Amber Hunt's 20 Random Questions

Simply what it says.
20 random and varied questions to answer as your OC.  Designed to make you think a little bit more about the minutiae of the character and about their place in their world.

01  What is the worst nickname that anyone has ever called you?
Take your pick; Half-breed, Scale-face, Lizard, Freak, Monster.
When you're a kindred; half-human, half-kith, cruel nicknames are easy to come by.


02  Have you got a favourite flower?
I'll be honest, it's not something I've ever thought about.  Perhaps Cherry Blossoms, They are such a pretty, delicate pink.  When the wind blows, it's like it's raining beauty.


03  Do you add a sauce, ketchup or other artificial flavourings to your food?
Oh lord, no.  After going to all that trouble to cook something, the last thing I'm going to do is drown it in some heavy flavoured sauce.


04  Describe yourself using only words that begin with the letter 'T'.
Hmmm... that's actually more of a challenge than it sounds at first...
Thin
Taut
Testy...

Troubled


05  What is your lover's pet name for you?
I don't do pet names!
…
..
.
oh alright.  Danika sometimes calls me mumble mumble mumble
…
..
.
OKAY Okay.  She calls me Honeybum!
Sometimes.  When she wants to tease me.
There.  Are you satisfied now?!

It goes back to a time when we were... you know.  Look.  Danika likes to... experiment.  Play games.  She poured honey over my... my back...side.  I wasn't exactly in a position to argue at the time.  She was going to... well you can guess.  

But it was icky, sticky.  Thick.  It clung to my skin and got stuck in my... my scales.  
I... I don't like to talk about this... stuff.


06  What is your least favourite colour?
Green!
I know I look good in green, like all redheads... well as good as something...one like me can look.  But it reminds me too much of what I am...
And what I'm not.


07  Who did you vote for in the last election, and did they win?
Jeremiah Karlson.  He was standing for the demesne council.  They govern the human population of the demesne.  And report to the high council who govern all 13 demesnes of the city.  The kith stand above all this, of course.  But they're happy to let us rule our own affairs as long as we keep them in comfort.
I had to vote incognito, being a kindred.  Most people think we shouldn't be allowed to live in the city, never mind cast a vote.  I voted for Jeremiah because he was the most liberal in his policies.  Which isn't saying much.

Of course he didn't win.
A scumbag by the name of Merrick Hastir won.  He bought, bribed and outright threatened enough votes for a landslide victory.  He's clever, charming and articulate.  He's also very anti-kith, which is stupid, if not suicidal.  I've had run-ins with him before.  He fooled me once, until I saw him for what he really is.  A rabble rouser and a thuggish, violent criminal.


08  What is/was your grandfather's name?
Deveran Hunt.
I took his (and my mother's) name after my father... step-father disowned me at birth.
Deveran was an amazing man.  Brilliant and a wily merchant.  I inherited his brains, but not his devastating charm.

He took me in and raised me, even though his beloved daughter died giving birth to me.  A monster.  He got me tutors and schooling and everything.  He died when I was seven years old.  But he made my fath... my mother's husband take me in until I came of age.  On pain of losing the family business he'd married into.


09  What is the best present you ever received?
My House.  It was my mother's final gift to me.  She knew, once she became pregnant, that it was a death sentence.  No human mother has ever survived giving birth to a Kindred baby.  Ever.  

And without ever meeting me, knowing me.  Knowing my birth would kill her and I would probably die too.  She love... she loved... she loved me enough to bequeath me a home.  Her home.  My home...


10  What is 17 1/2% of 97 + 42 x (6 / 2) – 137 ?
49.
Now ask me a hard one.


11  What would be the best possible way you could die?
What a morbid question.
I've thought about dying.  About ending it all, killing myself.  I went through a very, very bad patch that took me many years to work my way out of.  I ran away from everyone and everything I knew, but I couldn't run away from myself.  Death seemed like a good option.  Would the world be any worse off?  Truth is I'm a coward.  I'm scared to do it.  Scared it won't work.  Scared it will.  Scared of the pain.

The best possible way?  I'd want something sure.  Something that wouldn't leave anything behind to... possibly... well heal.
One of those sky rocks.  That you see occasionally burning across the heavens.  That would would work.  There'd be this blaze of beautiful light and fire and suddenly there'd be nothing, no pain, no suffering.  Just obliteration.


12  Given the choice of absolutely anything, what would be your dream job?
Tyrant-Queen?
No.  Seriously...
I think probably Dean of the University of Kitholme.
I'd teach those stuffed shirts the real meaning of education.  Open the doors to anyone; human or otherwise.
And maybe I could start to teach the next generation not to hate and fear us kindred.  That scales or skin, we're all the same underneath.


13  What position do you sleep in at night?
Curled up.  Tightly curled up.  I think it's a reaction to all the hatred and negativity I've been surrounded by all my life.  I guess subconsciously I feel that if I can make myself as small as I possibly can, they won't find me...

On those rare occasions I'm not alone in bed, I like to spoon.  I think I kind of swamp them.  There are so few times in my life when someone actually wants to physically touch me, it's like I crave it.  I want as much of my body in contact with theirs as I possibly can.


14  What's the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to you?
I've had my share of shameful things that spring easily to mind, but embarrassing...

I guess it was that first 'Girl's Night' With Jem, Dione and the other maids from the palace.  I was working there undercover trying to find a murderer.  Thy sort of adopted me, for all my social awkwardness.  I've never belonged like that before...

Anyway, the last Wednesday of the month is 'Girl's Night'.  A night of drunken revelry; a chance to let our hair down; get drunk; and usually in Jem's case, get laid.  Jem brought this hip flask of her own concoction.  I swear I had two sips... and after that there is nothing but a half-dozen disconnected flashes.
I have a flash of me Ra-Ra Dancing; kicking my legs high and waving my skirt about.  Flashing that patch of scales that covers my upper thigh and bum cheek.  It's so brash and out of character.  But there's a dark, buried side of me that would love to thrust my kindred nature in peoples' faces.

Late the next afternoon... I sort of lost the morning and most of that afternoon... Jem delighted in telling me all about my dancing, and the fact it had been on a table in front of the whole inn.  Right up until I went, in her words, tits-up.
And I had the bruises to prove it.

I haven't dared go back into that inn since.  But the girl's thought it was hilarious.  That, more than anything else, I think, made me one of them.

15  Who is your favourite fictional character?
Oh.  I think it would have to be Luneria, the Moon Princess.  From the book 'Virago and the Priestess of the Moon'.  I mean I know she's supposed to be a bad girl.  Daughter of the Evil Moon Emperor an all that.  And a total slut.  But I just love how she rebels against her father and doesn't let the fact that she loves the incredibly dull and two-dimensional muscle-bound hero get in the way of her plans to devastate his world and rule over the ruins.  Of course, in the end the hero defeats her, and her father, and several thousand Moon Warriors and banishes them back to the dark side of the moon before living happily ever after with the Moon Priestess; the virgin bride who was to be sacrificed to appease said Moon Emperors' lust and stop him destroying the world.


16  What food do you hate most in the world?
Chocolate!
I know everyone else seems to love it.  But I don't.  I loathe the stuff.  It's bitter and horribly sugary sweet all at the same time.  And it melts in your mouth and sticks to your teeth like a squidgy, rotten mushroom.
Urrrgh!


17  When was the last time you were ill?
I don't get ill, as such.
I'm not fully human, your diseases and illnesses aren't communicative to me.  And the kith are immortal, they don't have diseases.  There aren't enough of us kindred together in one place to breed our own diseases either.

And skipping over that hangover, of course...

We... the kindred, suffer terribly from the cold.  Like our kith fathers we're cold blooded.  But unlike them, we can die from it.  It almost happened to me once, fifteen years ago.  I won't ever forget it, or let it happen again.  The cold gets into your limbs, makes you sluggish and sleepy.  It gets into your brain and your mind too.  I could barely move.  It was hard to think, to string two thoughts together...

I won't ever let that happen again.  Never.  NEVER.  Not even if I have to spend every penny I have and more.


18  If you were transformed into a wild creature, what would it be?
A Pteradon I think.  Imagine floating, gliding over the world on giant wings.  You would be alone and free.  FREE.  Just think what wonders you could see.  The whole world could be yours.


19  What was your favourite toy as a child, and whatever happened to it?
Oh...  My rag doll.  Kaley.  I haven't thought about her in years.  She was my only friend.  I used to drag her everywhere as a child.  By the arm.  Grandfather was forever having to sew it back on.  He even sewed a patch of scales on her leg, under her skirt.  I think it was to try and help me accept who and what I was.

I don't think it worked.

What happened to her?  I lost her... I left her behind when I panicked and ran after Joseft betrayed my secret to the world.  You see, when I was young, I could hide what I was with a decent dress, a high neckline and my hair worn long and down.

Joseft was a boy... well a young man.  Handsome, almost too handsome, like he was a statue cut from ebony.  I was in love.  We were in love.  Or so I thought.  I showed him my dark secret, my true self.  And he ran from me in horror.  He told everyone.  Only his sister, Charity.  As sweet as her name and twice as pretty, would have anything to do with me after that.  My life was in ruins.  I ran away.  As far away as I could get.  I braved the monsters and serpents of the sea that eat ships whole, and hid myself away on the Azulian Isles for over a decade.  The time it took to put my fractured soul back together.

(Out Of Character Note)
Joseft found and kept the doll to remind him of his weakness and shame and the terrible thing he did to Amber.  He still has it now, over 20 years later, when he comes back into her life seeking her help.

20  What's the most amazing thing you've ever seen?
Oh lord.  I've seen more than most people who live cloistered little lives barely looking beyond the street where they were born.  But the most amazing...

I think that would have to be on that fateful journey across the seas.  We were a week out of port and the skies were a wonderful azure blue that seemed to merge with the skyline at the horizon.  But I didn't care about that at the time.  I was hurting so bad from Joseft's betrayal that I couldn't see anything but my own melancholy.

Suddenly the sailors were shouting, running about, panicking.  The lookout atop the mast had spotted a monster a mile or so off the port bow.  I decided that maybe being eaten by a bigger monster was a fitting end for the monster I was.  (Hey, I was in a bad place, okay!).  So whilst everyone else was running for the scant cover of the lower decks, I forced my way through them to the rail.

And then I saw it.  It was a serpent, at least two or three times the length of our ship, which it could have eaten in a couple of easy bites.  It was terrifying and yet somehow majestic, sleek and beautiful.  It's scales were each about the size of a door, and silvery-grey colour, shedding streams of water.  And yet where the sun hit them, they shone with a corona of colours.  Like miniature rainbows.

It looked at the ship.  I'd like to say it looked at me, but that's mere fancy on my part.  And then dived beneath the waves and was gone.  Leaving only a haunting, lonely cry in it's wake.

It was the most terrifying, beautiful... and yes, amazing thing I've ever seen.  It was a part of what gave me the strength to go on.  To rebuild my life after Joseft destroyed it.  It's something that has always stayed with me, and always will.