A 1000 years ago, it is said, the first Recombinants appeared on Tereathon. Where they came from, how they got here, and why have all been buried in the place of lost things. The first years were hard, many of these animal/human hybrids died, and those who remained existed as best they could. According to the legends -- for only legends remain -- the first inhabitants were not accustomed to life beneath the ground, but finding life on the molten surface of Tereathon impossible, they were forced to burrow beneath the crust and find a way to survive. There, between the molten surface and frozen core of the planet, they found vast, habitable, underground caverns, the continents of Tereathon. All through the earth, veins of lemite course like lightening, crystals luminous in response to Tereathons geomagnetic field, which varies at regular intervals due to the shifting tides of molten rock that rise and fall with the movement of Tereathon around its sun, and Tereathon's moon around its planet.

For generations after the Recombinants' arrival, mere survival was enough, and so much was lost in those first years: knowledge, history, lives. Specially bred plants that grow in the glow of lemite and pure animal stock that feed on the plants were carefully cultivated to populate the Tereathon subterranean continents with wilderness and with wild and domesticated flora and fauna. The surviving Recombinants built a civilization. Technology for traveling through solid earth was perfected, and earthships were constructed to connect continents along shipping routes, and earthmobiles were developed for short-range subterranean travel. Otherwise Tereathon technology is similar to early 20th century Earth, with a few curious exceptions.

"Recombinant" quickly became a term found only in textbooks or used in the vernacular as an insult, due to a negative cultural memory related to the term, though specifics are vague. The hybrids developed a preference instead for the generic "animalian", turning the adjective of their ancestors into the very word of their kind. Differing from the "true animals" that roam Tereathon by their additional human DNA, the animalians are classed according to taxonomic families and adapt taxonomic nomenclature to form "race" names, known as the "hypogenions" or "genons" of animalians: "canians," the canidae (fox, wolf, etc.)/human hybrids; "mustelians," the mustelidae (weasel, badger, etc.)/human hybrids; "sciurians," the sciuridae (squirrel, chipmunk, etc.)/human hybrids; etc. Though generally living together in peace, a kind of racial tension exists throughout Tereathon, especially in regard to the very rarely viable offspring of cross-genon pairing.

This is the world of Tereathon, my home world.

In response to the  FAWriters2.0 February prompt, I wrote a fictional account of a relationship I never had with a delightful sciurian girl I once knew, a story about what might have been if .... well ... that's a different story.

The story is a little long, clocking in at 3600 words, but it is, to me, filled with fun. I hope you think so as well.