Braxton

Braxton, the Flatwoods Monster, is a cryptid in West Virginia legends, and an alien of the species Thus. Selecting Earth to be his home, he is set on learning Earthling culture and living Earthling experiences.

He is in a long-term committed relationship with the hellhound Garmr, and eventually has a child with him that they both raise.

The majority of his storyline revolves around his experiences, hardships, and growth in living in his new home.

Appearance

As a member of the species Thus, he looks identical to all of his other kin.

Braxton has saturated red skin, is almost seven feet tall, and is very thin and lanky. He has no mouth, no hair (head nor body), no nails, no ears, and no genitalia. His face is long and narrow, with a sharp jawline and chin. Overall, his figure is very bony, with visible ribs, a wide rib cage, and an extremely narrow waist.

His most common outfit is a deep green spade-shaped headdress, a similar colored long skirt, and a lighter colored blouse. Often, he wears a golden choker with this attire.

Like most of his kin, he is uncomfortable with his head being exposed, and will nearly always cover it, usually with his headdress. However, he is comfortable with hats, head wrappings, and most other Earthing head coverings in place.

While he wears both masculine and feminine clothes, the majority of his attire is feminine.

Personality

Braxton is very empathetic and compassionate, as well as optimistic in a naïve way. He is expressive and transparent with his feelings, and doesn’t sugarcoat nor downplay emotions, although his emotions are generally positive ones.

He is a concrete pacifist, and almost never gets angry, instead more prone to feeling sad when somebody wrongs or hurts him. Will not and does not defend himself when attacked, and often will even sympathize with his attacker if they had lashed out from feeling threatened or afraid of him.

He harbors an intense curiosity, and a tendency to ask too many questions. While socially ignorant and oblivious, is very logically and scientifically intelligent. However, his species has mastered many of the sciences, thus he is broadly uninterested except when it comes to "new" sciences, such as Earth biology.

Although he tries to be friends with nearly everyone he can, his touchyness and cluelessness comes off as annoying to a lot of people. His ignorance of typical social cues and customs can make people uncomfortable, and generally establishing explicit boundaries with him is needed.

Hobbies

One of his favorite hobbies is taking walks, particularly through areas of nature or parks, and enjoys documenting and taking pictures of plants and animals he encounters. Extending off this interest, he attempts to garden some plants of his own at home, enjoying having his own pieces of the local flora he finds beautiful.

History

Timeline Disclaimer

• The narrative of Braxton’s life outstretches over many written stories at various points in the timeline.
• There are five major arcs in the timeline all stories fall under, and below are the narrative summaries from his standpoint.

Pre-Arc I: Before Braxton Met Garmr

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Around 1,112,000 years ago, Braxton along with his entire species popped into existence, eventually gaining sentience after their bodies fabricated around their cores.

After mastering the science and workings of the universe after a few hundred thousand years, the species of Thus determined that the meaning of their immortality, skin-contact empathy, and hivemind structure was explore and experience the lives of other lifeforms in the universe, and each individual chose a planet with intelligent life to reside and integrate with.

For Braxton’s history before Earth, please see the history of Thus as a species.

Braxton eventually chose Earth, and on September 12, 1952 he made first contact in the forest around Flatwoods, West Virginia. Catching sight of an eerily tall man-like figure in the dark with bright eyes, blood-red skin, a spade hood and a pleated skirt, the teenagers who spotted him fled in terror. From that point onward, he made an effort to conceal his presence better from humans, so as to not frighten them. Thus, the legendary Flatwoods Monster was never seen by humans again, and went down in North American mythology as a cryptid. Going forward, he integrated with cryptid society, and now resides in an independent town of cryptids and monsters wishing to live openly.

Rendition of the Flatwoods Monster

Despite the fear he invoked in those humans that day, that event positively imprinted on him. From this, he derived his name Braxton from the alternative name for the Flatwoods Monster, the Braxton County Monster. This was unintentionally encouraged by the town itself, affectionately referring to their local cryptid as “Braxie”. In addition, he adopted his gender and pronouns from the townsfolk’s description of him, as they used he/him pronouns when referencing him.

For several decades, he would spend brief periods of time exploring and analyzing Earthling creatures and things he could document in the forest, but returning to his spaceship to stay in orbit around the planet otherwise.

Arc I: Relationship between Braxton & Garmr

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In the 21st century, Braxton was encountered by the hellhound Garmr, who was hunting a rogue soul in the area of Flatwoods that needed to be reaped unto hell. Garmr’s prolonged mission resulted in multiple encounters with Braxton, taking pity on his ignorance and dedicating multiple conversations with him to urging the alien to leave Earth and find a nicer planet.

Despite so many decades visiting Earth, Garmr was the first intelligent Earthling that Braxton was able to form a loose friendship with, albeit the root of this friendship was Garmr’s dedication in sparing Braxton from the evils he would surely encounter on Earth if he stayed, as Garmr himself was depressed over the state of humanity and the world as a whole.

However, undeterred, Braxton instead learned a lot more than he ever had before through Garmr, who also grew attached to his optimist outlook on Earth and overall benevolent nature.

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Braxton and Garmr, dressed for Halloween.

After about a year of such friendship, Garmr confessed he had grown romantic feelings for him. And despite his patchy knowledge of Earthling romance, Braxton delightfully accepted, honored by the depths and intensity of the care Garmr felt for him since Braxton could read it through his empathy.

Not long afterwards, Braxton was invited to reside at Garmr’s home with him, in a secretive town isolated from humanity where cryptids and monsters live openly. While he met plenty of new people he was fond of, the majority were off-put by his touchy and clueless nature, resulting in his closest friend outside of Garmr being Alistair, a fellow outlier from cryptid society.

Garmr and Braxton's relationship quickly became sexually active, on account of Garmr's naturally high libido and Braxton's touch-based empathy. Due to Braxton's lack of genitalia, the pair engage in intercrural sex. Garmr's sexual attraction to Braxton is unaffected by his alien body, and physical affection is common in their relationship regardless, including kissing despite Braxton's lack of mouth and lips.

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Braxton and Garmr sharing a intimate kiss

Arc II: The Church Grim Incident

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During the following year, Garmr had to visit Church Grim, a polar opposite to a hellhound. Grim is a Christian canine guardian spirit and psychopomp at a withered abandoned church at the edge of town, and Garmr arrived with Braxton in his company to quarrel with him over a soul belonging to hell that Grim was attempting to shelter, claiming the soul had redeemed himself in God’s eyes.

Church Grim, a Christian version of a hellhound, who assaults Braxton

During this encounter, Braxton met Grim. Unfortunately for him, Grim recalled him a few months later when he encountered Braxton alone, having accidentally cut through the church property while on a walk.

As Braxton was seen to have allied himself with a demon, Grim attempted to slaughter him.

After attempting to kill him by slitting his throat, Grim quickly came upon the realization Braxton was immortal. His assault escalated after the realization that Braxton identified as a man, which misaligned with Grim’s homophobic ideology that two men can not be together, and thus he created a deep wound between Braxton’s legs to feminize him into "a woman", before raping him through the wound.

This event rattled Braxton, and for a year he struggled to recover, disheartened in discovering the depths of evils some Earthlings have.

However, this depression was transmuted into determination to create more good on Earth. Much like how Earthlings have offspring to teach and raise, he dedicated himself to the mission of making a child he can raise as a good Earthling, and teach them the better side this planet has to offer. He was certain of the theory that if he could break off a piece of his core, it could fabricate its own body and become its own individual. Unable to stop him on this mission despite his disagreement to the plan, Garmr eventually ceded to offer up a portion of his soul to infuse into the chip, as there wasn’t a natural way for demons to procreate either.

Arc III: Gnípa’s Creation and Childhood

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Creating a micro black hole and succeeding in the split, Braxton survived despite losing a large portion of his body in the result, and was indeed able to retrieve a chip of his core. Holding up his end, Garmr requested that his creator, Death, sever part of his soul and embed it in the chip, which Death was willing to comply with.

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Braxton in homemaking attire with baby Gnípa

This gave Braxton the child he had wanted, born to be an Earthling he was going to raise to be good in this world.

This resulting child was named Gnípa, who was intersex and a hybrid of both Braxton and Garmr, thus it was decided their child would be raised non-binary and addressed with gender neutral pronouns.

He would proceed to act as a homemaker and a teacher to his child for the next five years. Due to their hybrid nature, his child reached maturity by five, and began working with Death as a standard reaper.

Arc IV: Post-Maturation of Gnípa

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Henceforth, Braxton resigned into his homemaker role, and a stay-at-home parent since his child still lives with him and Garmr. He continued to be determined in his mission to learn and experience the wonders of Earth, and instill his child with the same opportunity.

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Sketch of Braxton with full-grown Gnípa

Shortly after Gnípa’s fifth birthday, Braxton empathically identified sexual attraction towards them in his best friend, Alistair. Unaware of appropriate social boundaries, he encouraged Alistair to act on his feelings since Gnípa had already reached physical maturity, leading to Alistair entering a relationship with his child that rapidly grew abusive.

After Gnípa and Alistair broke up after a particularly violent abusive episode, Braxton ended his friendship with Alistair.

Trivia

• Braxton's favorite color is green
  • This was a strong reason he was drawn to Earth, and favors forested environments
  • This also started his interest in plants, and later, gardening
• While he has no shame nor shyness over his nude body being exposed, having his head bare with no covering makes him feel very uncomfortable and vulnerable.