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Day 30: NAAANTS INGONYAMAAAA BAGITHI BABA

In most Uesean societies, children are registered as citizens at some point within one month of being born, receiving a birth certificate and a unique identifier to be used on their identity slip. From that point on, the child is considered a ward of their parents (assuming both are present).

That said, infants can also be put up for adoption during the first year of their life. Rather than going into a child-care system, the parents (or the hospital, if no parents are available) must find a specific person or group of people who will become the child’s new legal guardian. Once that’s done, there’s a lengthy legal process to determine the worthiness of the potential guardian(s) to raise a child, as well as to truly confirm that the parents are ready to give their child up. This type of adoption carries very little stigma on a social-level, and is typically used so that other members of the parents’ family can adopt a child from unprepared parents.

In Aquiland, a child is considered to be of legal age at 18, and is gifted the rights to vote, to drink alcohol, and to own their own property. It’s also at this time that all Aquilish citizens are required to sign up for the Emergency Defense Service: a system that allows the government to conscript all participants in case of military conflict. The Service has been in place since the Askedelos Conflict, and while it hasn’t been activated since that bloody war, the threat still hovers over every able-bodied citizen, both woman and man.

Upon their death, there are two ways for an Aquilish citizen’s body to be treated. If they have a Writ of Living Will, then it falls to their family to enact the deceased’s last wishes. Typically this means either burial, cremation, or embalming and entombing. Those without a Living Will are dealt with in the way determined by their family, while those without a Will or family are typically cremated by their local government and buried.

Obviously, Shapechangers have a completely different life cycle. After conception, the pregnant Shapechanger carries their spawn long enough for the central brain to form: typically 5-6 months. When born, the Shapechanger spawn is a lump of meat jelly about the size of a house cat, made up of the “flesh” donated by their progenitor.

Even for Shapechangers born from “civilized” parents, they’re still not truly sentient until they start eating Humans. Since Shapechangers have to gain enough mass to eat and digest something the size of a human, and the only way for them to gain mass is to eat creatures smaller than themselves, this means the average Shapechanger will take 4-5 years before they’re big enough to start hunting humans. Sometimes their parents will provide a first Human; either recently deceased or soon-to-be so, while others leave that encounter up to fate.

Aging and death is strange for Shapechangers. So far, there are no records of a Shapechanger dying of old age (though not for lack of trying; Humans are just really good at finding Shapechangers when they put their minds to it). Theoretically, a Shapechanger could continue to eat and grow until they can no longer support their own weight, crushing their brain and killing them. A Shapechanger could also carefully wound themselves to shed mass, and thus live indefinitely.

When they do die, Shapechangers leave very little evidence of their passing: their gel bodies dissolve into a sticky puddle, and their brain will begin to decompose within a few hours if not preserved. The death of a sentient Shapechanger is mourned by the Shapechangers who knew them, but typically no ceremony is held.

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