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* He's had a couple of run-ins with GrayZero and they've clashed verbally, her faith against his cynicism. |
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* He's had a couple of run-ins with GrayZero and they've clashed verbally, her faith against his cynicism. Lately, though, he's been reservedly polite to her. |
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* He accepted an offer from Sweet William to meet his employer at the Library. [He should have refused.] |
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* He accepted an offer from Sweet William to meet his employer at the Library. [He should have refused.] Grey's currently nursing a serious grudge against William. |
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
--- T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
He has the head and tail of a wolf (soot-black fur, eyes like molten gold, long furry neck, pricked ears, wet black nose, long muzzle, white fangs, pink tongue, wet dripping maw),
And the body of a man (just over six foot, furless, whipcord muscle, prime of adulthood, black hair on arms and legs).
Bandaged and bleeding (wounds major and minor, different with each waking, battered body half-mummified in gauze, tattered ends trailing),
He bears a handprint on his chest (giant hand, seven fingers spanning shoulder to shoulder, an impression like unto hardened clay),
And wears a long grey coat (smoke, fog, blind TV static, enveloping folds, concealing, hiding, ceaseless motion, trailing tatters and tentacle streamers of semi-sentient cloth).
His origin is murky. His memories, too. His past is an abstract painting or, at best, a parody of modern media, full of emotion and expression, quick stabs of sound and image, lacking coherence or an understandable narrative. An art film on speed. Failure and loss hound him, though he doesn't remember what he'd tried to do or what (who) he'd once had. He fears a coming doom, but neither knows its nature nor has proof of its coming; he only has the conviction that it Is.
Like a wolf without a pack, he wanders, he drifts. There is something he is looking for, but he doesn't know what (who) it is. Place, person, thing? Something even less tangible?
His intellect is human in nature and quite intact; only his memories are faulty. Yet his sense of time is as a wolf's. There is Now and there is Some Time Ago. He has to concentrate, sometimes, to put past events in their proper order... or even to remember them at all. Some things are retained; others vanish like ice in fire. Even his name is not his name, but something that managed to take hold onto the slick blankness of his memory; he holds onto it as it holds onto him.
Socially, he's more reserved than most, aware of his lackings (perhaps too aware) and wary of exposing weakness to strangers. Still, he's not unwilling to engage in conversation. It's difficult to gain his trust, but possible, and those who do will find in him a loyal friend, albeit one who takes betrayal (real or perceived) badly. Betrayal, rejection, and mockery all wound him; he has a prickly pride and a snarly temper. Close and trusted friends may tease (he has a sense of humor, though a dry and cynical one), but others will only make him angry or sullen.
Along with the wolf's head, he has a wolf's tail, with a line of black fur running along his spine to connect both. Both spine-fur and tail are usually hidden by his coat.
Grey currently lives somewhere in Downwarp, though he's lately been spending a lot of his waking hours in Puzzle Park, where he rests against (or in) the Cube Tree. Taking comfort, perhaps?
[There's pictures of him at his player's Side7 Gallery.]