" I help to raise hundreds of children
I get to see them growing up.
In their eyes I see you, Alexander
I see you every time.
And when my time is up
Have I done enough?
Will they tell my story? "
BASICS
RETIRE INFO: Retire
NAME: Chesed
GENDER: Male
PRONOUNS: He/Him/His
ORIENTATION: Bisexual
BIRTHDATE: Early Summer 2701
AGE: 69 as of Late Fall 2770
LOCATION: High Reaches Weyr
OCCUPATION: Creche worker, wherhandler
WING: Retired
APPEARANCE
EYES: Dark brown
HAIR: Black
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'6", wiry
PLAY-BY: Jackie Chan
FULL APPEARANCE:
Chesed is a rather unassuming man. Small and slightly stooped with a tendency to move with careful deliberation, he can occasionally at a glance seem to be even older than his Turns. This notion is quickly put to rest when he actually wants to move with more speed, and he still possesses a surprising agility even for a man half his age. For a short while, at least; unfortunately, what time did take from him was stamina.
He has a rather rectangular face, with a strong jaw and a broad forehead. His nose is somewhat wide, and turned down at the end. His mouth is narrow, with thin lips but a pronounced cupid's bow. His eyes are dark brown, and his eyebrows spaced somewhat far apart. His skin is fairly tan, and quite heavily wrinkled around his eyes, though really he's doing quite well for his age.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
Chesed's mannerisms are as unassuming as his looks. He's quiet and patient, more than willing to sit still for as long as he needs to for whatever task needs doing, or whatever person he's waiting on. He's not a man with an excess of energy or ideas, but one who has just enough for the situation. However, despite his patience, he's not a man content to just go with the flow; he can be extremely resistant to change, both in himself and the world around him. He disagrees with High Reaches' current direction, believing that keeping things as they were would have been the safer course. He finds habits, both good and bad, difficult to break, and often doesn't really want to break them at all; he's quite content with routine. He's slow to forgive, slow to forget, and slow to move on.
He has a great deal of capacity to care, and a love of children. He sees little issue with being used as a human jungle gym, and is more than happy to lead some of the older children—the ones who can be trusted not to go investigating her eyes and teeth—around for short rides on Chessk. He hates to see other people—especially children—in pain, and would do just about anything to keep them safe.
TW: alcoholism mentions below
Despite the passage of more than thirty Turns, he still mourns the loss of his wife and son when it's late at night and too quiet and too cold. Though he hasn't so much as touched alcohol in decades, it's during those moments that it becomes a soft longing in the back of his mind.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
Younger brother, Daled
Younger brother, Kopitar
SIGNIFICANT OTHER:
BIRTHPLACE: High Reaches Weyr
HISTORY:
TW: Death, alcoholism
Chesed was the oldest of three boys born to a pair of High Reaches drudges. His childhood was largely uneventful, filled with the small adventures and mishaps that only the young take much note of, and are quickly forgotten. But he does know he was happy, safe and secure.
Arpita was his best friend from the time he was five. As they grew up, they slowly grew to regard each other as more than just friends. Even after Arpita impressed Arpisk, they remained close. They were married when Chesed was twenty-one, and a son was born two Turns later. Despite the slowly growing unrest at High Reaches, it was a happy time. Chesed's work in the creche meant he got to see a lot of their son, which he was happy about.
Then things at High Reaches got worse when Golre came to power, and worse still when war was declared. Chesed's life and work remained constant, but his relationship with his wife was strained. She refused to talk about what happened on raids, and he was hurt by her distance.
Things got worse still late one winter. Sedar got what seemed to be a common cold, but didn't get better. The cold instead became a wracking cough, and he died a month later. Chesed's life fell into a tailspin. He started drinking heavily, and when one morning that spring he was greeted not by his wife's return but by her squadleader to inform him of her death, he hit rock bottom. He stopped working in the creche, stopped... almost everything. He doesn't remember the Turns after very well, lost to a haze of wine and anything else he could get his hands on. The mind healers tried, but he refused nearly all help, and only got better at sneaking drinks.
It took a drunken incident at the top of a flight of stairs to force him to sobriety. Unable to sneak around on a broken leg and wrist, he was made to stick to the Healers' orders. At first, he found the clarity that sobriety brought to be unpleasant, but eventually came to accept that masking everything with alcohol didn't help either.
Eventually he returned to working in the creche, and was surprised to be not just allowed back, but welcomed by the people he'd once been friends with. At some point he'd got it into his head that only Arpita and Sedar had ever cared, when nothing could have been farther from the truth. Finally, he found some modicum of happiness. He would never see his own son grow up, but he could make sure that the same couldn't be said of many, many more children. He'd raise them, for the sake of the one he couldn't.
However, after a while he decided that it wasn't enough. He wanted to do more to help them, to protect them. He tried for a wher. He got Chessk.
Chessk was quiet and strange; not what he'd expected in a wher at all. But she was exactly what he'd never known he'd needed. He took some time from his duties for wherling lessons, where he felt a little awkward as the oldest in his class by a couple of decades. He got over it. And when it was done, his time was split between guarding—his actual duty—and helping in the creche when he had free time.
At last the war ended, and he shifted to focusing on learning to combat the Thread that would soon be falling. It came, and with it its own set of disasters, but compared to life when he was younger they were inconsequential. With Chessk, he could survive anything. Even Golre's last hurrah. Even changes to leadership, and murders and catastrophic Threadfalls that saw losses even among the whers.
There was only one thing Chesed couldn't outlast: time. Eventually, he just couldn't quite keep up with his squad. The flamethrowers were too heavy, his knees too creaky. He retired, and went back to working in the creche, Chessk by his side.
