attention this is your captain speaking chag sameach pesach to all celebrating and a reminder do not open the airlock to greet elijah the vulcan rabbinic council ruled that opening the door to the room where the seder is occurring is sufficient elijah can get on a starship just fine himself he just likes to be personally invited in to your seder we dont need another incident like last year thank you

i think about this a hundred times a day

Loving this level of accuracy

Listen All Systems Red is so so funny from Gurathins perspective imagine you grew up with Space Socialism and was hired to go help some pal with science but you weren't allowed to go unless you rented AmaTeslas Torment Nexus Alexa Dot and then when you get there you find out a whole continent of people got annihilated by their Tourment Nexus rentals so you take a moment to check yours quickly and find out it already had disengaged its Don't Kill People box, the only thing you've ever been told prevented them from mass homiciding their clients, something that LITERALLY just happened to people you knew a day ago, and when you say to your fellow socialist doctors HEY I think our Tourment Nexus is fucked up and it's files said it killed dozens of people barely a year ago and we should probably get the hell away from it the same doctors are like look at what you're saying. You're hurting the Tourment Nexus' feelings. The Tourment Nexus is just a little construct who likes Netflix Gurathin stop antagonizing it on the plane ride.

Phil Davies

"The Egret was in shadow and the background was in full sun"

This! This right here! This is what The Dress looks like, and why I will forever be frothing with rage at being wrong about the color!

I still cannot look at that photo and see black. The white parts are tinted kinda blue, yeah, but obviously because it's in shadow like this egret. Right??

Apparently not. Argle bargle foam at the mouth.

been messing around with making a (faked, actually 2D) 3D dungeon crawler without a game engine the last few days - never tried making anything in just C# and monogame with visual studio before, its like a fun puzzle…

simple little external tool for making the number arrays that generate the maps I put together today, haven't done much like this before either so it's fun, idk how I'd do something like this as simply in unity lol

messed around with making textures and learnt how to shrink the render area of the screen down and crunch stuff to make it run better

City Pigeons: now with underglaze!!! Absolutely can't wait to fire these guys.

dropped the walrus vs fairy question on a group of psychologists today and not only did the majority agree the walrus would be more surprising, the one with the strongest background in research responded to the ‘but fairies aren’t real’ argument with “are your beliefs so inflexible that you’ve never considered you might be wrong about what’s real and what’s not?” and honestly i haven’t recovered

honestly you know what goals

This continues to bother me, because my parents were faced with basically this same question when I was born—"autistic or demon?"—and they decided an autistic person would be more surprising, so I was probably demon-possessed.

I know this is how human psychology works. I know.

But that doesn't mean being more surprised by the appearance of something that obviously exists than by the appearance of something that apparently doesn't exist is a good, helpful, or even safe way to think.

Look. Trump lying is a walrus: it exists, we know it exists, we've seen it existing, there's tons of evidence of Trump lies.

A Trump policy that rapidly fixes the whole economy is a fairy: we hear a lot about it, but we don't see it, in fact no one's ever seen it.

You open your door, which one would you be most surprised to see: Trump telling you a lie, or an economy made healthy by Trump's policies? It'd be real weird for Trump to be on your doorstep. He'd have no reason to be there. Assuming he has a good economic policy, why wouldn't you see that in the world outside your home?

That's quite an assumption, you say? Why would we assume he has a magic fix-it-all econ policy when we've never seen any evidence of it before, you ask?

Now you're getting it.

i am an autistic ex-christian survivor of a fundamentalist cult whose family also believed demons and witchcraft were more likely than their child being autistic and chronically ill and i was subjected to faith "treatments" because of it. kindly make your own post to proselytize on instead of implying that philosophical skepticism is responsible for the rise of the religious right in america. i pursued a phd in psychology in part to understand what the fuck was going through my parents' heads and i can assure you that the perspective of those psychologists is not remotely related to the magical thinking you're talking about.

RE: your tags... "no evidence for" and "impossible" are two different things.

Walrus vs fairy is not "improbable vs impossible," it's "evidenced but improbable vs unevidenced but (if real) more probable than the other."

you continue to get it backwards: fundamentalist christians think that demons are evidenced but improbable. autism being a naturally occurring genetic difference rather than “vaccine injury” is unevidenced to them because all of the “evidence” is fake and the CDC is lying to you. my parents do not believe there is any evidence that autism is anything else other than vaccine injury. if yours do they don’t represent the vast majority of the anti-vax MAGA movement and are irrelevant to your argument about trump.

the point is that you should be open to the possibility that you are WRONG about the things you believe have “no evidence.” scientists are open to this. fundamentalists are not. you’re contorting the entire situation to fit your irrational belief that people who are more surprised at the walrus experience magical thinking, rather than simply having had some practice considering doubt around their belief that fairies aren’t real but have not previously considered doing so about walrus behavior.

it’s not that fucking deep and you’re not promoting rationality, you’re on a soapbox that has no base trying to fit your predefined rant onto a post that has nothing to do with it.

go make your own post about it and stop bringing up MAGA fundie shit on mine.

There's the same amount of "evidence" of demons and fairies both: there are stories about both throughout time and around the world.

There's the same amount of evidence of autistic people and walruses: we and they exist and can be studied.

What anyone believes about any of this doesn't change the amount of actual evidence there actually is for each thing—and that, the actual amount of actual evidence, is what's at the core of this whole thing.

My parents, like yours, are in an antivax cult that I, like you, have only barely survived.

My parents, like yours, have decided that an evidenced claim (autism is innate) is more surprising and less believable than an unevidenced claim (vaccines cause autism). The core of the problem is their inability to see what is evidence and what is not.

...And, of course, the fact that in real life they can't just open the door and see the differences in my genes (or, alternatively, the demon wrapped around my soul).

Of course fairies might exist. So might demons, or a magical economics plan.

But there's no evidence that any of those things exist, and so seeing any one of them ought to be a lot more surprising than seeing something you know for a fact exists, even in a place you weren't expecting to see it—unless, of course, you enjoy being the kind of person who thinks a sock goblin would be less surprising than a gap in your washer's drum, or an unexpectedly grabby lint trap.

you fundamentally don’t understand the premise. it is not about what objectively does or does not have evidence. it’s about what people BELIEVE does or does not have evidence. because those beliefs can be WRONG.

of course you and i agree there’s no evidence for demons. but to my parents there’s LOTS of evidence of their existence. to my parents there is ZERO EVIDENCE that autism is genetic. it does not matter what there objectively is or isn’t evidence for—the question is whether or not the individual in question BELIEVES there is evidence.

this post is telling you to it is important to question what you believe there is or isn’t evidence for because YOU COULD BE WRONG. my parents are wrong about what there is and isn’t evidence for, and they should question that!

a good scientist has lots of practice asking, “am i wrong about what i think there is or isn’t evidence for?” and most every scientist has considered “are fairies real or not?” because it’s such a common cultural concept. therefore when presented with ACTUAL EVIDENCE that a fairy is real (remember that’s how the thought experiment works!) they are less surprised because they have already practiced considering that belief. they have no such practice considering their beliefs about walruses behavior because that is not a major cultural construct. it has nothing to do with thinking the unevidenced thing is MORE LIKELY, it has to do with what they have already had practice questioning.

you keep acting like “being less surprised means you think it’s more likely or easier to accept that it’s x than y” and that’s fundamentally not how surprise as an emotion works. it’s about familiarity/unfamiliarity. a fairy at your door isn’t something that really happens but we’ve seen it in media and thought about whether they’re real or not enough that it’s a familiar scene for many people. far fewer people have the same experience with a walrus showing up on the door. it doesn’t mean people are more willing to believe an untrue thing, it means IF THAT THING HAPPENED FOR REAL, then it would be less surprising because having that belief overturned is more familiar. not because the person think’s it’s more likely to be true.

I hope you're right about how all the "a fairy existing would surprise me less than a walrus existing" people are approaching this question.

In my experience of being confronted with things I had no evidence for, my surprise was definitely greater than when I saw something I already knew existed—even if I was now seeing it in a strange place.

Once upon a time, I had no idea that transitional fossils existed (specifically, those fossils so difficult for creationists to classify that two different creationists looking at the same fossil would call it two different things: "obviously" human and "obviously" ape). I had been deliberately sheltered from any evidence of those fossils, so I had no evidence that they existed.

Then I saw one.

I was very surprised! I had to update a lot of my beliefs and expectations after seeing that evidence.

On the other hand, one day I came home to find a cat in my apartment. I don't own a cat. No one in the building where I lived owned a cat. All my doors and windows had been closed. I was surprised to see the cat—but not as surprised as I'd been to see the fossil. After all, I knew cats existed. I just didn't expect to find one in my home, getting hair all over my couch.

I only had to update a few beliefs and expectations after seeing that evidence. (There was a door I hadn't known about, and a broken latch on one I had known about.)

I'm a little surprised to hear that the way I experience surprise is "fundamentally not how surprise as an emotion works." Only a little surprised, though: I know that wrong ideas about how emotion works exist, so it isn't too surprising to hear one, even one that I know from personal experience is entirely wrong.

yeah so you were more surprised because you most likely had not spent a lot of time looking at depictions of transitional fossils in countless media forms and stories focused on transitional fossils, nor had you spent many hours thinking about what life would be like if they existed and what you would do if you saw one. “transitional fossils exist!” was not a familiar new reality for you, at least nowhere near the way fairy media has culturally made “what if fairies were real?” highly accessible in the human mind.

you have probably thought before about what it would be like to have a cat show up somewhere unexpectedly! either because you’ve seen it happen to other people or because you know enough about cat behavior to expect they might show up somewhere out of nowhere. so this is a more familiar new reality to you.

i’m going to guess, actually, that your parents sheltered you from a lot of media with fairies in it, as mine tried (but failed) to do. so potentially to you the fairy would be much more surprising because of not having had a lot of exposure to the belief “what if fairies are real?” but most people (in america at least) not raised by fundies have seen media or stories exploring that idea constantly since they were tiny children, so they have thought about this potential reality before. scientists even more frequently, because it’s a common early experience curious folks will have with searching for evidence and determining reality. hence it’s more familiar to them.

you experience surprise the same as anyone else, you just aren’t correct about why you’re surprised—which most people aren’t, that’s why we have cognitive psychology. the reason people are more surprised by the walrus is because most people already have a cognitive schema for what “fairies are real” would mean even though they know fairies aren’t real. far fewer people have any kind of cognitive schema for how walruses behave.

also, people can be entirely wrong about how surprised they would be or why they’re surprised the way they are. when i say “you’re wrong about how surprise works” i mean we have studied this extensively and know on a neural level how it functions. surprise is not related to evidence/lack of evidence, it’s related to violation of expectations—but this decreases with familiarity. if we’ve thought about having this expectation violated before, it’s less surprising than an expectation violation we’ve never thought about before. it’s unrelated to the objective likelihood of the violation.

most people don’t describe their personal experience of surprise this way because we rarely describe our neural processes accurately. again, that’s why we study cognitive psychology.

*waves* I can tell you personally as someone who does have extensive schemas surrounding walrus behavior, that's a major function of my surprise level at the walrus. I have so many putative questions about why the walrus has rung my doorbell, for example, and am evaluating possibilities like "that's in a walrus body but not a walrus brain" and "walrus is a dude in a suit," and so forth.

And yes, surprise being a violation of expectations is bang on the money.

suddenly I have a million things to say about Ancillary Justice and Murderbot

Okay so, here it is. What is the fundamental difference between Breq and Murderbot? I really feel like there is one, even though they have so much in common, actually here are the things they have in common:

Okay so. I think the difference them is just this: Breq is an adult, and Murderbot is a child. A teenager, probably. But that's it. And I think you could understand that straight off about Murderbot, but it's Breq who pulls it into sharp relief. Consider, first, the singing, as Justice of Toren One Esk Nineteen would wish you to do. The ship was known as the "singing ship"; the reason Breq knows so many songs is because the ship was collecting them for two thousand years. It's a lifelong habit that Breq takes with her; whereas for Murderbot it's day one of a new life. It's how it begins to be a person. In Breq's case, it's elegy for the person that she was, long ago.

And personhood is a thing. Murderbot is fiercely protective of its personhood. It is a person, not a human person, not there to be anyone's pet person, not looking for love or gendered pronouns or anything except space to watch its shows. Breq... is not worried. She's an ancillary, and doesn't need to be more. She's lived this long, and she doesn't need to be saved. So she says, but I love how she admits that she does like being "she", rather than "it". Not because she cares very much about pronouns or gender, not even because she's Radchaai (sidenote: I also love that she kind of has to contend with the fact that she is Radchaai) but because her crew would never talk to her as though she were a thing.

And she's admitted, as has Murderbot, that she's capable of love. Which brings us to:

Murderbot saves the person it loves; Breq murdered hers.

So why is this important? I mean, I think it's interesting. And particularly the contrast between Mensah and Awn; Mensah is a guide for Murderbot, a mentor-type figure; One Esk, on the other hand, cared for Lieutenant Awn in the most fundamental and loving way. So naturally it's Mensah who is saved, and Awn who is killed. (And Justice of Toren that is broken by it.) It's such a different story, for each of them. Murderbot is anxious and angry and traumatised; Breq is all of those, but also just deeply, fundamentally grieving in a way Murderbot hasn't lived long enough to understand.

But: here's actually why I think it's important. Murderbot is a new person, and despite what it says, it wants to keep its people safe, which requires going out in the world to keep people safe. And as it does, it meets other people, trying to do good: people trying to smuggle out slaves; a university trying to overturn the corporates; a whole planet of good people who try to make life better for everyone. It's a shitty corporate hellscape, but bit by bit, it might be getting better. Breq is the two-thousand-year-old remnant of an earlier world. AI-core warships are no longer being made; the Radch is no longer conducting annexations. And the split in Anaander Minaai means that the empire is tearing itself apart from within. Breq lives in the embers of a dying fire. And you might say that yes, good, down with empire, but that is also Breq's life and culture (and she is Radchaai), her tea and omens and songs. So grown-up Breq, tired and impossibly old, does her best to do better, to do no harm; whereas spiky teenage Murderbot really might change the world.

every day i think about how wild vaporeon would live mostly in the water but come to shore to have their pups (eevee), and then would probably groom their pups in a special way to trap air bubbles in their soft fur to make them more bouyant so they can float unaided on the water. and then as soon as the eevee have control of their little legs they're being taught how to swim, so you could come to a lake at a certain time of year ans see a vaporeon swimming around with a tiny soaked eevee paddling along behind it like

Hajichi -- banned tattoo practice originating in Okinawa, Japan

haitai (hello), hajichā (hajichi practitioner) here.

to clarify, the practice was banned by the Japanese as an attempt to destroy us. I am the first to have hajichi in my family in at least five generations, possibly more but my family lineage and history was heavily wiped out during the battle of okinawa

that first picture? its staged. it was taken after the ban, and if you were caught giving hajichi you would be imprisoned.

the other pictures are an attempt to preserve the culture—notice how the hands are aged.

those drawings? done by a non-okinawan anthropologist who called the practice barbaric, but his work contains some of the only references we have left.

okinawans are not japanese. okinawan isn’t even what we’re really called, but we’re forced to use what name people recognize. we are the indigenous population of loo choo (sometimes seen as ryukyu but that’s the japanese pronunciation)

very long story made very short, japan kidnapped our king, illegally annexed the kingdom, then proceeded to destroy us by banning and dismantling our entire culture, from language to spirituality to hajichi and more. we are still treated as second/third class citizens today.

we’re still being killed off, both literally and culturally, by both japan and the united states.

nifē dēbiru (thank you)

for those interested in learning more, please contact me privately. due to the sacredness of this practice and its vulnerability to exploitation, I prefer not to discuss the details of hajichi publicly.

Going to put all this in its own post too by popular request: here's how you make your own website with no understanding of HTML code at all, no software, no backend, absolutely nothing but a text file and image files! First get website server space of your own, like at NEOCITIES. The free version has enough room to host a whole fan page, your art, a simple comic series, whatever! The link I've provided goes to a silly comic that will tell you how to save the page as an html file and make it into a page for your own site. The bare minimum of all you need to do with it is JUST THIS:

Change the titles, text, and image url's to whatever you want them to be, upload your image files and the html file together to your free website (or the same subfolder in that website), and now you have a webpage with those pictures on it. That's it!!!!! .....But if you want to change some more super basic things about it, here's additional tips from the same terrible little guy:

I'll be honest with you: as a web developer this makes all my hair stand on end. BUT! Yes, this totally works and you can build a website like this!

So I just want to add a tiny little tip: if you look at this website on a small screen, everything will be zoomed down. That may be fine for the images, but it's not for the text. Here's a screenshot to show you what I mean:

So to make your website mobile friendly (or friendlier anyway), I propose a couple of simple changes:

And that's it! The result should look like this:

Congratulations, your website is now mobile friendly. Please never make me look at the source code.

@bogleech maybe something for you to consider? 🙃

@bogleech I am SO SO SORRY! I never replied to your question in the comments 🙈 anyways let me add this here since it might help others as well:

If you have more than one page with the same style, it is a very good idea to put all the stuff from the aforementioned style tag in the html head into a separate CSS file. This way if you decide to change the colour of your headlines or learn about new things to add or whatever, you only need to change them in one place, and they will be different on all the pages that reference that css file.

For our example it would look like this: you create one text file with the plain text editor of your choice and shove everything in between the style tags in there (without those tags). You name that file styles.css (or whatever, the ending has to be css). Then you remove the style tag from the html head and instead reference your file like so:

Notice that I’m starting the file name with a forward slash – this means the CSS file is in the root directory of your web page. Of course, you need to upload the file there, and if you put it elsewhere, you need to change that path. And THAT, again, will need to be changed on all of your possibly many pages, so maybe give it some thought from the start. 😉

Oh and @bogleech again: I’m super curious about your websites that work on mobile without my additions. Would you let me take a peek at one? Just to see what’s going on there? It sounds like I might learn something new (if it’s the fact that my additions is not necessary under some circumstances, I may be a bit miffed, but still).

Oh, I just mean my own website looks normal enough to me on mobile, but maybe I'm not really aware of how a mobile friendly site should look?? Just bogleech.com in general

And yeah a css style page is a good idea if you plan on having hundreds or thousands of pages, though you can also use a program like textcrawler to edit as many html files as you want all at once! I use that when I need to alter a url that's on tons of pages :)

i wish there was an easier way to tell the difference between an "if it sucks hit da bricks" situation and a "sometimes being an adult means doing things that you dont wanna" situation

The best answer to this that I've seen is "You are free to do whatever you like. You must only live with the consequences."

"If it sucks, hit da bricks" is for when you realize that you actually definitely can live with the consequences of Not Doing The Thing.

"Sometimes being an adult means doing things that you don't wanna" is for when you've thought it over and it turns out you would strongly prefer NOT to live with the consequences of Not Doing The Thing.

THE KHAIT BRIDEGROOM (South Wardi variant)

(A romantic folktale in which a girl marries her khait, kinda)

There once was a poor maize farmer, living in a mud hut at the edge of a village on the Brilla river. His beloved wife had died in childbirth, leaving him with only a daughter to raise on his own. The two led very difficult lives, and he mourned that he could not grant his daughter the ease and safety that she deserved. She had to work the fields just as hard as he did from the moment she was able to walk.

The most valuable asset to the farmer’s name was a beautiful young bull khait, who he had found roaming wild in the scrub. The khait was big and strong, with fur that shone gold like sunlight and was spattered with white spots like stars. He was never gelded, for he was a gentle and docile animal that bore none of the wild ferocity of many an intact bull. He took the yoke without complaint, and bore a rider with unwavering patience. Many had tried to buy the great beast from the farmer, but he refused all offers. Having such a fine working animal of his very own was a gift beyond the farmer's wildest dreams, and the khait was worth far more to him than anything he was offered.

The farmer had no fear that his khait would ever harm his daughter, and so she spent many days working him in the fields on her own. She always treated the animal with a kind, gentle hand, and he trusted her deeply and worked himself hard for her sake. The girl and beast became dearly bonded during the years of her childhood.

But the farmer’s daughter had just recently come into womanhood, and he was now tasked with finding her a good husband, and perhaps a better life in the process. He approached every man of good standing that he could find, but each laughed in his face. His daughter was too ugly, they said, and the farmer certainly couldn’t offer a good enough dowry to make up for it.

And it was true that his daughter wasn’t all that pleasant to the eye. Her hair was loose and matted, her skin was sun-worn and rough, she was often dirty from her labors, and the only cloak she owned was tattered and worn over her naked body. But beneath all that she was kind and gentle, hardworking and obedient. A man could not truly ask for a better wife, and so the farmer persisted.

The only potential suitor he had yet to approach was the son of his village’s chieftain, who was newly a man and as of yet unwed. The farmer knew he had little to offer the man, but hoped that the son of a wise elder would see his daughter’s virtue.

And so brought his young daughter to meet the chieftain’s son. He supplicated himself before the youth, laying one hand on the man’s foot and one across his own breast.

“My lord, I would offer you my daughter’s hand in marriage. She is kind and gentle, hardworking and obedient. You could not ask for a better wife.”

The chieftain’s son held back a laugh. He certainly could ask for a better wife, and quite easily! He found the very proposition to be insulting. But he had a rather lowly and vicious nature, and thus he pretended to contemplate the offer.

He looked the girl over with a deep frown, and shook his head.

“As tempting as this sounds, I must refuse. Her hair is too matted and ugly, I cannot have an unkempt woman for my wife. Perhaps if she manages to fix it, we can discuss engagement." The chieftain's son said.

And he sent the father and daughter away.

The girl had nothing left but to attend to her chores. It was the beginning of the planting season, and she had far too much work to do to wallow in her sadness. She held back tears as she placed the yoke on the khait’s neck, and began to cry to herself as she hitched him to the plow.

“What’s wrong?” Asked the khait.

“The chieftain’s son won’t marry me. He says my hair is too matted and ugly. He thinks I am unkempt.” The girl wept.

The khait felt great pity for her. It was true that her hair was quite disagreeable, but through no fault of her own. She had no mother to teach her to braid it finely, and her daily labor was too dirty and strenuous to keep it neat. It hurt his heart to see her so sad. And so he asked his friends, little egret and magpie, for help.

Magpie flew off to a distant town, and there he stole a ball of sweet-smelling soap and a jar of sesame oil. And meanwhile, little egret sat upon the girl’s shoulder as she guided the plow, picking lice out of her hair and teasing apart the tangles with her nimble beak. 

The next morning, the girl rode down to the river upon the khait’s back. The great beast stood guard and shielded her body while she washed her body and cloak with the fine soap and oil. She scraped the dirt from her skin and oiled and rinsed her hair until it was clean. Little egret taught her to braid her hair finely, and together they wove it into two neat strands, scarcely a hair loose.

She thanked the khait for his help, and he nodded his great head, relaxing as little egret and magpie took flies from his ears in payment.

The girl returned home and excitedly showed her father the good news. Her once filthy hair now shone bright and clean like chains of bronze, fragrant with oil and falling in two tight braids down to her breast. Both rejoiced, and her father took her to meet with the chieftain’s son again.

The farmer supplicated himself again, and said:

“My lord, I would again offer you my daughter’s hand in marriage. She is kind and gentle, hardworking and obedient. Her hair is beautiful and well-kept, and shines like bronze. You could not ask for a better wife.”

The chieftain’s son looked her over with a deep frown, and shook his head.

“I suppose her hair is quite beautiful now, but on second look-… Her cloak is tattered and worn, and she carries herself like a barbarian, wearing nothing underneath. I cannot have such a lowly woman as a wife. Perhaps if she manages to clothe herself properly, we can discuss engagement.”

And he sent the father and daughter away.

The girl returned to her tasks, humiliated and miserable. She flung the seed as if she disdained it, stomping through the freshly tilled fields in her anger.

“What’s wrong?” said the khait, gently nosing her shoulder.

“The chieftain’s son still won’t marry me. He says my cloak is too tattered and worn, and that I am naked like a barbarian. He thinks I am lowly.” the girl said.

The khait was upset for her sake. She had only one cloak to her name and walked near-naked underneath, this was true, but she took precious care of what little she had, and carried herself with modesty and dignity. It hurt his heart to see her honor insulted.

“Go down to the river and gather a bushel of the sweetest, greenest grass you can find, and take your father’s sharpest knife. Return to me, and I will take you to someone who can help.” the khait said.

And so the girl and went about gathering grass, taking only the most succulent of stalks and wrapping it all in an old blanket. She returned to the khait, knife and grass in tow. He took her upon his back, and together they rode into the brush.

They traveled for half the day, all the way to the Red Hills. There they came across a big horse with wool the color of snow, surrounded by his brightly spotted yakintsi wives.

The khait saluted him with a loud bellow. He stood nearly thrice as tall as the horse, but bowed his head in deference all the same.

“Lord of the hill, I humbly ask you to give this girl some of your wool. She brings fine riverside grass as a gift in trade.” the khait said.

This horse, though of tame stock, was himself wild and proud. The thought of being sheared was a bit humiliating, and he considered leaving his visitors in the dust then and there. But the forage of his hills were poor and sparse, and the bundle of grass the girl had brought was quite enticing. And his wool had grown a bit too thick and fine for the hot weather, and he could certainly stand to lose some.

“Fine,” he said, “She may shear my wool for as long as it takes for me to finish eating, and not a moment longer.”

And so the horse chomped away at the grass while the girl made quick work of shearing him. By the time the horse finished and ran off, the girl had gotten herself a hulking pile of fine, white wool. She carefully bundled it into her blanket, and the girl and khait rode back home.

She spent many days spinning the wool, and meanwhile the khait brought her kolis flower and foxgloves to make dye and precious feathers and cowries for adornment. She then spent many more days in weaving, until she had a fine cloak and veil of yellow, a grass-green headband with white stripes, and a pure white dress to wear underneath.

She happily showed her father her new clothes. Both rejoiced, and her father took her to meet with the chieftain’s son again. This time, the girl rode astride the khait so that her dress would not be dirtied by walking. She was a resplendent sight atop the beautiful animal, her brown braids gleaming against the rich yellow of her cloak and lovely white gull feathers and shells ornamenting her headband.

The farmer supplicated himself a third time, and said:

“My lord, I would again offer you my daughter’s hand in marriage. She is kind and gentle, hardworking and obedient. Her hair is beautiful and well-kept, and shines like bronze. Her cloak and veil are fine and well-made, and she wears a dress of pure white. You could not ask for a better wife.”

The chieftain’s son looked her over with a deep frown, and shook his head. 

“Her hair may be very beautiful, and her clothes may be fine, but on third look-… Don’t her hips seem a little narrow to you? A little too lean? She will never be able to bear healthy children.”

And, seeing a possibility, he added:

“But perhaps that could change with a good offering. Give me your khait as part of her dowry, and I will offer him up to bless your unfortunate daughter. Then we can discuss engagement.”

The farmer was pained at this. He could hardly bear to lose such a precious and hardworking animal. But the thought of seeing his beloved daughter sad and alone pained him far more. He reluctantly agreed.

“This khait is a fine and noble animal, gentle and docile, and agreeable to hard work. He is young and has never once been bred. One could scarcely make a finer offering than him.” The farmer said sadly.

And with that, the khait was handed off to the chieftain’s son. But he had no intent on making an offering of the animal in sacrifice, just as he had no intent on marrying the girl. The khait was a very fine beast indeed, and the chieftain’s son wanted him for his own herd.

But his satisfaction at his play soon turned to frustration. He had hoped to use this fine bull as a stud, but the khait refused to cover any mare. He thought that certainly he could pull a plow or carry a rider, but the khait shook off the yoke and bucked and kicked at the sight of saddle. The man couldn’t even bridle the khait, who would lower his horns and paw the earth at the mere sight of him. The chieftain’s son finally decided to geld him in hopes that the beast would become less spirited, but he couldn’t even make the approach. The khait charged him on sight, and ropes meant to hold him seemed to slip off his neck like water.

“That wretched plowman lied to me, this animal is bad-tempered and wild. He probably has a better khait hidden somewhere, that greedy dog. This one is useless.” The chieftain’s son said to himself. He decided there was no remaining use for the khait but to butcher him for a feast.

It took ten men to capture the khait, and ten more to hold him down. The chieftain’s son, who by now felt quite vindictive towards the great beast, decided he wanted the honors of the slaying himself. He held the furious khait by the horns and sliced a deep gash across his neck.

But to the astonishment of everyone watching, no lifeblood poured from the wound. Instead, the khait’s form seemed to shift right before their eyes, its great bulk shrinking beneath its flesh. Its golden hide fell open, and out from underneath climbed a human man. He was tall and handsome, with freckled skin that shone like bronze, and a thick beard and long curled hair the color of gold. He covered himself in his own shed hide, and spoke to the chieftain’s son with great disdain.

“You are a pathetic dogfaced excuse of a man, a liar and a thief. You live crawling so low that you can’t see a good thing standing right in front of you. If you won’t marry her, I will.”

And with that, he left the man and his entourage behind in astonishment.

The khait-man did not head back home straight away, but instead slipped into the brush where little egret and magpie were waiting for him. He had bidden his time under chieftain’s son’s care so that they could help him collect a great bridal gift.

He clothed himself in a fine cloak and skirt, and said farewell to the birds, who mourned their loss of lazy spent eating flies off his back. Hefting his gift onto his strong, broad shoulder, the khait-man made his way back to the little mud hut.

The farmer answered the call at his door with his daughter hiding behind him, frightened of this strange man. But as she looked at him she quickly recognized the gentleness in his eyes, the familiar sunlit shine of his hair, and her heart was glad.

The khait-man knelt and bowed deeply, and said to the farmer:

“I would like to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage. She is kind and gentle, hardworking and obedient, and more beautiful than the sun. I could not ask for a better wife.”

And the khait-man laid out his gift- rare and resplendent feathers, precious shells, fine wool, and his own lovely golden hide. This would more than cover the girl’s dower and the farmer’s loss of his khait, and leave him a hefty sum of wealth behind as well.

The farmer agreed to the proposal with great enthusiasm, and the girl and the khait-man were thus betrothed.

And so they were wed, and had many children. The girls were beautiful and the boys were handsome, but all were a little strange- their hair was shone gold like sunlight, and their skin was spattered in freckles like stars.