"There was a whole magnificent soul burning brightly behind her ‘shy.’"
- Atticus
BASICS
NAME: Hai’ku (was Haileeku)
GENDER: Male
PRONOUNS: He/Him/His
ORIENTATION: Homosexual
BIRTHDATE: Late Winter 2743
AGE: 33 as of Summer 2777
LOCATION: High Reaches Weyr
OCCUPATION: Wingrider, former apprentice Harper
WING: Raindance Wing
APPEARANCE
EYES: Dark Brown
HAIR: Black
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 6’2”, Lean and Athletic
PLAY-BY: John Harlan Kim
FULL APPEARANCE:
- In possession of a firm jaw, Hai’ku has long, narrow eyes of a deep brown that goes well with his short black hair and softly golden skin. His eyebrows are thick in shape yet thin in density, and his lips are pleasantly average, neither too full nor too narrow.
Hai’ku’s body is leanly athletic, well muscled but not bulky. He is on the tall side of average at six feet two inches, and he personally thinks he’s much more impressive with his shirt off; his muscles aren’t the sort that tend to show themselves through clothing.
As for his clothes, well, they’re not exactly anything special, at least not at first glance. Hai’ku does have taste, but he isn’t flamboyant about it. Quality items that are going to last, that’s his thing! He’s rather fond of green, in shades darker than but complimentary to his dragon’s hide, but he only wears that color a little more often than he does any other color.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
- Shy and introverted, Hai’ku is nevertheless artistic and musical. When he can be coaxed into putting himself out there, he is open and loving, wanting very much to be everyone’s friend despite the fact that he has trouble being forward about that desire. He doesn’t have a huge number of friends, but those he does have he holds close and cherishes. Hai’ku is very dependent on those around him, drawing strength from others and letting himself be led.
Honest and straightforward, Hai’ku generally tells it how it is, or at least how he sees it. He doesn’t appreciate being lied to, and so he doesn’t lie - it makes perfect sense to him to live that way. He is actually quite confident in himself, sure that he is who he is and that he isn’t about to change.
A tidy person, Hai’ku likes it best when everything has a place and is in that place. He is well-mannered and very by the book, focused on making everything fit just so. His outlook is rather idealized and he is frustrated when things refuse to fit into how they should be. Rules are there to be followed, after all - and that includes both rules about how to behave and rules about the places things and people belong.
Hai’ku is an empathetic soul, feeling deeply and being primarily understanding of others’ emotions. He is generally very emotionally vulnerable despite his surety in his own identity; a cruel word from a sharp tongue is enough to make him unsteady and cause him to second guess if not who he is then at least what he’s done. He doesn’t like feeling off-balance and will do everything he can to rectify the situation when he gets that way, scrambling over himself to fix everything at once.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
- Father, Harril, 61 [+28]
Mother, Joileeku, 62 [+29]
Sister, Joila, 37 [+4]
Brother, Jorril, 35 [+2]
Sister, Hareku, 30 [-3]
Nibling, Riell, 15 [-18], eldest child of Joila Open Tie!
BIRTHPLACE: Keroon Hold
HISTORY:
- TW: INJURY, PLAGUE, DEATH
The third of four children, Haileeku is born late in the winter of 2743 at Keroon Hold. He is followed by a baby sister, Hareku, when he is three. Their family is a simple one with a pair of journeymen for parents - a weaver for a father and a beastcrafter for a mother. The children were all expected to work hard and pitch in as necessary. As far as their parents were concerned, their apprenticeships (and therefore their futures) should be decided by age ten.
When Haileeku was five, his nine-turn-old sister Joila was apprenticed as a weaver to a friend of their father’s; when he was eight and old enough to be considering his own apprenticeship, ten-turn-old Jorril begged for a place as an apprentice to a seacrafter who sailed out of Keroon Bay. Then the eyes of their parents were turned on Haileeku.
Unfortunately, Haileeku had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. None of the immediately obvious options struck him as particularly appealing. The pressure to choose what he was going to do for the rest of his life was more than he wanted to deal with, and he struggled to find his place. Hareku actually chose her path before he did; at nine she decided to follow their mother as a beastcrafter.
When Haileeku was eleven, nearly twelve, armistice was declared, and the Interval War that had plagued the land since before his birth finally came to an end. It was an odd transition, moving from the wartime he had always known to a time of peace, but peace would not last long as the Red Star would soon rain Thread down on the land again.
It was with those thoughts that Haileeku, a few months after his twelfth nameday, felt reasonably certain he had found his way. History fascinated, the interactions between people, the why and how of things. Apprenticed to a Harper, his great stumbling block was his shyness and introversion. He had trouble talking to people, something his master bemoaned, but thankfully his reticence did not translate into stage fright. In singing a ballad or reciting a story, Haileeku came alive.
By the time Haileeku turned fifteen in the winter of 2758, Thread had returned in earnest and it was clear that the Tenth Pass had begun. Dragons came on Search, and in the summer of 2759, Haileeku was selected to go to Igen Weyr and Stand as a Candidate. He was still Standing when strange news came of the women Impressing bronze and an odd new color of wher being born in the shape of Garnet Kelsk. When it reached his ears that a garnet dragon had hatched as well, he thought that the world must indeed be changing - and here he was, right in the middle of it!
As dragonriders fled the political climate at High Reaches, Haileeku Stood on the Sands at Igen and Impressed to Green Poeth. He was utterly delighted by her; upon her hatching she was already approaching seven feet in length and her outgoing nature was an excellent foil for his more reserved personality. Poeth and her rider, now Hai’ku, grew quickly into an effective Thread fighting pair.
Threadfall was particularly severe in the spring of 2764. Poeth, at two and a half, received a gash on her left hip from a collision with a rockface, and while the injury did not scar it did keep them from fighting Thread until summer. And summer that turn was particularly bad, fraught with plague and Thredfall injuries, but thankfully Hai’ku and Poeth made it through. Not everyone did, and a notably high number of riders were rendered dragonless.
It was much more pleasant to hear stories of the lost riders returning to the Weyrs from the summerlands, and that winter joint surveys of the summerlands were started. This set Pern on the path to a new Weyr as Semaca Weyr was officially recognized the following spring.
In the autumn of 2766, Poeth was old enough that she and Hai’ku were eligible to transfer to another Weyr should they desire. That knowledge weighed heavy in Hai’ku’s mind. While he was content to remain in the background, his darling and extroverted Poeth deserved her chance to shine. The following turn High Reaches took heavy losses during Threadfall and the pair relocated to find their place in the Raindance Wing. Perhaps they joined too soon, and the following turn again led to heavy Threadfall casualties, but the pair muddled through somehow.
Spring of 2770 brought further chaos to their new home. Two eggs appeared at High Reaches as they were about to hatch, and when everything had settled they were no longer sharing Candidates with Fort (where it was presumed the mystery eggs had originated) and many a rider had left for their original Weyr. It was quite the mess and resulted in emergency elections over the summer to choose a new Council, one that the people of High Reaches Weyr had faith in. It was all quite a lot for Hai’ku, who just wanted a little peace alongside fighting Thread; he seriously considered taking Poeth somewhere quieter, but ultimately decided that there was little point in uprooting them again. Their original reasons for transferring to High Reaches still existed, after all. If Poeth was going to have an equal chance at being whatever she might become, High Reaches Weyr was the best place for her.
It’s a good thing Hai’ku had resigned himself to chaos because the next few turns were not exactly kind to High Reaches Hold. Blight struck the crops in the autumn of 2773, and a mudslide struck the following spring. The Weyr was temporarily crowded by refugees from the Hold, one of which was a particularly beautiful young man a few years Hai’ku’s junior named Ciotin. Romance sparked during the time that Ciotin was taking refuge in the Weyr, a deep enough connection that Hai’ku asked his new lover to stay - but Ciotin had responsibilities back in the Hold, responsibilities he claimed he could not shirk, and in the end, they were separated by duty.
The next big change in the Weyr came during a snowstorm. A rescue mission brought several of the Holdless into High Reaches Weyr and they were allowed to stay. It was no surprise to Hai’ku when that exception led to a new rule: Holdless who were deemed to have properly reformed or who were born in the wilds of Pern were allowed to join life at the Weyr. While Hai’ku was fully welcoming of those who were born Holdless through no fault of their own, well, he wasn’t entirely certain how reformed those who were cast out could possibly be.
Spring arrived again, as it always did, and with it came 2777. Hai’ku received word that his eldest sister’s eldest child, Riell, had been Searched. It took a little doing, but he arranged to bring them to High Reaches where he could keep an eye on them. Although he didn’t really know his nibling as they had been born after he had been Searched (and, in fact, were close to Poeth’s age) he felt a sort of kinship to Joila’s eldest. After all, they had both been Searched. Surely that meant they were something alike!
Of course, he would soon learn that he couldn’t have been more wrong. Riell was nothing like him.
UPDATES
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