Sickness & Health
While I'm not getting a ton of writing on the Monstervore book done, the ideas never stop flowing from my young world-builder. Naturally, lately some of the ideas have to do with diseases in Kabos.
Sometimes she has a name, sometimes a symptom, sometimes a cure--and then it's up to me to ask her enough questions to tease out the rest of the answers. So while there's no COVID in Kabos, here are some things to watch out for:
* Dream Laughing: Whenever you fall asleep you start laughing, which means you don’t get very good rest and neither do the people around you.
(Shown: her pretending to work on a 'medicine potion' to cure dream laughing; ingredients are yellow oil, purple moon water, green leaves, and unripe fruit--"it can't be ripened, or the potion would be too sweet like candy, and you shouldn't drink medicine potions unless you're sick.")
* Bloody Ear: Your ears get infected by an ugly sound and start bleeding so that you can’t hear it any more, and they get blocked up with blood and you hav etc wait until it dries up and falls out or else they start bleeding again. You can’t hear when your ears are all blocked up. If you get really sick with bloody ear, you start shouting out the ugly sound and then other people can get sick with it.
* Stone Stomach: Your stomach turns to rock and you can’t digest anything. You have to drink medicine juices to make it soft again and keep your belly warm while people rub it.
* Monkeytongue: Sometimes when you lick an animal you can only make sound sin the language of that animal but you can’t talk to that animal or know what they’re saying unless you already speak their animal language. You have to cure it by drinking boiling hot special tea to get the animal bacterias off your tongue.
* Venomanamad: When you get bit by a monster, sometimes you get really mad and the mad makes you want to hit people and things. You have to tie their hands together with clean bandages and put fruit in their mouth until they fall asleep and they might feel better in the morning.
* Walking Itch: Whenever you walk, your feet itch. If you keep walking it goes up your legs until your knees get itchy and you scratch them until they bleed. You can make it go away by wrapping the itchy parts in clean grass or wet kelp but you have to sit and read while it heals because that can take a lot of days. Walking itch comes from wearing dirty boots or shoes with dirt in them for too long.
* Vagga Rash: Named after an animal called the vagga, where the disease came from after a monstervore ate it. The vagga is sick all the time and when it gets sick it lies down to rest and its skin turns to look like what its laying on so it doesn’t get eaten while it’s healing. A person with vagga rash has a fever and sneezes that can spread the sickness if they don’t wear a scarf. The rash makes your skin look like whatever it touches in little blotches. You can clear up the rash by putting ice on it or sitting in a cold bath because that helps the fever but you have to eat healthy meals so your body has strength to fight off the sickness or you’ll just sleep in the bathtub until you die.
* Tribbia: From breathing skeleton dust or touching dead things. You feel like you’re turning into a monster and are compelled to hit yourself or run away from yourself until you faint from being afraid or fall asleep from exhaustion. Eating onions and foods you hate makes you very poopy and you poop the germs out of your intestines.
Now you see why I have to find a way to get back to writing--she comes up with too many good ideas.
Stay home, stay safe, and stay well, my friends. I hope you all have worlds to escape to that give you a break from reality, and if not, well, you can always come join us in Kabos for a while.
#monstervore
