Harold the Bat Monster Emerges from His Cave

Here is a new illustration I did recently:

Bat monsters are rare creatures but they exist, living in dark caves with bats and rarely other bat monsters. A bat monster rarely meets any other bat monsters during their extremely long life span. Most of the bat monsters they meet are family: Their mother, their mate and if a female bat monster their one offspring. Only rarely do they meet other bat monsters besides these three relationships. Most bat monsters do not mind, most bat monsters prefer this life as they are solitary beings who relish an independent life void of connection. But not Harold. He always wanted friends. When he was a younger monster, he sought out the friendship of other bat monsters, but he was unanimously shunned by the bat monsters he sought solace from. He learned instead to just befriend the bats, who were fare more social then the monsters they shared a resemblance with.

As mentioned, bat monsters have an extremely long life span. But to the bat monsters, it really did not feel this way as they spent centuries at a time hibernating in a cave. It would be one thing if their dreams were vivid, as if living a life in their head while hibernating. But few bat monsters remembered their century long dreams. Harold wanted to fix this issue. He had gone to a sleep psychologist who had given him some techniques on how to not only remember his dreams more, but how to even control them through lucid dreaming. Harold has been practicing and it seems to be working. He is remembering his strange and lively dreams and even is occasionally able to control them. It gives Harold some comfort in a life that often feels quite bleak. In one of his lucid dreams he created a friend: Another bat monster named Salbert.

Another heartache of being a bat monster is how quickly the world changes. Two-hundred years ago when he last fell asleep, cars didn't exist, the television didn't exist, internet didn't exist and the socioeconomic climate was quite different. Global warming wasn't a threat and over population didn't seem to be quite a threatening force. People used words differently then they do now. People were outfits that were strange, but in quite a different way than they were now. It really was a lot to take in sometimes. But, bat monsters lived for millions of years and it was part of their burden to only live for small moments in one era before falling asleep and awakening in another. Bat monsters learned to adapt. Harold would learn to adapt too.