
Goennec Pen #: 3
Name: Zakkai
How would you use him/her:
Well, I really wasn't planning on adopting any more characters. I felt finally pleased with the characters I had for each story arc, and I've spent quite some time fleshing out their universes. But as I planned to write out my Goennec's stories, I found myself missing something. And then, after a few weeks of trying to figure it out, this thread updated, and I saw this guy. He's beautiful. And I just love that he's so stereotypically feminine yet still male.
He will be a great exercise in character improvement, as most of my characters stay fairly stable in both mind and body. Throwing him in difficult situations and watching him actually grow while keeping him consistent will be a great challenge for me. Writing about him will be wonderful.
He will join my character thread, and become part of Teroe and Druvian's herd, be a headmate, be drawn often by myself (and possibly by others, if I can find more people willing to draw goennecs), written about (particularly in this years' Camp Nanowrimo), will be the last of my adopted characters, and loved very much.
Define your Goennec:
X X X
All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.
- Elias Canetti
Zakkai is young (somewhat more so in mind than body), with a body that looks like he
should be healthy and active. His eyes are very expressive, and when he is idle, he tends to have a faint look of surprise.
Kai as an air of calmness about him. He seems very together, friendly, and easygoing, but any increase in tension makes him retreat into himself, detachedly ignoring anything physical. He finds it difficult to focus on small details, and blocks out anything even mildly discomforting. When he is himself he is cheerful and glib, but his fault of avoidance changes him frequently.
He is restless, and when he was young had been very obsessed with strength and speed. His lack of health disabled him greatly, and he was forced to become satisfied with living through his vivid dreams, particularly when hunters drove his herd from his birthplace.
Over time, his hiding to avoid reality has backfired; he can barely tell dreaming from wakefulness, and the dreams that gave him endless possibilities have turned into nightmares.
Kai was raised in a very turbulent environment, poor conditions making his life unstable. He spends a lot of time in his own mind trying to keep the balance, never making headway into finding inner peace.
He is fairly trustworthy whenever there is no chance of conflict. Looking to preserve his peace of mind, he tends to put off or ignore difficult tasks to handle the easier less stressful tasks. Improvisational, he avoids any planning or thinking about the future to an infuriatingly impractical degree. Death scares him, and his best way is to hide within his dreams - and if that fails, to move too fast to be aware of it.
With his nature, he tends to be self-absorbed, particularly when times are bad. In his normal state he is on friendly terms with the entire herd, but with his increasing moods his relations strain.
He is curious, with a fondness for the general and abstract - he detests details, and is more focused on the ideal than the reality. Kai tends to immediately regard the basics of information, becoming quickly bored, and flitting around ideas.
He is sentimental - everything has an importance to him, and he finds meaning in everything. This gives them a talent for seeing life as an exciting drama, full of possibilities. The behaviour verges on superstition, though most of the time he merely makes jokes about his worries instead of expressing them. Incredibly sensitive about others doubting these beliefs, he is bothered if anyone but him makes fun of them. He thinks that admitting a problem to himself means no one has a right to point them out to him.
He is hyper alert, and little around him escapes his attention. He pays particular notice to the other members of his herd, trying to find some hidden motivation in each of them. Often these turn to full-fledged stories, so convoluted that anyone he tells them to wouldn't recognize what they were originally based on.
-
There's still a hint of fall color in the otherwise cold and dismal grey of the shrubland as it settles in for the winter. The cold still stings, even through the dying leaves, reaching into his half-hearted haven. He shifted in his burrow, painfully aware of the clotted dirt and debris that were twisted into his mane, seeing that his mother from her position a little distance away was in the same condition.
The glow the stars cast across the land should have been beautiful, comforting, but now they seemed to meet his irked look with one of their own. They grabbed his concentration, refused to let it go, and for some time not even the sleeping ewes or the rising wind existed in his mind.
When he was young he had considered them as some sort of companion - sentient creatures that remained despite everything. At a year old, when the water overtook and drove them away from the only land he'd ever known, he'd been convinced that they would not remain... yet here they were. Watching him, definitely. Whether they watched with fondness or contempt was a different question entirely.
-
He hated the spring. It was the worst time, when the world couldn’t decide if it wanted to be cloudy or if it wanted to shine, weak sunlight glinting off the dew and the puddles that were strewn across their path. And when the remains of winter made him feel close to snapping, the rains would invade in earnest, and all sunlight would be gone, replaced with the thunderheads, making everything he looked at appear like a disgusting bruise.
And then it was summer, and the world was hot and sticky and sometimes he thought he was going crazy, always did even when he was little and thought he knew better, thought he had the world figured out and locked up safe.
Fall brought some peace with it, eventually evolving into something more ominous, the cold presenting him a bitter reminder. And once more it would become bitterest winter.
Every winter was like the first - chaos, confusion, movement. Each brought a wave of nostalgic memories that didn't fade until the snow did. They lingered around him even while sleeping, interrupting his safe haven, slipping through his mind and manifesting in any way possible.
Zakkai sprawled lazily on his personal throne - sparse bits of grass that couldn't feel more perfect in his exhaustion. The warmth of the sun was beginning to effect him - his eyes began to flutter, keeping his head up seemed an unbearable effort. For a while he stayed like this, at times hardly aware that he was drifting. A persistent breeze prodded him into consciousness, and he was only vaguely aware of his own actions as he lifted his head to see the ram before him.
His build was small, almost delicate, wrapped in a misty blue, with friendly eyes. Zakkai couldn't quite pinpoint when the had met the male; he figured that the little thing had simply gradually
became. He had no memories of any of it, merely impressions, like the remnants of a past life. Thinking about it, his very existence was questionable. Perhaps that was the great charm of it all.
Kai wasn't entirely sure whether they spoke, either - he had the same vague feeling as if something had been communicated, and since his companion seemed content enough from his position a few feet away, that was enough for him.
Time passed unmeasured, and the day's warmth began fading. The thought of his herd crossed his mind briefly, but his heart reassured him, persuaded him not to move from his position.
A voice sounded in the open space next to his ear. "Aren't dreams wonderful?" it asked with the tone of someone who was in on some marvelous joke.
"They require no understanding."
A change in temperature, of scenery, that he was only vaguely aware of, too wrapped up in his presence in a hundred different places at once to notice his visitor was now beside him.
"The only sad thing about them is..."
The wind was too powerful to further ignore, demanding awareness amidst the chaos. His head seemed to swirl, and he ran as he was still, and he was suddenly convinced that nothing was certain except that he was dying, dying, dying -
"They end."
-
He woke with a violent jerk of the head and a certainty that he was going to die.
Under a bush, again, head completely caught up in brushes. For a second his mind was in the past and present, and he panicked, pulling away from the foliage so quickly he left behind a shock of pink amidst the dark greens.
Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he slowly saw the difference from this and the last year - different foliage, somewhat more room, new faces and old ones missing. His mother could be seen lying a few feet away, dark fur nearly blending in with the bleak land. He wasn't sure if she was really sleeping, but she didn't look up at him, so he calmly seated himself, trying to regain his dignity.
He glanced towards the bush with a withering look, huffed, and laid back to sleep.
-
He was quiet, frowning, sulking, muttering to himself. He had his moods, but the ewe had never seen her sink this low. A voice nagged at her - talk to him, it said. He's yours, your responsibility.
But she had learned from experience not to bother him when he was in his lows. The voice got louder as time passed, and as they traveled her thoughts became a full-fledged battle between logic, fear, and curiosity.
Curiosity won.
She approached him - he was sitting in the same place he'd stubbornly sat since they had arrived, distant. She spoke, prodded him gently with a paw.
She wasn't sure if he noticed, from wherever he was.
-
The smile was nice at first. After a while it just started looking like a leer.
Though plenty of doubt remained, he was sure that this creature - for it certainly wasn't one of his own, despite its appearance - was part of his subconscious, and when its face appeared he would sigh, disappointed in his awareness that none of it was real.
The face watched him when he ran, joined as he hunted, rarely ever spoke - and when he did, it was faint, to the point that Zakkai wasn't completely sure it wasn't just another sound.
The time of the mind flew as his body rested, and a name struck him, suddenly, when the saw the ram again; Druvian. It occurred to him that he would've thought the name beautiful, at one point. But now he had the feeling he had heard it far too many times before; it was the name of a weary, unwanted guest.
Endless potential became a bore with awareness. There was no joy in success when it's superficiality was painfully clear. Soon he was sulking through his dreams as much as he was in real life.
Weeks passed, summer entered, and he was quite sure he was awake when the face greeted him again, it's owner laying as he was prone to do, with a smile that said he was in on some marvelous joke.
"Your mind is thoroughly dead. Congratulations.
"Everything that motivated you is gone. Really, it was a shame, watching you realize that. I don't pity you, though, knowing you refuse to sleep, too afraid of disappointment. It was your fault, really."
After a moment of consideration Druvian laughed.
"Besides, all you've lost is your imagination, and the only thing that you have to do is find a new one. Could that really be so hard?"