Brown, Grey, & Green

Chapter 3: Deeper Dive Into The Main Characters

BROWN

A too-thin, brown-coated coyote with watchful, solid yellow eyes and one bent ear. His tail- and ear-tips are blackened, looking burnt — whether or not they actually are burnt is something he never explains. He wears a dark brown, tattered old scarf that's just as burnt as his ears might be; its origin is another thing he never explains.

He calls himself a creature of the Wastes, and he never means it dramatically because he never means anything dramatically. His coat blends in with the sand and the dirt, his eyes can spot a buzzard coming from kilometers away, and his paws never falter no matter how far he has to walk to find the next source of water. Getting to tomorrow in the Wilds is a special kind of skill, and it's one he didn't need to master so much as refine, because he was born tied to the land in a way that's almost not a metaphor.

Thinking about getting to next year, next decade, is something a lot harder for him to learn. The future's never guaranteed in the Wilds, and it's easier to just try to get to tomorrow, as hard as that already is. Then he has two pups in tow and all of a sudden, not thinking about their futures is too hard for him to do. His thinking can't stop at tomorrow when he has to think about teaching Grey and Green what it takes to reach adulthood.

Brown is a creature of the Wastes. His pups are not. Green is loud and he's bad at hiding because he glows and his mind can be bent to work as it must to survive the Wilds, but it lines up more naturally with the ways of laboratories and science in a way much more like a human than a coyote. Grey is a soft thing, gentle and joyful, and the wastes demand sharpness but Brown doesn't want to see him become sharp. They are made for the steel and spark of the Pockets as he's made for the sand and stone of the Wilds.

Brown changes a lot for his pups. He stays quiet, careful, one who keeps to himself. But he learns to see the beauty of the stars because Grey is fascinated by constellations and wants stories about them. He learns to be a little less patient, because infinite patience with Green's boasting will never help him grow. He learns that friendship may be difficult in the Wilds, but it's far from impossible. He learns the feel of warm coats pressed against his at night, and that it is something he can never unlearn.

So while he remains always a creature of the Wastes, he learns to live away from the Wilds in the middle of that bizarre thing called civilization. He learns to shake the sand from his coat and keep his gaze nearby instead of on the distance. He learns to rest his paws. Because Grey and Green need him to, and being needed is another thing he can't bring himself to unlearn.

Brown is cunning and prefers to trick others into dealing with his problems/enemies, or just avoids them entirely if he can, but that doesn't mean he can't fight.

He's grown and lived in the Wilds for a very long time, if not all his life, and he's survived. He prefers to avoid conflict, but he does fight — and when he does, it isn't pretty. He's vicious, he plays dirty, and he fights like a cornered animal trying to survive and willing to risk a limb for a few seconds more. The Buzzards and him have fought directly before, and they're a lot more wary of going again than he is, as much as he's the one trying to avoid it more.

Brown is quiet, patient, careful. Slow until he's not. He doesn't talk much, and when he does it's usually because it's necessary. He isn't lacking a sense of humor entirely, it's very dry and doesn't come out often (moreso as the series goes on, though). He's practical and survival-oriented, but he has a softness to him that's hard to see until it has a chance to come out; it's why he keeps his scarf, and why he keeps two pups he has no business trying to raise, and why he keeps going day after day.

GREY

A grey coyote pup with a big pink nose and wide, too-large ears darkened at the pointed tips. He has soft paws and a fluffy chest and rings around his eyes, all snowy white, the color curving along his belly to spread under and around the edges of his tail. His eyes are large and curious and dark, solid blue. On his hindfeet he wears light pink sneakers, a child's idea of fashion, which get beat up over the series but remain a sign of his origins in the Pocket.

He's the equivalent of around eight at the beginning, and maybe eleven or twelve near the end.

He has a pet rat. This rat is possibly named Vermin, which would be a name given by Brown that was not supposed to be a name so much as a complaint but stuck anyways. I haven't decided the color of this rat yet, but possibly blue or pink to match Grey's eyes or shoes respectively, or green to match Green. Or maybe yellow and I could name it Sparky instead.

He collects rocks, and twisted bits of metal, and interesting twigs and leaves. Not much of the latter, though, because plants aren't all that common in the part of the Wilds where they live. He makes Brown carry them in his scarf, and Brown's not entirely sure when he agreed to do this but he does it anyways. When his collection grows too large to carry with them, Grey arranges it all in pretty patterns and leaves it behind, in the hopes that someone else will get to enjoy it.

He has one special stone that he keeps, a smooth grey river stone that looks blue when wet and has wavy patterns across it. It is not a stone that belongs in the Wilds and he loves it and it's a little too big to fit comfortably in his mouth but he carries it around with him anyways. He calls it his pebble, despite the fact that it's larger than a pebble, and so everyone else calls it Grey's pebble as well. The plot of one thing could be it going missing and him getting really upset, and the others have to help him find it, with him eventually getting it back of course.

GREEN

A muscular coyote, well-built but not bulky, that never seems to get slimmer no matter how long he goes without food, and is maybe a bit stronger in his legs and his chest and his shoulders than he looks like. His coat is dark black, but his paws and his underbelly and the insides of his thin, sharp ears are all yellow-green and neon. His tail is pure yellow-green and acts like a signal reaching up behind him when it glows, and his eyes are the same green and never completely lose their light even when the rest of him dims. He's built low and thick, like a tank, like a hunter, but his mind works more like a technician's or a puzzle-solver's than a fighter's.

He's the equivalent of maybe fourteen at the beginning? And like seventeen near the end? I'm not entirely sure.

The thing about the coyotes is that they aren't humans. They can scavenge, and they can plan, and they can coordinate — but they don't make things.

They can live in a human society and use what they make just fine, but they don't build things on their own. Green builds things.

Green makes a satchel that falls apart every five minutes and he hates that it does but they can carry more food now so Brown considers it to be a tiny miracle. Green figures out a way to fix up ab old steel storage box and store rain water to drink from later. Green makes a sled out of a piece of wood and some plants to pull it with, and it's very hard to do without thumbs, but Grey cheers when Green pulls him around on it so it's worth the effort.

Coyotes are smart, it's a hallmark of their species, but they can't make cities like humans do because they can't build anything. They as well can't glow. Brown begins to suspect, over time, that Green's mutations run further than any of them know.

He's as well the only one who half-understands the ruined things they come across, because Brown is of the Wilds and Grey is too young to know how anything really works. A rusted water pump, one of the few electric towers that's survived the test of time, a old mining drill that hasn't been used since the world ended — Green doesn't necessarily know what they are and he isn't necessarily right when he tries to guess, but if someone can make them do or be something useful, it's him. He's boastful to a fault and always thinks he's correct even when he really isn't, but he does have legitimate reasons to pride his own mind so much.

He's fast. He's not agile nor flexible, not like a coyote should be and not like Grey and definitely not like Brown. But he's got muscles that won't go away, and he can't keep pace with Violet but neither can most of the other cheetahs, and he can still get close. He can run in a straight line and plow through nearly anything weaker than stone and keep going long after Brown would've collapsed, but add a twist to it and he'll stumble over his own paws trying to turn around. He's built thick and low and solid, the body of a tank housing the mind of something much different, not quite a coyote but not quite not.