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“ I ᴀᴍ ᴄᴏʟᴅ, ᴄᴀɴ ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴇᴀʀ?
I ᴡɪʟʟ ғʟʏ ᴡɪᴛʜ ɴᴏ ʜᴏᴘᴇ, ɴᴏ ғᴇᴀʀ
Aɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ɢʀᴏᴜɴᴅ ᴛᴀᴜɴᴛs ᴍʏ ᴡɪɴɢs
Pʟᴜᴍᴍᴇᴛ ᴀs I sɪɴɢ, ᴘʟᴜᴍᴍᴇᴛ ᴀs I sɪɴɢ...”
Tᴡᴇɴᴛʏ Oɴᴇ Pɪʟᴏᴛs — Isʟᴇ ᴏғ Fʟɪɢʜᴛʟᴇss BɪʀᴅsQuantumNightmare
Hey there, I'm Quantum! I've been in the Kia community for three years now and treasure my Kiamaras dearly~ Thank you for the opportunity to try for this beautiful babe who I have seen around the trading post many times before; I love writing long forms for adopts. <3
Nᴀᴍᴇ;; Ptarmigan
A northern grouse commonly found in Arctic regions, known for their white winter plumage and feathered legs.
Gᴇɴᴅᴇʀ;; Male
This sweet, neutral coloured Kia came across as agender to me at first, but as I develop him further he has evolved into a rather feminine male. I don't think gender means much to him anyway, he seems rather chill about outside perceptions of him as long as he's not called his deadname.
Pᴇʀsᴏɴᴀʟɪᴛʏ;;| LITERAL | DISCONNECTED | PANICKY | QUIET | CARING | OPEN | NERVOUS |
Ptarmigan is what is known as a kūdere, appearing as a rather reserved and cool, emotionless Kiamara when in fact his lack of emotion is a front, a mask used to keep others at arms length. He is actually a very shy, soft and kind boy, afraid of pretty much everything, including his own shadow. He pretends to be cold to prevent himself from being hurt by others, as though he would never be unkind to any living thing he has been surprised by the cruelty, intentional or not, of others in the past.
The high-stress family environment he grew up in, and the subsequent time he spent on the streets, has not made life easy for Ptarmigan. Though he tries to comfort himself with the fact he is free from his old life he is quite well aware that several of his key personality traits are not exactly healthy. Being afraid of your own personality is quite an accomplishment.
Regarding his actual character, Ptarmigan is a very literal-minded Kiamara, often thinking things through in a logical manner without factoring in the emotions of others. Depending on how tired he is he often misses the point of jokes and sarcasm, though he is a master of sarcasm himself as his voice is often completely toneless. He can have some problems with metaphors. Sometimes even he cannot tell he's being sarcastic, which he just finds amusing. He is very blunt and to the point, not liking to waste time on small talk and other useless things, but his anxiety means he often doesn't talk around people anyway so the only people who really see this bluntness are those he already knows well.
The high-stress, high-anxiety life he escaped as a child contributed massively towards his personality — he lives in an almost permanently hazy and disconnected manner. This is due to chronic depersonalisation, a symptom of anxiety where individuals feel like they are outside of their body due to the feeling of their body sensations, feelings, emotions and behaviours not belonging to the same person or identity. For Ptarmigan it means he often doesn't feel real, or goes about his life whilst feeling as if in a dream. Combined with his already slipping grasp on reality, these feelings make his anxiety levels skyrocket and he can often be found in tears if he's in one of these states.
He is easily frightened, especially during periods of time where he is struck with anxiety and can't talk. Sudden noises scare him pretty much constantly throughout these times and so he tends to squirrel himself away in a quiet corner somewhere. It probably doesn't help that Ptarmigan is afraid of a lot of things without these hypersensitivities.
His paranoia only emphasises these fears and feelings, leaving him in a near-constant state of fear. He gets headaches a lot from the fight or flight response triggering at everything he's scared by, but pain only negatively reinforces his fear.
Ptarmi has always preferred the quiet; used to a silent environment from living alone for so long. His understanding of authority he learnt on the streets and his anxiety most often lead to him being quiet in an attempt to be respectful/forgotten around others. He doesn't like to speak over people or challenge their opinions, though if it's something he has a strong viewpoint about you can bet he's dying to jump into the conversation with a vehement 'You're wrong!' It's just his anxious mistrust of strangers that keeps him from doing this.
He is a very honest and open person, even a little naïve. He has no problem with lying but often just doesn't see the point of it, making others see him as fairly trustworthy and making any actual lies of his far more influential. Ptarmi also has the problem that, once he gets to know someone, he can be a little too open and adds a little too much detail to pretty much all of his speech. For example, a conversation about a party may lead to him offering up stories of every party he'd ever been to, not that the number would be high. It leaves him quite vulnerable in that it gives a lot of people personal details about him.
Ptarmigan is a ball of nervous energy, with his anxiety making him carry out unnecessary tasks and worry about little things constantly. This and his paranoia has him checking things constantly, and it's easy to see why he is constantly overwhelmed. It's probably due to the stress of his family life he escaped that he is this way, easily scared and anxious and prone to panic attacks. Everything just ends up stacked though, with his paranoia causing him anxiety and his anxiety making him selectively mute and everything together making him overwhelmed. He's got a lot on his shoulders and it's really rather impressive that he's forging onwards like it. Ptarmi would never let these feelings defeat him, but also considers them an intrinsic part of himself that he's not sure if he wants to change.
He has very little self-worth and is extremely shy, often hiding away from others when they get too loud or exuberant, though he will simply pass it off as boredom. He is pleasant-mannered, polite and loves to just sit and watch the world go by for hours. Both facets of his personality, the reserved 'kūdere' mask and the panicky 'real' him, mean that he can avoid prolonged social contact as it makes him feel extremely awkward — another reason for his daydream world. He is also often seen talking softly to himself.
Above all else, Ptarmigan loves the sky, specifically the freedom of the birds and the beauty of the stars. No-one ever doubts the personality of a star, they simply acknowledge that they are there, and far greater than any human perception of beauty could ever begin to describe.
Fᴇᴀᴛʜᴇʀs;;The sound of shouting followed the running boy onto the dark streets, through the door he had slammed behind him just a second before. It was a clear night, cold enough that he could see his exhaled breath hanging in the air, so he blinked back the tears threatening to fall and huddled further into the puffy jacket he'd at least had the foresight to grab before setting off.
Ptarmigan had finally decided he couldn't stay at home a minute longer, but for someone who had thought of this course of action as many times as he had, he was woefully unprepared for the reality of the situation.
The streets were cold and not meant for the delicate, feminine boy in the too big coat who wandered with no clear purpose along the city streets. Sure, he'd thought of running away before, but he'd never had such a strong reason to. If they couldn't accept him, he wouldn't wait around for them to decide to try and fix what wasn't broken.
He'd walked for what seemed like forever and had more likely been a hour or so before he came to the bright lights of the city centre, where he had more or less been being in the first place. He couldn't return to the house, that was for sure. It had never been much of a home to him anyway.
Instead he paced the well lit streets, searching for somewhere fairly dry to hide out. He knew a few Kias slept on the streets here, it was safer than some of the other parts of the city. It wasn't like he had anywhere else to go.
Eventually Ptarmi settled for the porch of a boarded up shop towards the end of the street. It was tucked away enough that if anyone was looking for him they'd be hard pressed to spot him, without being too secluded where he'd be at risk of being murdered or something.
To be honest, he had no idea what he was doing. He had a coat and a pocket full of cereal bars, and that was it. Was being murdered an everyday risk? Probably.
The road out of the city called in a voice like the wind; high and fluty but barely more than a whisper.
Every night he stayed it grew more urgent, this pulling call to the wilderness beyond the world he had always known.
Ptarmigan knew little of the outside world other than the city. He knew enough to recall the wild road led to the mountains, a harsh, cold climate suited for few Kiamaras. He'd heard of many a Kia who'd gone missing on the snowy trails.
It poured with rain that night.
Curled up in his jacket, shivering and clutching the last couple of cereal bars in his pocket, tucked away in the shallow doorway he'd called home the past few nights, Ptarmigan fell into a fitful sleep, gazing up at the hazy night sky even through the downpour. When he awoke and saw the missing poster on the other side of the street his mind was already set, but the wording made his stomach clench and his determination only strengthened.
Hopefully no-one would associate the bright-eyed girl of the picture with the scrawny street boy in the too-big coat in the time it would take to carry out his plan.
He would just disappear into the mountains.
Sure enough, no-one noticed the boy walking beside the wild road. Few people even drove down it, so once he was far enough from the city that he could no longer be seen there was little threat of him being found. The freedom was exhilarating, keeping him moving even as the temperature dropped and his surrounding became the snowy woodland surrounding the base of the mountains.
Even as snow began to fall around him, he kept walking like a man possessed, drawn by the call of the mountain and the freedom it offered.
If he noticed how his footprints were quickly erased behind him, he didn't seem to care.
-----
It was an unusual case for SAR to be called out on, that was for sure. A Kiamara missing from a house in the city. No one expected the missing Kia to have headed into the mountains but the police had found no trace of them, and so the mountain team were the last resort. It'd been a week since they'd left. Even if they were up there the chances of them being alive were literally zero.
SAR Frisk never did like these kind of bleak missions. Still, he loved his job and his team, and would give this mission everything he had even if they weren't bringing the missing person back alive. His team were gathered nearby, checking their supplies and that of the search dog, waiting for him to brief them.
"One individual confirmed missing. Young adult, grey fur, named Paloma. Last seen a week ago in the city centre, reporting missing yesterday. They don't know if she's up here but if she is it's our job to find her." Frisk announced, watching his team nod solemnly in confirmation before he picked up the leash of the search dog and the group began their trek into the forest.
They hadn't been up there long but it felt like it. Even the dog was sporadic in its scent tracking, picking it up one moment and losing it the next. The search dog's bark and the sudden rattling warble of a ptarmigan made him jump and look around wildly, seeing no sign of the bird.
The pale grey fur was almost invisible with the light covering of snow that covered it. If it hadn't been for the bird that suddenly took off from it in a flurry of white feathers, startled by their appearance, it would have been almost impossible to spot them. Frisk called over the rest of his team and approached the Kiamara the ptarmigan had drawn him to. Clenched in their fist were four icy-encrusted feathers, undoubtably those of a ptarmigan in its winter plumage — the feathers of the bird he had just seen.
Wait... was that?
Frisk's attempts to dig them out of their snowy grave increased at the sight of the rise and fall of their chest.
"They're alive! Someone call the medics, get them to meet us at base!"
-----
As Ptarmigan awoke he became aware of someone talking to him rather urgently, asking him something. He couldn't hear what the other Kiamara was saying but he somehow knew it wasn't the right name. His stomach dropped. They'd sent people to find him even out here.
"N-no." He shivered, blearily opening his eyes just a crack. "'Tarmi. Ptarmigan."
To the credit of the long-eared Kiamara leaning over him, he seemed to catch on immediately. "Okay then, Ptarmigan. I'm guessing you came out here for a reason and don't want to go back to your house. Am I right?"
Ptarmigan nodded warily, icy eyes glancing quickly around the medical surroundings before settling on the kindly-looking Kiamara with the brown eyes who beamed back at him.
"I'm SAR Frisk, I led the team who found you. You can stay with me for a little while if you need to, get you back on your feet."
It was a casual enough remark but it made Ptarmigan's ears prick up in hope. He couldn't nod fast enough. Smiling, Frisk went to leave but suddenly stopped.
"Gotta say, your namesake gave me a bit of a fright. Wouldn't have found you if it hadn't been for one of the rock ptarmigan up there. Must have been where you found these, since we found you holding them." The goat Kiamara turned back to him, four feathers in his hand.
The dye of his cheap blue coat had clearly bled into the feathers he had been clutching, turning their brilliant white a washed out blue. The same colour as his eyes. He reached out and tentatively took them from Frisk as if expecting them to melt away in his hands.
Feathers. He was of course aware of the significance of feathers to other Kiamaras, but he'd never given much thought to his own lack of them.
Somehow, this seemed a more than fitting way to receive them.
2 Aʀᴛ Exᴛʀᴀs;;Since I'm not able to draw a lot at the moment I commissioned some specific pieces to give you a better picture of Ptarmigan's life and personality. I hope the ideas come across as clearly to you as they did when I was writing the briefings!
1. Header pixel by
mailmen!
2. By
Shatterhowl!
3. By
Nymeria;;!
4. By
me!
5. By
WolfiaKeys!
6. By
Scooteson!
FriskMeeting Frisk may have been a coincidence that saved his life, but staying friends was no such thing. The lively, kindhearted SAR Kiamara is undoubtably one of the nicest people Ptarmigan has ever had the pleasure of meeting. From immediately switching to their preferred name to offering them a place to stay so they had somewhere to go, Ptarmi owes Frisk a lot and fully intends to pay him back someone, hence why he follows the goat Kiamara like a puppy. He hopes to one day get a position on Frisk's esteemed Search and Rescue team, despite the difficulty of such a task, and especially as a volunteer.
Outside of his professional duties, Frisk has always stayed in contact with Ptarmigan no matter his whereabouts, often phoning him up simply to make sure of his wellbeing. The grey Kiamara may pretend to complain about these spontaneous calls, but he is honestly delighted that someone actually cares about him enough to do so; though he does in turn have to remind Frisk to look out for himself, so concerned is he for others.
Ptarmi thinks of Frisk as sort of an older brother and is very fond of the other Kiamara.
VolpeVolpe is a close friend of Ptarmigan, having met him by accident when they were both hiding from a crowd in a station toilet. Volpe immediately took to the panicky Kiamara and often tries to help him regardless of Ptarmi's opinion on the matter. From lending him clothes to offering him a place to stay when he was living alone, the other shy Kia has proved himself again and again as a selfless Kiamara who is truly looking out for his friends. Ptarmigan cannot help but appreciate all Volpe has done for him, and feels deeply indebted to the other.
DismasNo-one would really expect Ptarmigan to have ever set foot in a gym, let alone befriended the owner of such an establishment, and they'd be partially right. Though he rarely visits Cosmic Fitness' gym, he is partial to the smoothie shop it houses and so developed a strange friendship with the shy owner. He can often be found in the smoothie bar, sitting in a corner far from the other patrons but offering a slight smile to the friendly but quiet owner. The happy but shy Kiamara is like an enthusiastic version of himself, and Ptarmi can't help but feel a sense of kinship with the other. After all, shy people gotta stick together. Quietly.
PhiloPtarmi has extremely mixed feelings towards Philo. On one hand the highly intelligent, book-loving Kiamara has much in common with Ptarmigan himself, but on the other his stuck up, almost aggressive attitude towards those he considers 'below him' or less intelligent is rather frightening to the far shyer grey Kiamara. But despite his snobby attitude, Philo seems to have developed a slight liking for him. Ptarmi can be often found tucked away in a corner of Philo's library, book in hand and whispering quietly with the owner about one exceedingly complex topic or another, impossible for anyone else to understand.
LednikovPtarmigan has a great deal of respect for Lednikov, with her sensitive and caring and yet stubbornly sarcastic nature. He admires her greatly for her ability to stand up for herself without compromising her softer, more imaginative traits. They met by an accident of fate in town, when Lednikov rescued him by breaking up a group of younger Kias who'd been harassing him. Ever since then, he'd had a rather puppy-like idolisation of her, wanting to be as strong and yet soft as she manages to be. His blind idolisation is probably not healthy, but little of his personality is.
Aᴄᴋɴᴏᴡʟᴇᴅɢᴇᴍᴇɴᴛs;;Thank you to everyone who helped out with this form: mailmen, Shatterhowl, Nymeria;;, WolfiaKeys and Scooteson for helping me get all the art together on such short notice and Sable., little fish and Tauruu-Vynn for letting me use their Kias!
If I do not win, all artists agree their art goes to the winner~
Thank you for hosting this competition, I had a lot of fun making a character out of my concept. I hope he comes across to you just as clearly! <3
