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The Cryptozoologist's Field Guide, Wednesday, Per 1

The lesson plan Verity had planned had gotten scrapped by a phone call about ten minutes before class. She might have cancelled class entirely if her stupid cold hadn't made her do that last week.

"Okay!" she said when everyone had arrived, very grateful her class was tiny. "Today you're about to get a hands-on lesson about a cryptid called the Mishigamaa. The Mishigamaa is one of the five extant species of plesiosaurs that have survived to the present day; they can only be found in certain lakes up in the general Michigan area, leaving them to be colloquially called the 'Michigan lake monsters'. Their proper name, 'Mishigamaa', comes from the Ojibwa word for 'large lake,' though we're pretty sure the Ojibwa used a slightly different term for the creatures themselves."

How did one say 'Oh shit!' in Ojibwa?

"Due to human interference, like pollution and overfishing, the Mishigamaa are near extinction, spawning several cryptozoological conservation efforts. However, since Mishigamaa only mate after a pod member dies, keeping their numbers stable is very hard. This is compounded by the fact that Mishigamaa are air-breathers and after the rigors of birth, mother nor calf need to come up for air and rest. If they remain submerged for long, they will start to drown. Most Mishigamaa sightings occur during this time and can lead to injuries and death for Mishigamaa and spectators alike, as the mother tries to protect the calf."

Verity pulled back her hair into a no-nonsense ponytail. "One of the conservationists I mentioned before has a Mishigamaa mother in labor, but she is young and a rescue and it isn't going well. So, hope you dressed warmly, class, because you get to see your first real cryptids in the flesh today. While participating in the miracle of birth. Let's go!"

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"This is precisely why I'm glad Nessie has the grace to lay eggs," Jenkins said, taking a bite of his cruller. "It's bad enough occasionally needing to assist a unicorn's foaling. I certainly don't need to add being submerged to that equation."

"We're pretty sure that all the unicorns are extinct, like the dragons," Verity said with a pained sigh. "The death of the last unicorn in England is what motivated Great-Great Grandpa Healy to break ties with the Covenant, in fact."

"The more I learn about your universe, Ms. Verity, the sadder it makes me. Unicorns are uniquely obnoxious, but that's no reason to wipe them out completely."

"And actually some good reasons to keep them alive," Verity said. "Sure, a unicorn in the wild might kill a person or two a year, but..." She shook her head. "Unicorns clean the tainted water in the areas they live. The last unicorns were killed in England and almost immediately following that came the great cholera epidemic. And when my family brought their findings to the leaders of the Covenant, they were basically told, 'It doesn't matter, we're doing God's work.' Because killing unicorns justified losing thousands of people to cholera for...reasons, I guess."

Jenkins heaved a weary sigh. "As someone who spent his youth 'doing God's work', I've come to thoroughly despise that phrase. Anyone who uses it in earnest can be counted on to be one of the biggest jackasses on the planet, let alone in the room."

"Pretty sure 'world's biggest jackass' sums up the Covenant," Verity snorted. "Might need to add 'self-righteous' and 'entitled pricks' for accuracy, though."

"Unfortunately a terribly common set of adjectives," Jenkins said with a shake of his head. "My own family got mixed up into something rather similar, I'm afraid. Different goals and motivations, but the attitude I fear was same."

"Ugh," Verity said, sympathetic. "What was their cause?"

"Monarchy," Jenkins said, lips drawn into a moue. "My father firmly believed that without a king -- one king, mind you, for the entire world, and of course it had to be his king -- humanity as a whole was doomed. Naturally, he was willing to kill whatever and whomever might get in his way in order to get it. Including the woman who loved him."

Edited 2018-02-16 03:15 (UTC)

"One king to rule them all, huh?" Verity asked, because her big brother was a giant dork and some things had filtered down. "Wait--where were you that your dad was worried about kings?"

Well, Britain had lost a lot of political power during the Second World War. So...

"British?"

That was adorable. “Yes,” Jenkins said. “In a manner of speaking. Mind you, his king was long gone by the time he really got into it.”

Hey! Her brain just didn't automatically leap to 'immortal Arthurian knight!' No one's did!

Verity nodded. "Wait--your dad wasn't all about supporting whats-his-face, Edward the...Sixth, was it?" Thank you, Netflix shows about royalty. "And his Nazi-sympathizer leanings?"

"What? Oh, no, no, thank god. Though that might have made it easier to hate him." Jenkins shook his head. "No, the man my father supported was just and honorable. And a bit of a blowhard, but an . . . excellent king. I miss him myself, sometimes. But the world has moved on, as it always must, and humans have chosen themselves a different path."

"Hmmm," Verity said, noncommittally, filing away that use of the word 'humans' to think about later. Jenkins did that sometimes, referring to humanity in such a way as to suggest he considered himself apart from it.

Interesting.

"So you and your father were close to the king?" she teased. "Should I be curtseying every time you walk by?"

Well, hundreds of years of socializing with at most one mortal at a time does skew your perspective a little bit.

"Well. You certainly could if you wanted to. But no, I'm of rather, ah, ignoble birth, myself."

Servants, then? European royalty still had servants, right?

"Probably for the best," Verity said. "My curtsying is a little stiff, unless I'm going for a weapon."

Her childhood had been very weird, okay?

"Or finishing a dance routine?" Jenkins guessed. "I seem to recall dancing always required a certain amount of genuflecting."

Mind you, the last time he'd been dancing, the art form still mostly involved walking in formation and occasionally touching hands.

"At the end, we bow more than anything," Verity said. "Most of the costumes are too skimpy to really make a curtsy happen. Or if we do, it's this kind of low glide to the floor, designed to make our legs look amazing."

"I wasn't aware your legs would require help in that department," Jenkins said with a very small smile. "It's for the best, really. Curtseying in general always seemed remarkably silly to me. Especially once fashions moved away from enormous, enveloping skirts."

"It's TV," Verity said with a pleased smile. "'Subtle' never really caught on. "

"Ah yes," Jenkins said darkly. "Television. I suppose I must be thankful it's not all made up of shows of people falling down."

"I will admit, the episodes where someone falls or hurts themselves are always the ones with the highest ratings for Dance or Die," Verity said with a sigh.

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The Cryptozoologist's Field Guide, Wednesday, Per 1

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