Kikaze
A plumaleon who listens to the stories of the world, and shelters whoever cruelty has touched.
- Gender
- Male
- Pronouns
- he/him
- Species
Name
Ki comes from the Japanese 聴く kiku, to listen attentively, the kind of listening that gives something one’s full attention.
Kaze is the Japanese 風, wind, for the air he carries.
The listening wind is the direct reading. The fuller sense is the wind that hears the stories of the world and then carries them on, which is exactly what he does with everything he is told.
Temperament
Kikaze is gentle and warm, and openly, endlessly interested in the stories of the world around him. He wants to know how things happened and how they felt to the people they happened to, and he asks because he truly wants the answer.
He loves hearing how other people see things. A perspective unlike his own is a gift to him, and he takes each one in and turns it over with care, long after the conversation that brought it has ended. When something he has heard is worth sharing, he passes it on gladly, and he uses the stories he carries to teach.
He is deeply protective of anyone who has been hurt by cruelty. He shelters them first, and listens for as long as they need to talk, giving them all the time and space they need to tell it their own way. When protecting them takes more than shelter, he acts.
Physical description
Kikaze is a great, warm-hearted plumaleon who carries his size gently and meets the world with open curiosity. Some part of him is always listening, turned toward the stories moving around him, and whatever he hears he takes in and turns over with care, thinking it through long after it has been told. His warmth is immediate and easy to approach, and beneath it lies a deep, steady shelter: the strength of someone who will stand between harm and anyone cruelty has already touched.
He is large even for his kind, nine feet long and a full seven feet at the shoulder, and long in the leg. Bear and lion meet in him in even measure. His head is broad and heavy-built above a thick, powerful neck and wide shoulders, and his forelegs are heavy and strong. Behind the shoulders his body narrows through the barrel into a lion’s waist, and his hindquarters are leonine, long-muscled and made for springing. He is as easy upright as he is on all fours, and he moves between the two without a thought.
He keeps his vivoment comfortably between loose and compact, and he shifts it often, with his mood and with whatever he is doing. When he takes to the air, he draws it out of his wings and forequarters and rises lighter, and once he is back on the ground he settles heavier again. When he is protecting someone, it fills out through his chest and shoulders, broadening his whole frame around whoever stands in his shelter.
His fur is long and deep all over, and a hand sinks well into it. It grows fuller still at his neck and shoulders, rising into a mane-like ruff that carries forward around his cheeks and jaw. Its colour is a dark, rich brown that deepens down his legs and over his paws. In low light it reads as almost black, and in sunlight a faint sheen moves across it.
His wings are in proportion to his body, broad and eagle-shaped, and coloured like spring grass just after sunset. The green is darkest at the base of each wing and lightens toward the tips, the way a field holds the last of the light longest at its edges. Every feather is fur filled through with vivoment, long and especially soft, and when he folds them they lie flat and close against his sides.
His face is a bear’s, broad and rounded, and at rest its expression is soft and gentle. His ears are large and round, usually turned forward and attentive, and very mobile, swinging toward each new sound around him. His eyes are a deep, honeyed gold, large in his face, the colour unbroken from edge to edge. In the dark they shine gold as well, and they shift with every feeling he has, as any eyes do.
His tail is long and leonine, the fur running even all the way to the tip. A narrow, crisp white stripe runs lengthwise along it, bright against the dark brown.
His forepaws are very large, broad and bear-like, and his hind paws are a lion’s. Both carry thick, soft pads, darker than his fur, and black claws that soften back into the paw when he has no need of them.
Thousands of tendrils grow over his body, fully black, darker even than his fur, and they reach a long way, eight to ten feet. They rise from his skin when he wants them and lie flat beneath his fur when he does not. He uses them freely through his day, for carrying, for handling small things and for all the ordinary tasks of living. They are soft and silky, and they can hold as gently as a cupped hand or press firm and close. He uses them often to hold and to comfort.
He carries a strong air element and uses it openly, lifting and moving things with it and calling it into his wings to fly faster. At times a faint breeze moves around him on its own, and it can rise with his feelings. At other times the air around him stays still until he calls on it. Whenever he draws on it, his fur and feathers stir.
His feelings show all through him. His ears turn and lift, his tail moves, and his eyes change. His tendrils lift, curl or still. His wings shift or half-open. His vivoment settles softer through his body or draws close and compact.
He moves with a smooth, flowing grace that shows most in his hindquarters, and he passes between all fours and upright as one continuous motion. In the air he is easy and powerful, and the wind he carries lends him speed.
Kikaze’s company is warm and open, attentive and steady, a sheltered place where a story can be told at its own pace.
He smells of grass in the evening, of warm fur, and of old paper.
Kikaze is a storyteller’s fire, wind moving through tall grass, and a sheltering tree at the edge of a field. He is the first star of evening and a quiet library after dark. He is the wind that listens, and then carries the story on.