Persona Profile: Kalesia

(Adoptable)

Name: Kalesia
Age: 28
Birthday: m7 d24
Rank: Senior Apprentice Dolphineer
Location: Dolphin Hall, Dolphin Cove Weyr
Craft: Dolphineer
Craft Rank: Senior Apprentice

Physical Description of Persona:
Despite her lack of classical feminine beauty, Kalesia can appear striking, but it's from her eyes and either her intense look of focus or her daydreaming lack of the same. She has a racer's build, being slightly above average in height (5'5), very trim and well-muscled. Her legs and arms are long, and she was very gawky during puberty, something she has since fortunately grown out of, although she has a few small scars on her legs and arms from past accidents. She has one long one down her left leg from the wood when she was shipwrecked.

Kale freely admits that her face isn't lovely, with its blunt nose and cheekbones and jawline that the polite would call handsome and some (including her) would call prominent. Her face is easily softened by her frequent smiles. She's not particularly fond of the spray of freckles on her nose, neck, shoulders, and back, either. She doesn't like her fair skin, which has always burned badly, but a childhood by the sea and Turns of seacrafting and dolphineering has given her a fairly strong tan and far more resistance to burning than the past.

There are, however, a few things that Kale does like about herself, including her long wavy red hair, which she has to keep tied in braids when she goes swimming. Her favorite physical feature, however, is her eyes. The left one is green, the right one is grey (heterochromia) and this has attracted a lot of attention, attention she joked she never would have gotten without them, since her feminine curves are entirely nonexistent.

Emotional Description of Persona:
People's first impressions of Kalesia are of an intelligent, emotional, young lady with a zeal for life and always willing to talk. If she knows something, her voice is first to speak, and she's quite willing to expand upon anything being said or even argue. She can be a sympathetic shoulder to cry on or an intellectual theorizing about her passion, and she can switch between the two quite quickly. She is typically very open and friendly. The only exceptions are when she has suffered some kind of blow that lowers her confidence or is angry. At such times, her mood can turn stormy quickly. Kale's emotions are very changeable, however, and depression or anger can leave as fast as it came up. She is a very dependable individual, both in her work and duties, and as a person interacting with others.

Kale has a clever and inventive mind that is good at looking at large amounts of information, processing it, and putting it back together very quickly and coming up with answers. (Sometimes, however, her answers are entirely off the wall and not at all what she's been asked for.) She is very curious and wants to know why things happen, but learned early on that she could not effortlessly learn everything and instead had to learn how to sit down and scientifically analyze and work through things. Skills and all interesting information is learned quickly and instinctively, but rote memorization of 'unimportant' things is not, meaning that Kale has spent all of her education struggling to learn all the other things she needs.

Kale has the sea in her blood and is a born explorer, and from an early age, she spent as much time outside and near or in the water as she could- being raised at a Seacraft Hall certainly helped. She gets restless and irritable when far away from the water or when kept out of it for extended periods of time. She has a fierce love for everything about the ocean, including the weather, the beaches, the life that lives in it (especially dolphins, who she feels she owes her life to), and more. This love is surprisingly undampened despite having been shipwrecked in a very bad squall and having lived through a hurricane. Kale has the ability to predict the weather with uncanny accuracy, however she has no idea how to explain it to others.

History of Persona:
Kalesia was born to a cook who died shortly after she was born and a seacrafter at a northern Seacraft Hall, and from the beginning it was clear that Kale was destined for a life at sea. She was taught to swim very early, like all at the Hall, and took to it like a dolphin to water. Before she was old enough to swim unsupervised she used to beg adults to take her down to the water to swim. When she couldn't swim, she would sit on the dock or the shore and watch all of the activity. Watching the sea, hunting for firelizard clutches, and swimming became Kale's favorite pastimes when she wasn't in Harper classes, and she occasionally cut classes to pursue one of those. After all, they were easy and boring and she would rather be doing 'practical' learning. She enjoyed talking to the people at the Hall and getting permission to go on ships and look around them much more than classes, but it being innocent fascination rather than malicious skipping never kept her out of trouble with authority, and she received a reputation as a troublemaker. This worsened when Kale was 7. Her father died in a ship accident, and she lost any interest in going to classes, sneaking off to sit at the docks constantly.

One of the captains who allowed her to do this was named Skeltia. Skeltia saw the girl's intelligence, curiosity, and love of the sea, and wanted to keep her out of trouble, so she took Kale under her wing whenever she was in port, watching out for her and giving her lessons about the ships and seacrafting. When Kale was 8, Skeltia took a leave from the active ship life to do some teaching at the Hall and attain her Mastery. Hearing about Kale's problems, she talked to the creche worker who had taken her in and agreed to raise the child. Kale moved into Skeltia's rooms. It was just the change she needed. Skeltia was able to convince Kale to go to her classes and learn, 'or else you'll never be an apprentice'. In return she taught Kale basic things- she couldn't take her on a ship, but she could teach other useful things. Kale was particularly fascinated by both maps and weather. They became very close and regarded each other as family.

Kale immediately apprenticed at 12, leaving Skeltia, now a Master, free to go back to sea on a ship. Her lessons were not quite as helpful to Kale as one might have imagined, however, since much of junior apprenticeship had little to do with maps or weather but focused more on shipboard life. Still, the focus that Kale had learned helped her in learning her craft. She was not particularly well-liked among the other young apprentices, despite her friendliness. Her habit of always speaking up made some of them feel pushed aside, and accusations of teacher's favorite constantly followed her.

Kale's life ambitions began to change, however. After she was promoted to Senior Apprentice when she was 16 and began to have more classes in her favorite subjects, cartography and meteorology, Kale soon found that perhaps she wasn't cut out to be a navigator; she was fascinated by the idea of going to places and creating those same maps. She also discovered, one she got formal craft training in it and not just pointers, that she had a remarkably accurate talent for weather prediction. These things made her consider that perhaps, when she made journey rank, she would be a cartographer instead. She never entertained the thought of changing her craft, just her specialty. This would soon change. Her second long voyage was met with disaster when a squall came up and shipwrecked it. Kale was knocked overboard, cut deeply by a piece of wreckage and nearly drowned in the choppy waters. She would have, had it not been for a pod of dolphins who witnessed the accident and brought the crew to an island nearby. They waited there several days until rescue arrived. Kale was incredibly grateful to those dolphins, and when she got back and was healed, she made a point to seek out and befriend the local pod. She had swum with them before, but rarely; now she became obsessed with knowing all their names and personalities.

After consulting Skeltia until her mind was made up and discussion with the Master of Apprentices of both the Seacraft Hall and the nearby Dolphin Hall, Kale transferred to the Dolphin Hall as a Junior Apprentice. Skeltia gifted her with a firelizard egg, which hatched into green Seafoam, as a present to wish her luck in her new craft. Kale had several advantages in her knowledge, especially in cartography, meteorology, human first aid, tides and currents, but lacked many of the basic abilities of dolphineers, as well as their knowledge of dolphins. She worked hard to try to make up for this. This was made more difficult by feeling awkward around the other younger apprentices, who weren't always kind to a former Seacrafter. Almost a Turn after she reached Senior Apprentice, Kale requested a transfer to the Dolphin Hall in the South to finish her apprenticeship, hoping that perhaps, if she didn't tell anyone this was her second attempt at a craft, she might get a better reception there.

Family and Friends
Skeltia, 52, Master Seacrafter (Helped Parent)

Pets

Seafoam, Green Firelizard: aged 10, hatched m2 d18
Seafoam is large for a green flit, with long wings but a comparatively stubby tail. She is a pale green, with flecks of a darker green spattered over her back and her wings. Her underbelly is even paler than the rest of her, and Kale finds it hard to spy her in the sky on clear bright days.

Seafoam is very energetic and a bit of a ditz. She took quite a lot of training before she became able to carry messages. Even now, she can only always carry them reliably every time to people she knows exceptionally well. If Kale concentrates very hard, she can send Seafoam to anyone, but the green has a tendency to be easily distracted.

Approved: June 6th 2007
Last updated: January 8th 2014

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Persona Profile: Kalesia

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