Equid's Name: Affinity
Age: 11
Height: 13hh
Gender: Mare
Personality (based on which song?): "The Mother We Share" | Ardent ~ Imaginative ~ Perplexing ~ Persevering - Unbiased |
“Just gotta keep on keeping on, no matter what happens.” That’s what Affinity usually says when something comes up, even if it completely derailed the rest of her program, and she refuses to let it hold her back. Each day is a new chance to improve something about her life, to improve the lives of those around her, and she works with what she has to make ends meet. She is the brush and paints, and the whole rest of the world is her canvas. Her personality is a mystifying one, if not a fervent reminder that sometimes, you’re just supposed to turn out the way you turn out, and there’s little anyone can do to alter that.
Her mother tried to prepare her for a posh, easy life in domestication. You have good blood in you, my child. Don’t struggle needlessly. Don’t think outside the box. Don’t challenge the authority. Easy peasy. But young Affinity wasn't so keen on this idea. She drank in new things like they were the air she needed to survive, and nothing any man or mare could do was going to convince her otherwise. Playing, thinking, combing through life's little mysteries like they were shiny baubles... and it was even better when she could escape. It was her unquenchable desire to create, and challenge the rules of what are and what aren’t that always seemed to land her in trouble, as well as the many times she'd run aimlessly and gleefully about the property while everybody tried to chase her down.
It wasn’t until she was a little older and a little more capable that finally, after much strain on all ends, there came an apparent compromise. Affinity’s mother realized she couldn’t completely quell the fire in her daughter’s visionary spirit (even if she really wanted that to start with), and Affinity realized it’d be way easier on everybody if she kept more to herself and reined in her impulses every once in a while. And thus arose a more mysterious, thoughtful mare, one who always seems to surprise you, even though she thinks about things months and even years in advance. She still operates the same way she always did, that yearning is still there; just to a less notorious degree. It’s more apparent in the way she performs than anything else.
When the lights go on, and she melds into routine, there’s a certain artistic quality that goes into even her tiniest movements. When everybody else is uniform, choreographed… Affinity is lively, flaring out from the rest of the group while still staying on cue. It’s almost like she’s somewhere else entirely, maybe that beautiful, far away somewhere she's always dreamt of... but is also at home in the ring, ready to inspire and elate.
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My initial inspiration that I took from this song wasn't so much on the actual lyrics, but in the way it made me feel when I listened to it. It makes me feel alive and hopeful, like there's something out there as long as I keep on fighting and keep an open mind. It seems to channel an air of: "Smile; you have a reason to, and you’re not as alone as it feels." That's where the bulk of her actual personality came from, though there are still a lot of other aspects about her that were definitely inspired by the lyrics. ;D
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Art:
^ Click for full sized image.
What's her relationship with her parents and siblings like?: Her relationship with her family? Affinity lives at the circus; in the circus, everyone's family. But as for blood relatives, she hasn’t seen her father since she was very young. Her mother lives at the circus with her, performing in the same show as she and her twin brother, and she has a few siblings she’s never met.
Her memories of her father are hazy ones, but she does remember his kind eyes peering at her occasionally from over the fence. She learned most of what she knows about him from her mother; “Affinity! You’re as hard-headed a filly as your father ever was!” (Question: Dad was a filly?) or “Heavens! You and your wild ideas… I’d kick your father in the tail if he were here right now; he used to tell me the same crazy things when we were both younger. Now you do no such of a thing as make a run for that gate, you hear?” She often makes up the rest of her father’s story.
Sometimes, her mother talks about her other foals, but only seldom since it puts her in one of her bitter-sweet moods. It wasn't until she was 2 or 3 that she even found out; who knew she had 2 sisters and another brother somewhere? What were they even like? But her mother said they were long gone way before she and her brother had ever been born, and never has she expounded. Affinity makes up stories for them too.
Affs loves her momma, even though they bicker like two cats in a sack 90% of the time. That’s what she’s called her since she was a little thing if you were wondering, “Affs”. She’s 11 whole years old now, far from a baby, but she’s still that wide-eyed little filly from her Momma's point of view. The other horses and ponies at the circus call her by it too now (she’s known the lot of them almost as long as her mother and brother), but hearing it never ceases to transport her back in time to that pretty green pasture where she and the other spring foals once played. Her mother has always been there for her, and in a way, they're also best friends.
She and her brother have always had a very special bond as well. Maybe it was that they came so close to losing their mother during birth, and had to have a vet out to finish their traumatic delivery. Maybe it was that they were so sick, and so premature, that they had to stick together from that point on, as a team, to make it through. Who knows what the catalyst was, the fact remains the same; they’ve had each other's backs through thick and thin. When Affinity went through her escaping faze, he usually helped her, and sometimes, it seemed like they were the only ones who really understood each other. Even now, as old as they both are, even after having outgrown the majority of their frailties, they’re as fiercely loyal to one another as the lions that perform before them. As the only Wild Mountain Equid family in the circus, and the star attraction, the show must go on.
![Too big to post, [looks better big] represents her two personalities.](http://oi59.tinypic.com/rk1v7p.jpg){kind=link}
