if you'd be happy?

The whole later part of the story is filled with "and yet" moments. The queen says "I'll keep you safe and happy, just like all the others" and you know what that safety entails, and yet... safe and happy. Or the queen comforts Ren while the transformation happens ("the queen gently ran her claws along his back... and licked the blood away"). Such a creepy moment, and yet a soothing one. Or the nose boop at the end, when the newly created drone touches his queen's nose. Messed up, right? And yet.

Reminds me of those philosophy thought experiments I was into ages ago. Stuff like would you accept wireheading (plugging electrodes into your brain to stimulate your pleasure centers so you feel nothing but mindless happiness forever) instead of living out the rest of your normal life? Is that a good way to live? Related: would you rather have a perfect life in a computer simulation or live in a miserable reality? It probably says something about me that I don't mind the concept of wireheading or living out the rest of my life in the Matrix. I'd go for it. As a result I found this story comforting. People who would fall on the other side of the coin, like in some of the other reviews I've seen, might hate the idea.

---

More random thoughts:

There's an element of distance, for me, that comes from this story being centered around completely nonhuman characters. My own reaction is if the story was about humans it would feel more intimate. Here's someone like you, the reader, giving up their intelligence and humanity. But because Ren is a coyote it matters less to me that he's exchanging one species for another, even if the coyotes are very human-like. If it was a human becoming a quadrupedal green scaly thing and not an coyote I think my reaction would be even more visceral, the creepiness turned up to eleven.

Humans aren't coyotes and all that, the mannerisms are different, the fundamental ways of life are different. Even the things that Ren hates about his species are coyote things like hunting and killing prey, so even his dysphoria has a sense of distance to it. Maybe this is me not really being into animal fiction in general. With the exception of Pokemon I don't read a lot of animal stories, I've never had a pet dog or cat, I don't interact with animals much at all. Ren might as well be an alien species who lives in another dimension as far as I'm concerned, which makes the story have a surreal, detached quality to me.

The queen mentions becoming a Verdian, which is odd to me because it implies she remembers it and she once made the same choice as Ren, but it ended with her keeping her intelligence somehow. How does that work? Obviously this question will never be answered, but I'd expect the queen to be a native of the species enthralling other non-Verdians to her will by turning them into Verdians, like the Borg or something. I guess the fact that she's a convert, like Ren, makes her more sympathetic. But it also makes me wonder why she could keep her intelligence when none of the other drones could.

On that note, I loved the little detail about how she left to spread her "hope" to others. Hits the right creepy comforting note again. From a reader's perspective it could come off as an invasive power grab, because she's just making more people into drones. But from the queen and Ren's perspective it's genuinely good because they offer solace to those who need it. Despite that high (or not-so-high) cost.

I like the poem in here, the "ancient verse". Unexpected but pretty beautiful.

"He must have been losing his ability to think, but it didn’t feel that way. It just felt like thinking wasn’t important anymore." is a good line I lingered on for a bit. To me it's like the epitome of the whole story's vibe. It really is one of those sentences that induces a perfect mix of "I would hate to be in that situation" and "I really want to be in that situation".

 

[love]

It's a response for @Poivron

When I get the chance, I think I will decapitalize the species names; it'll probably bother people less.

Reminds me of those philosophy thought experiments I was into ages ago. Stuff like would you accept wireheading (plugging electrodes into your brain to stimulate your pleasure centers so you feel nothing but mindless happiness forever) instead of living out the rest of your normal life? Is that a good way to live? Related: would you rather have a perfect life in a computer simulation or live in a miserable reality? It probably says something about me that I don't mind the concept of wireheading or living out the rest of my life in the Matrix. I'd go for it. As a result I found this story comforting. People who would fall on the other side of the coin, like in some of the other reviews I've seen, might hate the idea.

One could write a sci-fi version of this story in which the queen is an alien or computer program messing with electrodes in peoples' brains. As interesting as wireheading is, sci-fi stories are often seen as speculative, and I don't want to give the impression that I think technology irl is heading in the direction of creating a wirehead utopia, or any kind of utopia, even if it theoretically could. I think it's also hard to deny the appeal of a natural setting.

There's an element of distance, for me, that comes from this story being centered around completely nonhuman characters. My own reaction is if the story was about humans it would feel more intimate. Here's someone like you, the reader, giving up their intelligence and humanity. But because Ren is a coyote it matters less to me that he's exchanging one species for another, even if the coyotes are very human-like. If it was a human becoming a quadrupedal green scaly thing and not an coyote I think my reaction would be even more visceral, the creepiness turned up to eleven.

This is sort of a weakness of the story. We don't spend much time with Ren before his life changes, so we have only a vague idea of what he is giving up. A human character would likely make readers more inclined to fill in the gaps with their own experiences. But I like animal characters too much. I also like that coyotes, as predators, are intrinsically violent, so Ren's decision to transform reads to me as a rejection of violence, while a human transforming might not give that impression. I also think making Ren a human would give the story more of an "embrace nature" vibe, which is not necessarily bad but could come across as naive if executed poorly.

On that note, I loved the little detail about how she left to spread her "hope" to others. Hits the right creepy comforting note again. From a reader's perspective it could come off as an invasive power grab, because she's just making more people into drones. But from the queen and Ren's perspective it's genuinely good because they offer solace to those who need it. Despite that high (or not-so-high) cost.

From the beginning, I knew I wanted to establish that the queen does not force others into dronehood. In my imagination, there are other verdian queens, and maybe some of them do force others, thinking they know what is best for them. Such queens could make interesting keystones for darker stories, but I wanted a hopeful tone for The Verdant Ones.

I like the poem in here, the "ancient verse". Unexpected but pretty beautiful.

Thank you. I am not really a poet, but Ren associating a poem with the queen seemed too good of an idea for me not to try. Since the poem is presented diegetically, I figured some imperfection could be tolerated as long as the intended effect was clear. But I think the story benefits if the poem is well-executed.

"He must have been losing his ability to think, but it didn’t feel that way. It just felt like thinking wasn’t important anymore." is a good line I lingered on for a bit. To me it's like the epitome of the whole story's vibe. It really is one of those sentences that induces a perfect mix of "I would hate to be in that situation" and "I really want to be in that situation".

It seems like this bit conveyed what it was supposed to well.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. The verdian queen wishes you everlasting peace.