Hayli
Observe how the wild Hayli emerges from her den to wander out in the open. A subspecies of writer, the wild Hayli can become nervous in large groups, especially when the group has gotten a hold of her first drafts.
The wild Hayli can easily be tracked by the three-and-a-half-foot long golden hairs shed by her in large quantities everywhere she goes. For years, now, experts have been trying to classify the wild Hayli’s hair as an organism of its own, as it can often be seen interacting with other objects and animals independently of her. The distress this appears to cause the wild Hayli leads experts to believe her hair may be a parasitic lifeform, possibly dependent on her remaining unmated, as it tends to guard her personal space most aggressively around males of her species.
The mating call of the wild Hayli has been largely debated. Many believe it has never been observed, but there are proponents who claim that it is the sound the wild Hayli makes whenever she is showed an image of author Neil Gaiman: [fangirl noise]
“Impossible,” opponents say. “Neil Gaiman is, for many countless reasons, an impossible mate for her.”
The proponents point out that the wild Hayli might not in fact be aware of this.
The wild Hayli subsists almost solely on hot tea, a biological marvel as-yet unexplained by science. This leaf-water diet drives the wild Hayli to hoarding great quantities of both loose and bagged teas. This is similar to the nut-burying habits of the common Susky squirrel. The main difference being that common Susky squirrels are deviously plotting a-holes who share their hoards with nobody, whereas the wild Hayli is a pack animal devoted to sharing her tea stash with the others of her kin. As such, any interaction between the wild Hayli and the common Susky squirrel flirts with disaster. Here we can see her coming face to face with one of the beady eyed demons as it guards the path to Fisher.
[growling noises]
“Oh, uh, good day, Mister Squirrel! D-don’t mind me—just trying to get to class!”
For a defenseless Hayli in the wild, such interactions all too often end with death. But luckily today, she walks away unscathed.
The hunting and gathering of tea accounts for nearly half of the wild Hayli’s movement outside the safety of her den. The rest of her movement can be attributed either to the collecting of books—another peculiar compulsion inherent in her species—or to the requirements of work, school, or basic social engagement. All of these can cause the wild Hayli to become morose and uninterested. When left unguided, the wild Hayli keeps to a much tighter circle of space, seldom doing more than writing and sleeping.
The wild Hayli is generally renowned for her unusual hours, being neither a true nocturnal animal nor, by any means, on a normal human sleep schedule. She can sleep for up to eleven hours in one go, and will if she can, but she can also be observed in a sort of reverse-hibernation twice a year, when the demands of finals week trigger a frantic wakefulness in the wild Hayli that has been observed to last up to thirty-eight hours uninterrupted.
Her only known natural predators (besides the Susky squirrel) are glaring grammatical issues in workshop pieces and people who have no sense of humor. Both of these will send the wild Hayli into a chain of defensive muttering, sometimes even causing her to incite confrontation with snappy remarks.
These are typically made with pen rather than vocally, as the wild Hayli only pretends to be confrontational—or, rather, is only confrontational when she’s hungry, tired, or overly startled by social interaction. When left unprovoked by dull-minded dialogue-tag-molesters, she is of a much gentler and sillier temperament. During these sillier moments, the wild Hayli has been observed literally writing “gullible” on the ceiling and shooting foam balls at her kin with a plastic sasquatch. For these behaviors, the wild Hayli is often punished by her kin, who banish her into the social ostracism of the writer’s house Timeout Box.
In the end, the wild Hayli proves to be a puzzle for any expert who thinks they can pin her down. Anyone lucky enough to spot her out in the open can draw their own conclusions—provided they can keep up with her on her sunshine yellow bicycle or make it past the defenses of her hair.
One thing is for certain: there is no other species quite like her.