a moffit

This is a moffit. It is about halfway between animal and plant and fungus. It grows from the ground in dark places, but in each stage of life evolves - from a pasty light grey goo to a small dead bush looking plant similar to the “antlers” you see here, but without the nodules. The kind of ground it grows in is always loose, damp soil near large gold veins, so they’re exceptionally rare. L3 is a larger bush with nodules like these but sparser and larger, quite like glowing gold fruit ( and quite tasty if i do say so ).

The L4 moffit you see here sort of grows up, out of, and around the bush/tree. Then root-like structures shrivel and presumably get absorbed back into the moffit’s body until it finally disconnects from the ground. The lower “bark” disintegrates and is re-absorbed into the ground, leaving three short (2-3 feet long), furry tentacles of the same color as the fur you see here, but with vari-coloured stripes of pastel hues, by which it locomotes in this stage.

The fruit nodules fall off and likewise disintegrate into a puff of dusty smoke sort of stuff that twinkles as it falls to the ground and gets almost immediately absorbed into the soil. After testing the soil was found to be normal, so it’s believed that moffit chemistry is anti-alchemical and bio-regeneratively sustainable, turning gold into body parts. Then somehow the fruit completely reverses any other chemical or biological changes that occur along the way.

---

A moffit has several distinctive states of personality development in L4, which last as short as a dozen and as long as several hundred years at latest count. When it first detaches it is vicious with long sharp teeth and a thirst for iron, and therefore attracted to the smell of blood. After first feeding, any residual blood that is on their fur gets absorbed, they go into a seizure, loose any remaining nodules, and faint. They then autonomously curl into a ball and “hibernate” for about 3-5 years.

When they come out of the stupor they are bone and fur and their teeth have shrunken substantially, and otherwise look about as you see here with the first of the new nodules developing along their “antlers”. They grow in spurts every time a moffit L4 eats and make a sort of crunchy, tinkly, scrapey sound depending on what mood it’s in. This persists through L4 and theoretically into L5 somehow. Occasionally a nodule will fall off when the moffit moves very quickly. They can be collected and used to <redacted>.

Upon awaking they eat only leaves and other basic, raw organic matter. They are at this stage a drowsy, lazy creature that mopes around its den or other familiar living area, apparently in a state of ennui. They eat a lot and gradually the tentacles grow and their teeth shorten as they fatten.

After they are “satiated” for a period of weeks to months, but has been known to be as short as minutes, the nodules begin to flash on and off like fireflies, the larger ones more frequently and brightly than the smaller. Their mood improves significantly and they take on a personality something like a cat, aloof but occasionally friendly.

In this two developmental stages they have omnivorous teeth and will eat almost anything but prefer vegetable matter.

The next stage happens by all accounts randomly with no known trigger. They take on a dog-like personality, becoming gregarious and loyal, though not possible to train. They will take on the simple habits of their companion human or whatever more advanced creature is around them at the time, so house training and behaviour are automatic. They will follow you, protect you, and so on, but only on their own initiative and any attempts at force or coercion are doomed to fail. They will withdraw, curl into a ball with their tentacles wrapped around their body, and secrete a mucus that hardens them into a sphere, from which no moffit has been known to recover, though they still exhibit signs of life.

The moffit you see here is named <redacted>. It is of the <redacted> sex and lives with <redacted> in <redacted>, north of Wales. It is an example of the next emotional change and currently the longest living moffit at <redacted> years old. In this stage it develops basic cognitive skills on par with a human 4-6 yr old ( with great variations known ), and apparently even the ability to understand most language, though they don’t seem to react in any predictable way, and only communicate back with facial and tentacle gestures.

The next development is full cognitive capacities. It is tempting to compare them to human but they’re nothing like us. They read voraciously, eat sparingly of only the most rare and delicate fruits and seeds, or various small rocks which are swallowed whole and ejected from a second mouth between the tentacles after the needed amount of nutrient is absorbed. They become more solitary at this stage and typically do all the around-the-house work that they can get their hands on and actually accomplish (nothing intellectual in the human sense). The length of this stage seems to depend entirely on diet with more rocks indicating a shorter time before the next change.

The final stage we’ve observed is called The Drooping. The moffit begins to physically droop and their hair turns light grey, the same shade as their first form. They occasionally exhibit introspection or ennui. Their interest in books lessens and their diet sparsens. They increase their intake of water significantly, but usually release it (same method as above) very quickly thereafter, but with small particles of various minerals and nutrients formed into little pebbles with a goo similar to L1. Despite those changes their overall energy level seems normal.

L5 has not yet been observed but it is thought to be a tree with baby moffits in shimmering golden pods rather than fruit. After some arbitrary time in L4, a moffit picks a direction and heads to it. Nothing seems to stop or dissuade them. If there’s an ocean in the way they walk directly into it ( they exhibit no particular difference in biological activity being underwater or in several basic gases tested ). If there’s a volcano they go around and pick up on the same trajectory by some unknown inner sense. No one has managed to track a moffit to the end of its journey but twice one was tracked all the way around the globe repeatedly on a non-overlapping line before it was lost. If blocked or caged they will ensphere themselves as explained above.

---

These stages vary more and more broadly in quality and length as moffits “mature”.

Only several dozens of moffits have been known to exist, although suspected sites of moffit dens have been counted in the hundreds. They look remarkably similar in body but their fur has a variety of barely visible stripes in various configurations, resembling tabby cats, between moffits, their tentacle stripes are usually and their antlers always unique. Nodules at each stage of development <redacted>.

Moffit fur is exceptionally soft but has a static quality that attracts all kinds of tiny detritus. While on them the material is apparently absorbed, but after removing and spinning it, it just gets dirty constantly. For this reason it’s more typically used for dust mops than fur sweaters. They grow hair at different speeds depending on diet and mood but the correlations are still being studied. <redacted> grows faster than most and the host family makes a new sweater each year, given as the traditional holiday gift to someone you dislike. Moffit fur sweaters go for <redacted> if you can find one.

Moffit fur exhibits a number of other unique qualities including <redacted> and kevlar-like resistance to tearing. For this reason, several governments have invested <redacted> as of yet impractical to produce.

Moffits come in <redacted> sexes, of which three are <redacted>

In rare cases, moffits of <redacted> sex have been found to <redacted>

<EOF>