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Post by stars on Oct 30, 2012 20:11:01 GMT -8
 STARSTwenty | Female | Staff | --- | Ookami ChiyoThe Character
a tiara in dust » personality
♕ courteous ♕ demure ♕ passive aggressive
What can one really expect of a sickly woman who has spent most of her life in bed? She's polite and demure, the lessons of her tutors and mother well embedded into her personality. However, this leaves Ami with the tendency of being overridden by those who have no problem raising their voice, by the people who've learned that aggression and persistence is a far better strategy than polite discourse. Her reaction is always the same: a fluttering of words that fall in a tangle from her lips and quiet compliance.
But submission does not equate to idiocy. Attempt to control her and she will do as you wish, for a time. Inevitably, she will lay out meticulous plans to sabotage your every endeavor, ripping apart her brutish tyrant from every subtle channel until they come toppling down, accused of heresy and treason. That, too, she learned from her tutors and mother.
♕ optimistic ♕ friendly ♕ determined
But she isn't just malice and spice. Her inclination to cutthroat politics is only ever honed on the hides of those who'd attempt to abuse her... And for everyone else, she puts her best foot forward. After all, her true disposition to strangers is a quiet, sunny optimism. Every new face and every experience is greeted with a tired, genuine smile and a resilient hope for the best. After all, any stranger could be a friend in disguise! ... And if things happen to be awful? If the world is dark, evil and bitter? She slowly pulls her life back together and stands.
After all, what else could she possibly do, hmm? Give up? There is nothing at the end of that road but black oblivion. She'd far rather take life for everything it has while she has the time to do So she strides forward with that golden optimism and bravery that is, sometimes, a bit of a farce. But if she's only fooling herself, at least no one else suffers.
and the diary of a dying girl » history
The Chiyo family is a mite bit eccentric, as the story usually goes, when a person [ and his entire line ] believe they're important enough to ignore societal norms. They had a history of hosting grandiose parties, to which they may arrive adorned only in laurels, and creating sprawling "doll houses" for their spoilt children.
And, really, the Chiyo family is full of children, as the founders of the house enjoyed the pleasure of. . . knowing one another very fully. But rather than staying at home and enjoying their life of luxury they, and their spawn, would disperse on the back of the four winds. They would reside in other nations, or become cutthroat tyrants of corporations that would flourish and rise like behemoths and crumble with a whimper just as soon as it'd seemed like they struck gold. The streak of bad luck that haunted the uncles and aunts of young was not an uncommon theme for the Chiyo family, though it was usually a prediction of far worse things to come.
So very long ago, when the Chiyo name was far more prestigious, and chambermaids were lining up to become the concubines of the men, and dukes the less-than-loyal grooms of Chiyo women, the family crest had been a nine taled fox. And one mad uncle made it his life's goal to have the head of one mounted over the fireplace. ... It's hard to tell if he succeeded. The tale is lost in the ocean of time.
But the more superstitious of the clan always believed he had, because it became quite clear that the family was cursed. The Chiyo line would be riddled with misfortune and death, skipping kindly here and there, but entirely unavoidable. And since then, it comes in all types- murders, accidents, sickness. The trend is that it is never pretty, and never in their sleep. And a sad truth is, no one in these last few generations knows why this misfortune stalks them so relentlessly- though a few have come close.
Those few equipped with morbid humor, just close enough to the family not to offend, will endlessly jest that there family was cursed; someone skinned a kitsune, hmm?
At least, they did. The jokes ceased quite suddenly as Victoria Chiyo, a woman of Swiss and Thai descent, wife of the last surviving Chiyo, gave birth to two dead sons. The loss for a heirless Chiyo family and a sensitive, much in love couple was too much to bear. They took comfort where they could in each other, but it was so strained- the rift of the tragedy was so deep. Together, bound and chained in grief, they retreated from the fringes of public life. By the miracle of one night where it seemed love had rekindled they tried again. And from it, Ookami Chiyo was born, fragile and beautiful and alive.
But just barely.
Her weak immune system, common to her father's line, has allowed sickness to dogged her her entire life. How her parents loved her, and were so heartbroken by her. There was no chance for the grand Phoenix resurrection of the Chiyo line. It was just a little girl, sick enough so that there was no way of life save for that of constant midnight calls to house calling doctors. Victoria simply couldn't take it. She couldn't bare seeing another one of her children dead. She never divorced her husband, merely wrote a short, poignant letter and left it with a kiss on the pillow where she had slept beside him for so many years. In silence, without a goodbye or hint to her departure, she put her back to the manor, never to return. She would move to another country, where she ran a little bookshop and paint sometimes on the side, and she tried to forget about her time in this sad, dismal place.
A few hours later her father broke the seal and burned it, took his daughter into the cradle of his arms, and kissed her gently on the brow. That day, the disappointment he felt on the fringes of his love was overwhelmed by a need and emotions that only a father can feel, and never describe to someone who has never had a child themselves. It didn't matter that little sickly Ookamii was not a boy. It didn't matter that the Chiyo line was coming to an end, and that he would likely die before she was married, cutting away their once proud family tree. He loved her, then, fully and completely and with his everything. Perhaps it was born in desperation at the sudden loss of his wife, his best friend, one of only a handful of companions. But it scarcely mattered- the relationship that came from it, between father and daughter, was deep and uncorrupt. He loved her so, and that was all there was to it.
As she grew, she was not always bedridden and haunted by illness. Sometimes its grip broke, allowing her to grow and blossom, like any other child. What glorious, infrequent times! Where life touched her body and strength her limbs. In those days and months and sometimes years, she learned to ride horses (never competitively, for her body was still touched by past years of sickness that would never truly leave her), and once took up fencing. She climbed a rock wall, and went to a state fair. On a summer night, she went to the circus and climbed to sit on the shoulders of the Strong Man, giggling all the while.
To ask her of when she is well is to let loose a torrent of beautiful memories, that in only a handful of minutes her visage will light up with joy her subdued, pale features would suggest were impossible. In these moments, it is clear that if she had not been so sick, for so long. . . she would have been so different. So bright, and confident, and clever. A creature like a wild summer days, rather than a single ray of sun through a window pane, pale and weak.
And, indeed. It was this type of sun that she saw most often as she lay buried beneath warm quilts, feverish and miserable. It fell in through her bedroom window that allowed a view so maliciously beautiful into a world she'd scarcely touched, taunted her endlessly as she rested like a corpse in the beautiful coffin of her bed. What way to amuse her morbidly twisted mind, than collecting? And she did it so endlessly; books, dolls, crystals, rare brooches, masks, death urns. Her father would bring these to her endlessly, periodically, placing them in her hand and delighting her with how he found each one. . . what trader, what strange, foreign land. She lived in this fashion for twenty years, never seeing a reason to leave her home, when all it would mean was resting ill in a bed where her father could not keep her company. In her twenty fourth year, things turned for the worst, and a verdict was reached.
Ookamii, after multiple intense head aches and fainting spells was finally diagnosed with a brain tumor. Caught early, but it's placement in the brain stem made it lethal though it was fairly timid for now. But the aggression of the disease would wreak havoc on her frail figure with two years. Perhaps, perhaps, she'd see the five year survival rate if she took treatment-- to which she politely declined. She had seen their hesitant looks, as they peered over her medical records, saw her track record. She wouldn't survive chemotherapy. She folded her hands in the skirts of her lap, looked them in the eye (her act of boldness was betrayed by her own body; her fingers and voice trembled- she was so afraid), and told them firmly, "That's quite alright. I think I'll tend to my own health, form here on out."
No more pills, no more syringes. Enough beds with satin sheets and doors like coffin lidS and enough dreams. A year, perhaps two at most, until she started to feel the more devastating side of the effects.
... And so she slipped instead into a land where she could be free of her sickness, where she is both brave and strong. She put her all into it, every iota of effort in a world where she could have an effect. Sometimes her father joins her, and they're happier there- far happier than they could be, now, in the all too desolate, crumbling manor of the Chiyo line.
Seeing her adoration for the game, the hours she whiled away in it, the way she spoke about the way it could be improved, what had been done well, what moderators were clearly abusing their power... Old Man Chiyo used near the last of his dying connections. Wills were rewritten. A cherished, much sought after family heirloom found a new home.
And one day a man came to visit, sat by her bedside, and a conversation began. Just question after question about the game. After a week, she received an e-mail and a job offer: something menial and inconsequential. She was overjoyed! She was the happiest she'd been in years. And born from her jubilation was determination, and she worked on line, rather purely, on video calls and through e-mails and websites, throwing the whole of herself into it.
She proved herself and her mettle was rewarded. At least, in part. No matter how wonderfully well she'd do, her father would always be paying a little behind the scenes, keeping the good things going. By the time he had to default, sell the house, move into a condo in a lonely city, Ami would be dead. She'd never have to know what her father did for her.
The RPerStars
face claim vocaloid, luka megurine
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