Post by Fox on Nov 1, 2010 0:56:28 GMT -8
Name: Br’an (Brennan)
Age: 22 (Spring)
Gender: Male
Sexuality: Heterosexual.
Rank: Greenrider, Wingletmaster, Searchrider.
Location: Eyrie.
Personality:
The face that Br’an presents to the world is one of youthful naivete and unflinching optimism. He lives and lets live, doesn’t linger on his sorrows, and give people third, fourth and fifth chances in the bucketload. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that human nature includes the propensity towards greed and cruelty, because he chooses not to see it. Br’an is a master of selective sight. Truthfully, Br’an is well acquainted with the less-savory side of society, having been raised only a step above the poorer quarters of Sayaie. But he’s afraid. He doesn’t have it in him to be cynical or bitter; what’s more, he thinks people will think less of him for it, and that would be worse for him than any amount of shit that life and fate might throw his way. This is because Br’an cares very much about other people’s opinion of him, and in many ways he lives his life trying to play up to that impression, unrealistic though it may be. He is cheerful because that is what’s expected. He is optimistic because that is what is needed.
Br’an loves life, but he is, ultimately a bit of a coward. The prospect of fighting and injury frightens him, and every time he and Niataph are deployed against the koxi, he frets and worries himself down to the bone. It doesn’t help that Nia treats him at these times much like a disdainful older sister would treat a baby brother. It just makes him worry more, so he worries for her and for himself and for everyone else as well, but mostly for his own skin and that of Niataph. Despite the cowardice that governs so much of his life, though, Br’an is mostly a genuinely nice person. He likes to make friends with people, and is always trying to please them. He’ll say it’s because he likes seeing people happy and, while this is true to some extent, mainly it is because pleasing people makes Br’an feel safe. If people like you they won’t turn on you.
Furthermore, Br’an, for all his posturing and bubbling cheer, is a very sensitive person. He is easily pushed to anger, or sadness or hurt, though he has a better control over his anger than he does over the other two negative emotions. The man is no actor; if he’s hurt or sad or angry, you’ll see it play across his face clear as day. But this sensitivity also makes it easy for him to identify with others, and Br’an finds that he enjoys teaching people and simourv very much. He likes it much more than he likes being out in the field, at any rate. That’s because as a teacher, there is a clear role for him to take; the expectations of him are attainable. It also helps that Br’an is by no means a lazy person; he’ll work himself down to a stub if that is required of him, and he finds that seeing his students excel maybe makes him happy too.
On the subject of romance; Br’an is of the sort that falls in love far too easily. He’ll tumble head over heels for a girl (and he is rather adamant about his preference for the female gender) at the drop of a hat, but is generally not the type to come right out and say it. In fact, his lacking self-confidence rather confirms that he won’t say anything at all, no matter the consequence. This is because Br’an has the unhealthy habit of keeping his romantic inclinations held very close to his chest, partly out of a reluctance to risk himself to ridicule, and partly because there’s a part of him that really can’t imagine anyone liking him back. Even so, while he won’t actually come out and say it, the lad isn’t totally averse to showering attention on the object of his affections and can, in point of fact, shade over into the obsessive, which he would find himself doing more often if it weren’t for Niataph’s sobering presence.
Appearance:
Br’an looks young. He looks, in fact, much younger than his twenty-odd years. Often, strangers might peg him at about late teens, and this irks him to no end. Mainly, the thing that contributes to his youthful appearance is his facial structure. Br’an has a soft-looking face; flat cheekbones, rounded chin, straight nose and full lips, all added to a fair complexion and a liberal spattering of freckles. Freckles. They’re the bane of his life. It doesn’t help that he has an almost perpetual puppy-dog look, either, as his eyebrows are straight and tilt downwards slightly at the ends, giving his blue eyes a distinctly woeful look if he doesn’t smile. But then again, he does smile a lot. When he smiles, it’s the sort that always seems to be a grin, even when there’s no teeth involved. Because Br’an smiles with his teeth, and it’s very much an open, all-or-nothing, mouth-cracking-his-face-in-half kind of smile.
Above his face, is a thatch of wispy, straw-coloured hair; usually trimmed reasonably short, but generally not well-taken care of at all. His body is rather stocky and he has broad shoulders despite otherwise looking somewhat like a stick; his muscle tone is distinctly lacking in his arms and torso, though his legs are toned and fairly well-muscled. All the better for running away, really. Oh, and there’s no forgetting that the top of Br’an’s straw-coloured head only comes up to a miserly 5’8”. Overall, he is rather unsatisfied with his appearance, though after twenty-two years he has grown resigned to it, if not completely content. His favourite feature of himself is actually his hands; long-fingered and delicate, they are calloused from hard-work but, he fancies, have a sort of elegant look that the rest of him lacks.
When it comes to clothes, Br’an favours bright colours. Blues, reds, yellows, you name them he’ll wear them. It doesn’t matter to him that they clash with his eyes or hair or even with each other. Nor does it matter that they draw the eye of observers rather spectacularly. It is a choice that has no real meaning in terms of why he chooses it; he simply takes to the colours much like a magpie takes to the shinies.
Family:
Bradley, 60- father
Anne, 54- mother
Pets:
None
Simourv Name: Niataph
Simourv Color: Green, #4F8200
Simourv Age: Four years (Spring)
Personality:
Niataph is, in her mind, the best simourv alive. Well, maybe except Eceph. And that’s because Eceph’s a Gray. Gray’s are Queens by default, but Niataph doesn’t see why Greens can’t be either. This green is a vain creature; she puts the word narcissism to good use. Reflective surfaces are her greatest love (besides her rider); that and, of course, any cloth or trinket that makes her look even more beautiful than she already is. Which is very beautiful, mind you. She’s a vain, disdainful, flamboyant, self-absorbed creature, and she considers most of her other siblings to be far beneath her on the scale of life. Poo, she says. Poo to them all.
Fastidious though she may be, show her a koxi and Niataph goes at them with a will. Why? Well, she thinks that koxi are ugly and should not exist; that and they threaten people her rider holds dear, of course. In her world, only her rider exists besides herself, and even then she constantly treats him as little more than a rather convenient servant to fetch her things and buy her nice baubles. In many ways, his eager to please character is put to good use with Niataph, though she disapproves greatly of is tendency to wish to please others. He is her rider, and therefore he is better than them; he should not need to please them, they should be trying to please him. In this spirit, she has been working at building a halfway-decent backbone in her rider. With limited success. Especially considering her method of teaching him is to order him around further.
However, there is no denying that despite her somewhat ill-thought out way to go about it, Nia does wish to better her rider. And anyone else besides. Yes, they are beneath her, and she will always be above them, but that is no reason to stagnate. Change is good; try harder and you’ll succeed. In many ways she can be compared to that pushy maiden aunt who is always barking to ‘Pull down that skirt!’ or ‘Dust it again!’ or even ‘No, no, no! That technique is all wrong you should do it this way!’, even though at times she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Quite frankly, the prospect of little simourv babies to teach and mould into shape excites Niataph more than she is willing to admit.
On a side note, refer to her as ‘Nia’ or ‘Taff’ or anything short of her full, gorgeous name and you have saddled yourself with a distinctly upset green simourv. Be warned that her good opinion (or what can pass as her good opinion) once lost is henceforth unreachable. Niataph is adept at grudge-keeping and has a long memory for it, even though her recall of more mundane things is more spotty. Even Br’an isn’t allowed to refer to her as Nia in public or anywhere that someone else might overhear him.
Appearance:
For a green, Niataph just breaches 41 feet in length from nose to rump. She also ranges at around 22 feet at the shoulder; taller than a simourv of her length should be chiefly because the green is possessed of a set of four slightly longer than average legs. They add at least another foot and a half to her height; not too noticeable, thankfully, unless Nia is standing close enough to one of her siblings for an observer to compare. As an adolescent, she rather resembled a stork or a rather leggy colt, having grown into her height first before actually lengthening out properly. It’s a touchy subject, so thankfully adulthood has granted her as close to a proportionate body shape as she can get. In any case, much like any green, Niataph is streamlined and built more for speed and aerial manoeuvrability rather than brute force.
Also, for all that her main colour is a vague, decidedly un-outstanding shade of forest green, Nia still mostly succeeds in her quest to catch the eye. The primary feathers on the simourv’s wings are a vibrant, eye-watering shade of sunny yellow, and it only improves very little as it fades to a light green in the secondaries. Across her flanks again, the green of her feathers shades into a lighter green once again, extending along perhaps half of her tail, and then back into the same bright yellow towards the tip. Due to the bright colouration, Niataph tends to carry herself with her wings half-open and her tail lifted, as if to draw attention to the proudly coloured banner. The only place in which this green’s colouring shades into anything darker is on her face, where the edges of the feathers along her neck are tipped in a dark green that’s almost black. Her eyes are a pale, ominous shade of yellow, whilst her horns and claws are a pale cream, matching her legs and beak which are a correspondingly pale colour, though a slightly darker shade of beige overall.
Parentage:
(Gray Wild x Black Wild)
History:
In Spring of the 46h year, a little boy was born to Bradley and Anne, a pair of poor Sayaiean tailors. Nine months earlier, when they had found out Anne was pregnant, it had been a surprise since both parents were well into their thirties, but also not a pleasant one, as both had been adamant on not wanting children. They were a poor couple; business had not been going well for, well, a couple of years already, and there was barely enough to go around to keep husband and wife fed, much less an extra mouth. Still, over the course of the pregnancy, Bradley began to look forward to the prospect of a strong, strapping son to help out around the place. Conversely, Anne was less and less amused by the prospect of a child the more swollen, stiff and achy she grew. It wasn’t a difficult pregnancy by most standards, but Anne complained so much that one might have thought she would die before the baby was even born. But even so, little Brennan was born, small and red and squalling, in the middle of a sudden spring shower and that was, apparently, that.
For the first few years of his life, he was a sickly child, plagued by coughs and fevers and once even developing a cold that verged on pneumonia. This was, naturally, something of a let down to both parents who had expected something… More. Bradley had wanted a strong son to follow in his footsteps and, instead, he got a pasty, skinny little boy who was always smaller than the other children his age. Brennan was little help in the shop even as he grew older; he was easily distracted and still sickly, though he was a bright and cheerful lad for all that. It wasn’t what his father wanted though. And as for Anne, well. It was difficult to say just what she had wanted out of the pregnancy and subsequent possession of an infant, but she herself was adamant that she did not get it. She expected more than the child who demanded so much of her attention to nurse it through myriad coughs and colds. She wasn’t a negligent parent, no, but she was discontented, and Bradley’s distancing of himself from the child and her was no help either. Perhaps they both really did love their child; the only product of their union, but the failed expectations and the regrets and the discontent piled up and up and up and strangled the love before it could blossom as it should have.
It was into that strained home life that Brennan grew up. He didn’t know, at first, that there was anything odd or unusual about his family. How could he when they were the only family he had? His self-esteem first took a hit, though, when he was four years old. Just after he had recovered from yet another racking cough, the little boy decided to do something nice for his mother, in the innocence unique to toddlers and small children. Brennan had gotten out of bed and slipped outside, to the scraggly potted plants lining the porch, and from there he had plucked himself a bouquet fit for a queen (in his four-year-old opinion). That evening, Brennan presented the flowers to his mother, inordinately proud of the small feat, but instead of taking the flowers and thanking him, Anne saw the bouquet, comprised of her favourite- and only- flower pots and saw red. She took the flowers, but she delivered an ear-blistering scolding along with it; something that perhaps wasn’t entirely warranted in its severity. Brennan did not understand.
Things would continue in that vein for years. Brennan grew up never being good enough; always coming up short. He tried and tried, bent over backwards to try and appease his parents and make them happy with him, but nothing worked. He went from a happy, cheerful child to a deeply insecure man who no longer remembered how to do a thing for the sole sake of pleasing himself. The atmosphere in the little house was forever strained, with all three occupants plainly unhappy, but none willing to confront the problem and lay things out in the open. The wounds festered and oozed, poisoning a family. Brennan was eighteen when he first caught wind of an expedition in the works. When word came round of the hunting expedition into the mountains, it was by means of a gossipy neighbour, talking to his mother. Brennan overheard and, desperately seeking a way out of the stranglehold life had him in, sought the neighbour out again later for more information. He was no hunter or scientist, but he was a willing worker, and he hoped that that would be enough to get him on board.
Brennan didn’t tell his parents that he was leaving. He finished up a last mad cleaning spree of the house and shop, left flowers on his mother’s work desk (a proper bouquet this time) and a letter on their battered dining table, and then he was gone. There wasn’t much in the letter, either; it simply detailed that he had left to pursue a new start, and not to look for him. He would be fine (or so he hoped). And that was the only goodbye that Brennan left them. He joined the hunting party and tried his best to keep up; the sickliness of his childhood and early adolescence having left a mark in his lowered stamina and weak muscle tone. It wasn’t an ideal situation; the eighteen-year-old had to be assisted several times so that he wasn’t lost entirely, much to his humiliation. The young hunter who helped him, Kalean, said little and what he said was not what could be called inspiring. But Brennan tried his best, and eventually those stick-legs of his gained some sinewy muscle, and his stamina improved enough that Kalean no longer needed to hover worriedly whenever the boy started to lag. Which was often.
Nothing could have prepared Brennan for the events that followed; stumbling onto a simourv- a wild simourv- had not even occurred to him as a possibility. To him, simourvs had always been the heroes in tales of koxi battles, but little more than that. He had never seen one, and frankly, had never expected to see one, what with the sadly dwindling numbers of the majestic creatures. Yet what they found was even better; not just a wild Gray simourv, but a clutch of eggs as well. Twenty-four eggs, and so brightly coloured that they made Brennan’s eyes water. The mother Gray did not last the year, but the hunting expedition stayed to watch over the eggs. Brennan adopted one in particular; a comically striped egg in loud orange and green, and he spent most of his time following the pattern idly with his eyes and, after he had become more bold, with his fingers up until where the bottom of the egg disappeared into the sand. The boy rather hoped that he would get to see his little adopted egg hatch, and he wondered what the baby simourv inside would be like.
Sure enough, the chance to find out came soon as one day the eggs, one by one, started rocking. Slowly, but surely, the eggs were moving, rocking, shaking in place as the chicks inside strove to get out. Brennan was there to wring his hands and worry right from the start, and his little striped egg was among the first to start moving. He dared not touch it as, suddenly, a fissure appeared in the top of the egg, lancing down its side, as the egg rocked over onto its side. It wasn’t long before the egg gave an almighty crack and fell apart, leaving the green chick it had held to shake off the shards of the shell. Brennan could only stare in open-mouthed wonder as the hatchling stood up on slightly long, awkward legs, blazing yellow tail whipping from side to side in eminent displeasure. It did not occur to him that the chick, if it so cared to do, could maul him to ribbons. Lucky for him, then, that the green would have considered it far beneath her to commit such an atrocity. Br’an!
They remained with the other members of the expedition, all twenty-four of them having bonded to simourv chicks, and made their home in the rocky canyon eventually to be known as Eyrie. The new greenpair got to know one another’s quirks and habits and the nuances of their personalities. While they did not always get along, Niataph’s opinionated demeanour encouraged Br’an to stand up more for himself, whilst Br’an’s more peaceful, easy-going nature tempered the green’s perfectionism somewhat. They were opposites, but they fit like two halves of a whole. When the simourvs turned two, the riders returned to civilisation, led by Ro’za and Gray Eceph, and they were hailed, embarrassingly, as saviours. But it didn’t stop there; things started to happen. First off was when Niataph Rose, and Br’an found himself in the terrifying grip of a passion that was not his. He was not a happy camper in the days immediately following the Flight; especially after he had woken in bed with the very male rider of Niataph's chosen suitor.. Es'tev of Red Hjolteph. But other than that, koxi attacked Eyrie and Eceph’s first clutching heralded the first generation of Rider-born, with Altaph’s clutch following soon after it. Through it all, Br’an and Niataph watched, but there was no role for them. Until, that is, they were chosen as one half of a Wingletmaster Pair, to take charge of the Winglets and Hatchlings resulting from Eceph’s second clutch. Currently, they are both preparing for it still, and waiting with baited breath for news of the coming clutch. [/size][/center]
