Full Name: Sangreal
Sangreal is a Pistrix, the co- protagonist of "Fish Don't Cry," the first book in the Odyssey saga.
Appearance
Sangreal is a relatively large Pistrix for its age, with a total length of six meters and forty-two centimeters. However, he's still young and could reach a length of thirteen meters. He has clear blue eyes, with an exceptionally high-performance tapetum lucidum that makes them highly reflective and gives it the characteristic "shiny" effect in dim light, even when the ambient light is very dim.
His body has an articulated, human-like torso, which is grafted onto a body that could be compared to that of an oarfish: very long, laterally compressed, and with a red dorsal fin that starts from the middle of its shoulder blades and ends just before the tip of its tail. Of the approximately 400 rays of the dorsal fin, the first six are elongated to varying degrees, forming a crest with diamond-shaped flaps of skin at the tips of the rays.
His mane is semi-stiff, with the tips always tending to point upward.
His skin is scaleless, and his body is covered with a layer of guanine that gives it a silvery, reflective appearance, almost mirror-like in its smoother areas.
Sangreal initially appears as a typical male pistrix, with a slender body and a thick, carmine-red beard, pigmented very similarly to its fins. Like all pistrix, he can change sex if its chosen mate is of the same sex and if it is the larger of the pair (it is always the larger individual that becomes, or remains, female, to maximize egg production), which is why his appearance changes slightly in the second half of his life.
He is fortunate enough to enjoy a plentiful, high-quality diet, so even during his female phase, he retains his full beard (which is generally minimal or almost absent in females), even as he grows in size and his muscles become more prominent, while his lower body becomes capable of storing fat.
Personality
Sangreal almost always appears calm, with a proud and elegant bearing, so much so that humans who encounter him often fail to understand his true nature.
In reality, Sangreal is enthusiastic about new things and full of joy over the little things in life, but the way he speaks and moves is influenced by his need to conserve energy, typical of his species that lives in the cold depths of the sea.
Like other specimens in his community, Sangreal speaks fluent French.
Despite his enthusiastic personality, his desire to be kind to everyone and meet new people, Sangreal feels terribly lonely, useless, and lacking in qualities. His species prioritizes pairing, but he has never been chosen by another individual, and at his age, it seems difficult, even impossible, to find someone to share the rest of his long life with.
Pistrix do not live in family groups, nor do they form lasting bonds of friendship beyond that of a pair. Instead, they begin testing each other from childhood, choosing a mate as soon as they reach adulthood, usually confirming the "special relationship" they began to form years earlier.
Sangreal, at the moment of his choice, was rejected by the young female with whom he had formed a special bond.
To avoid living alone, he was forced to live with his grandmother, a huge female pistrix who had lost her mate and who always encouraged him to stay home and help her. Although completely normal in other cultures, this coexistence caused Sangreal's reputation to plummet. He was unable to find another mate, mocked for his increasingly clumsy courtships. In fact, some females did find themselves interested in him, particularly because of his growing beauty, but by then Sangreal couldn't even perceive their advances, his self-esteem so shattered that he was convinced he was utterly repulsive and unworthy of the presence of other members of his species, and this believe was reinforced by his grandma.
Sangreal, no longer having to protect his offspring or spend time with his ideal partner, ended up focusing primarily on food, of which he became a connoisseur. Its ability to find high-quality krill, and even to farm some species of crustaceans with high nutritional and organoleptic value, has made him better fed than the average specimen of his species, resulting in his fins being particularly red (due to the carotenoids ingested and the general composition of its food) and his beard particularly developed, making it an aesthetically ideal specimen. I
His taste for food has only grown over time, but so has the "refinement" of his palate: Sangreal is particularly picky, unable to tolerate the taste of nutrient-poor foods, or those containing the wrong nutrients.
He likes to try everything, and is certainly interested in human food, but most cooked and/or fermented foods deeply disgust him.
He particularly loves foods rich in fat and protein, and his diet normally consists exclusively of highly nutritious crustaceans.
Sangreal also enjoys very much talking to open-minded, willing people who understand his complex and profound feelings, which to some humans can seem vaguely alien.
Trivia
- Sangreal has had a passion for "sea monkeys" (Artemia salina) ever since Professor Seraphin Panorme showed him videos of them being raised.
- Sangreal has difficulty telling male humans from female humans (although he is improving, he will probably never be able to tell 100% of the time).
Gallery (click to enlarge)
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🌵🎨 All the drawings on this page (and probably on the others too, unless otherwise specified) were made by our artists, Furiarossa e Mimma.🌵🎨.
