Anais Duquaine - Seychelles

[Anais Duquaine]

Name: Anais Duquaine
Age: 16
Gender: Female
Quarter: Southwest Quarter
Job: Officially, she's a "street performer" - she dances both to earn food and drink, and to try to attract the attention of someone from Citadel so that she can get out of the Southwest Quarter for good. Unofficially, she's a pickpocket...
God(s): She's always felt a strong connection to Canden, though she tries to worship all the Gods equally... she doesn't usually succeed, though.
Gift: Anais is a Waterspeaker, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. She can read messages through moisture in the air - for example, she can tell through the way the moisture is concentrated if there are people nearby, and in some cases she can even hear bits and pieces of a person's conversation. Her specialty, though, lies in coaxing water to do her bidding - if she focuses, she can pull water out of anything where water is concentrated (clouds, moist air, bodies of water, and sometimes people - though she doesn't know how to do this yet), or manipulate its forms - turning ice to water, water to steam, and vice versa. However, doing anything other than just reading messages from moisture fatigues her greatly, and there's always the risk that she'll become so attuned to listening to water that she won't be able to hear anything else.
Essentially, she communicates with water - it tells her what it observes, and she asks it to do what she wants. It doesn't always work, of course. Though it is pretty entertaining when she and the water have an argument.
Yes, this idea was shamelessly borrowed from the Books of Bayern by Shannon Hale.

Personality: Labeling Anais as a "people-person" would be a bit of an understatement. She's very interested in meeting new people (though she is aware that there aren't exactly many opportunities to meet people on Pangaea Island) and enjoys making friends. She believes that variety is the spice of life and gets bored if she has to stick around with simply one person for too long. This may be because of her relative isolation - in her early years she had little to no contact with others her own age and fell back on getting acquainted with older people in order to keep herself occupied, and thus has come to expect the variety that many years of experience fosters in others. In return for people keeping her entertained, though, she is extremely loyal to them and will do what she can to make them happy.

She babbles a lot, and loves to get others involved in long, drawn-out conversations on any topic they can think of. She's highly energetic and determined not to be boring or to find herself bored, so spending time with her is a good way to keep yourself entertained (or tire yourself out if you're suffering from insomnia!). She remembers little details that she learns in conversations with people and uses them to make things more interesting when she sees them again, because she doesn't find things as fun when people think she's forgotten things about them. Her attention to detail, however, often causes her to overlook the big picture.

She is a bit of a "country girl," finding herself overwhelmed in large, complicated places, and trusts people - maybe a little too easily. She sometimes finds herself being tricked by someone and only realizing that something wasn't right after the fact. Sometimes, though, she discovers that she's being tricked midway through (in which case the person in question will want to put as much distance between them as possible). She doesn't really hold grudges unless someone's done something really terrible to her, but she does have a temper (she blows up and burns out quickly), and she will usually come up with some sort of unflattering nickname for someone who's annoyed her, which she'll use more often than their real name.

She depends on others for a lot of things. She can cook if there's someone there to walk her through it, but finds herself making silly mistakes or misplacing ingredients when she cooks on her own, causing her handmade dishes to be rather disconcerting when one looks at them. She needs help just to afford living - the cost of living is way too high...! - and often gets this help by playing up her "helpless little girl" persona. If life as a pauper taught her anything, it's that you get really good things when the person in charge thinks that it's solely their help that can make your life better. She does sometimes feel guilty for this, but whenever she tries to show that she doesn't need help she usually lands herself in a situation where someone needs to rescue her.

Her past experiences have taught her a lot. She's not too fussed about accidentally showing too much skin - it happens sometimes, and from watching others she's realized that it's only really a big deal if the person doing the exposing lets it be. Living where she does, though, she's also come to realize that it's much easier to ask forgiveness than permission, and that if you really want something you have to go out and take it.

She never grew out of the childish "pick-on-the-person-you-like" mentality, which manifests itself in two ways. When it comes to platonic relationships, she'll be much less formal and will gently tease people she likes; when it comes to romance, she often finds herself lashing out and yelling at people. She's immature, and can't easily come to grips with liking someone, so she tends to dismiss her feelings as "being sick" or "spending too much time in the sun." She can come off as dense, but really, she's just afraid of being rejected.

Appearance: Anais prefers to wear a loose sundress, sandals, and her ribbons, but she will wear other clothing if she really needs to (though her ribbons are almost always there and she will in fact refuse to leave her room if she can't find them, except in really special cases). Whenever she does wear something other than her dress, her clothes nearly always have some sort of feminine aspect to them. She loves wearing skirts, despite her slightly tomboyish nature. The possibility of accidentally showing something she shouldn't has never really crossed her mind, so she'll run and jump even when she's wearing clothes that aren't well-suited for it.

In the mornings, she takes care with her appearance, brushing her hair out and re-doing her ribbons if they're not lying right, or smoothing out her dress before she goes to meet anyone. As the day progresses, though, she becomes less and less aware of her own appearance, and won't actually bother to wipe dirt smudges off her face or fix her hair if it gets messy unless she happens to come across her reflection... or if someone ruffles her hair, because then she'll know it's a mess.

Strengths:

✔ Perceived Innocence;;
Anais just doesn't look like the kind of person who has a hidden agenda. This lets her get away with a lot of things that others might have trouble doing. Of course, people who know her well - or who have had to deal with her under their rule - know perfectly well that she's not as simple as she seems.

✔ Optimism;;
She likes to think of the glass as half-full. It makes it easier for her to keep going. Plus, life is a lot more fun when you're not always thinking "Ugh, this is going to go wrong, eugh, that guy's out to get me," right?

✔ Resiliency;;
She bounces back easily, both when it comes to emotional matters and when it comes to physical ones (though she finds it much easier to recover when it's not physical). It's hard to keep her down.

✔ Self-confidence;;
Actually, it's hard to get her down in the first place - by insulting her, anyway. For a teenage girl, she has a surprising amount of self-confidence and it's not exactly easy to make her question herself.

✔ Dancing;;
Anais is a talented dancer and is well-versed in traditional dances that are dedicated to the Gods, so she figures sooner or later she'll be able to use the talent to get away from the slums. Even if she can't, she does have an amazing sense of rhythm, which is helpful in lots of other areas.

✔ Half-truths;;
Giving away enough of the truth to make a story sound sincere while concealing enough of it to protect oneself is something that any pickpocket needs to master if they don't want to end up behind bars.

✔ Childlike;;
She can come off as someone who needs to be protected. This has kept her out of a fair amount of fights... and also puts people at ease when they really ought to keep their guard up lest she get them to spill their secrets. She acts so much like a kid that she seems to be very unthreatening.

Weaknesses:

✖ Height;;
She's very short. In addition to opening her up to "short stuff" jibes, it makes it hard for her to reach things when they're high up... and during a getaway, it means she generally has to take the roundabout way instead of taking a more direct route up and over, because she won't be able to reach the handholds.

✖ Frail;;
She knows a few weak spots and can land a good punch on them, but in truth, she's small and petite - physical strength isn't her thing (unless she's unreasonably pissed off, and this tends not to happen in combat situations). In a long, drawn-out fight, she'll have to spend most of her energy dodging and trying to get in a strategic blow rather than just pounding away.

✖ Dependency;;
As headstrong and independent as she claims to be, Anais still requires help with lots of things - cooking is just one of them. If not for others helping her out, she most likely would have died a long time ago.

✖ Childlike;;
She looks and acts like a kid so much that when she really wants to be taken seriously, it's hard for her to get people to do it. It's sort of a double-edged sword.

✖ Impulsive;;
She makes split-second decisions and stands by them with an almost ridiculous amount of obstinacy, even when it would be better to just let it go and pursue another course of action. She's also impulsive when it comes to collecting things, and finds herself with more trinkets than she really needs/can afford.

✖ Over-thinking;;
When she does allow herself to think before making a decision, she often talks herself out of something that could be really good, or overwhelms herself by thinking of all the different possibilities there are. It's so bad that she deliberately doesn't think unless she has to, choosing instead to follow her "gut feelings."

✖ Easily frightened;;
In addition to being easy to startle by sneaking up on her, Anais believes in the paranormal - which means it's easy to scare her with horror stories... she actually thinks they're based on truth. She tries to hide how easily frightened she is by frightening and pulling pranks on others, though.

✖ The cold;;
She simply isn't made to handle the cold. Cold weather saps her strength and makes it much more likely for her to get sick, unless she bundles up - which cuts down on her mobility. She does her best work during the summer months.

Likes:

ღ Fish;;
She likes them both for eating and keeping as pets, but she finds it difficult to eat a fish if she's seen it more than once. That's probably a side-effect of growing up with sea creatures as her friends.

ღ The shores;;
Treacherous as they may be, Anais has always felt the most at home at the shores. It's where she feels her connection with Canden is strongest, and where she's best able to concentrate and sort through her problems.

ღ Dancing;;
Traditional dances are an integral part of life for Anais. She loves dancing in all forms, but she's not mind-blowingly good at anything other than the traditional dances.

ღ Good food;;
She's a sucker for food that tastes delicious. No, not "delicious" in the English sense.

ღ Sweets;;
Desserts and sweet-tasting snacks are things that she loves, especially if they're flavored with cinnamon or vanilla. She always seems to have room for more if there's something sweet involved... which does land her in trouble sometimes when she tries to get sweets from the more affluent quarters.

ღ Others who live in the Southwest Quarter;;
With a few exceptions, of course, but because they all are stuck in the same area, and are all stuck facing the same prejudices, she tends to like them and want to protect them - though she's not exactly the best person to do any protecting.

ღ Her ribbons;;
They were a gift and she'll never give them up for anything, including a belly full of food.

ღ Watching snow fall;;
Provided she doesn't actually have to be outside and feel how cold it is, she loves to watch snow fall - it's pretty.

ღ Swimming;;
Anais is most at home in the water, particularly if it's salt water. Fresh water's okay, too, but she just associates salt water with good things for some reason.

Dislikes:

✗ Being bored;;
To her, there's nothing worse in the world. She'd take being groped by or getting a collar slapped on her over having nothing to do any day... not that she'll admit that.

✗ Being forced to tell the truth;;
She doesn't mind being honest, but she absolutely detests being caught in a lie, especially if it's one she's been working hard to keep up.

✗ Love-at-first-sight stories;;
As romantic as they are, they feel way too fake for her to enjoy. Love at first sight is something she isn't aware of experiencing, and it's one of the few things she has trouble believing in.

✗ Cold weather;;
It makes her sick, after all; nobody likes things that make them ill.

✗ Being lied to;;
She really hates it when people aren't truthful with her, and hates it even more if she actually catches them at it. For some reason, it's easier for her to forgive them if she finds out about the lies after the fact.

✗ Being called out on her hypocrisy;;
It's unlikely that anyone would enjoy this, but she has a special dislike for it. Not only is it embarrassing, it means that someone distrusts her enough to go back and look for ways that she's contradicted her words or actions.

✗ Not being trusted;;
She hasn't really done anything to earn anyone's trust, but the feeling of being distrusted is something she really hates. It just leaves a bad taste in her mouth.

✗ Sleeping late;;
Occasionally sleeping in is fine with her, but she hates making a habit of staying asleep well into the afternoon - she loses hours when she could be having a lot of fun by doing that.

Quirks:

❀ Selective Forgetfulness;;
She comes up with nicknames for people - some flattering, some not-so-flattering - to help her remember who they are, and if she likes her nickname for someone better than their real name, she'll conveniently forget what they're called just so she has an excuse to use the nickname. She also sometimes forget to introduce herself, so while others may know her by sight, they wouldn't know her by name.

❀ Animated;;
She has trouble staying still - she is forever crossing her arms, playing with her hair, tugging on the hem of her skirt, fiddling with her ribbons, clasping her hands behind her back... the list goes on and on; she just hates standing in one position for too long. She also tends to leap or twirl while walking, without realizing she's doing it.

❀ Attraction to Fish;;
No, not that kind of attraction. If she passes any sort of display with fish; they're just too adorable. She's always on the lookout for more fish to acquaint herself with. Sea creatures almost call to her - she relates to them easily and thinks of them as her friends.

❀ Personal Space Invader;;
She doesn't realize it, but she often invades the personal space of others. She'll greet people with hugs and ask to hold hands with them while walking from place to place, not realizing that there's anything strange about this. She's all too aware of it when people invade her personal space, however, and she doesn't really like it much.

❀ Romantically Oblivious;;
She dodges kisses - even innocent ones on the cheek - without even realizing what she's doing, or that anyone was trying to kiss her at all. It's just become a habit.

❀ Comfort-seeking;;
She has a ton of handmade stuffed animals shaped like sea creatures, and can't fall asleep unless she's holding onto one of them (or has been up for so long that she simply passes out). Theoretically, this could also work if she was holding a person while she slept. When she feels out of sorts, she seeks out other people to talk to and distract herself, gravitating to either those she knows best or those who remind her of them. She'll also take their hands and just stand there holding them, for comfort.

❀ Off-cue Laughter;;
In addition to laughing when something's actually funny, she laughs in the most unamusing situations - it's to keep herself from getting scared.

❀ Hunger Pangs;;
She hates being hungry, but if she is hungry and there's no food around, she'll undo and redo her pigtails to keep her mind off it.

❀ Francophone;;
She is fluent in French and enjoys speaking it, but listening to and speaking French for too long makes her sleepy. Also, when she's being honest, she tends to speak in French - she only ever lies in English. Not that she and the people around her even know the difference most of the time. It often sounds like babble, but she knows she's saying something with a meaning.

❀ Maternal Instincts;;
There aren't many people who are shorter than her, but when she does run into them, she tends to mother them. She can't help it, it just happens.

❀ Uncomfortable with Romance;;
She doesn't mind romance for others - and delights in acting as a cupid - but when it comes to herself, she rejects romance entirely because she's afraid of liking someone too much and getting hurt as a result. Romance just leaves her ill-at-ease, and she doesn't like feeling unsure or second-guessing.

❀ Barrier of Politeness;;
The more polite she is to a person, the less comfortable she feels with them - or the less she likes them. It's a way of keeping herself separate from others. When she likes someone, though, she'll often tease or prank them.

Fears:

☠ Really small spaces;;
She's mildly claustrophobic when it comes to just plain small spaces... but when she's really crammed in somewhere, the claustrophobia is nowhere near as mild. She can deal with it for a short amount of time - usually just long enough to get herself out.

☠ Certain animals;;
Big dogs, pigeons, and spiders creep her out. Surprisingly, she has no problem with snakes.

☠ Old people;;
Or more specifically, people who look old. There's just something about wrinkles that she finds a little terrifying. No, not a few wrinkles - lots of wrinkles. She has recurring nightmares where she wakes up and is so old and wrinkly that no one will acknowledge her. Her fear of old people probably stems from that.

☠ Blood;;
She can handle the smell of blood, but the sight of blood is something that sends her into hysterics. Don't try to trick her with ketchup or food coloring, though - she can just tell, and she will be supremely pissed that you tried to make her succumb to her worst phobia.

☠ Being told she's hated;;
She doesn't seem to mind saying "I hate you," but the gravity of the words really sinks in when they're directed at her.

☠ Falling in love;;
Romantic love is a foreign concept to Anais, and it's one of her greatest fears, second only to the sight of blood. She's afraid of the pain that comes with liking someone so, so much... and then being rejected. She'd rather pretend that her feelings are something else entirely than risk it.

☠ Losing her friends;;
This phobia applies to both the thought of losing other people... and losing her fish. One of her worst nightmares is that certain people will try to turn her friends into a meal, and as a result she doesn't take joking about "sushi night" very well. On a more serious note, she'd be absolutely devastated if someone close to her vanished forever or even just got hurt.

☠ Dying painfully;;
Dying in her sleep would be okay, though. She thinks.

History: Anais's story begins rather typically for a resident of the Southwest Quarter - her grandparents were poor, her parents were poor, and she has always been poor and likely always will be poor (unless she has anything to say about it!). She is an only child, but her parents are very close to and live with their siblings, and their siblings have many children, so Anais was raised with her cousins acting as her brothers and sisters. Though there were many mouths to feed, they all had a wide variety of talents, so they were able to scrape by enough to survive and shared what they had with their family.

Anais, however, was never quite content with an "average life." She loved her family, but she wanted something that wasn't so ordinary. And she found it when she was about seven years old, when one of her cousins took her to the shores to show her why they were dangerous and why she should stay away from them. As good as his intentions were, the act backfired - she drifted out of his supervision and to the edge of the water... and, predictably, fell in.

Miraculously, she didn't drown - and she attributes this to Canden's protection. Her belief in this was furthered by the fact that her ability to Waterspeak became apparent that day as well, when she emerged from the sea mostly unharmed. From that day on she was careful to thank Canden every day, and began to sneak around to learn the traditional dances to honor the Gods, her interest in spirituality having been kindled for the first time.

In the nine years since then, she's come a long way in terms of dancing - and even longer in terms of blending in with her "betters" in the more affluent quarters in order to pickpocket them. She knows it's wrong, and she knows that one of these days her luck is going to run out, but until it does or until she finds some other way out of the Southwest Quarter, she's going to continue attempting to hoard her ill-gotten gains.

RP Sample: If there was anything that Anais had been expecting to find once she turned the corner to enter the maze, it wasn't Matthew having stopped in his tracks, or Matthew having walked back the way he'd come. Actually, she wasn't expecting Matthew at all, but that was something else entirely. When she saw him there her eyes widened and she gasped, digging her heels into the ground to try to come to a stop before she slammed into him.

The sudden stop only resulted in her losing her balance and pitching forward, flailing her arms in an attempt to catch herself on something. One of her hands grazed against a hedge, but she couldn't close her fingers around it in time to stop her fall, and she hit the North American with a thud and a light, "Oh!"

The next thing she knew they were on the ground and she was draped across him. Normally Anais didn't have a problem with human contact, but there was something decidedly uncomfortable about falling on top of someone, moreso when it was your own fault. The girl's cheeks colored and she scrambled off of him immediately, getting to her feet and barely sparing a moment to smooth down the skirt of her dress before offering the bespectacled boy a hand.

"Sorry about that! I wasn't looking where I was going." Her lips curved up into a small, sheepish smile and she rubbed at the back of her head with her free hand as she gave him a once-over. It wasn't Francis, that much was certain... the boy in front of her was clean-shaven and he had glasses. That, and Francis had a distinctly different way of dressing than this guy. Anais wasn't sure, but she thought maybe she was a little disappointed that it hadn't been her old caretaker she'd been following. Either that, or she was just out of sorts from the fall. Yeah, it was probably that.

Though, on second glance... he did look a little familiar. Had she seen him somewhere before? Her brow furrowed just a little as she looked him up and down, trying to remember his name. She knew him, she was sure of it!

Kind of sure. Maybe just a little sure.

"Um, you're, um..."

His name was on the tip of her tongue! He had to do with France, obviously... but it had been awhile since she'd seen any of the other former French colonies... Why couldn't she remember who he was...?

Out Of Character
Name: Adannaya
Age: 19
Contact: adannaya @ plurk
Anything else?: My favorite goddess is Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom and War! Artemis is a close second, though. Though I mostly just like her because she has a twin - twins are cool.