Surely they didn't notice her... surely she can just leave...
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Transcript
Talita rounds the end of the hallway leading to the recycling plant's exit atrium, looking for Mel.
Talita: Mel?
Mel is standing in the middle of the atrium, talking to four of the adult centaurs from yesterday. Talita freezes, then tries to quietly walk away before they spot her.
89 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 255”
Oodl
I am soo happy to have more examples of centaur type clothing and styles in comic yaaay
Athelind Llewellyn Long
Talita’s expression is channeling some serious Charlie Brown vibes in the last panel.
Daredevild
“I hope none of them noticed me”
The darker centaur is looking straight at her,,, Talita sweetheart something tells me you arent gonna be able to avoid them this time
Smooti
I would love to know how this whole situation was explained to the centaur clan here. Are they expecting Talita’s role to be like a worker marriage? Are they aware their direct supervisor is a clanless centaur, or will it be a surprise for them too?
holly...!
poor talita casually being thrust into the scariest social situation of her life
Jefffy
Can’t wait for Mel to find out Talita is there and rush to introduce them, all the while making Talita feel even worse with their oblivious desire to see her “properly” surprised, cutting her off, talking over her, etc things Mel is wont to do 🫠
MEL DIDN’T SEND FOR TALITA WHEN THEY ARRIVED THO, HOLY MOLY. Everybody talking about how rude Talita’s being standing in the doorway YARDS away from them when they haven’t even been introduced by the one who had them brought there. Jeepers. Makes me wonder when, if ever, Mel intends for them to meet.
But anyway, I really doubt Talita would blurt out how, in fact, not happy she is with the surprise with the other Centaurs right there, but now that I’ve said it I’m worried OnO
Me watching this all play out with a bucket of popcorn like 🍿 👀
aves
Yeah it’s wild that Mel kept being like “it’s a surprise for you :)” and also this is Talita’s own temp crew, but she wasn’t called in to meet them when they arrived? Like I know they’re not gonna get to work immediately, but Mel seems like the type to be VERY excited about the surprise they orchestrated, and want Talita there from the start.
Archieve
I suspect it comes down to Centaur workers being a profitable investment for the company (an by extention Mel) first and Talitas feelings coming second. It would be smart buisness wise to give their supervisor warning but Mel misses the mark alot with whats appropriate.
MRSELFDESTRUCT
yeah the way a lot of people are pushing that shes being rude is such a shallow perception of a otherwise insanely complex scenario for her. its like damn have you people never avoided a room in your home because there are strangers there? this is basically that x100 and even that is a very surface level analogy for this situation. especially considering its a literal surprise to her, id be unnerved and nervous as fuck abt approaching too!! its a Lot to take in.
S0glet
I wonder were the kids are.. jay said they are all around 8 or so so Mabye they are just chilling out at their new living space Mabye…?
blythe
one of the males are missing! they must be watching the kids :]
JoB
Well, they’re too grown for Talita to accidentally step on one as she tries to sneak away …
… clinging to the ceiling above her like proper little dropbears? >:->
(Those stretches of suspended ceiling in panel two gotta serve some purpose, after all!)
tyrone
Whats where they hide all the contraband..For logistical reasons is handy having it close to the exits/entrances.
HAL9000
talita girl you are being so fucking rude rn
TotallySomebody
Is she???
S0glet
Kinda imo, shes lurking around them just kinda staring at them in the background in a very concerned and disturbed manner at people who just got here and really don’t know anything about her.
forthebit
I don’t think she’s lurking or staring here. She was looking for Mel to have a personal conversation, froze (presumably in panic) when she found them not alone, then immediately tried to leave. The transcript supports that. I think she would have had a similar reaction if she came in on Mel talking with Adam and the other temps.
Phasma Felis
I don’t think she’s so much “staring” as “running away the moment she spots them.”
blythe
thank you for saying it
talita needs to suck it up fr and stop treating these people like. not people
Archieve
Thing is, that’s what Talita was trying to do here. She knew that when she found Mel she would have to be introduced to the other Centaurs. Unfortunately, extreme distress isn’t always easy to mask, especially when you have other factors like body/species dysmorpia at play.
Lezzlebit
Talita could be handling this a lot better, and also, she’s been put in a really tough situation (But I don’t wanna start a debate. Hopefully this is an agreeable sentiment)
hurgaburga
honestly yeah staring and then running off and hiding like an anxious child is definitely not a good first impression but STILL
hurgaburga
and yeah… she’s no stranger to just running away if she’s close to something she feels extremely anxious about. like she did the first like 3 or so times gillie and idrisah wanted to teach her sign langauge, they only managed to get her to actually talk it out and then comply was by gillie PHYSICALLY stopping talita from running off by grabbing her by the shirt. and her anxiety there was from her species dysmorphia, just like it is here. except it’s probably even worse
Jason Myers
Fuuuuck a lot of people here think this is so simple- just shove the girl raised with human culture her whole life to be literally alienated by her foster/sponsor parent. Like. Talita isn’t socially a centaur. People need to stop acting like what Mel is doing isn’t genuinely shitty. Like damn, this clan is a bunch of strangers to her, and Mel expects them to bond over species shit even tho Talita has more in common with a human socially than she ever will another centaur.
HAL9000
man aint nobody doesnt think what mel’s doing is pure shite but its not the fault of any of these centaurs. i dont find talita a relatable character but i have been in this exact scenario and shes still being rude as hell to these unaffliated people imo
Jason Myers
Imagine considering anxiety attacks ‘rude’.
c Senaru
Right! I’m absolutely baffled by the folks saying she’s rude or staring, she’s having an anxiety or panic attack or about to, she just wanted to try to talk to Mel like…Privately I assume first, and was shocked / startled seeing part of the group here with them. She’s going through some EXTREMELY complicated feelings and issues, the sort most of us haven’t had to deal with. There’s a whole other culture with them, how they work and do things, their social order and so on, springing this on Talita suddenly was a terrible thing to do. Without warning, she had no time to mentally prepare herself, both for dealing with them, how to work with them, and all the custom stuff she had to basically make herself she might now also have to (If she wasn’t Running Away to the Stars) make for them.
No time to even work through her own other personal issues going on, from Adam to her only friends leaving, the gorl is about to break. She’s in shock and frightened, maybe not specifically of the Centaurs themselves as people, but of the whole Everything encompassing. All the familiar is going out the window, she’s being thrust into a situation she should ideally have been talked to about, slowly introduced to, if there was no choice to decline in the matter. Her feelings mattered, but Mel isn’t considering anyone else’s but their own, because they think ‘wow I’m so great, Talita will be so surprised! :3!’ I feel so sorry for her. I would honestly not be surprised if she loses her shit, either in public or in private.
Jason Myers
Like literally I’m trying to wrap my head around how she’s being perceived as ‘rude’: she’s been forced into a social contract that she had no knowledge of beforehand, by a person that has mishandled social situations for her AND APPARENTLY MANY OTHERS, to the point of quitting. At the very bare minimum, it shows a clear lack of understanding of Talita as a person, it’s incredibly disrespectful towards her autonomy, and Mel is here acting like having Talita is a GREAT middleground for their human/centaur relations on site. You can’t just force somebody into a culture they’re not familiar with, and Talita already has social anxiety (which Mel might know about if they understood Talita as a person at all), and difficulties with respect from temp, AND she regularly shows species dismorphia/dysphoria THAT MEL SHOULD AS A CARETAKER ALSO KNOW ABOUT ALREADY. Talita is experiencing what I would imagine is an anxiety or even equivalent to a panic attack, and if having an anxiety reaction is rude, then none of us in these comments are safe from being considered rude.
blythe
so newsflash
that doesnt excuse you from being rude
think about how disrespectful and dehumanizing (for lack of a better word) this behavior is to other centaurs. a species already treated with fear. something that talita has experienced herself and is now doing to these random people! this would be like having anxiety attacks around black people specifically. you may not control it but damned if that isnt shitty! its your responsibility to curb that or get read as a racist instead.
austroraptor
seriously. I feel for talita here, I REALLY do, but rn she’s literally treating this centaur clan the way her previous temp crew treated her–like they’re something to gawk at and be afraid and uncomfortable around. it’s rude and unprofessional, full stop. yes, she didn’t ask to be put in this situation, and yes, she’s struggled a LOT with her identity as a human-raised centaur, but that’s not this clan’s fault??? could you imagine if you and your family went to work somewhere and your new boss (who is the only person in the whole company that’s the same species as you) kept LITERALLY running away from you like this 😭 also I can’t reply directly but “people need to stop acting like what Mel is doing isn’t genuinely shitty” like 75% of the comment section isn’t just people shitting on mel every single time they’re onscreen. LMAO
Phasma Felis
> this would be like having anxiety attacks around black people specifically. you may not control it but damned if that isnt shitty!
So, this is a shitty situation for everyone involved, and the blame for all of it falls on Mel for being so insensitive.
But.
Blaming someone for having panic attacks that you know they can’t control is a deeply shitty thing to do. Yes, it can be painful for everyone around them. That is *not their fault.* This is exactly the same as blaming someone with Tourette’s for being foul-mouthed.
This is a thing that people do in real life, and I really hope you won’t be this nasty if it happens with a friend or family member.
blythe
the statements “not their fault” and “is harmful” can coexist you know
my own breakdowns arent technically in my control. they are still absolutely my responsibility. it doesnt negate the harm it does. and if i werent actively managing it, then people would be right to call me out on it! the same goes for talita. she had to be forced to listen to gillie vs getting stifled by her dysmorphia. and it doesnt matter the reasoning if it kept happening enough times for gillie to finally snap at her. reasons are explanations and not excuses. talita is still responsible for how she reacts.
Art
Literally! How is she being rude?! She hasn’t spoken rudely to these people, she hasn’t been called over and refused/ignored them, she’s just trying to talk to Mel one on one. And Mel hasn’t even tried to introduce her to them yet! They’re so insistent on surprising her that they haven’t considered that she might need to mentally prepare herself for any of this. I get that Mel is doing this out of care, but it’s so, so clear they don’t listen to Talita when she tries to communicate her needs, so she gives up on trying to sometimes and that’s all they see.
Jason Myers
Also Talita is not some Centaur puppet that they can drag in and go ‘omg you guys will /TOTALLY/ get along, same species right~?’ It’s reading ‘yaoi fanfic writer trying to get their irl gay friends to fuck’
Thisfox
Your society requires us to walk up and introduce ourselves to new staff. But there are plenty of places where the rudest thing in the world is to even talk to someone to whom you haven’t yet been introduced. So yes, by your (Current, 2026, presumably American? I’m not, but I know Americans are forthcoming, so it’s a guess) standards, she is being rude. But I’ve actually once been told off for walking up and sticking out my hand and saying “my name is Fox what’s yours?” instead of waiting for the people who were intending to introduce me actually got to the polite stage of introducing their friend to the new people. Because introducing myself was rude. Someone is being very rude by not introducing her to the new blood, but I’m not convinced our beloved young centaur is the one being rude right now.
Also, Talita is downright terrified right now. I don’t blame her. Just as you are judging her behaviour from another point in time and culture, she knows she is about to be judged by her contemporaries on a set of social rules that she only vaguely knows about, and is sure she’ll get wrong. She is used to being the elephant in the room, but has gone to a lot of trouble to live in a place where she still calls the shots socially. That has just been taken from her, and it’s tough, especially as she’s already socially awkward, to know that she is trapped into this situation.
Athelind Llewellyn Long
On top of all of this, the one thing that Talita DOES know about Centaur culture is that when the humans asked the Centaur homeworld how to deal with the foundling, the answer was effectively, “if it was abandoned, let it die.”
sugar-goat
I love following rtts in real time <3<3<3 the wait between the pages (even just a few days) makes the progression of the story all the sweeter. I'm going to explode Mel is yucking up Talita's anxiety soooo much. Mel is such a good character but they remind me a lot of my grandma…
Pocoloco
I’m just gonna be zipping straight past poor Talita’s panic to focus on how freakin cute the little pictogram for an avian running on the exit sign is!
Lilac
Really Ominous author’s commentary! Hm! I wonder what will happen next page !
JoB
Talita: [knocks over suddenly-decloaking ceiling-high pyramid of cans, a third of them bursting open and spraying everyone with soda, the rest being empty to make more noise]
Lilac
Then its like the cartoon gag where she looks over nervously and they still haven’t noticed her and she wipes sweat off her forehead like “phew!” And walks away and then accidentally kicks a pebble or steps on a small thing and All of the centaurs and mell Immediately turn their head to look at her simultaneously
JoB
> and they still haven’t noticed her
Dammit, all that fine soda wasted for naught 😛
edenmachine5457
.to quote Idrisah from chapter 5, “But I don’t think avoiding them is a good strategy in the long run.” you’ve got to acknowledge it at some point, talita
Trees
Great advice, I imagine. Unfortunately neurosis is often immune to wisdom.
Vinemaple
It’s hard to take advice seriously when every previous time you’ve tried what you’re being advised to do, it’s ended badly for you.
There’s also the aspect that Mel is FORCING this on Talita, apparently without awareness of what they’re doing, despite the fact that they’ve known Talita since she was in the teen home. I can’t imagine that the way other Centaurs see Talita “just never came up.”
Idrisah, who comically failed to take her own advice at the time, was advising Talita to explore Centaur culture at her own speed, in her own way. Mel is shoving a bunch of Centaur strangers on Talita and requiring her to improvise an adequate working relationship with them, by the day they start work. Mel’s effectively taken away nearly all the control Talita would have of the situation, and raised the stakes considerably.
edenmachine5457
.ah, i failed to think of that! (genuine im not trying to be mocking or sarcastic here)
Trees
I agree with you on, basically, all points. This situation is has been thrust upon Talita and Mel continues to be a frustrating interlocutor…
but…
… I still think Idrisah’s advice is worth following (whether or not Idrisah follows it herself).
I can only speak for myself but I find avoiding a problem or uncomfortable situation, while incredibly alluring moment-to-moment, can quickly become is it’s own flavour of hell. Stewing in a sort of limbo of anxiety and uncertainty is horrid and the act of ‘screwing thy courage to the sticking place’ and addressing the source (for me at least) has been incredibly cathartic. The situation may not be resolved. It might not even be improved but I have found even the decision to take action in-and-of-itself is crystallising.
Jason Myers
Casually tattooing this to the inside of the audience’s collective eyelids.
blendjamin
fr! it’s kinda upsetting to me how little empathy some of the ppl commenting here have for talita’s situation. personally i find this a fucking nightmare. her boss will not listen to her needs bc they think they know best for her. they let everyone else on management know about this but her, the person who’s actually supposed to manage these temps. it’s also kind of racist of mel to assume this is what talita or the temps will want or need. like a white person setting up their only two poc friends on a date regardless of what they might have in common.
ETG.Dino
To make things worse I doubt it’s easy for talita to breath in those clothes.
JoB
Don’t worry, there are openings for her excurrent nostrils.
(Can’t have the props interfere with the possibility of the other centaurs noticing her presence by her heavy breathing, natch. 😉 )
Trees
How does the saying go? ‘If you want to starve an introvert, put a stranger in his kitchen.’
.
As an medium-to-heavy grade introvert myself I know the finely balanced evasive protocol of trying to circumvent the attention of a bunch of people you don’t want to talk to in order to get to the one you do, like a particle curving between magnetic fields.
God speed, Talita.
BlueJay
I missed dinner so many times in college because my roommates would bring guys over without warning 🥴
boopus
god, poor talita…
milk4evertoasted
TALITA NO.
Quad
Surely she’ll be able to get away… it’s not like there’s people in the room with enhanced hearing and a sensitivity towards moving objects or anything…
K
Waaaaaaaaah!! I can’t wait to meet the new centaurs. I’m so excited.
eden
so the fourth entourage member will be the new techie! why else would they not be apart of this tour?
Calcifer
I imagine they would be tending to the children. Since that’s the entourage’s job, at least one would have to stay behind.
Jay Eaton
That wasn’t an entourage member, that was one of the current matriarch’s “dads” i.e. one of the previous matriarch’s entourage. Whether or not that centaur is the current matriarch’s sire, mating between them would violate an incest taboo. The ex-entourage member is part of the “worker” pool, in simple terms, though they are very involved in childcare and spend most of their time with the current entourage. As you may notice “worker pools” in centaur clans are often are a lot more socially complicated and wobbly than the human exonym that lumps everyone in them together would imply. Particularly in small clans where almost everyone is family
zaratustra
this is my unc crew
milk4evertoasted
uncle crew!
milk4evertoasted
Im curious to find out who is who in the family 🙂
Calcifer
Oop- I stand corrected
blythe
oh is it perhaps the male who has two piercings like the matriarch? grandpa watching the kids.
Mica
I’m sure the story will take a turn before it becomes an answered question, but really I don’t think Talita will be able to lead these people if she can’t even cope with standing in the same room with them.
Accursed Dirt Boar
oh they already know, they have the same enhanced sences you do tali….
Gheesfellow
when you’re not used to having other kryptonians around:
Zidane
Recent pages have been so bad for Talita emotionally but so enjoyable for me personally because we have been getting so many fun expressions from her
Heather
LOVING panel 3. The neck fluff…
Fogblitz
Oooh I spy only 3 of the 4 entourage members. Is the fourth one off with the kids? :0