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 Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2011 10:41 pm
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Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2011 9:59 pm
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NAME Ayle Danforth
AGE 22
ORIGIN Equivalent to Northern Australia.
OCCUPATION Farmhand and stablehand.
FAMILY The only child of deceased parents.
POSITIVE Loyal, courageous, outgoing, good-looking
NEUTRAL Hard working, fearless
NEGATIVE Womanizing, relentless, impatient, smarter than he lets on
APPEARANCE Not always entirely concerned with his personal appearance, he has a bit of wolfish/unkempt look about him. In the fields it might be considered charming or even attractive, but in the cities it would never do. His skin is deeply tanned from being out in the sun all the time, his hair is held back in a tail and is a very light sunbleached blonde, and his eyes are blue. He has a generous mouth that is maybe just a hair too big for his face. His forearms are corded and his hands calloused in a way that suggests hard work and long hours.
His pants and clothing are usually somewhat careworn and in faded colors: simple trousers and shirts, sometimes dungarees. More often than not he has rips in his pants, usually at the knee. He prefers high boots; grass and mud doesn't tend to get inside of those, and he prefers his feet to be dry.
PERSONALITY Having grown up largely on his own, Ayle has more in common with the beasts he takes care of than any member of 'polite' Sunderland society -- at least if one were to ask his current employer. He is a risk-taker, brash, outspoken, and wolfish; he is a rogue with the ladies and something just short of a gentleman. Though he does what is required of him he is still not quite as tractable as some should like. Ayle very, very much enjoys being outside, and is usually the only company he needs, though as of late he and his deer have become nigh-inseparable. But still he is possessed of a strange wanderlust, and with Siscalus reinforcing Ayle's own independent nature, no one can be quite sure what he will do next.
SKILLS Ayle is skilled with his hands, making delicate or dextrous work easy for him. He has an affinity with livestock, and is able to work around horses, cattle and even small livestock with no difficulty. He is also physically strong and somewhat light on his feet. He only has satisfactory ability with sums, and his handwriting is unremarkable.
HISTORY Ayle's parents came to Sunderland from the Wardwood equivalent of Australia. His mother had him late in life, in a small town somewhat outside of Oldcastle; they owned a farm with several acres of fields, some of which were nicer than others. Unfortunately, his father died of old age several seasons ago, and his mother fell ill and passed on shortly after. With no farm of his own (the fields of his parents' farm were called Rice, Beans, and Son of a b***h -- not worth doing anything with once they died), he has taken to working on neighbors' land, or whoever will give him the best pay or free room and board. He likes to stay as long as he can at any given farm, but he never expects to stay any at any one place for the rest of his life. He resents being tied down.
He's been known to make forays out into the Wardwood (armed with a pitchfork or a nicked, pockmarked sword) half out of boredom and half because he enjoys the risk and the challenge. Once he came back with several shards of rock that he claimed were from the Wolfstones - hacked from them at great peril and with much effort involved. They were, in fact, shards of stone he'd picked up from the field he'd just plowed. These he sold to unwitting farmhands as luck talismans and turned a nice profit. It was the first (and last) time he did that, as an odd sense of wrongdoing hung over him for days.
His favorite challenge being women, he may have a few b*****d children out there. Whether he knows about them is another thing entirely. He's reckless and a risktaker and a loudmouth, but he can be a charming loudmouth, and he is quite good at embellishing tales of his own exploits. Needless to say he comes off as being just a bit sexist, and he is. This may change with time. |
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Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2011 8:20 pm
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  totem | fawn | yearling | buckpronounced sis-cal-us; middle syllable rhymes with 'pal'
On his own the Guardian is somewhat severe in bearing: tall and lean like his Chosen, with intensely golden eyes and a constant sense of readiness, as if he is just about to explode into motion at any instant. However, he is also endlessly patient, and the readiness is always held in check, in reserve. He does not seem to mind being used as a tool to help enhance Ayle's status with the lady-folk.
Siscalus both keeps Ayle grounded and gives him some measure of self-control: the best indication of this is that Ayle, while still a risk-taker, seems to take the risks he knows he can perform: challenges, still, but ones that present some tangible reward. He no longer stupidly leaps into a ditch to see how long it takes him to hit the bottom, for example. Siscalus himself is adept at the sideways 'are you sure?' glance. He has an entire inventory of them. He has also given his Chosen a measure of patience which he didn't possess before.
Ayle isn't quite sure why Siscalus chose him, and does not exactly put the spirit on a pedestal. Some days the deer is treated like a big dog, an intelligent farmhand animal. Other days, the worst days, he's barely acknowledged. On rare occasions Siscalus has been used to very great effect to embellish some of Ayle's stories when there has been an particularly appetizing skirt to chase. And rarer still are days when Ayle seems to appreciate the deer's company. Siscalus has been told things that no human ears have heard. |
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Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 8:52 am
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He'd meant to do a day's work -- harvesting, perhaps, to clear the field for winter crops, but a curious sensation had woken him up, like water coursing through his veins. It had come on in a torrent: he had woken up out of bed and clattered down the stairs loudly enough to make the mistress of the house frown at him over her morning knitting. He hadn't felt this excited in a long time: not even when the lady of the house's daughter had given him those eyes two weeks back, and they'd spent -- time together, underneath the hay loft. Instead of doing any work, he snatched a roll and slathered it with butter, forcing the entire thing into his mouth before she could tell him otherwise. He shot her a crooked, crumby grin out of polite spite and stepped out of the house into the brilliant midmorning sunlight, blinking away the glare.
So he rushed, in his usual recklessness, and forgot that the way there was long and the ground full of holes. In fields like Beans and Son of a b***h, he'd learned where all holes were and could walk without fear. Nearing the fringes of the Wardwood, he turned his ankle in a hole hidden in thick grass. It rolled under with a sound like a pebble ground underfoot and instantly his whole leg buckled, sending him tumbling into the grass. Though he could walk after the incident, it was with a dogged, teeth-grindingly painful limp. The further he walked, the more painful it got, but he couldn't stop. The rushing feeling was like raindrops along his spine: unable to be ignored. He started cursing under his breath at the pain; as the trees closed in behind him and he walked into the woods proper, the curses became louder, and bawdier, until they would peel paint.
He got to the totem tree without managing to injure himself further, but he was sweating and his breath was strangled. The pain in his ankle was not at all obliging as he stopped to rest, leaning on a large branch he'd found amid the underbrush. The tree was the source of the rushing feeling. That much he knew; the sensation of raindrops down his spine was now a downpour.
Ayle had never been one to believe in the Old Ways. Some argued that he wasn't intelligent enough to suspend disbelief or have the proper faith, and he had never really given an opinion either way. But now he couldn't exactly refute them anymore: not when he took his lurching, painful steps up to the totem tree. Along its branches the small deer-shaped totems bobbed in the breeze, softly glowing; snapping one totem off was both like plucking an apple and not. It was heavy and solid in his palm like an apple, but it throbbed in time with his heartbeat, and for a moment, the downpour-feeling broke. It made him gasp.
-*-
After the choosing happened, Ayle stayed for a week in the Wardwood, finally emerging with Siscalus's totem under one arm and a long tree branch in his other hand, used to support his weight. |
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Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 4:13 pm
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