Below is my initial character concept for the new Changeling: The Lost venue when it gets started. I'm curious to see what people think, and am interested in discussing the possibility of some kind of in character connection if people want to discuss it with me. Feel free to comment below, or e-mail me privately if you prefer that.
“Now we're gonna be face to face,
And I'll lay right down in my favorite place,
And now I wanna be your dog.
Now I'm ready to close my eyes,
And now I'm ready to close my mind,
And now I'm ready to feel your hand,
And lose my heart on the burning sands,
And now I wanna be your dog...”
Name: Coal (Cole Wainwright)
Seeming: Beast (Hunterheart) – Hound
Story:
Once upon a time there was a boy who believed himself to be the luckiest person alive. The oldest of three brothers, who in turn were the children of the oldest of three brothers, who were in turn the children of the oldest of three brothers. He knew that he in turn would eventually meet a girl and they would fall in love, and have three boys of their own. For that was the way that it was in the boy's family. He was quick, and clever, if a bit shy, and these qualities served him well as he grew older. He did meet a girl, and they did fall in love, because that was the way it was supposed to be. He considered himself very fortunate indeed. But luck can be a fickle thing, and fortune's favor does not always linger.
One day the boy was running in the park, when he found himself face to face with the biggest dog he'd ever seen. It was almost as large as he was, and black as midnight. It's pale yellow eyes stared back at him, unblinking as it regarded him intently. Now the boy was no fool. He knew that strange dogs weren't always friendly, but standing there, looking at the dog, and with the dog looking at him, he couldn't help but reach out his hand, and run his fingers through the dog's thick black fur. The dog, for it's part wagged it's enormous tail, and panted happily, it's pink tongue lolling between it's massive jaws. The boy smiled, pleased to have made a new friend in such an unexpected way.
“Do you like dogs?”, came a voice from behind the boy, quiet but firm. The boy turned and beheld a woman unlike any he had ever known. She was tall and beautiful and her bearing nothing short of regal. The boy thought however that she seemed cold there was something fierce and perhaps a little frightening about her, but when she smiled, the boy found that he could not look away. “Do you like dogs?”, she asked again, and this time the boy found his wits long enough to reply. He told the woman that he liked dogs, and she replied that her dog seemed to like him well enough, and did he want a job?
The boy was, as I have said, no fool, and thought it odd that such a woman would offer him a job, having only just met. He asked what the job was. The woman smiled again, and the boy found himself transfixed. The sun seemed to bright, and the air heavy. She explained that she had many dogs, and that they needed a firm hand as well as attention, and that her affairs kept her from being able to tend them as they required. Did he want the job, she asked him again. The boy asked where this job would be. The woman smiled a third time, and told him that her dogs resided at her house. That it was a distance from here, but not as far as one might think, and did he want the job? The dog simply stared at the boy curiously, as if waiting for his answer.
Hesitant, but curious, the boy agreed, and the woman took his hand, and they swore, him to serve and her to rule, although the boy could no longer remember exactly what he had said. The woman led him from the park, and into a thick wood that the boy had not remembered being there before. The woods were so dark and the ground so uneven that he stumbled often. The woman had no trouble finding her footing, and when the boy stumbled too often, she laughed and made him run on all fours to better keep his balance. The boy could not remember how long they walked, but his clothes were torn, his knees scraped, and his hands cut by the time they reached the woman's house. Of the house itself, the boy knew little. His mistress, for that was what she insisted he call her, made him sleep in the kennels with her hounds. She took his clothes from him, and dressed him in her livery. At first she called him her houndsman, but as time went on, she put a collar on him, and simply called him her favorite hound. She insisted that he live amongst the other hounds, for how could he train them if he did not know what it was like to be one of them. So he stayed among her hounds, and learned their ways. He became less a boy, and more a dog with each passing day. The boy knew the call of his mistress' voice, the touch of her hand, and the sting of the lash when she was displeased. He learned to come when called, to run swift in search of prey, and to hunt whatever his mistress demanded he hunt. And so it went until the boy no longer knew any life but to sleep, and wake, and eat. To run, and bark, and bite when ordered. To lay at her feet.
It might have gone on forever, but as I said, luck is fickle, and sometimes fortune's favor returns to those it has once forsaken. The hunt was sweet that day. A runaway. A wayward ward of his mistress who thought to leave her privileged position as a rose trellis in the gardens, had fled into the woods. She sent her hounds, with her favorite at the lead, and they set to the prey's trail, howling and baying, all teeth and tails. The boy, who was barely even a boy now, ran swift and sure. The woods no longer made him stumble. He clambered ahead of the others eager to close his jaws on the runaway. His pace outstripped the other hounds, and he saw his quarry as it scrambled through a small hole in a thorny hedge. Undeterred the boy threw himself after his prey, and heedless of the thorns tearing at his hands and face. Panting hungrily he scrambled on all fours pushing through the narrow foliage. He could no longer see the runaway, nor could he remember which way he had come. Ahead of him he saw light peeking through the branches and thorns. Now uncertain why he had even come here in the first place the boy dragged himself forward, to emerge cut and bleeding into the bright sunlight.
The boy blinked, taking a moment to let his eyes adjust. A few feet away, there she was, just climbing to her feet. The boy leaped, and knocked her to the ground. Atop her, he snarled, and snapped, his jaws taking firm hold of the wrist she raised to ward him off. Across the lawn a jogger stared suspiciously at them. The boy froze, suddenly uncertain of himself. A park. The park. The one he'd left before when he'd accepted the job. How long ago was that? The boy looked down at the girl he had pinned to the ground and remembered a little of the piece of himself that wasn't a dog. His girlfriend! He had to get to her. Surely she had called the police. Filed a missing persons report. The boy tried to think why he had never tried to escape himself. He couldn't think why he hadn't. He scrambled to his feet, no longer interested in the hunt, and ran as fast as his feet could carry him, but when he reached his apartment, the person who answered the door wasn't his girlfriend. It was an old man who he didn't recognize, and who didn't appreciate being bothered by some kind of crazy person. In the weeks to come he would find that he had been gone over a year, although he thought he'd spent longer than that wherever he had been, hadn't he? His girlfriend had moved, although he wasn't certain where, and no one seemed to know that he had been gone. And so the boy was left confused, and feeling as though he had dreamed his first life, or perhaps his second one, and to sort out his own happily ever after, if indeed such a thing even existed.
Current Mood: 
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Current Music: I Wanna Be Your Dog - Iggy Pop
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