Welcome back to the past, that is.
Transcript
The view pulls back to show three people seated around the coffee table in a kind of break room, with a sink and cabinets in the background. An e-panel on the wall with a mangled pen cord shows smiling human children and the name "Garriton Teen Village." Mel is younger, with less grey in their hair and no beard. Otília is a middle-aged tabby catgirl, with striped hair in a loose braid over her shoulder. The other person is a bald man with a thick white beard, black metal band shirt, ear piercings, and sparse eyebrows.
Mel: Yes, I’d love to talk more with her.
Otília: I texted her, but she’s still in her room. Even alien teens are moody, apparently.
The man looks over his shoulder out the window and mutters to himself in Portuguese.
The man: Hm. Ela está nos espionando…
Otília: Mel, anything you'd like to ask before your prospective foster arrives?
Mel: Well… Is it true she was anonymously surrendered in a pet carrier?
Otília turns to look at the man on the couch.
Otília: Ask Doug. We only got her at 15.
Doug: Yes. She was six months old, recently pupated. Only this tall.
Doug gestures with his hands, showing a height of about 30 centimeters.
Inset panel: A pet carrier shows two familiarly round eyes peering out of the darkness behind the wire door.
Mel: Wow.
Doug: Could run, though. Like a little cat.
Doug smiles, Mel strokes their chin incredulously.
Inset panel: A little naked creature covered in a coat of wiry spotted feathers runs out of the pet carrier on six long knobby legs ending in tiny four-toed bird-like paws with hooves, with round staring eyes above dark eye-stripes, a tiny tucked trunk, and two tiny spinnerets where a tail might be on an Earth animal. It is familiarly Talita-shaped, but of infantile proportions.
37 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 214”
MyUniverseinaBox
DOUG !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lilac
Extremely Younger Mel…..
Claire
Did Mel see Dougs beard and decide to just… copy that style?? It looks nearly the same, stylizing and all.
EnchantressEmily
Flashback time! Mel sure looks different without the beard they have in the current timeline.
EveryZig314
Baby Talita. Skill: Scuttling, Presumably
HAL9000
off topic but this is the first time we’ve seen an “on-model” catgirl gmh. fluffy tail…
Entguarde
She’s spying on us!
Vinemaple
It’s present tense?
cain
Seems to be present tense, yes.
Calcifer
Talita’s surrender to the foster home has always been so interesting, because it’s a mystery we’ll never get to find out the answer to. I always wonder what events led to her ending up at that doorstep. It’s entirely unlikely a centaur clan would bother dropping her off there under any circumstance considering their attitudes on culling unwanted young, let alone the lack of logic in turning her over to a bunch of aliens, so what happened? Did a matriarch visiting Jovia have a recently pupated litter and one just… got away? I could imagine a human finding her long after her clan has disappeared, recognizing her as a sophont, and turning her into a foster home because they have no clue what the hell to do with her.
Oooor maybe it’s just a much darker answer of her being trafficked as though she’s some exotic pet, and someone felt guilty enough to turn her in.
It’d be cool to have a short story about it, but I’m going to hazard a guess that that’s not happening. I imagine we’ll remain as much in the dark about it as Talita herself.
Vinemaple
I’ve read that the orphanage suspected sophont trafficking, which raises even more worldbuilding questions…
Vinemaple
Oh, you DID mention that. It’s right there. Sorry.
Shin
Admittedly i don’t work in foster care, but I can’t help but raise an eyebrow at the fact that, when learning about their prospective charge, instead of asking about things like ‘what does she plan on going to college for’ or a logistics question like ‘do you have a list of accommodations we should work on implementing,’ Mel instead went more towards gossip. Perhaps this is an ungenerous interpretation, as Mel does seem to try to be kind, but…
bryn
I noticed that too actually, it stuck out to me. I do think it’s intentionally characterizing Mel as having… misplaced priorities
Enai
I mean, the “what are your general life plans” questions are best asked of the adolescent concerned, aren’t they? Best not to prejudice oneself with the opinions of the current guardians, who may or may not actually know what Talita wants. I would also wait to ask those until she arrived and ask embarassing “so, what was she like as a toddler” type stuff out of her hearing (I realise Doug thinks Talita can hear the group talking, but Mel doesn’t know that).
furubatsu
At best I can assume Mel is trying to confirm just how Talita wound up in foster care so they know whether or not there is like, a record of birth parents out there who might want/have contact with Talita somewhere. That feels like a reasonable thing for a foster parent to want to know, the problem is its Mel asking this so it just comes out with weird vibes from ’em
Vinemaple
This, exactly. We know what Mel is like, or at least what Talita and Calcery think of them, so we’re going to see that in everything they do. That college story makes it hard to respect Mel, but I remember Jay very specifically mentioning, in an AMA artist comment, that Mel’s divorce was a very normal people-growing-apart problem, which to me suggests that Mel’s personality flaws may be less extreme than we’ve collectively assumed.
un_pogaz
The comments from others speculating about a conversation on Dirtball made me doubt myself, but I should have trusted my instincts that it was indeed a flashback: Doug’s hand was far too recognizable.
Also, the fact that the characters are easily recognizable just by their hands, bravo, great design feat.
Else, I love how Talita can’t fool Doug’s because he know her too well.
JoB
I just noticed that I have no idea how much effort centaurs spend in childcare for imagoes; larvae and pupae are rather literally glued to mom, but imagoes could range anywhere from “still the matriarch’s prerogative”, to “let them run, the more bugs they catch on their own, the less we have to feed them”, to “I swear, those tykes keep the entire clan busy!”. Do the depths of the lore hold any info on how large a hoofprint Doug had to fill?
eden
the entourage also take care of imagoes! I like to imagine a handful if stay t home dads herding cats
Vinemaple
It may have evened out… a centaur brood of six would have most of the entourage looking after them, but Talita was a singleton, and much easier to secure, until she could outrun humans and be too big to pick up.
bryn
seeing talita as a baby makes me so incredibly happy ;w; <333
blythe
oh so mel was gonna adopt her…
TheOneandOnlyVoid
Foster not adopt. Talita never got adopted.
furubatsu
Mel being the one to foster Talita just as she aged out of the foster system is just one of the many reasons her relationship with them is so…(wiggles hands) they became her legal guardian when she went to college and then hired her as her boss/manager.
And then there’s Mel’s general Melness, I can imagine why Talita feels awkward approaching Mel about their “surprise apartment” they’re making just for her, no other surprises in the works.
Madame Thunderbone
You can say it. Mel is that ever-irritating balancing-point between being a busybody and a flake, an intersection that results in an individual who, while undeniably well-meaning, rarely consults others on drastic changes and upon ever doing so only truly understands the feedback half the time anyway, and ultimately ends up barreling through delicate social issues with all the grace of a freight train.
edenmachine5457
.omg the portuguese. my girlfriend knows portuguese so she translated for me- it says “Hm. She’s spying on us…” FASCINATING implications. im guessing talita has access to the cameras here or is just looking through a window
Atuada
More likely she can hear them
Peter Jensen
“Talita is a habitual snoop… people don’t generally know the extent of her hearing so she keeps getting away with it :/”
https://www.runawaytothestars.com/comic/rtts-page-199/#comment-14981
Of course, Doug knows her very well and is no doubt aware of the extent of her hearing and likely also her tendency to eavesdrop.
edenmachine5457
.INCREDIBLE foreshadowing-ish on jay eaton’s part that is amazing (both with that page and in the comment!)
Teod
Okay, who can read the metal band logo?
TERRA[SFA?][TY?]
JoB
I’m reading “TERRAFATY”, but I’m not 100% certain that the remaining strokes around the “F” are indeed ornamental (to make the logo look symmetric), rather than a particularly dismembered letter …
Falconette
Baby centaur, built for grabbin’. I want to chase her like lizard and hold her like cute lizard that probably doesn’t want gentle head scritchies but will get some anyway.
astrobun
scrunkle toddler SPOTTED
sugar-goat
DOUG!!!!!! I love Doug so much I’m so happy he’s here ^-^
Vinemaple
Jay has returned us to the Doug
PedraGata
seeing the Portuguese in this makes me smile 🙂