Nalin ibu Avani

[Nalin ibu Avani]

''Name:'' Nalin ibu Avani
''Age:'' 18
''Family:'' Danava
''Occupation:'' Garbage Boy / Aspiring ‘Dancer’
''Likes:'' dance music, attention, clubbing, new underwear, meat samosas, mythos animals, whales, and (surprisingly) books (mostly about whales).
''Dislikes:'' his avasha, his boss, Sihabahu patrollers, too-tight clothes, his own bottom, and the color pink.

***Backstory

Nalin was born into the roar and stale air of a 12th floor Zinzana apartment. Avani iba Makara was thrilled at the prospect of her first child. She’d been newly married to a young field worker (and rumored Zinzana beauty – if rumor is believed, our boy’s father had the finest alya in half the Ghetto), named Radhi, whom she loved magnificently. They were together for only four months before she blew up with child. The boy was dusky and beautiful, with a shock of his avuri’s auburn curls. When he was old enough to understand, she would grant him the haqui Nalin, meaning lotus blossom, and regret it for the rest of her days.

Nali’s youth steamed by without incident, populated by crunchy vegetable pakoras, long hours in the glow of the primary school computers, and the birth of a little sister named Padma. It wasn’t until his first stirrings of adolescence that things went sour.

At thirteen, his father was taken in The Culling. Or, well – that’s what the family presumed happened. Avani had sent Radhi out to get bread one evening, and he never returned. The next morning, Avani learned that the Sihabahu had gutted Katra Market the previous night. The absence of his affectionate avuri rocked the little family to their barely-there foundations. Avani started hitting the amrita hard, because in the way of all good wives, she believed her husband’s death was unquestionably and irrevocably her fault.

At fifteen, Nalin hit the biochemical jackpot. Where before he had been a plump piglet of a boy, cute in a typical sort of way, by Zokatara’s end our boy had blown up into a true khabi ala Crow. A plush-bodied stunner of a boy. Big eyes, soft lips, and an alya so sweet it made old ladies reevaluate their entire romantic lives.

“Khidamuna!” his mother cried. “Why must you be given such a burden in a hovel like this?”

For most boys and girls so young, becoming Object of Desire no. 1 for your neighborhood would have been frightening, even depressing as hell. And Nalin did feel that way, at first. The force of catcalls and leers was nearly enough to knock him over whenever he ventured outside, so he sulked inside the apartment. It took him nearly a year to come to this startling understanding: all those men and women liked him. Liked him a whole lot. And then Ai ya!, our boy had found his calling.

For once in his life, Nalin was popular. He started wearing the petite neighbor boy’s clothes, so tight he burst the seams. Slashed all his linen shirts off at the ribs, tied all his sarongs gaspingly high, and started painting his eyes. Frolicking to every bar, dance club, and strip joint in sight, there was no shortage leery-eyed young things stumbling out of the apartment door in the morning.

Nalin had become what every Danava parent feared the most: a kusu.

The neighbors were horrified at this development and told his mother she would have to beat this nonsense out of the boy (“You may even have to kill him,” they added somberly.) But no matter how many times Avani whipped out the belt, all she could see were his huge honey eyes, too much like Radhi's, and Nalin would elude a beating time after time.

These days, Nalin is working a government job as a garbage boy, hauling trash from the Ralasi districts down to the furnaces. By night, however, he’s a waiter at the Milk & Water strip club – ‘waiter’ in the loosest sense; all he does is toddle around giving patrons drinks while wearing an outfit so kusu it could rip the words right out of a girl’s mouth.

***Personality
Outwardly, Nalin seems like a sweet boy. A confident little thing, always smiling or laughing at some stupid joke. It’s a bright smile, it’s a melodious laugh. Always trying to be helpful and respectful to his elders (with the exception of his avasha), his reputation as a ‘nice boy’ can (almost) tenuously stand up to his titanic reputation as ‘that little skank’. Nalin is quick with flirtation, can’t help it, he needs the attention the way other boys need water.

He isn't stunningly smart, either. Some have even gone as far to say he's dumb as a box of rocks. But he's still young, still malleable, and his mother hopes he can still be changed into an upstanding boy. He has only the slightest sense of self -- anything an older friend does, he's all too quick to imitate it. Be it a new style of clothes, the latest video game, a shade a makeup -- if it's popular, Nalin will spill any amount of his meager paycheck on it with the hope of being popular, too. He's that boy all those glossy magazine ads are tailor-made for.

He isn’t a deep soul. No thought of cultural degradation or civil rights philosophy ever touches his brain. Over-whelmingly vapid might be the word for him. Nalin is too busy buying new underwear or trying the latest eyeliner to waste thought on ugly, confusing things. Really, the most dangerous thoughts he’s ever had are fantasies about breaking into a Svatantra farm and stealing a zarii piglet to keep as a pet.

***Description
Nalin is a pretty thing. Not quite a pretty boy to most, mind – a thing, an object. Like a chair or a teakettle. Really, he’s all that a boy should look like. A gorgeous thing, his dead father’s gene pumped up on something only a comic artist could design in clear conscience.

A petite 5’5”, plush of hip and thigh, his figure almost pear-shaped. Nali’s skin is dark, cacao dark, a warm shade of russet brown. A mop of thick, auburn-red curls crowns his pretty head, cropped short to his ears for ease of work. But, vain little thing he is, he keeps two tendrils in the front long to frame his face. And it’s an over-whelmingly nice face, by his own approximation. Warm honey-brown eyes fringed with thick lashes, almond shaped with a sly tilt at the corners. A strong nose with a faint bump in the bridge hangs over the boy’s wide, soft mouth.


***Skills

-looking pretty.
-sneaking out of 12th floor apartments.
-cooking very tasty saag paneer.
-flirting free drinks out of people.

***Goals
For the moment, Nalin wants nothing more than to turn 20 years old. Why? So he can be a dancer at Milk & Water, of course. Wiggling around half-naked for money is his highest aspiration. But beyond that, way far away in the distant future, he wants to maybe get married and make babies.

[Cap O' Rushes]

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