Chuck Tingle
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NUMBLE - TIMELINE #52861103
🕑 Added 2025-07-22 21:16:47 +0000 UTC(Timeline Tuesday #208)
Numbles are small insects, no more than half an inch in length. They are light, rusty orange in coloration, with six crawling legs and a head with two large mandibles. Their abdomen is bulbous and oval, with distinct markings that become more and more pronounced as a numble ages. A full grown numble is covered in yellow numbers, the symbols appearing on their back in a clustered, seemingly random formation.
Numbles have incredibly long lifespans for an insect, many of them living up to ten years, and as the seasons change so do their markings. Every year, one of the numbers that marks a numble’s back will begin to darken, becoming a deep brown. During this stage, Numblekeepers will use various techniques to produce a larger number, although none of them are scientifically backed and it is believed by most that this number production is random.
Over the course of a farming season, numbles are fed a specific crop of organic material. Their gestation process will work as long as their diet is ninety percent of any singular fruit, and at the end of the season the numble will lay a cluster of seeds specific to the darkened digit. These seeds can then be planted, and they will grow overnight into full, healthy trees of whatever material has been fed to them.
This process has a number of advantages. The overnight production of trees can fill an entire orchard with the right numblekeeper. It is important to handle the insects with care, however. Anyone bit by a numble will find their thoughts overwhelmed with that season’s number for several weeks, compelled to made purchases at that specific unit size, or driven to scrawl the number wherever they can.
