[AA16] Tiny

[ARTSY APRIL 2016] DAY 12 - TINY

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(This description contains tons of spoilers for the book Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke.)

Then, very quietly, so quietly that Ben could hardly hear him, Twigleg said, “Nettlebrand doesn’t know what the djinn told you, young master.”

The words had come out of Twigleg’s mouth as if of their own accord. As if they were tired of being held back and swallowed all the time.

All the others looked at him. All of them.

Sorrel narrowed her eyes like a hungry cat.

“So, just how do you know that, little titch?” she growled in a menacingly low voice. “How come you’re so certain of what you say?”

Twigleg did not look at her. He didn’t look at anyone. His heart was beating as if it would burst out of his narrow chest.

“Because I was his spy,” he replied. “I was Nettlebrand’s spy.”

-Chapter 28, Dragon Rider

Okay so fun fact: the irony here is that the actual image file for this is 5000 x 5000 pixels large. Not, in fact, tiny. Lmao. The fullsize can be found on the download version in if you want to see the details.

So the character within the mouth of the dragon is Twigleg from Dragon Rider, a children’s book by Cornelia Funke (an author who is more well known for titles such as the Inkheart trilogy and The Thief Lord, although I’m personally not a fan of those books). Dragon Rider, despite being a “children’s book” is still one of my favorite books to this day, and pretty much 100% because of Twigleg. He makes the story for me okay. I also illustrated him for one of the Drawlloween 2015 prompts, and talked a little more about him there.

Twigleg is actually really small! I have some scans from the illustrations of the books that show his height (although honestly it seems like they weren’t really absolutely consistent with how small he’s supposed to be across all images, so I tried to make him the size I think he should be given what was going on in the actual storyline).

As I summorized from the Drawlloween prompt linked above -

Twigleg is a manikin / homonculus and the slave / servant / spy of the antagonist of the book, Nettlebrand, the Golden One, who is basically a golden dragon created by the alchemist Petrosius. Twigleg was also created by Petrosius, who could not create life, but only borrow it / change its form basically. Because of this, Twigleg was actually created from a spider, thus his name. Nettlebrand ended up devouring Petrosius as well as Twigleg’s other siblings, and so Twigleg is the only manikin left.

This image is meant to convey Twigleg’s absolute terror of his master, Nettlebrand, who is such a huge, imposing, terrible force. Nettlebrand has a horrible temper (and he has a bad habit of eating his servants when he’s angry). Twigleg is so tiny and fragile in comparison, and is therefore naturally rather timid of the Golden One. Twigleg is also incredibly intelligent though (he singlehandedly saves the group at one point?!), and he’s overall a very fascinating, well-rounded character.

It gets revealed within the storyline that unless some kind of harm befalls a homonculus (aka we really mean Nettlebrand eating them), they can basically just keep living on indefinitely. However, if a homonculus gives their heart over to a human, they will die on the same day as that human. Twigleg eventually ends up giving his heart over to Ben / switching sides / betraying Nettlebrand in the end due to the compassion and kindness that Ben shows him. Even after he reveals he was actually Nettlebrand’s spy, Ben continues to protect him and care about his feelings / his fear / his welfare. It’s seriously the cutest thing okay.

Another thing to note: sometimes Nettlebrand swallows his servants but not to actually kill them. He’s so large he uses it as something of a way of transporting them around with him since he’s an artificially-created creature and his insides are a bit different than a normal animal. It’s actually kind of cool / a useful ability since Nettlebrand can literally teleport to any body of water so long as he’s actually touching any amount of water. (Like no joke, they get stuck in the desert at one point so he basically just spits into a container, dips the very tip of his claw in, and then boom teleports.)

Also, I found a website that seems to have the book online if anyone wants to give it a read, although I personally strongly feel like you should buy the book if you like it / support the author. Also Twigleg comes in on page 14 of this online version. *V* Did you know whenever I re-read this story I just skip to where he comes in? x’D (Also I have a cool version of the book that came with this nifty little fold-up map of their journey. B) )

Anyways geez this is like SHSL Textwall / Description my bad.

Time Taken: 5 hrs 3 mins