Kiyei Zhayuk

[Kiyei Zhayuk]

KIYEI ZHAYUK

name: Kiyei Zhayuk.
gender: Female.
age: Nineteen.
element: Water.
animal companion: Kiyei is accompanied by a male Polar Leopard named Xiao, meaning small. This was the name given to him by Kiyei as a cub, but the name doesn’t hold true now. As a fully grown Polar Leopard, a polar bear-snow leopard cross, Xiao is a huge mammal weighing half a ton and is about two thirds the size of an adult Polar Bear Dog.

::looking pretty good[/font]

hair color: Blue-black.
eye color: Silver-blue.
skin color: Pale ivory.
overall appearance:
Kiyei looks nothing like traditional Water Tribesmen, and also looks nothing like her father. Instead, her looks are due to the other half of the gene pool. Kiyei looks strikingly like her mother, a fair-skinned, grey-eyed Kiyoshi Islander, who in turn had roots in the Foggy Swamp Tribe and after learning waterbending in the South Pole, travelled northwards to learn more about healing.

It could be said then, that Kiyei is the resulting a-ethnic mush that occurs when a wide variety of genetics from all over the planet are crammed into one person. Indeed, the most striking feature of Kiyei is her face, boldly built. Her features are too strong to be considered merely pretty and almost too harsh to be beautiful. However, she can be considered handsome. Most characteristic are dramatically upwards-sloping almond-shaped eyes - like cat’s eyes - high cheekbones, and full lips. Her eyes, unlike the bright blue of her father and Water Tribe kin, are instead a pale, understated silvery periwinkle that appear aloof and lonesome, and are framed by long lashes. Kiyei’s pride, however, is her glossy blue-black hair which she religiously maintains and conditions. The mane of hair falls down her back to her waist, and is often manipulated into a variety of styles, sometimes very complex, to keep it back from her face. Kiyei owns a large collection of rare and handmade hair sticks and ornamental pins which she has collected from all over the world, and she displays these treasures in her hair like jewels.

A lifetime of learning waterbending moves and styles have made Kiyei’s body lean and slim but not stick-like. She’s ectomorphically built, willowy and lithe like a gymnast, with a small chest, narrow waist, and broad hips. Kiyei naturally builds dense muscle, the end result being a deceptively slender woman who can pack a surprising punch.

Kiyei dresses in a practical yet fashionable way. She favours pants and flat-soles boots with beautiful shirts and jackets made of expensive fabrics. She wants to look good, but won’t compromise her ability to fight or waterbend.

Kiyei in Water Tribe garb. Click to view larger.


Kiyei in Republic City clothes. Click to view larger.

::what I'm thinking[/font]

likes:

• Flaunting the skills that make her better than others.
  
• Beating anyone in competition.
  
• Chances to be sarcastic.
  
• Chances to poke fun at people.
  
• Picking out other people's flaws, weaknesses and mistakes.
  
• Winning arguments.
  
• Using her powers of persuasion.
  
• Vehicles.
  
• Lavish meals.
  
• Alcohol.
  
• Beautifully tailored clothing, and being well-dressed.
  
• Her hair.

dislikes:

• Losing.
  
• Being contradicted or argued with.
  
• People with over-inflated egos.
  
• Being underestimated, but at least then she gets a chance to kick their doubting butt.
  
• Garishly bright colours.
  
• Ruining a perfectly good item of clothing.
  
• Needless destruction and carnage.
  
• People who she deems a threat to her.
  
• Being protected, supervised or mollycoddled. She's perfectly capable of taking care of herself.

sexuality: Heterosexual.
overall personality:
All at once, Kiyei can be described as fierce and flinty, as well as sarcastic, laconic, facetious, and sharp witted. She tends not to put on large displays of emotion, preferring to express gratitude, congratulations, and appreciation through other means. Although the concept of Kiyei and emotion don't tend to go hand in hand, this doesn't mean that she wouldn't spare you the ice chipped off her heart even if she could find it, rather that she has little time for sentimentality and soppiness. In combat, this makes her incredibly slow to anger, and she ignores enemy attempts to get her riled, but when she does finally anger it isn’t with fire and rage, but with a chill fury that sweeps through her silently and makes her brutal and deadly.

In social situations Kiyei withdraws from meaningful conversation. She may talk, but she won't actually say anything of herself. This is because she knows that should someone come to know her intimately, it would only be a matter of time before they used her sympathetic links to get to her. She speaks in a political manner, choosing her words strategically, with thinly-veiled wisdom and cynicism behind her voice. In a professional environment she’s courteous and urbane, especially to those who she deems an advantageous ally, and she adheres to laws yet questions all of them and disregards those she finds trivial or can get away with breaking.

Kiyei is a taciturn woman, but most mistake her for being introverted. She prefers not to talk, but to have her actions speak for her. She doesn’t say anything more than she has to, and never trash talks anyone. She favours asking questions over answering them, because she withholds all information and holds her cards close to her chest until she needs to strategically play with the knowledge to her advantage. In essence, she likes to have everyone else pegged but hates to be figured out herself.

Kiyei is intelligent, tactical, and strategic. She can play people against each other in politics and battle, always analysing her options, and in combat figuring out a backup plan and escape route should things go sour. Retreat to fight another day. Kiyei takes calculated risks, and rarely fights for anything but herself.
Similarly, Kiyei is resourceful with her surroundings. Though she keeps a traditional water pouch at her hip at all times, Kiyei has also learned to draw moisture from her environment and in dire situations has waterbended using her own bodily fluids before.

Lastly, Kiyei has an insatiable hunger for knowledge. She wants to learn everything there is to know about waterbending, and is currently looking for someone who can teach her the illegal practice of bloodbending. She does not shy away from the forbidden art, because Kiyei’s morality is shockingly grey. Most people are good, who strive for good things. Kiyei, however, strongly believes that negative actions can have positive consequences, that war can be used to eradicate a greater evil, and that killing is sometimes right and just, as long as it is done humanely. Lies can spare conflict and protect people, and that bloodbending could potentially be used to stop profuse bleeding and restrain those who wish to do others harm. Kiyei argues that actions are not evil. Only motivation is evil.

::a past to remember[/font]

Kiyei’s father was a Northern Water Tribe waterbender, and her mother was a Kiyoshi Islander whose waterbending originated from the nearby Foggy Swamp Tribe. Her mother, Sezé, had learned the basics of plantbending from her own father, before going to the Southern Water Tribe to seek a waterbending teacher. However, Sezé wanted to learn more about waterbending, so she travelled to the Northern Water Tribe to learn more about healing. There she met Nanuk, got married, and had Kiyei several years later.

Thus Kiyei Zhayuk was born to the Northern Water Tribe, a waterbender to two waterbender parents. Since Master Katara had challenged the teaching traditions of the tribe, they had relaxed somewhat, but few girls were allowed to learn waterbending and a teacher taking on a female student was uncommon.

Kiyei was taught waterbending by her parents, though her mother did not teach Kiyei of plantbending until she was much older due to the lack of vegetation in the North Pole. They lived in the capital city in a glistening house made of ice, with a pet Polar Leopard cub Kiyei named Xiao.

From an early age, Kiyei was studious. She was told of the concept of jings by an elderly neighbour, and Kiyei began to embrace a concept of waterbending that few ever used. Firebending used positive jing. Airbending; negative jing. Eathbending; neutral jing. Waterbending; positive and negative jing. Tui and La. Push and pull. But water could also be still, water can wait, water can be patient. Kiyei began to experiment with utilising neutral jing in her waterbending. Water doesn’t always have to be on the move. Sometimes it stops and waits and listens.

Kiyei grew up receiving waterbending lessons from her parents and attending healing lessons from the female waterbenders in the healing huts. She was precocious, and by the time she was ten, Kiyei showed potential to be a great waterbender. However, as she neared her sixteenth birthday, Kiyei wanted to leave the North Pole, fearing that turning sixteen would mean that she could be open to engagement. After weeks of having nightmares about betrothal necklaces, she spoke to her mother, and Sezé agreed to accompany her as she left the North Pole.

Taking the Polar Leopard with them, they went south through the Earth Kingdom. As they travelled, Kiyei learned waterbending from her mother, and in areas of abundant greenery, Sezé taught Kiyei what she knew of plantbending, Kiyei’s heritage through her maternal grandfather. Sezé knew the Northern, Southern, and Foggy Swamp styles from her various travels, and was almost impossible to beat in a spar.

Kiyei read a lot and studied a lot, wanting to know more about waterbending and the human body as possible. She had been taught healing in the north, and Kiyei wanted to go to a proper school to learn about medicine. She read up on the old styles of medicine, using remedial herbs and acupuncture, as well as reading as much as she could about modern surgery. She read about bending styles, and came across a mention of bloodbending in one book. However, she daren’t ask her mother about it for fear of being scorned.

After a couple of months, they arrived at Kiyoshi Island and Kiyei met her mother’s family. There she finished her training, and when there was nothing more Kiyei could learn from her mother, she continued to the South Pole, hoping to find a waterbending master who would accept her. She found a master who couldn’t have cared less about her being female, learned all she could about waterbending, and left the Southern Water Tribe. When she returned to Kiyoshi Island at the age of eighteen, Kiyei found that her mother had gone back to the north. Thus Kiyei and the Polar Leopard were left to travel through the Earth Kingdom alone, and Kiyei earned her keep by offering her healing services for payment at small towns and villages. She made her way towards Republic City, where she hoped she would be able to join a medical school and find someone who could teach her the illegal art of bloodbending.

[Aria]