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Elsewhere Accepted / Bas Shepherd
« on: 03/12/2017 at 18:55 »E L S E W H E R E T E E N
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Basil “Bas” Shepherd
Gender: Male
Age: 14
Bloodline: Squib
Parents/Guardians (Are they currently played characters?):
Residence:
Do you plan to have a connection to a particular existing place (for example: the daycare)?
No
Do you wish to be approved as a group with any other characters? If so who and for what IC reason?
No
Please list any other characters you already have at the site:
Icarus, et al.
Biography: (100 words minimum.)
I know two things about my dad. He was a goat farmer, and he loved my mother very much. I remember his face, red. Not from sun or wind or ruddy complexion, but from emotion when he left. Or when we did. It's difficult to put together now. No matter how I still feel that day in my lungs, I don't know anything else.
My stepfather, that old man, would have me believe that only a bad man leaves his wife and kid. He would say he’d never trust a goat farmer; they got them eyes that look at ya sideways. And he’d never say any more about it. And Mother wouldn’t say nothin’ about the man at all. Guess that’s a third thing: they wouldn’t have the nerve to treat no one’s memory like that, so I know he’s not dead. And to not say nothin’? I’ll bet he’s a man as good as they come, even if he never answers the letters I’ve sent. To be fair, I can’t guess if he’s even gotten ‘em.
Now, I’m not here to make any accusation, or speak poorly of them. They’re good folk, well-meanin’, generous. And when I didn’t get a letter to school, the old man put a crook and the keys to the hut in my hand, so I wouldn’t feel useless. Who feels useless on a farm so full of ducks and chickens and cows and horses and the sheep... so far out in the field and up the hills? So I took off with the dog to pasture. He let me take care of ‘em like they were mine, though they weren’t, not one of ‘em. Hypocrite.
I don’t rightly know what goes through her head, and it would be wrong of me to suppose I did. But when a woman looks at her son like a stranger, when he sees her once every two, three weeks, he starts to feel like one. And that’s after she spoils her new children, with naught but half a box of lemon drops left over. I’ve still shared them with the children, the three of ‘em. And I’d swear on it, the moment each sweet touched their lips, the sugar sparkled like the silver paint on the old man’s Bristol Saloon. On mine, just dust. The only spark I get is the static of the wool.
I can't do what you can do. Not a color I can change, not a light in mid-air with the wave of a stick. And you must know how many sticks I've tried, carved myself. Boiled in lanolin and fly agaric, cut from the wood of a felled oak hostin’ sulphur tuft, tapped in the gills of a destroyin’ angel on a full moon. There’s no magic in me but what it takes to tell poison by the gills. Unless you count usin’ the right herbs to cure a stomach ache, or readin’ the stars to get home, but doesn’t everyone know those things who lives among ‘em? I’m the only one on the farm who doesn’t have it. And, y’know, that shouldn’t mean I’m the one who does all the hard work with his hands, but I do. I do it all for them, no matter how much of it they ask, whether or not they lift a finger or a wand to help. Almost never do.
Every night, I wish.
It’s not just the old man, but people in the town, too, who’ve said my magic’s missin’ with my dad. Whispers here and there, things I happen to overhear when I come by for supplies. Don’t know if I believe it, the way they blame him. Like it’s punishment, somehow, for doin’ somethin’ they can’t even prove he did. I suppose only one person can prove he didn’t, and she’s not talkin’. And I still feel that day when I breathe in the mornin’. I don’t blame her so much; sometimes, it feels like I might lose it if I exhale too quick.
Four years old last I saw him, and that was the last day I ever cried. Same age as Bunny is now, and I can just hear her wail from miles and miles away. I cannot hear her consoled. She's the only one who thinks of me as family at all.
It was a hard thing to do, y’know, leavin’ the sheep. The last click of the gate, the poor things absolutely clueless, bleatin’ their happy goodbyes. I gave them each a nose rub on my way out, and the dog too, but not a word to the family. Whatever they might have had to say to me, either it’d hurt too much, or I wouldn’t care. Wasn’t keen to find out. I think at least Bunny would understand if I tell her I’ve gone to find my letter, lost in the mail. Hard to find a boy out in the meadow, in the forest, at the edge of the cliff, as though I didn’t stick out among the sheep. At least they treat me like their own. Sometimes.
If I had magic, I could be.
I can hear her miles and miles and miles away, tears in the dew, and I hope she doesn’t forget me either. I’ll be home sometime, just not until I find my dad. Because maybe he’s like me, and he’s got advice or help or something, anything, or... maybe he’s not. But either way, I know that he knows why.
Roleplay:
Reply as your character to the following:
Godric Park.
Overhead, the sky was a crisp blue, for once clear of the ever-pervasive spongy clouds and rain. The sun was a lemony-yellow presence, high in the Eastern sky, and in front of it zipped three broomsticks in a straight line, or something very like one. One... two..... three... the boys passed, their shouts of excitement echoing as they chased the snitch, a tiny shimmer reflecting the sunlight.
Far below was another, much smaller broomstick.
It trugged along the ground, hugging close to it like a sluggish choo choo train and occasionally shuttering in protest. This was because said stick was currently being occupied by a very small girl who was tugging upward on the front of it with all her might, trying to coax it into doing what it had been expressly designed NOT to do.
"John, I said wait up!" The tiny girl squealed, giving the broomstick another tug.
Begrudgingly, it drifted upward a foot, and then sank, depositing the troublesome girl safely on the ground. Janey Hurst was not pleased. In a huff, she hopped off the toy safety broom, grabbing it firmly and thrusting it handle first into the turf.
Her brother was such a beast. He NEVER let her play! She folded her arms, seething blue eyes fixing on another figure nearby. "You!" She barked, much more sharply than she meant to.
"...Do you want to play?"
Roleplay Response:
The bark of a big little voice pulled his brows to their peak. Eyes followed up from the pages of his research, landing on the girl as she spoke again.Any doubt he might have had that you meant him vanished under her turbulent glare. It had been some time since anyone had set a stare upon him quite like that, but he was too familiar with that weight to miss it.
(He thought distantly of the girls, his mother’s daughters, and pushed missing them quickly away. Their eyes had such a heft themselves.)
Bas took stock of the scene, of the toy broom in the grass, the boys on real brooms, and determined they had abandoned her. But whether it was because she lacked a broom the same as theirs, or if she was too much a little girl for them, he couldn't tell. Seemed cruel, either way. There wasn't no one more delightful to play with, if his opinion was worth anything. Little girls liked to play pretend, and that suited a Squib just fine.
He closed the book that held the scraps of his journey, pressing records to maps to sketches to letters unsent, and gave the girl a slow but genuine smile.
“Y’know, I’m not sure I’m too good at playin’ like that,” he admitted in a careful drawl, “but I do know how to play hopscotch and jacks?”
It wasn't much, because he wasn't much himself, and he accepted it. The trouble would come in whether or not she could accept him in his lacking and simplicity. And wasn't that always the trouble for Bas Shepherd?
OTHER
How did you find us? Somewhere in the recesses of my mid-2000’s memories brought me back
