Skita

Basic Stats

Name: Skita
Species: Cartoon Draco-ferret
Elements: Wind and Fire
Height: 5' 8"
Weight: 180 lbs
Antipode: Aura

Heart-Wing Motif

A repeating component in many of Alex's works of art is a winged heart motif. They are sometimes one set of wings and sometimes as many as three pair. They vary in shape, size, and type, but they generally represent the free flight of the heart, freedom of emotion, and innocence. This motif is still present in Skita in that his passionate heart and his almost indestructible wings are his hidden motif.

Songs

Skita was inspired by lines from primarily two songs: Be Still (The Killers) and Something Wild (Lindsay Sterling feat Andrew Macmahon in the WIlderness)

A third song "The Call" By Regina Specktor shows the deeper aspects of his heart. It pertains not just to Alex but to any of his friends.

Some of the more inspirational and/or influential lines are quotes below.

Be Still

Be still Wild and young Long may your innocence reign Like shells on the shore And may your limits be unknown And may your efforts be your own If you ever feel you can't take it anymore

Don't break character You've got a lot of heart Is this real or just a dream? Rise up like the sun Labor till the work is done

Something Wild

You've got a big heart The way you see the world It got you this far You might have some bruises And a few of scars But you know you're gonna be okay

And even though you're scared You're stronger than you know

If you're lost out where the lights are blinding Caught in all, the stars are hiding That's when something wild calls you home, home If you face the fear that keeps you frozen Chase the sky into the ocean That's when something wild calls you home, home

The Call

It started out as a feeling Which then grew into a hope Which then turned into a quiet thought Which then turned into a quiet word And then that word grew louder and louder 'Til it was a battle cry I'll come back when you call me No need to say goodbye

Notes

Something Wild as a whole is something I see Skita singing to Alex on the day they left the world behind for something better. I also like to think of Andre MacMahon's voice in this song as what Skita might sound like when he's singing or even talking. As for something wild, ferret... what more is needed?

The line of 'Don't Break Character' is appropriate for an actor, a toon, and more.

Description

Anthro Dracoferret

Skita is a sable ferret with the usual brown gray fur and bandit mask, but his hands and feet end in fine sky blue scales, and both fingers and toes end in somewhat more significant claws. His tail is a stout affair with a thickness more like an otter's tail, and it ends in a broad spade with the same fine blue scales as his paws. His eyes are a much deeper blue that tends more towards the blue between sunset and night. If his paws and tails were not evidence of something peculiar being at work, his large draconic wings should make anyone think twice. Hefty rather than light, the bones that make up the struts do not show up as hard lines in the leathery membranes but smoother bumps with no definition to the joints. One could run fingers from inside to out along his wings and never catch on an edge of any kind. The red leading edge fades into a deep red-orange from top edge to bottom edge.

Of course, his colors are all cell shaded, a telltale sign of a toon.

Skita tends to grab what clothes are handy, but he is often found in jeans or shorts and a t-shirt. He is also prone to hiding under a heavy brown cloak of non-toon origin so that he can sneak around with out 'cheating' by using his Cheshire cat like invisibility skills.

Fuzzy bandit dragon

Although he is not a thief at all, the nickname has stuck. Because he has the colors of a sable ferret, he has the facial mask of brown fur around his eyes that earns him the nickname. This is one of Skita's earliest forms from Alex's childhood, and as Alex's drawings and thoughts about him changed, Skita changed with them. However, this oldest and perhaps purest essence of Skita remains a part of the digital toon.

The overall shape of Skita is long and thin such that one might think of him as a fuzzy noodle. This shape later became the ferret shape of his anthro form. As a full dragon, Skita is quite large. His head and slender snout are about six feel from nose to the back of his jaw, and his neck is another eight feet. Skita's chest is solid enough to give him some volume, but there is a larger distance between rib cage and hips much like a ferret that makes him look thinner than he is. His tail is well over twenty feet to the spade at the end, and from nose to tail tip he measures roughly seventy feet long.

Paws all share the light blue scales seen in his smaller form, and the last third of his tail including the space are also covered in light blue scales. His wings, total span nearly a hundred feet, are still hefty and smooth like leather with red along the leading edge fading to red orange by the time t one reaches the bottom of the wing. Except for wings, paws, and part of his tail, Skita is covered in dense fur suitable as protection in a fight and also as insulation against the cold in all the strange places he might fly.

Despite his daunting size, SKita isn't much different at this scale outside of being more accident prone and unable to use things Alex gave him later such as his pen and the ability to vanish. He is most likely to defend something as a dragon than attack as one, but there is something to be said for sitting on someone until they change their mind about being evil for the day.

Origin

Version 1

Trying to describe what Skita was at his origin is quite a challenge. He could be called something of a Cheshire cat. maybe a few parts guardian angel, but no matter how many called him imaginary, he was always real to someone. Alex was an artist, and while many artists are said to be a little out of their minds, Alex had the unfair burden of schizophrenia, or at least that is what they called it because Alex always had a friend that no one could see, and he had a hard time relating to anyone other than this person.

Alex was medicated early on, but in no way could they make this friend go away. Alex did, however, learn to hide it. Oddly enough, when his illness bent him towards delusion, his imaginary friend was his anchor. This friend's name was Skita, and Alex had been drawing him since he was four years old, and it was these drawings that began to give Skita a lasting shape. Alex survived college and even became an animator where Skita became a signature for him and something he tried to hide in images whenever he could.

Alex poured himself into one personal project, the sole fully animated cartoon of Skita as a hooded vigilante giving Alex's perceived enemies a swift kick in the ass, a phrase form which Skita got his name. It was never published by a company, but instead it lived online where the confident, devious hero of sometimes questionable methods racked up viewers, and some asked if there would be a sequel.

No one on Earth would see the next film because Alex's mental illness worsened, and he became hard to manage. Too good at hiding the degree of his illness, Alex eventually started to come undone, and that is when he heard a voice so familiar ask for something odd.

"Hey Alex, can I borrow your stylus?" Alex nodded to Skita and watched the creature he had made and drawn so many times snatch the stylus from desk. "Oh and I am borrowing this." Again Skita took something, a phone, from the table. He dialed something and then fiddled with Alex's computer. "Hey! DO you remember when that asshat in seventh grade got his nose broken and no one knew how? The guy that kept picking on you?"

Alex started listening more intently. "Yeah. Happened at his house, right?"

Skita grinned, "Yeah, I popped him one for you. Remember that girl you liked in high school? The one with the asshole boyfriend on the football team?"

Alex started seeing the pattern, "You're the one who clubbed him in the knees?"

Skita puffed his chest proudly, standing in front of Alex in all the glory of cell shading. "Yep. Worked well enough, but we both know what they really just needed was." At this point they both chimed in "A swift kick in the ass!" Skita grinned, "I have a truth for you. All those years they drugged you and chased off everything but me wasn't because the meds didn't work. It is because I have always been as real as you made me. Now everyone knows my face, but I gotta say, they should know yours. Besides, you're not in the best shape, bud. I guess that's what happened when you drop an angel down here."

Alex looked confused, more by the angel comment than any of the rest. "So what are you going to do?"

Skita smirked, "Me? We! There ambulance and more coming since I dialed 911, and they have just been listening to you banter since they can't hear me, or because I am not letting them hear me. We're taking you home, and we'll make everyone remember it?"

"You're taking me home? Angels? You mean, heaven? I get to go?" Alex's words and non-responsiveness to the operator ensured emergency services were on the way. Meanwhile, Skita was using the stylus to paint things on and around the house, things all in cell shading that set it apart from the rest of the house. He finished it with some kind of control console on the front porch.

"Alright captain, let's blow this joint!" Skita took Alex to the front porch and made sure to crank up Alex's stereo so loud it would annoy the neighbors. Fire, ambulance, and neighbors were all there to see a cell shaded creature standing next to Alex as he pressed buttons on a cartoon console. The whole house shook, and before anyone could get to the porch, the entire building lifted off with its foundation to leave wires sparking and water spraying in the hole that was a home. Cell phones were drawn, and the whole event recorded as Alex and his home flew into the up and beyond on cartoon engines and an imagination that would never die.

In that moment in and all the replays of the recordings, Skita proved he was real. Alex... they all knew now he was never ill. He was just a soul out of place looking for his way home. As to where he went, as Skita tells it he felt heaven could wait because he was going to the stars.

Once Alex was 'settled' in his neighborhood, he bid Skita to go back and 'do what you think you should.' He let Skita keep the stylus under the simple rule that Skita could use it of make things for himself or meddle with others, but he was never to change who he was with it. It was a rule Skita agreed with, and the toon returned to seek new audiences and make trouble with the two not being mutually exclusive.

Version 2 as told on Spindizzy

Tonight's story isn't quite like most told here so far. There are no great gods, there are no war heroes, there are no clever mages, and there are no cities, nations, or worlds in peril. This story is instead about one person, a single lost child and the road home. This child's name is Alex, and but for one other, I have known him for almost the entirety of his life. What he was put through was terrible, but I promise this tale does not end in tears or sorrow in the least. If I am going to start at the beginning, I must start not with Alex but with his home.

After wandering Spindizzy, I don't think there are many here who would be surprised at the existence of many worlds, dimensions, and otherwise in the universe. However, the tiny realm, compared to some at least, that Alex called home lies beyond the veil of death but not of the dead. It almost touched the worlds of dream, but it is isolate from them. Between the dead and the dreams lies a land we call the Everdark. Don't strain yourselves trying to imagine it. It is exactly as it sounds. This place is a no-man's land where all senses fail. Only the boldest and hardiest of beings and spirits dare challenge it, and many remain lost to it for eternity. Still, there are rare travelers between here and there. Some knew their way, and most of these were spirits like djinn, fairies, pixies, and the occasional dreamer. While this place was splendid, it was not as awe inspiring as other dimensions, but there was one place worth visiting.

On a high mountain peak, one man had erected his home and outfitted it with a great many telescopes aimed both up and down across land and sky. They belonged not to a mage, a spy, or a scientist, but instead they were used by a simple cartographer. Zill, the man in question, was a master at creating maps for places that were prone to extreme flux. You can think of him as the AAA of the planes of chaos. If you wanted to find a place or, if your intent was good, an object, he was the man you needed to see. A map drawn by Zill could re-draw itself in in real time, and it could even be made to warn you of dangers on the way. Some say he could even map the Everdark but no one has ever seen him do it. But there was one thing he refused to use the maps for: finding people. This might sound terrible as you could have used it to save someone, but I will come back to that.

The money, and more often gear, that was traded for these maps was given to the large village that existed at lower altitudes on the same mountain in exchange for necessities like food, medicine, and even stories and music. It also came to be that his fated soulmate also came from this village. The pattern of Zill's heritage included a peculiar tendency for the woman's name to be one advanced from the man's name, and in Zill's case, Aeris was Zill's wife. When their first son was born, as was tradition, his name started with the same letters as his mother's, and thus Alex came into this world in the usual way for the locality anyhow. For four years, Alex grew up in a peaceful home with fairies for friends, and together they listened to the whispers on the wind and made up their own stories from the fragments they heard. However, four years was all that fate was willing to allow.

Enter our first villain. He was no dream nor was he dead. A recurrent nightmare, but not the kind you can wake up from. A stalker and a killer, the assassin's arrival in the mountain town had most hiding in their home and hoping he would leave soon. His intended destination was Zill's home. Thankfully his target was not Zill or his family because he needed something from Zill. You see, his current commission was extremely well guarded and incredibly hard to locate. He needed a map to this person, direct or indirect, so that he could kill them. As I mentioned, Zill would not make any such map for anyone for any reason. A wise man himself, the assassin knew he could not kill Zill and get what he wanted, nor could he slay any of his family to get the necessary result. He thought he had a way to motivate the map maker though. A few days after he left, when the town recovered from the shock his arrival, the assassin returned. It wasn't until Aeris called for Alex to come to dinner that both she and Zill realized something was wrong. Alex was nowhere to be found.

With an unconscious child in a bag, the assassin traveled to the edge of the Everdark. However, he did not make the entire trip unnoticed, a fact he was not unaware of, and while one fairy flew back as swiftly as she could to Zill and Aeris, the other snuck into the bag with Alex. She knew she couldn't take on the assassin, but she couldn't leave Alex along either, and so she was with young Alex when he was cast into the Everdark. If Zill was to ever find his son again, he would have to make a map that located a person. If he made one map of such a format, he could not claim the moral high ground any longer and would have to make more maps. It would only be a matter of time before what he needed would become his. The assassin was wrong though, and even at the loss of his son, he would not make the maps.

Alex awoke in the Everdark. His companion, a Wisp fairy, meaning a moth-like fairy that glows at night, was unable to make any amount of light that could pierce the darkness, but they had physical contact with each other. As best she could, she had Alex sleep while she tries to navigate. She knew less about where to go and more about where not to go. Navigating in the Everdark is a lot like trying to find a special hidden island where only those that have been there before can get back. The land of dreams could get them as lost or even worse than they already were, and the land of the dead was out of the question. That left only going through, and using what little she knew, Wisp drifted with Alex for a time unknown until Alex fell as a spirit into a terribly banal world compared to theirs. The only thing Wisp could do was start him over here, and thus Alex was reborn as a human in a very human world.

It took four years for Alex to catch up in body to where his spirit remained, and those four years left him looking like a very plain, healthy young boy. Unseen, Wisp had to stay close to Alex in order to sustain her life as there just wasn't enough spirit to this place of science, technology, and cliche to fuel her. However, she was around long enough to see Alex's magic grow and finally emerge as the four year old picked up a crayon and drew. It was a jagged line with a couple of others lines poking off of it. As scribble of red on one end was supposed to be fire. In Alex's mind, it was a masterpiece, and he loved his drawing dearly. His parents said it looked like a fuzzy noodle dragon, and so the name was coined and later shorted to Fuzz.

What his parents didn't know and Alex did not yet understand is that he had made something. Not just a drawing but a life. Fuzz was just the beginning of a powerful spark that start growing into more beings and more worlds. From then on until sixth grade, Alex was regarded as a creator and a very imaginative youth. He loved to write, but he loved to draw even more. Seeing their son excelling with art, they went so far as to buy him a very expensive art tablet. Some might have enjoyed it while novel and then set it aside, but not Alex. Control Z just made life easier, and soon he was immersed in creation with this tablet, and it was not by chance that the first thing Alex drew was Fuzz in all his glory. Over the years, Fuzz's designs became more elaborate and better defined. Red and orange wings, blue scaled paws, spaded blue tail, and seventy feet of ferret-like fuzz. Of course, some of you might be guessing about who that is now. Fuzz was his parent's name for the drawing, but Alex hadn't given this one a name of his own yet. Not until he heard his father grumbling about someone at work needing a swift kick in the ass did Alex pick a name. He knew I was right behind him when he gave me my name even if no one else could see me. Skita was to be my name, and butt kicking the bad guys was my job!

Alex survived elementary school without too much bullying, and his art was only getting better. What no one realized was that he was drawing things he could see but they could not. Not hallucinations though. He could see beyond the veil like Zill could see and map distant lands. These beings Alex made flocked around him and only grew more numerous with time as the realms Alex imagined expanded. Unfortunately, Alex had an easier time playing with the world he made and its inhabitants rather than the human world he lived in, and worried about him started growing as he withdrew from the world steadily. His habit of talking with me and others also made some think he was crazy. Still, he made it four more grades before life took a darker turn.

Not many would pick on Alex despite his struggles. Well, they definitely did to begin with, and beanpole Alex had nothing on groups of three or four jocks or otherwise trying to start a fight. That only lasted so long though because I was always there. The first time, I picked the largest guy and gave him such a wedgie that he yelped a couple octaves up as a result. The others I could trip or smash into lockers. Alex got in trouble once when they claimed Alex had done such things to him so I fixed that too! I repeated the punishments when they were all in the middle of different classes, and boy did that leave them all wondering! Alex didn't want me to really hurt anyone, so I never did much more, but I think he was starting to realize I was more than just a drawing.

Eventually, we ended up in a stale office where every click of the wall clock sounded like a hammer in the silence. Alex's parents had long conversations with a stuffy fellow. They showed Alex some funny looking cards and asked him a lot of questions about his drawings, who he talks to, and even about me. Neither of us understood what was going on, but all I could do was stay close to protect Wisp, who was hiding in a shirt pocket, and Alex. That is when it all started to fall apart. Schizophrenia they called it. As for us, we were delusions and hallucinations, so they started giving Alex little pills to take every day. He hated them, and we hated them. For a year we fought a losing war with that person and his stuffy office and things Alex's parents would make him do. I couldn't do anything to them because I knew, really, they cared about him. They were trying to protect him from himself and from us, but if only they understood we were on the same side.

The smaller spirits and creatures suffered first. Wisp was forced to build a domain for the others to hide in as the pills made a strange mist fill the world. It wasn't lethal, but it was cutting them off from Alex. Month by month the mist grew thicker as his ability to see beyond diminished. Eventually even Wisp had to leave and hide because she would die otherwise. I could only hope I could find her again because there was one thing no pill could push away: me. Alex knew it too, and I think he was grateful, but what we learned what that we had to hide our interactions. Unfortunately, he started to have trouble hearing me, so at times his talking to me was more of a prayer. He hoped I heard, he hoped I was there, and he hoped he was not alone.

Alex learned to fake a lot of things to avoid having to take more pills. He hated those things. They made him tired, made him feel flat, and they stymied his creativity. Still, somehow he managed to get into art school, and he even ended up with a job as an animator. Drawing was still his passion, and that was one thing that they did not try to take away from him. He never lead a studio, but he did make it far enough to lead some teams. The stress strained the medication though, and he made it all the way into his mid-thirties before he couldn't bring himself to shovel in another fist full of disgusting medicine. He had been using them for so long though that the rebound from it was overwhelming. He was like a beacon to us, and everyone was just about ready to rush back to him, but the visions and the emotions were more than he could handle. There was one big bad guy he couldn't fight, and one he needed saving from. The world was killing him slowly, and without his meds, his abilities caught up and became even more powerful, but depression stole his motivation.

Alex was on a knife's edge. On one side he could fall back in line and just survive his life here. On the other side of the blade, he could let if come and, most likely, kill him. Alex's heart remained beautiful through all the years, but in remaining so, it was not hardened and easily wounded. I didn't like either option, so I decided it was time to try for a third option: take away the knife. At this point, Alex knew I was there nearly all the time, and we went back to hushed chatter and sneaking around. He'd been playing video games and watching movies when he decided by fuzzy body took up too much of the house. He gave me this form instead, something a little easier to get around in, but still capable of living up to my name. It was the last thing he drew though. I watched when he set the stylus down, and I saw him leave everything with it. Motivation, joy, wonder, everything, so I did all I could do.

Pointing to the stylus, I asked, "If you aren't using that, mind of I give it a try?" Alex shrugged and slumped in his chair. He didn't realize that he has just allowed me to enter into his world directly. He thought I was still just a vision or something, and he didn't second guess me when I asked for his phone. If my capacity to care and love comes from him, then you all might be able to imagine why I had to do something, anything, to save him. I thought about flying the house away, but how do you make a house fly? Houseflies? Ugh! No, that is gross, but the idea was there. I knew where we needed to go for Alex's sake and for Wisp and all the others, but this was going to take something extreme. I walked out the front door and set to work.

We needed to fly, so rockets were in order. regular ones would probably blow us up, so I opted for a sort of space engine rocket quad copter design. The house needed a shield over it, but that was easy. Everything could be painted in with the stylus. and a couple extra layers. Some of the neighbor kids stopped playing in the yard when they saw me. Everyone could see me now as well as everything I was doing. I needed a real audience and something to prove everyone wrong though, so I made an emergency call to make sure we'd get some party lights at the house. With maybe three minutes before they arrived, everyone was piling into the guest rooms, kitchen, office, everywhere to get a ride home! AS they filed in, I went to get Alex.

"It's time for us to go, Alex." He wasn't sure what I meant, but he took my paw. I brought him to the front porch where I placed the main controls for the engines. "Primed and ready for flight." Alex was confused, and the incoming emergency vehicles made him nervous. Everyone was coming out with cameras and phones though to catch the action of whatever the heck was going on. "Where are we going to?" Alex asked of me. "I figured your other home, but there's no itinerary. By the way, that button." The largest, candy red button on the panel was, of course, the engine start. "Why are they all taking pictures of my house?" That made me laugh, "Because everything you ever saw was always real. Let's give them something to talk about."

Alex punched the button, and with a roar and smoke, as well as lots of folks running for over, the whole house shoot. The whole foundation started to come up from the ground, electrical wires sparked as they tore loose from the house, and water sprayed everywhere! Some were will out there recording while wide-eyed police and medics stared at a home on cartoon propulsion rose into the air. Alex stared at me, and the house tilted sideways before I planted his hands on the wheel. That was when he finally started to realize he wasn't sick, he didn't need to use medicine any more, and that his world was much larger than he thought it to be. He was still strung out so much that up and away seemed the only escape, and so with a wave to the kids across the street, he started for the sky!

The world below faded and vanished as he took us into the clouds. ON the other side of them, we could see the gates to some local utopia, or perhaps just some winged hippy hangout, but Alex pushed us up and onward. Looking over the railing, he could see the little ball of blue he called home, as as much as he always wanted to be an astronaut, his heart called him somewhere else. Somewhere in the space between the stars, we found the passage to the Everdark. However, it could not pierce the borders of Alex's home for his magic was stronger as were the lives inside his house. It still took Wisp to guide us back the way she came, but at last we broke through and into the mountains that had been Alex's home. There on the mountain top, one house met another as Alex parked his flying abode next to Zill's.

After all that time, and a few more kids, Zill and Aeris never gave up on Alex, not in their hearts by any measure, so when he finally came home there were plenty of joyful tears. Much of what I told you was relayed to them, and it raised the question of where Alex would stay now that he had found his way home. As Alex saw it, he had two homes, two pairs of parents, and both of them loved him, so it came down to me to do one last errand for Alex before he set me loose on everyone else's worlds. I knew my way now, so through the Everdark I made one last journey. I could tell Alex's human parents loved him dearly when their finding me at their door was not met with shock or anger but with only wanting to know where he was. I was pleased to hand them an envelope containing a special map and four short sentences. "I'm safe. I'm happy. I love you. I will see you soon." That is all Alex wrote in the card. I turned to leave, but I was grabbed by the wing and invited in, so I stayed to tell them more, much as I have told you here.

I can't rightly say what they did after that, but I like to think they found their own way with that map to a place where two families could meet. Now and again I hear from Alex and we trade stories, but that is how I came to be, and how I came to tell you story. Thank you all for listening.

Abilities

Magic

Fire

Fire is one of Skita's primary offensive abilities which gives him some degree of fire resistance and the ability to breath fire.

Air

Air is most often used by Skita to enhance his flying ability or knock people and things around with powerful gusts of wind.

Illusion

Coming from a background of imaginary friends, Skita can make any amount of his body vanish. He can limit who sees him as well, but he rarely makes use of this skill. He prefers, most of the time, to be up front and troublesome rather than sneaky.

Stylus

The most dangerous thing in his possession, Alex's digital stylus grants Skita the ability to paint and alter reality. As fast as he is, the bigger the mangling of reality, the longer he needs to finish it. It also requires the most concentration, and keeping a ferret occupied with anything for more than a few minutes is always hard.