A whisp, pale in coat and eyes. The sight of freshly fallen snow, or the foam from an ocean wave, perhaps a mistaken visage at the edge of a graveyard. Two sunken tombs on his face hold lights, hollow and dim despite their color being white. Beneath ghostly pale eyes are dark marks, staining the thin skin as though ink had spilled and dried upon colorless parchment. Faded through time and circumstance. His fur is short but thick with slight curls that frame the young form he was given with a messy, and unruly sight. His fur used to be neat and tames when he was young, but an injury—a scar—the shape of a jagged n was marked at the back of his head, near the right side. A sequence of events that caused this marring, not only shaped his appearance but the soul that housed it.

He carries many scars, too many for one who doesn’t fight. An uneven strike between the brows and on his forehead, leaning more to the left side. Aged cuts of different sizes scattered on the points of his joints, all frozen in various stages of healing, minimized to their smallest size through age and healing. Thereupon the innards of his pads and between those toes, a plethora of cuts, most of which are thin. The largest of his forced collection would be the one on his right paw, a large scar on each of the pads of his toes—evidence of something that was pressed too tight. Small things one wouldn’t notice unless they were uncomfortably close.

He has the build of someone lean, not muscular—but not thin either. A natural strength not gained from weights, but from running instead, running from what? Not even he knows. He stands solemn when alone, staring out into the distance for something that isn't there. The pads of his toes worry themselves dry, they are always cold—nearly cold to the touch. Soft and uncalloused, the smooth skin only broken from childhood scars. When he is in the presence of others, he tends to watch them and their movements. Holding eye contact for just a second too long—but even then his eyes are glazed over, reaching for something beyond his grasp.

On the rare occasions that he speaks, it is in a soft-spoken tone but not quiet. Clear with diction, he does not slur nor misspeaks. Concise and to the point, without the drag of a monotone that one might expect. He wears a mask of eternal somberness. Although his body remains, his mind is somewhere far away. When he floats by—he leaves in his wake a scent of last night's rain, near the ocean, a memory that never happened.

He might as well have been born without a tongue, for the abuse of not using it. When he speaks, it's a hushed whisper not to wake sleeping souls. Most of his communication is non-verbal. Unless needed, he will use gestures, eye contact, or the ever so slight contortion of his face. Sometimes there will be huffs and puffs of air, a click of the tongue or the teeth, or perhaps a rare smacking of lips, all of which could mean a variety of things. Although he holds strong eye contact when others are speaking, he will avoid eye contact when it is his turn to talk.


He’s severed from a connection. Surrounded by miles of people, and he still feels alone on his small island. No matter how far he swims out he always ends up drowning or worse, back on the lone sands. He no longer bothers with trying to connect with others. Emotionally distant and hard to reach. He sits on sun-baked beaches watching everyone else from far away, and his mind even farther away. It always looks too bright in the sky, he squints against that beaming light, blocking his vision from everything else except for what's in front of him. Were one to ever reach that island le's laid claim upon, they would be greeted with not a hug, but a cling. The cloying desperation for some kind of connection has him latching onto any who can manage to get close.


Tragic. He feels the weight of memories he can't remember, bags of sand that rest on his shoulders and make him hunch over. There is a flash of blood, a ringing in his ears, and red-stained skin. Mounds of corpses littered in the distance, he can't get the image to focus for it only brings a streak of pain in his head. He was not a somber creature before—the incident–but after, his eyes have lost their light. He mourns in silence for a family he never met, of the face framed by silken hair, of a face dressed with a toothy smile. He questioned time and time again, who were those two in his memories of a life long passed, why do they fade a little with every day that passes, why is it that when he looks too hard at the dried blood beneath black nails—he gets a strain behind the eyes instead?


He doesn't sleep much. His eyes are often heavy-lidded, there is a way where he stands. Blinking is slow and a millisecond too long. He often lies there and stares at the empty walls of a room with no personality. When he finally falls to rest, dreams always come and dreams are a broken record. A skipping film reel with no end of the incident that happened when he was a child—nothing solid—just brief glimpses, a tease, a close-up—too vague for him to understand. A wretched puzzle that only has pieces with no relation to each other. One half believes that the nightmares are a punishment for not remembering the one with dark eyes or the one with rosy cheeks. The other half just wants them to stop, with the fuzzy images that wake him to a shivering body and blurry vision. He doesn't want to stare down at red hands that won't get clean no matter how much he scrubs, the taste of something coppery on his tongue that won't go away


For all of his somberness and melancholy, he holds darkness within him. Gifted by an incident so long ago. He holds his jaw tight, his heart starts beating fast. There's a ring of a bell, fingers that snap, and his blood turns hot. Savagery overtakes his incredibly passive persona, a rage that originates from a blank spot in his memory. Harsh repression of the truth behind a wall gives cause to twisted anger–one that he fears. He shudders at his own shadow, knowing how sharp those teeth are when he closes his eyes for too long. The face he sees upon looking in the mirror is not one of sadness but of hate. A black ilk that bleeds through his eyes and dribbles from his mouth, it stains an almost all-white coat and there is no soap in the world to get it out. A black wine with no scent.


His body has held strong, but it is enough to cradle this fragile mind. A cracked glass that he keeps throwing stones at. He wants to see what's on the other side, but he doesn't know what's good for him, he should've shut the blinds and turned away.

Kajetan was a boy who smiled, he grinned hard enough to feel strain against his cheeks—enough that his vision was obscured by squinting. He was a happy child with a heart of gold, all the innocence one would expect from a child. Kind and sweet, he would see odd and shiny things and pick them up to gift them to those he was reminded of. Yes, his eyes were pale but they reflected the light around him, they had a reflection and glimmer. He was born to parents who loved him with all their hearts, especially when he was the product of many attempts and miscarriages. They held him close at night and held his hand during the day.

However, the world was a cruel place. A place of misfortune and unlucky happenstance. It held no mercy for anyone and gave no exceptions. Kajetan was a boy who would've grown up to be someone charitable and loving, someone, who would've jumped in the line of fire for a stranger, who would’ve led a life with his heart. Someone who smiled without resistance and fear. Maybe, in the end, it was fate, and not bad luck, that had him separated from his family at such a young age. Young enough that the memories of his mother's silken hair were the only thing he could recall of her, that the memories of his father's toothy smile were the only thing he could recall of him.

Lost and on the brink of death, he was picked up by strangers. Although his stay with strangers was short (just a little over a month), it was an experience that would shape the rest of his life. Traumatic and unspeakable, in defense of his sanity, his mind created a block to cover up the memory. A wall that only gave him headaches whenever he tried to scratch at it. In the depths of his subconscious, a voice would whisper to him—leave the wall alone. It spoke to let it be, to never let the wall crumble. Something earnest in the tone of voice made him listen.

The chance of Do-Gooders being nearby had saved him from a permanent fate but the effects had stayed, there was no erasing the damage. A traveling band of adventurers was no place to raise a child so they had handed him off, and handed him off, and handed him off. He had once kept track of the different roof tiles upon the different houses he had stayed at, but in the end, he had lost count. He's a special case, one who needed a lot of attention—in reality, no one wanted a child who couldn’t smile.

Unbeknownst to him, Kajetan had died that day, he was a shell of his former self. Quiet and non-smiling. He didn't wear his heart on his sleeve anymore, it disconnected at some point. Distant and aloof. The world didn't have as many colors anymore. He was a ghost in all but actual form. He went through the motions of life, growing up, staring too long at the color blue, wondering why he couldn't cry.

He blinked and he was no longer a child, but an adult. Yet still, he felt the same. Just a void that kept consuming. Just a ghost. He blinked and found some blue glass that looked so familiar, and blinked again to find himself somewhere he didn't know with an itch in his skull that wouldn't go away.