🦋 Cydia, the moth

Cydia is the buddy for students who understand that good things take exactly eight stages. She starts as a speck of an egg, spends her middle levels wrapped up in silk, and finishes as a luna moth gliding around her own private sunset. Patience, but make it fuzzy.

Name origin

A wink for the jailbreak historians: Cydia was the beloved jailbreak-era app store, and that store was itself named, completely sincerely, after Cydia pomonella, the codling moth whose caterpillar is the classic worm in the apple. An unofficial app store named for a bug that lives inside apples. The teachChat code comments call this out, because a joke that good deserves documentation.

Life stages

Stages arrive as your participation score levels her up, never from clicks. Each level costs a little more score than the last, all the way to level 30.

How to bring them home

Cydia sits on the shelf in the buddy store, right inside the pet window, for 250 points. That price covers the moth and her dusk yard scene together, so you are buying a whole evening, not just an insect. Points are the same ones you earn in class (see /points-and-houses), and every student starts with will.0 and his day yard for free, so browse /pets and save up.

Their yard

A dusk yard: warm sunset light fading into night, and if you watch closely, a wild cousin moth flutters across the sky. Cydia does not seem to mind sharing.

Field notes

• Her title bar reads cydia.exe, docked beside the send button like a tiny process you would never force-quit.
• Tap her for a little dance. It bumps a heart counter that counts nothing and unlocks nothing, which is exactly why it feels so good.
• She keeps her own level bucket and her own dance count, so trying another buddy never costs her a single stage.
• Palette check: dusty gold wings, cocoa fuzz, dark antennae, cream eyespots. The code labels them "moth wings / fuzz / antennae", which is honestly a decent life plan.