Post by harry on Aug 4, 2012 2:58:08 GMT -5
Name: bodhi xun
Gender: female.
Age: nineteen.
Element: air.
Companions: none but, though they're not on the list, i'd like to buy her a fox antelope or a jackalope.
Resides In: republic city, formally the si wong desert.
Appearance:
rounding out at about 5'7", bodhi is fairly tall and her perfect posture doesn't much help to hide it. her entire life, she's been about a head above her peers -- quite an embarrassing fact for a child to face. now that she's stopped growing, she isn't too much taller than her peers. the rest of her is slight and small, her naturally thin frame is encased in well-earned muscles. physical strength is important to bodhi, as, in her mind, strength of body and strength of mind go hand in hand. it's also important to her that she be able to defend herself, rather than relying on those around her to do it. so of course she works on her physique quite often, keeping herself in fighting shape. still, even with that muscle, she appears quite thin. the combination of her metabolism and all the muscle burning her fat away, it isn't difficult for bodhi to remain thin and lithe. the downside to being so thin, she has neither junk in her trunk nor a respectable chest. she's not quite flat, but she may as well be. her rigorous workout routine may have something to do with her minuscule chest size. still, she works with what she's got. the upside to her thin frame? she's often underestimated by potential foes. though her arms may look tiny, they pack a powerful punch.
though bodhi's hair is naturally a near black hue, her time spent in the desert sun has lightened it slightly. the nineteen year old keeps her hair a medium length, the front hanging down to her chest with a slight curl, while the back falls just below the nape of her neck. with her hair being naturally straight, bodhi doesn't do much with it aside from, occasionally, pulling it back in either a ponytail or a messy bun, just to get it out of her face. sometimes she appears to have bangs, the result of a slip of the razor from the last cut she gave herself -- but, hey, giving yourself a haircut is tough! you try it and see if you can do it perfectly! she also has a plait behind her left ear, braided into her hair by her younger brother years ago. occasionally her hair is cut shorter than the plait itself, making it all the more visible.
bodhi possesses a good few scars. the first of note are those she received as a child, only scarring due to the frequency of occurrences: both of bodhi’s knees are extremely scarred from years of tumbles. the second of note aren’t as noticeable, there’s the tiny cut on her forehead from when she hit her head as a young girl, the small silver slice on her stomach from a fight that went a bit too far. the largest of her scars is a long scrape on the left side of her abdomen and the bottom of her left arm, from when she tried to use her then sub-par "sandbending" to move a sand sailor before her teacher had actually taught her.
the most noticeable of her scars is right in plain sight, leading from the edge of her top lip and curving up to about mid-cheek. it definitely detracts from the beauty of her face, no lies there, but it adds to the bad girl image. those who get past the scar and are able to view the rest of her face will notice her small, somewhat button-y nose, her thin eyebrows, her thick, often scowling lips, and of course, her eyes. almond shaped and somewhat small like most of her features, the light blue-gray color of her eyes leaves them susceptible to taking on the shades of the overpowering colors around her. framing her eyes are her thick lashes -- the kind people strive for when they buy all of those strange mascaras. grace was born with them, u jelly?
the young bender has quite an affinity for tattoos, an addiction she inherited from her father. .her right shoulder bears a zen circle, a thick brushstroke encircling the joint. her left arm is adorned in a half-sleeve, sea and desert themed, it starts high on her shoulder and comes to a gradual end around her elbow. on her right foot is a large paw print, a symbol to remind her that each step she takes is not one taken alone. her final and most recent tattoo starts low on her back and spans upward over her spine, the image itself is of a cactus, a memento of her desert home, and at the top of the cactus, between her shoulder blades, is an orange flower blooming.
bodhi projects an image, her face often deadpan or displeased, acting as though she’s incapable of smiling. of course bodhi is capable of smiling, she just prefers to hide that side of herself initially. she stands tall, she puts on a bravado of power and invulnerability. bodhi's projected image, the statue of courage and cool she puts on, can easily be undermined if you look at the little things. her lips show the wear and tear of her inner nervous-nelly, gnawed at to the point where they're raw, cracked, and often bleeding. another area where her true nature seeps through are her nail beds, which she endlessly picks and chews at. they're atrocious, often bleeding or red and raw exposing the sensitive under-skin, that red baby skin that needs time to toughen up. her nails are often short as well, as she tends to bite them off as soon as they get long.
bodhi's hands are rough: workers hands, with deep gouges and scars and dirt beneath her nails that never seem to leave, calloused and strong. prizes from her upbringing, a reminder of her training and toil. bodhi's feet are also calloused. after spending nearly the whole of her life entirely neglecting shoes, the bottoms of her feet are rough enough to resemble the bottom of most shoes. because of this, she can walk around sans shoes with minimal pain. also because of this, her feet seem to be perpetually dirty, the bottom sides of them a few shades darker with dirt -- no matter how many times she has tried to rinse that dirt off, it doesn't seem to want to go, as if it's tattooed to her skin. she's grown to like it now, and would probably be quite upset if it disappeared.
Personality:
the first thing people seem to notice about bodhi’s personality is that she is extremely guarded. she wears a deadpan expression almost all the time, and her stance is often very closed off, with her arms crossed in front of her chest – in front of her heart—it isn’t hard to see that she’s a tough girl to get close to. this guarded personality isn’t the true bodhi, who was once a social butterfly, smiling freely and openly, displaying her happiness to the world, at one with her element. and then it happened. that happy-go-lucky social butterfly, that free, funny, openly kind girl, well, she’s still in there. somewhere. somewhere deep. bodhi hides her away like a deep dark secret, entombed deep within the hardest part of herself, protecting herself. she lives by the creed that if you don’t put yourself out there, you can’t be crushed. her logic is flawed, of course, because that deep dark secret controls her more than she cares to admit and, well, sometimes feelings, as much as we try to suppress them, are able to bubble up to the surface. still, that jovial girl bodhi keeps inside of herself is being overwhelmed and buried by the shield she puts up. bodhi wasn’t always so guarded and occasionally that guard slips and she, without even realizing it, becomes the social butterfly she once was, all accepting and happy to make new friends. these moments, of course, are few and far between and, often, as soon as she realizes that the guarded bit of her has slipped she brings that wall right back up. it isn’t a feature that she particularly likes but, well, she’s used to it now. change is hard and scary and, well, who is she if not the guarded, mysterious bad girl? in her mind, without that reputation, she’d be no one. too far gone to find her way back to who she really is, or was, or will or wont be again.
they say the meek shall inherit the earth. well, bodhi definitely won’t be inheriting the earth any time soon. bodhi is extremely outspoken. if she thinks your plan is stupid she’s going to tell you exactly that. she holds nothing back. have you ever heard that phrase ‘she wears her heart on her sleeve’? well, that’s bodhi, except you have to replace ‘heart’ with ‘opinions.’ she tries not to be mean about it but sometimes her tone escapes her, or she’ll let out a scoff without even thinking about it. she doesn’t mean to be cruel, honestly, and hates to hurt people’s feelings, but she hasn’t quite figured out another way to get her opinions across. bodhi hasn’t quite learned the art of tact. it’s in her nature to call things as she sees them, whether it’s telling someone that their idea is dumb or telling them that they have spinach in their teeth. because of her outspokenness, bodhi doesn’t really see the merit in lying. she has lied, of course, most have, but when it comes down to it, nine times out of ten she’ll tell the truth. generally her lies are just to protect those she loves, not meant to harm or cause trouble. she doesn’t look down on others for lying, she just accepts that they do and makes a note not to trust them fully ever. she does, however, look down on the meek. it’s something she can’t wrap her mind around, people with ideas and opinions that refuse to state them, she can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want to tell them. she doesn’t have a good understanding of shyness. she’s sympathetic, of course, but only to a certain point.
bodhi tends to be moody. she has her highs and lows, of course, and neither are crippling. still, if you catch bodhi in a bad mood you best stay out of her way. she seems to always be in a bad mood, always terse and sarcastic, sometimes even a bit cruel with her words. though bodhi isn’t deeply depressed, she often seems to be in a dour mood. this, of course, is a part of her front, a part of her shield. she hides her highs and revels in her lows. while she was at one point a wholly happy girl and quite proud of it, bodhi has learned to suppress that side of her. she keeps her happiness internalized, does her victory dance in her head. happiness, she worries, may be a sign of weakness. and bodhi, well, she would never be caught dead appearing weak. so instead of appearing happy-go-lucky she prefers to appear angry, uncaring, cynical, and serious, all traits her skewed perspective identifies as strong and very much not weak. this ability to keep her own feelings internalized comes in quite handy in dire situations, where bodhi is able to keep her wits about her. there’s no better strength than the ability to remain calm in the midst of a disaster, bodhi feels, and she has trained herself to do just that. although she occasionally has trouble thinking before she acts, bodhi is fairly good at coming up with last minute plans – even if said plan is just to attack with everything they’ve got.
deep down, bodhi is kind of goofy. she has a good sense of humor, always has, though she rarely lets it shine through. at heart, bodhi is kind, caring, and loving. she isn’t at all the bad girl she projects and – don’t tell, it’s a secret – wishes that she could shove away the shield she has built up and become just who she really is. that goofy happy little girl she was before it happened. some of these traits shine through, bright little stars in the dark sky of her encompassing shield. as hard as she tries to choke down her goofy jokes and smiles and chuckles, it can get hard. it seems strange, one would think that with the longing to be this person once more bodhi would just shrug off her guarded image and accept the self she once was. but, to bodhi, that’s not even a possibility. it’s her belief that, to protect herself from hurt and loss and pain, she has to keep her image. she has to be that strong, quick-witted, fearless, uncaring bitch to keep herself safe.
while she would love to settle down with a group, she prefers to be on her own. to get close to people is to learn to love them, is to eventually lose them. while she isn’t entirely opposed to having friends, she has issues with staying in one place for a long period of time. her legs were made for walking and that’s just what they want to do – all the time. it’s like restless leg syndrome, only bodhi is awake. maybe someday bodhi’s wanderlust will run dry but, as it stands now, no friend or leader or comfortable bed can contain her for too long. sorely missing the place she used to call home, she tries desperately to avoid finding a new home to miss.
bods is your typical anti-hero. while often forced into positions where she has to play the hero part, bodhi only acts the hero when it’s the only choice. she would never fancy herself a hero, of course. still, she’s willing to play the part if the situation arises where a hero is needed. her heroics are often brushed off before she can be thanked. that or she’ll say something rude or otherwise un-heroic to ruin the moment. she doesn’t want to be seen as a hero or as a role-model. she doesn’t want to be put on a pedestal. mostly, she just doesn’t want to disappoint. when you’re a hero, when you’re placed of a pedestal and looked up to, it’s just too easy to fall from grace and disappoint all of those who once relied on you.
bodhi is courageous as hell. though she does have fears, just like everyone else, she has this miraculous ability to shove those fears to the back of her mind. her trick is to allow herself five seconds of fear, let that fear swallow and contain and destroy her for five seconds. and then shove it down into the abyss of her gut, into the far reaches of her mind where it can’t hurt her. and then she’s not afraid anymore. this is a trick she was taught by her father while she was struggling to get over her fear of the dark. she took the lesson to heart and turned it into a way of life. this ability is part of the reason bodhi is so good in scary, chaotic situations. her courageousness is a double-edged sword, because bodhi also happens to be protective to a fault. when a friend is fighting a losing battle, bodhi’s protective instincts and ability to push fear away kick into high gear. the end result, more often than not, is bodhi joining in the fight. admonished time and again for it, bodhi can’t seem to help herself. though she doesn’t actually black out in the moments before entering the fray, she does lose all of her judgment. wind, meet caution.
Backstory:
sha-zi xun spent his formative years in ba sing se, the only child of a fairly well off merchant, a descendant of air nomads, and his seamstress wife, both non-benders. he was given every advantage in life, taught to harness his earthbending nearly as soon as it was discovered. at eighteen, sha-zi was faced with the duty of taking over for his father. unfortunately, sha-zi did not want to take over for his father. he wanted to travel, see more of the world than just ba sing se. more than anything, though, he wanted to master earthbending and learn as many techniques as he could.
that's what brought him to the si wong desert. at the age of nineteen, sha-zi decided to give sandbending a try nice family of sandbenders agreed to shelter him, allowing him to take up residence in their spare room. the man of the household was a bartender at the local hot spot -- which his wife happened to own. they had a daughter, mei, two years younger than him that he became enamoured with completely the very moment he set eyes on her. she was your typical sandbender, tanned skin and sun bleached hair, muddy eyes. but her smile, that's what really got him. it was infectious and beautiful and perfect and very, very quickly, sha-zi began to dread life without that smile.
still determined to learn sandbending despite -- or maybe in spite of -- his crush on mei, sha-zi started his lessons. the problem? the one teaching him was mei. it didn't take long for the sandbending practice settings to get out of hand, soon enough, mei was pregnant at only twenty. finding no use in hiding their relationship anymore, mei and sha-zi told her parents and were promptly married. months later, mei gave birth to two identical, beautiful, muddy eyed little boys, named jian and jun. from the start, it was clear that jian was a bit of a wild child, while jun was more subdued and compliant. jian’s adventurous and occasionally destructive behavior did not go away with age.
in order to support his new family, sha-zi took up work at mei's mother's bar while mei put her sandbending skills to use by taking tourists out on guided trips through the vast desert, sandbender style.
too soon after, mei became pregnant again. nine months later, their third son, qiang, was welcomed into the world. qiang took after his father rather than his mother, with his auburn hair and deep green eyes.
a year after qiang's birth, and much to the dismay of broke and struggling mei and sha-zi, mei gave birth again. finally, as mei said, a girl. she was named bodhi, after sha-zi's airbender great grandfather. she did, after all, resemble the air nomad heritage sha-zi knew so little about. with her light eyes and only slightly browned skin, bodhi looked like the odd one out immediately - still, she was never loved any less for it.
bodhi quickly became one of the boys, dressing like them, insisting on having her hair cut like theirs, joining in on each and every one of their games. while bodhi enjoyed the company of all her brothers, she especially admired jian. jun was alright, but jian knew how to do magic tricks with the sand, leaving little bodhi and qiang captivated, hanging on his every word. they attempted to be jian clones, doing as he did, saying what he said. bodhi herself displayed signs of bending ability, though her skills were meager -- or so everyone thought. the way she moved the sand through the air was peculiar and strained. she was a quick study when it came to the motions and techniques of bending, but her skill with sand remained sub-par at best.
as the children grew older, their personalities began to really develop. while jun was shy and reserved, preferring a quiet night at home with a book than a loud night out, jian was an outgoing, flirtatious, partying trouble-maker. qiang struggled to find himself, instead he glommed on to jian’s personality, trying his best to mirror his eldest brother.qiang, who was not a natural born trouble maker, was often dragged off on jian’s adventures. bodhi, however, began to pull away from jian as she grew into herself. her brothers schemes could occasionally be entertaining, but it wasn’t worth the punishment. more than she liked partying, she liked exploring, taking sand sailors out into the vast empty deserts and feeling the wind rushing by.
bodhi became particularly close to her father, who would take her out with him deep into the desert, teaching her all the things her mother had taught to him about sandbending. though bodhi's skills were lacking, her father never begrudged her for it. he remained patient with her, teaching her all she could learn from him -- the motions and techniques, meditation and concentration. the one thing it seemed he couldn't teach her was skill. still, bodhi’s time spent with her father was precious and both treasured it. for sha-zi it was a welcome break from the daily grind, for bodhi it was a fun way to learn and a chance to spend time with her idol. unfortunately, their father-daughter time did not last long.
shortly after bodhi’s tenth birthday, mei gave birth once more. her fifth and last child, a frail, small, freckled, sandy haired twig of a boy, was named kun. while bodhi enjoyed the infant at first, taken in by his adorable little hands and feet and the way he smelled and his little voice, her enjoyment quickly ended as she began to realize that she was no longer the favored little baby. her father no longer had time for her, working longer hours and spending what little time he had with his new little boy. bodhi, disheartened, turned once more to jian for guidance and supervision. she spent her formative years, from twelve to fifteen, partying, stealing, -- all the things those teen sitcoms from the 90s warned us against – all the way to purposefully drinking cactus juice, as the “cool kids” had taken to doing, and completely freaking out for the next few hours.
things became “real,” so to speak, when she was nearly seventeen. tripping on cactus juice, bodhi, jian, qiang, and a group of other young sandbeder boys broke into a home. not fully aware of their actions, they trashed the place. despite the chaos going on around them, bodhi and qiang had their wits about them enough to know that what they were doing was wrong. bodhi begged jian to leave with her, get the rest of them to follow. he refused, breaking tables and smashing plates. “this is someone’s home,” bodhi pleaded. eventually the owner of the home, a rather big and burly man, returned to find them all there, his belongings strewn across the floor. enraged, he grabbed hold of jian and moved to slam him into the wall. before jian could connect with the rock wall of the man’s home, a burst of air knocked the man away. he hit the ground with a thud, groaning. in the commotion that followed her what she would later come to reflect on as her first time truly airbending, bodhi grabbed her brothers and ran. none of the siblings knew quite what to make of bodhi's ability, assuming it was somehow connected to her sandbending. jian was less surprised by the air and more surprised by the power behind the gust, believing his sister to be a weak bender.
swearing off of cactus juice and partying, bodhi returned to spending her days mostly practicing her bending. intrigued by the ability she seemed to possess, she began to branch out and experiment. it took her a long, long time to realize that, rather than bending the sand like her family and friends had been doing, she had been controlling the air around the sand. in the wake of her discovery, bodhi decided her ability was better left a secret and continued to live life as a sub-par "sand" bender.
as she began to spend more time around her home, bodhi found a new incentive to practice. baby kun, now nearly seven, had shown himself already to be a sandbender. bodhi took him under her wing, learning from him even as she taught him, she had long ago perfected the motions required to bend the sand and passed those on to young kun. through teaching him she learned a great many things about her own bending, forming her own techniques and feeling her way through becoming an airbender.
bodhi began working in the bar her mother had inherited alongside her more responsible older brother, jun. the two helped support the family, doing what they could to keep things together as jian and qiang threatened to tear it apart with their thieving and partying. at the young age of eighteen, qiang disappeared. the search for him uncovered nothing, leaving the family to wonder if he had left on his own, been forced to go, or had just gotten lost in the desert. jian, without his big-hearted little brother holding him back anymore, left the family to pursue his life of crime.
though mei and sha-zi mourned the losses of their sons greatly, there was no denying the peace that came with their disappearances. mei was able to leave her job, focusing her attention on raising kun - to hopefully prevent him from growing up to be like his wayward brothers. with sha-zi and jun keeping the finances under control, bodhi, at the age of nineteen, decided it was finally time to leave her home in the si wong desert and embrace her true element.
Image:
melaka fray from joss whedon's fray
Gender: female.
Age: nineteen.
Element: air.
Companions: none but, though they're not on the list, i'd like to buy her a fox antelope or a jackalope.
Resides In: republic city, formally the si wong desert.
Appearance:
rounding out at about 5'7", bodhi is fairly tall and her perfect posture doesn't much help to hide it. her entire life, she's been about a head above her peers -- quite an embarrassing fact for a child to face. now that she's stopped growing, she isn't too much taller than her peers. the rest of her is slight and small, her naturally thin frame is encased in well-earned muscles. physical strength is important to bodhi, as, in her mind, strength of body and strength of mind go hand in hand. it's also important to her that she be able to defend herself, rather than relying on those around her to do it. so of course she works on her physique quite often, keeping herself in fighting shape. still, even with that muscle, she appears quite thin. the combination of her metabolism and all the muscle burning her fat away, it isn't difficult for bodhi to remain thin and lithe. the downside to being so thin, she has neither junk in her trunk nor a respectable chest. she's not quite flat, but she may as well be. her rigorous workout routine may have something to do with her minuscule chest size. still, she works with what she's got. the upside to her thin frame? she's often underestimated by potential foes. though her arms may look tiny, they pack a powerful punch.
though bodhi's hair is naturally a near black hue, her time spent in the desert sun has lightened it slightly. the nineteen year old keeps her hair a medium length, the front hanging down to her chest with a slight curl, while the back falls just below the nape of her neck. with her hair being naturally straight, bodhi doesn't do much with it aside from, occasionally, pulling it back in either a ponytail or a messy bun, just to get it out of her face. sometimes she appears to have bangs, the result of a slip of the razor from the last cut she gave herself -- but, hey, giving yourself a haircut is tough! you try it and see if you can do it perfectly! she also has a plait behind her left ear, braided into her hair by her younger brother years ago. occasionally her hair is cut shorter than the plait itself, making it all the more visible.
bodhi possesses a good few scars. the first of note are those she received as a child, only scarring due to the frequency of occurrences: both of bodhi’s knees are extremely scarred from years of tumbles. the second of note aren’t as noticeable, there’s the tiny cut on her forehead from when she hit her head as a young girl, the small silver slice on her stomach from a fight that went a bit too far. the largest of her scars is a long scrape on the left side of her abdomen and the bottom of her left arm, from when she tried to use her then sub-par "sandbending" to move a sand sailor before her teacher had actually taught her.
the most noticeable of her scars is right in plain sight, leading from the edge of her top lip and curving up to about mid-cheek. it definitely detracts from the beauty of her face, no lies there, but it adds to the bad girl image. those who get past the scar and are able to view the rest of her face will notice her small, somewhat button-y nose, her thin eyebrows, her thick, often scowling lips, and of course, her eyes. almond shaped and somewhat small like most of her features, the light blue-gray color of her eyes leaves them susceptible to taking on the shades of the overpowering colors around her. framing her eyes are her thick lashes -- the kind people strive for when they buy all of those strange mascaras. grace was born with them, u jelly?
the young bender has quite an affinity for tattoos, an addiction she inherited from her father. .her right shoulder bears a zen circle, a thick brushstroke encircling the joint. her left arm is adorned in a half-sleeve, sea and desert themed, it starts high on her shoulder and comes to a gradual end around her elbow. on her right foot is a large paw print, a symbol to remind her that each step she takes is not one taken alone. her final and most recent tattoo starts low on her back and spans upward over her spine, the image itself is of a cactus, a memento of her desert home, and at the top of the cactus, between her shoulder blades, is an orange flower blooming.
bodhi projects an image, her face often deadpan or displeased, acting as though she’s incapable of smiling. of course bodhi is capable of smiling, she just prefers to hide that side of herself initially. she stands tall, she puts on a bravado of power and invulnerability. bodhi's projected image, the statue of courage and cool she puts on, can easily be undermined if you look at the little things. her lips show the wear and tear of her inner nervous-nelly, gnawed at to the point where they're raw, cracked, and often bleeding. another area where her true nature seeps through are her nail beds, which she endlessly picks and chews at. they're atrocious, often bleeding or red and raw exposing the sensitive under-skin, that red baby skin that needs time to toughen up. her nails are often short as well, as she tends to bite them off as soon as they get long.
bodhi's hands are rough: workers hands, with deep gouges and scars and dirt beneath her nails that never seem to leave, calloused and strong. prizes from her upbringing, a reminder of her training and toil. bodhi's feet are also calloused. after spending nearly the whole of her life entirely neglecting shoes, the bottoms of her feet are rough enough to resemble the bottom of most shoes. because of this, she can walk around sans shoes with minimal pain. also because of this, her feet seem to be perpetually dirty, the bottom sides of them a few shades darker with dirt -- no matter how many times she has tried to rinse that dirt off, it doesn't seem to want to go, as if it's tattooed to her skin. she's grown to like it now, and would probably be quite upset if it disappeared.
Personality:
the first thing people seem to notice about bodhi’s personality is that she is extremely guarded. she wears a deadpan expression almost all the time, and her stance is often very closed off, with her arms crossed in front of her chest – in front of her heart—it isn’t hard to see that she’s a tough girl to get close to. this guarded personality isn’t the true bodhi, who was once a social butterfly, smiling freely and openly, displaying her happiness to the world, at one with her element. and then it happened. that happy-go-lucky social butterfly, that free, funny, openly kind girl, well, she’s still in there. somewhere. somewhere deep. bodhi hides her away like a deep dark secret, entombed deep within the hardest part of herself, protecting herself. she lives by the creed that if you don’t put yourself out there, you can’t be crushed. her logic is flawed, of course, because that deep dark secret controls her more than she cares to admit and, well, sometimes feelings, as much as we try to suppress them, are able to bubble up to the surface. still, that jovial girl bodhi keeps inside of herself is being overwhelmed and buried by the shield she puts up. bodhi wasn’t always so guarded and occasionally that guard slips and she, without even realizing it, becomes the social butterfly she once was, all accepting and happy to make new friends. these moments, of course, are few and far between and, often, as soon as she realizes that the guarded bit of her has slipped she brings that wall right back up. it isn’t a feature that she particularly likes but, well, she’s used to it now. change is hard and scary and, well, who is she if not the guarded, mysterious bad girl? in her mind, without that reputation, she’d be no one. too far gone to find her way back to who she really is, or was, or will or wont be again.
they say the meek shall inherit the earth. well, bodhi definitely won’t be inheriting the earth any time soon. bodhi is extremely outspoken. if she thinks your plan is stupid she’s going to tell you exactly that. she holds nothing back. have you ever heard that phrase ‘she wears her heart on her sleeve’? well, that’s bodhi, except you have to replace ‘heart’ with ‘opinions.’ she tries not to be mean about it but sometimes her tone escapes her, or she’ll let out a scoff without even thinking about it. she doesn’t mean to be cruel, honestly, and hates to hurt people’s feelings, but she hasn’t quite figured out another way to get her opinions across. bodhi hasn’t quite learned the art of tact. it’s in her nature to call things as she sees them, whether it’s telling someone that their idea is dumb or telling them that they have spinach in their teeth. because of her outspokenness, bodhi doesn’t really see the merit in lying. she has lied, of course, most have, but when it comes down to it, nine times out of ten she’ll tell the truth. generally her lies are just to protect those she loves, not meant to harm or cause trouble. she doesn’t look down on others for lying, she just accepts that they do and makes a note not to trust them fully ever. she does, however, look down on the meek. it’s something she can’t wrap her mind around, people with ideas and opinions that refuse to state them, she can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want to tell them. she doesn’t have a good understanding of shyness. she’s sympathetic, of course, but only to a certain point.
bodhi tends to be moody. she has her highs and lows, of course, and neither are crippling. still, if you catch bodhi in a bad mood you best stay out of her way. she seems to always be in a bad mood, always terse and sarcastic, sometimes even a bit cruel with her words. though bodhi isn’t deeply depressed, she often seems to be in a dour mood. this, of course, is a part of her front, a part of her shield. she hides her highs and revels in her lows. while she was at one point a wholly happy girl and quite proud of it, bodhi has learned to suppress that side of her. she keeps her happiness internalized, does her victory dance in her head. happiness, she worries, may be a sign of weakness. and bodhi, well, she would never be caught dead appearing weak. so instead of appearing happy-go-lucky she prefers to appear angry, uncaring, cynical, and serious, all traits her skewed perspective identifies as strong and very much not weak. this ability to keep her own feelings internalized comes in quite handy in dire situations, where bodhi is able to keep her wits about her. there’s no better strength than the ability to remain calm in the midst of a disaster, bodhi feels, and she has trained herself to do just that. although she occasionally has trouble thinking before she acts, bodhi is fairly good at coming up with last minute plans – even if said plan is just to attack with everything they’ve got.
deep down, bodhi is kind of goofy. she has a good sense of humor, always has, though she rarely lets it shine through. at heart, bodhi is kind, caring, and loving. she isn’t at all the bad girl she projects and – don’t tell, it’s a secret – wishes that she could shove away the shield she has built up and become just who she really is. that goofy happy little girl she was before it happened. some of these traits shine through, bright little stars in the dark sky of her encompassing shield. as hard as she tries to choke down her goofy jokes and smiles and chuckles, it can get hard. it seems strange, one would think that with the longing to be this person once more bodhi would just shrug off her guarded image and accept the self she once was. but, to bodhi, that’s not even a possibility. it’s her belief that, to protect herself from hurt and loss and pain, she has to keep her image. she has to be that strong, quick-witted, fearless, uncaring bitch to keep herself safe.
while she would love to settle down with a group, she prefers to be on her own. to get close to people is to learn to love them, is to eventually lose them. while she isn’t entirely opposed to having friends, she has issues with staying in one place for a long period of time. her legs were made for walking and that’s just what they want to do – all the time. it’s like restless leg syndrome, only bodhi is awake. maybe someday bodhi’s wanderlust will run dry but, as it stands now, no friend or leader or comfortable bed can contain her for too long. sorely missing the place she used to call home, she tries desperately to avoid finding a new home to miss.
bods is your typical anti-hero. while often forced into positions where she has to play the hero part, bodhi only acts the hero when it’s the only choice. she would never fancy herself a hero, of course. still, she’s willing to play the part if the situation arises where a hero is needed. her heroics are often brushed off before she can be thanked. that or she’ll say something rude or otherwise un-heroic to ruin the moment. she doesn’t want to be seen as a hero or as a role-model. she doesn’t want to be put on a pedestal. mostly, she just doesn’t want to disappoint. when you’re a hero, when you’re placed of a pedestal and looked up to, it’s just too easy to fall from grace and disappoint all of those who once relied on you.
bodhi is courageous as hell. though she does have fears, just like everyone else, she has this miraculous ability to shove those fears to the back of her mind. her trick is to allow herself five seconds of fear, let that fear swallow and contain and destroy her for five seconds. and then shove it down into the abyss of her gut, into the far reaches of her mind where it can’t hurt her. and then she’s not afraid anymore. this is a trick she was taught by her father while she was struggling to get over her fear of the dark. she took the lesson to heart and turned it into a way of life. this ability is part of the reason bodhi is so good in scary, chaotic situations. her courageousness is a double-edged sword, because bodhi also happens to be protective to a fault. when a friend is fighting a losing battle, bodhi’s protective instincts and ability to push fear away kick into high gear. the end result, more often than not, is bodhi joining in the fight. admonished time and again for it, bodhi can’t seem to help herself. though she doesn’t actually black out in the moments before entering the fray, she does lose all of her judgment. wind, meet caution.
Backstory:
sha-zi xun spent his formative years in ba sing se, the only child of a fairly well off merchant, a descendant of air nomads, and his seamstress wife, both non-benders. he was given every advantage in life, taught to harness his earthbending nearly as soon as it was discovered. at eighteen, sha-zi was faced with the duty of taking over for his father. unfortunately, sha-zi did not want to take over for his father. he wanted to travel, see more of the world than just ba sing se. more than anything, though, he wanted to master earthbending and learn as many techniques as he could.
that's what brought him to the si wong desert. at the age of nineteen, sha-zi decided to give sandbending a try nice family of sandbenders agreed to shelter him, allowing him to take up residence in their spare room. the man of the household was a bartender at the local hot spot -- which his wife happened to own. they had a daughter, mei, two years younger than him that he became enamoured with completely the very moment he set eyes on her. she was your typical sandbender, tanned skin and sun bleached hair, muddy eyes. but her smile, that's what really got him. it was infectious and beautiful and perfect and very, very quickly, sha-zi began to dread life without that smile.
still determined to learn sandbending despite -- or maybe in spite of -- his crush on mei, sha-zi started his lessons. the problem? the one teaching him was mei. it didn't take long for the sandbending practice settings to get out of hand, soon enough, mei was pregnant at only twenty. finding no use in hiding their relationship anymore, mei and sha-zi told her parents and were promptly married. months later, mei gave birth to two identical, beautiful, muddy eyed little boys, named jian and jun. from the start, it was clear that jian was a bit of a wild child, while jun was more subdued and compliant. jian’s adventurous and occasionally destructive behavior did not go away with age.
in order to support his new family, sha-zi took up work at mei's mother's bar while mei put her sandbending skills to use by taking tourists out on guided trips through the vast desert, sandbender style.
too soon after, mei became pregnant again. nine months later, their third son, qiang, was welcomed into the world. qiang took after his father rather than his mother, with his auburn hair and deep green eyes.
a year after qiang's birth, and much to the dismay of broke and struggling mei and sha-zi, mei gave birth again. finally, as mei said, a girl. she was named bodhi, after sha-zi's airbender great grandfather. she did, after all, resemble the air nomad heritage sha-zi knew so little about. with her light eyes and only slightly browned skin, bodhi looked like the odd one out immediately - still, she was never loved any less for it.
bodhi quickly became one of the boys, dressing like them, insisting on having her hair cut like theirs, joining in on each and every one of their games. while bodhi enjoyed the company of all her brothers, she especially admired jian. jun was alright, but jian knew how to do magic tricks with the sand, leaving little bodhi and qiang captivated, hanging on his every word. they attempted to be jian clones, doing as he did, saying what he said. bodhi herself displayed signs of bending ability, though her skills were meager -- or so everyone thought. the way she moved the sand through the air was peculiar and strained. she was a quick study when it came to the motions and techniques of bending, but her skill with sand remained sub-par at best.
as the children grew older, their personalities began to really develop. while jun was shy and reserved, preferring a quiet night at home with a book than a loud night out, jian was an outgoing, flirtatious, partying trouble-maker. qiang struggled to find himself, instead he glommed on to jian’s personality, trying his best to mirror his eldest brother.qiang, who was not a natural born trouble maker, was often dragged off on jian’s adventures. bodhi, however, began to pull away from jian as she grew into herself. her brothers schemes could occasionally be entertaining, but it wasn’t worth the punishment. more than she liked partying, she liked exploring, taking sand sailors out into the vast empty deserts and feeling the wind rushing by.
bodhi became particularly close to her father, who would take her out with him deep into the desert, teaching her all the things her mother had taught to him about sandbending. though bodhi's skills were lacking, her father never begrudged her for it. he remained patient with her, teaching her all she could learn from him -- the motions and techniques, meditation and concentration. the one thing it seemed he couldn't teach her was skill. still, bodhi’s time spent with her father was precious and both treasured it. for sha-zi it was a welcome break from the daily grind, for bodhi it was a fun way to learn and a chance to spend time with her idol. unfortunately, their father-daughter time did not last long.
shortly after bodhi’s tenth birthday, mei gave birth once more. her fifth and last child, a frail, small, freckled, sandy haired twig of a boy, was named kun. while bodhi enjoyed the infant at first, taken in by his adorable little hands and feet and the way he smelled and his little voice, her enjoyment quickly ended as she began to realize that she was no longer the favored little baby. her father no longer had time for her, working longer hours and spending what little time he had with his new little boy. bodhi, disheartened, turned once more to jian for guidance and supervision. she spent her formative years, from twelve to fifteen, partying, stealing, -- all the things those teen sitcoms from the 90s warned us against – all the way to purposefully drinking cactus juice, as the “cool kids” had taken to doing, and completely freaking out for the next few hours.
things became “real,” so to speak, when she was nearly seventeen. tripping on cactus juice, bodhi, jian, qiang, and a group of other young sandbeder boys broke into a home. not fully aware of their actions, they trashed the place. despite the chaos going on around them, bodhi and qiang had their wits about them enough to know that what they were doing was wrong. bodhi begged jian to leave with her, get the rest of them to follow. he refused, breaking tables and smashing plates. “this is someone’s home,” bodhi pleaded. eventually the owner of the home, a rather big and burly man, returned to find them all there, his belongings strewn across the floor. enraged, he grabbed hold of jian and moved to slam him into the wall. before jian could connect with the rock wall of the man’s home, a burst of air knocked the man away. he hit the ground with a thud, groaning. in the commotion that followed her what she would later come to reflect on as her first time truly airbending, bodhi grabbed her brothers and ran. none of the siblings knew quite what to make of bodhi's ability, assuming it was somehow connected to her sandbending. jian was less surprised by the air and more surprised by the power behind the gust, believing his sister to be a weak bender.
swearing off of cactus juice and partying, bodhi returned to spending her days mostly practicing her bending. intrigued by the ability she seemed to possess, she began to branch out and experiment. it took her a long, long time to realize that, rather than bending the sand like her family and friends had been doing, she had been controlling the air around the sand. in the wake of her discovery, bodhi decided her ability was better left a secret and continued to live life as a sub-par "sand" bender.
as she began to spend more time around her home, bodhi found a new incentive to practice. baby kun, now nearly seven, had shown himself already to be a sandbender. bodhi took him under her wing, learning from him even as she taught him, she had long ago perfected the motions required to bend the sand and passed those on to young kun. through teaching him she learned a great many things about her own bending, forming her own techniques and feeling her way through becoming an airbender.
bodhi began working in the bar her mother had inherited alongside her more responsible older brother, jun. the two helped support the family, doing what they could to keep things together as jian and qiang threatened to tear it apart with their thieving and partying. at the young age of eighteen, qiang disappeared. the search for him uncovered nothing, leaving the family to wonder if he had left on his own, been forced to go, or had just gotten lost in the desert. jian, without his big-hearted little brother holding him back anymore, left the family to pursue his life of crime.
though mei and sha-zi mourned the losses of their sons greatly, there was no denying the peace that came with their disappearances. mei was able to leave her job, focusing her attention on raising kun - to hopefully prevent him from growing up to be like his wayward brothers. with sha-zi and jun keeping the finances under control, bodhi, at the age of nineteen, decided it was finally time to leave her home in the si wong desert and embrace her true element.
Image:
melaka fray from joss whedon's fray
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