Gullet
- Kind
- Catfish
- Domain
- Deep creek pools and slow water
- Role
- Opportunist, downstream witness, reluctant informant
- Condition
- Hungry
An old, mud-coloured catfish with a broad head, long pale whiskers, and a mouth wide enough to make almost anything smaller than himself worth investigating. He is close to permanently hungry, and this is not a figure of speech.
Gullet's first interaction with Shae consisted of trying to eat her. When that failed he moved on to conversation with very little embarrassment. He is not malicious and does not consider himself a threat: from where he sits, attempting to eat an unfamiliar moving object is simply a reasonable first step in establishing what it is.
His priorities are food, water deep enough to live in, more food, and not exerting himself unnecessarily. That simplicity makes him unexpectedly valuable. He notices environmental change long before he understands it, because change alters what arrives in his pool. He does not talk about sediment load or habitat fragmentation.
He notices the minnows are gone. That is enough.
Appearance
Enormous from Shae's perspective. Mottled grey-brown, pale-whiskered, with a wide and perpetually hopeful mouth. He prefers to sit just under the surface with only his eyes and whiskers showing, which is not reassuring and is not meant to be.
Personality
Literal, patient, and intensely food-motivated. Not interested in explanations unless they bear on whether he is about to be fed. His dry manner makes it genuinely difficult to tell when he is being serious, a problem compounded by his habit of occasionally making a joke and then declining to acknowledge that he has.
Powers
| Power | Effect |
|---|---|
| Bottomsense | Feels disturbance through mud and water |
| Taste the Current | Reads change in water by taste and scent |
| Deep Pool | Knows the hidden hollows, channels and slow-water refuges of the creek |
| Anything Might Be Food | Investigates any unfamiliar creature or object by attempting to eat it |
Shae
He nearly ate her the first time they met. The relationship has improved only slightly since.
She finds him exasperating and useful — he experiences the creek from downstream, where damage accumulates before it becomes obvious anywhere else. He finds her too small to be satisfying and increasingly valuable as a source of information about whether the minnows are coming back.
He is still owed one minnow. He has not let it drop.