CASPIAN "BULL" TASI > wanderer [fin]

There is no mistaking why the nineteen year old boy is called Bull: he is broad-shouldered, obviously able to lift and bear intense amounts of weight, and his entire frame reflects the bulkiness of muscle. His arms are hefty and bulky from days of continuous work out on the boats and the heavy lifting of anchors and full nets. His great height attributes to his stockiness, too; Bull roughly stands at about 6’9, towering over his blood family.

His hair is usually a dark dirty blonde, but due to being in the sun for long continuous hours it has light yellow tips and streaks all throughout it. In the winter, though, when he’ll usually wear a hat to keep his ears warm, his hair loses the sun-bleached color and it turns darker, ending up at a light brown. His eyebrows, mostly flat lines above his eyes, sometimes are not the same shade of color that his hair is – they tend to stay the darker shade, so they match in the winter but differ in the summer. Bull’s eyes are a light shade of grey, changing shades in different amounts of light, and they stand out against his dark tan skin. The neck is rather thick and the ridges of his collarbone protrude from underneath the skin; his torso is toned but not chiseled and he does not care to have the so-called “washboard abs” because what is ‘looking pretty’ when you do not have the strength to back it up?

Bull tends to wear jeans, no matter how threadbare the fabric is or how faded the blue, or how torn up the knees and edges are. The strength of denim holds up to the demand of living in the wilderness whenever he chooses to travel between Six and Four, and it also protects his legs from thorns and poison ivy and oak. For a shirt he has his trademark white shirt (with various stains due to being worn so many times and through the wilderness) and either a scraped up jacket or long sleeve flannel shirt with holes at the elbows and around the seams of the pockets on the chest. The boots on his feet have certainly seen their better days but he refuses to find himself a new pair, choosing instead to wear them until they literally fall off his feet. In fact, the shoelace on his left boot has for a while been replaced with just a strand of twine he found lying on the street of Six. But what you will never see him without is his wool hat – just a little knitted thing to keep his head and ears warm in the winter, but given that it’s the only sentimental item he brought from his home in Four he keeps it with him at all times, and when it is too hot to wear he keeps it either tied around a belt loop or tucked into his pocket.

Fear runs deep through this boy. He lives in constant fear of rejection from his peers, shrinking his hulking frame as much as he can in order to somehow stay invisible. He doesn’t enjoy being the center of attention, burning in the spotlight, weighed down by the expectations and scrutiny of other people. He fears that he’ll continue to let people down, so to avoid that he does his best to stick to the shadows. A towering figure like him has a hard time blending in but Bull does try his hardest, never making rash moves or decisions (unless he’s absolutely certain he can overpower the other person) and avoiding eye contact with those around him. Unfortunately he’s been known to suffer from panic attacks when he becomes stressed or overwhelmed and he tries to cope by tucking himself in a dark room or area that he’s familiar with or by taking off and just jogging around.

Mostly he is terrified that others, too, will ostracize him because he is gay. His own sexuality is frightening to him and he does his best to try to ignore it and push the feelings down, avoiding looking at other males his age. In his head there is no other gay male aside from himself – he feels alone, terribly alone, and the thought of ever possibly meeting someone like himself is both terrifying and hopeful.

Bull’s fear of rejection has led him into being a mute by choice. If you don’t let people into your lives then they can’t judge you, right? Even when he is comfortable around people he still chooses to be silent, and at this point it has become so natural for him to not talk that the impulse to speak rarely ever rears its head. Often times, when around new people and they begin to question him about why he has not said a single word, he finds it almost easier to just pretend to be a runaway Avox so that people will get the hint that he will not answer them verbally. Of course there is always the select group of people that refuses to let the matter of his muteness die down and so Bull will try his best to be as intimidating as his silence and hulking frame will allow in an attempt to make them be quiet and show that he’s not going to answer any of their questions.

When he’s not trying to make you believe that he’s an Avox, Bull usually will want to help people. It makes him feel like he’ll be accepted more if he helps build that house, carry a heavy item for the elderly lady, fix a leaky roof for the single mother with the set of newborn twins, take up a scythe and help the farmer hoe his crops faster, etc. He believes that if he keeps up the good acts then no one will question him about why he is silent or where he came from, and even if they somehow found about then hopefully they wouldn’t judge him because of all the helpful things he has done for them.

Because he grew up in Four Bull knows how to fight. He thoroughly enjoyed his career training and took advantage of it, learning the ways of each of the weapons they had in their arsenal and the art of hand-to-hand combat. His strength from doing the heavy work out on boats always came in handy during training and still to this day he uses the tactics he learned in the training center to survive in the wilderness and sneak in and out of Six. Bull also isn’t afraid to swing a fist or two at anyone in particular that pisses him off or pesters about his silence for too long. If his attempt at intimidation does not work then he is always willing to resort to physical violence and let it be known that he really does not want to talk. Words are useless against the stupid people anyway so he uses his strength and Career skils to make them be quiet by making it really hurt when they try to speak.

Bull was born in District Four. His parents, both fishers, were proud of their one and only son and wanted him to be successful so that meant putting him through Career training. Every day after school he would go to the training center and restlessly practice, slowly but surely picking up on the usage of each weapon they had in their arsenal. He grew particularly fond of the trident and its versatile use, and also because he was proud of his District and how the trident, to him, was a symbol of Four.

He tried his best under the pressure of training and afterward he would go home to help his parents on the boats. Bull loved being out on the water and fishing, watching the seagulls circle around overhead and watching for a fish to slip through the net that they can catch. Sometimes he’d take a fish and toss it up and over the water so that a seagull could swoop down and catch it in its beak. When he wasn’t throwing fish he would help his father by hauling loads, lifting the anchor (granted it was a fairly small anchor), coiling ropes, fixing the boat, and when they returned home he would often help his neighbors on their fishing trips.

When the boy was ten years old his mother fell ill with an unexplainable sickness. Unfortunately it proved to be incurable and both Bull and his father were devastated. Bull then started to take care of his mother, helping her along and cooking her favorite foods especially after the local medicine man said she didn’t have very long to live. The young boy trusted his mother with everything and soon the day came that he decided to tell her that he was gay; he had already come to terms with his sexuality and he had proven himself a credible Career and kept his grades up in school so he held no reserves about telling his mother this little tidbit of information. He waited until his father came into his mother’s bedroom before he gently eased into the news, only to be greeted with utter disbelief displayed across both his parents’ faces. It was his father who spoke first, asking Bull to repeat what he had said, before they both began assaulting their son with hurtful comments. “Where did we go wrong?” “Oh, what have we done?” “Do you know it’s wrong and unnatural to feel like that toward another boy?” Teary-eyed, all Bull could manage to say was a whimpering “I’m sorry” before fleeing from the room, regretting having ever said it. Through the walls of the house he could hear the shrill pitches of his mother wailing and each one was like a dagger to the heart for him.

His mother’s condition declined quickly and she soon died, never having forgiven Bull for his sexual orientation. He was only fourteen at the time and already he felt his father beginning to disown him: he did not allow Bull to stand near him during the mother’s funeral even though he was sobbing bitterly; his father sent him out on his own for fishing trips instead of their traditional going-out-together; his father even refused to look at him or acknowledge him. Bull tried his best to somehow make his father proud by trying even harder at Career training but he found that his confidence had deteriorated; he refused to let his grades drop in school but he became a recluse, closing himself off from his friends and only staying at school for as long as he had to before disappearing.

It didn’t take long for his lips to be nearly permanently sealed. He very rarely spoke to anyone anymore aside from answering his teachers (giving no more of an answer than was absolutely necessary) and only nodded to his training instructors instead of asking questions like he used to do. Approval from his father never came, much to Bull’s dismay; his father still refused to even look at him and Bull’s shame continued to mount until he just couldn’t take it anymore.

It took a while to piece together the right words but Bull wrote an apology letter to his father, setting it on the little kitchen table and putting a little stone on the edge of the paper to keep it in place. He then slipped out under the cover of the early hours of the morning, taking with him only the clothes on his back and a little sack of food he swiped from the pantry. It wasn’t very much but his Career training allowed him to figure out what plants were edible along the way and he survived, living in the quiet of the wilderness and wandering without any sort of destination. He eventually came across a fence and curiosity got the better of him and he climbed over, coming to find that he was in District Six. Weary from travel and deciding to stick around he now stays in Six for some amount of time before slipping away to retreat into the woods, only to return a few weeks or month or two later.