Currently

Newly awakened, aiming to head East from the Coral Shores

APPEARANCE

A fragile thing, the gangly and slight build of an Indian wolf doing Dugong no favors against the size predisposition of her particular natal pack. She's on the smaller of her subspecies' average, 22 in (56 cm) and 35 lbs (16 kg), to accommodate for the arid heat of her pack's territory. What was normal in her pack is now nothing short of scrawny—a change that feels daunting in an already so different world.

Her fur is short and incredibly thin, reaching its thickest along the dark brown stripe on her back. She lacks any underfur and rarely sheds. Her coat is a sandy red; darkening along her sides and the top of her head, and lightening to milk-white on her underbody. Sprouting off her dorsal stripe is a V-shaped patch around her shoulders typical of her subspecies. Peach eyes are highlighted by patches of white beneath them and dark brown markings on her lower lids. In the face of her lithe form, her paws and ears appear almost oversized.

Her charcoal nose and paw pads are stark against the white of her fur near them. Despite the circumstances before her arrival to Vivarium, she lacks any notable scarring.




PERSONA

Self-victimizing · Neurotic · Cunning · Guilty · Gregarious · Reserved · Blunt · Flighty · Fawning

Dugong is a wolf governed by her shame, constricted by the obligations and beliefs of her upbringing but unable to shed them. The belief in her irredeemable but unidentifiable constant-transgression leads her to believe in an equally inherent prosecution. She assumes the worst of most around her, and simultaneously accepts their ire and cringes away from it.

Despite her apparent social issues, she's eager to seek out companionship. In lieu of directly approaching others, she takes great care to present herself as exceedingly agreeable and willing, cracking jokes and swallowing her real thoughts in the hopes of endearing herself to whoever comes by. Despite her yearning, for the short year of her life outside of Vivarium, even her closest companion was still held at a distance to preserve her small dignity. Those who know her best would describe her as remarkably vivacious, if rather reserved.

Her first language is Persian. Her speech is naturally flowery, though occasionally quite abrasive. Her nature and upbringing is to be blunt, but she is not concise—in many circumstances, she is, in fact, exceedingly indirect. It takes her a long time to get to her point, largely speaking figuratively and relying on nonverbal cues.

Her youth's proximity to a major port has allowed her to pick up pieces of various languages, notably Common seaspeak. Accordingly, she has a very particular and short way of speaking in Common. She comes across incredibly precise and blunt with a noted habit of avoiding contractions or otherwise ambiguous phrasing and prephasing her sentences with Marine Standard message markers. While the habit is beneficial to facilitating direct communication, she struggles to get across the depths of her feeling and quite often feels unequipped while conversing with those who have a better understanding of the language than her.

Dugong moves through the world with her hackles up, flighty and at war with herself through every circumstance. She was raised into a cunning nature that she uses primarily for her own benefit. She shies away from all forms of conflict, but can be especially snarky and petulant when she feels she's been wronged too severely to ignore. Deep inside, she's vengeful—forgiving but never forgetting until she snaps.

The betrayal of her natal pack has her on shaky footing. What's the purpose of stifling herself to be passive and valuable if it couldn't get her a single word in her favor? Given a chance to carve out a new characterization, she has to choose—will she stay passive, or take advantage of the rage deep inside?


HISTORY

Born on the Iranian coast off the Gulf of Oman, Dugong is accustomed to scorching heat, long stretches of sand beneath her paws, and the imposing forms of humans aboard large ships entering and exiting the Chabahar Port. The difference is... stark, in comparison.

Her natal pack was small, cresting eight (8) wolves with the birth of her and her brother, Mulberry. With the development of Mulberry's sharp, athletic form, Dugong's fate was sealed—bait. While the Indian wolf could easily take on rodents or hares, the quicker and larger chinkara required a more cunning touch. That is, Dugong acts dumb enough that they check her out and Mulberry jumps them. Simple, if embarrassing. Her unwavering duty to her pack softened the edge of the degradating role, the lack of recognition, the... okay, maybe she is bitter about it. Who wouldn't be? But, in a desert like this, she's lucky they even kept as fragile a pup as her! Who is she to argue?

Her life is simple, monotonous, and deeply, deeply demeaning.

Then it falls apart.

The details blur together in her mind, now. She doesn't want to remember just as much as she does, key moments in such violent clarity juxtaposed with the spinning fog between them. A hunt gone wrong, too close to Chabahar, her brother shot dead—and she's blamed for not saving him. Backed into the blue-green sea, she's drowning, drowning, drowning, and then she's up—coughing up the crystal waters of the Coral Shores and dragging herself up onto unfamiliar white sands.


MISCELLANEOUS

— Voice is akin to Leila Hatami's. Accented and soft with a hard edge. Fluid and almost melodic at points.

— In much simpler words: she's fluent in Persian and speaks a very particular form of Common. A guide to SMCP (and roughly her speech guidelines) can be found here. Beyond that, she understands a fair amount of Mandarin, Turkish, and Arabic due to frequency of trade, but less than common. She lacks any particular speech patterns for them due to limited vocabulary.

— She doesn't have the words for it, but she's demisexual, actively repulsed by romantic efforts from individuals she doesn't know.

— When unobserved, her default expression appears grumpy. A resting bitch face, if you will. She lightens up considerably with eye contact.

— She's quick to learn new languages when exposed to them repeatedly, and unafraid to ask questions regarding them, but she has a tendency to avoid straying from the patterns she was taught. Language is one of the most interesting things to her, but she'd rather sound exactly like someone else than risk making a fool of herself by venturing out.

— Dugong is prone to bouts of psychosis. She isn't consciously written as being schizophrenic, but since I am, it happens that she definitely reads that way. In these bouts, she experiences intense (particularly religious) paranoia, delusion, and hallucinations. Besides that, her experiences have left her with PTSD. She has words for none of this and, if she doesn't flat ignore it, believes it to be the norm.

— Playlist · Toyhou.se

— The Angry River — The Hat, Father John Misty, S.I. Istwa

— Run Rabbit — Mollie Elizabeth