Original info

Origin: Abnormal | Nature: Unnerving | Boundary: Mangrove swamp | Size: Stretchy
Species: Esk | Collection: MYO | Designer: hitodama89

Uncommon traits: Sleek, bright markings, stripes
Rare traits: Manx, bright mask
Nature features: Fairy fingers (Clavaria fragilis), common puffballs (Lycoperdon perlatum)
Mutations: Long body, multiples (legs), underdeveloped (eyes), animal trait (segmentation), shape shift (length)
Original form: Shed caterpillar skin

Enchantments: Aura vision

Biome: Fresh waters
Boundary: Mangrove swamp
Haunt: Fairy ring
(Reference photos)

Ownership: hitodama89
- can gift, swap (esk only)
- cannot trade (non-esk), resell
Owner history: Gifted via wellspring to hitodama89

Personality

By personality Mistake is a proper enigma: it's close to impossible to tell what's going on in its head. It hasn't shown any signs of having a preference over certain pronouns or even if it truly understands the concept of names. When asked to identify itself it occasionally answers with the very first sentence it remembers from the time it became sentient, This Was a Mistake, so that's what most others have started to call the peculiar creature.

Mistake seems to spend most of its time in its own little world, not really paying much attention to things happening around it. It examines things it encounters curiously mostly by touching them with its face and paws and does it the same way whether its current subject of examination is a rock, a piece of trash or another Esk. It doesn't have any sort of understanding of social norms or why it should stop touching someone when they tell it to stop, but fortunately Mistake is a rather slow and small creature so it's not hard to physically avoid contact with it. It also doesn't seem to mind even if someone shoves or downright throws it away; it simply continues looking for something else to do, be it floating in a river for a week or tangling its stretchy body into a tree. Or even talking to itself, because even if the tiny Esk can go long times without muttering a single word, it can in fact produce (telepathic) speech. However it only repeats things it has recently heard, not being able to talk about things completely on its own. If someone manages to catch Mistake on one of those talkative days, it is possible to try to have some sort of conversation with it. More often than not the words it repeats don't make any sense in the context it uses them in, but then, just often enough to take others completely by surprise, it sometimes manages to say something actually insightful. It's not known if those rare moments really prove anything of the creature's mental capabilities or not, but they certainly add their own layer to the mystery of the wormy Esk.

Appearance

Mistake is a caterpillar-like Esk that in its basic form is small enough to fit into a person's palm, but it can also stretch its body length-wise to anything from 20 cm to 100 m. In the stretched-out form the body doesn't grow in size and the amount of body parts doesn't change, so the creature ends up looking unnaturtally long and thin. It might seem even quite disturbing, but the base form on the other hand could even be called somewhat cute. The Esk's elongated, tailless body is segmented into eight parts, it has six stumpy legs and almost unnoticeably small eyes that have barely any vision at all, being able to see just changes in light conditions. That's why Mistake observes the world around it mostly through other senses and its Enchantment called Aura vision. While active the Enchantment looks like a large glowy eye that floats on top of the creature's round head. It allows Mistake to sense auras - the life force - of all soul-bearing creatures around it, including plants, animals, humans as well as Esk and other wandering spirits. The colors of auras vary from being to being, so the Esk can tell something about the nature of every being it faces just by looking at them with the Enchantment. Speaking of colors, Mistake itself is physically a rather pale-colored sight. Mosth of its short fur is nearly white while its extremeties are more visibly light blue and have faint stripes going around them. The Esk's nature features are pale yellow puffballs and fairy finger mushrooms that grow in six clusters on its backside.

Life

Mistake began its existence as a part of a Cloudless sulphur caterpillar, more precisely as its skin. In time the animal shed its old exoskeleton and while caterpillars often eat the parts they've shed, this time the old skin fell off from the leaf before it could be devoured. It didn't lay abandoned for long before an Esk, Someone Else, found it. She had been looking for someone she could transform into one of her kind as an experiment and now she thought she had found a perfect subject in the form of a dead caterpillar. But because the thing she had found was actually just the discarded skin it didn't contain the soul of a living creature, so the transformation turned accidentally from a normal one to abnormal. As soon as the transformation was completed Elsie noticed that the newly born Esk looked rather unusual, but that alone didn't bother her a whole lot. What did shock her much more was that the creature didn't speak a single word but instead started to stretch seemingly uncontrollably. After some fruitless attempts of trying to communicate with the being she uttered "this was a mistake" and ran away in terror. After that Mistake has been alone in the world, wandering from one place to another without much understanding of what is going on around it.

Tidbits

• Mistake's "voice" (Esk use telepathy) also mimics the voice of the creature the Esk's
  current words are loaned from, although not perfectly.

About the character

• Created in 2021.
• Esk is a closed species created by witherlings.
• Masterlist entry can be found here.

Art permissions

• Everyone can draw this Esk mostly without needing to ask permission first!
  Permission is only required if you want to show this Esk:
• Interacting with another character
• Doing something that might permanently affect its life
• Doing things that might be against its nature.
• Currently Mistake has just been tranformed and has no idea what is going on.
  It can wander to anywhere in the world, including conservatory and even the past.