Character Bio:
Karia didn’t develop at the rate most humans did, and for years her mother and brother thought she had a congenital birth defect, though it hasn’t been determined by any of the many doctors she’s seen in her 30 years of life. She looks underdeveloped, and embodies the oriental ideal of androgyny – though she is very beautiful. Many find her attractive, especially youths, but she does not understand any of the romantic overtures made toward her – as well as her physical development, her mental, emotional, and social development is behind. She’s extremely intuitive, and has been diagnosed with Savant syndrome, as well as a litany of other psychological disorders to explain her current state of being.
Any that know her feel like she’s been trapped in a child’s mind for her whole life, and if whatever barrier is keeping her back were removed she’d continue to progress properly.
On the eve of her 30th birthday, she locked herself in her room. She’d been feeling strange all day – hearing an old man’s voice in the back of her mind, and extreme cramps coming at random times, coupled with waves of fever and migraines. She couldn’t stop thinking it had something to do with the strange oriental staff hidden in her mother’s closet. As the shadows in the room started to grow, her skin became scaly – true scales, not simply dry and cracked. The cramps doubled her over and she sobbed in a fetal position for hours. As the sun sank behind the Frost Tower, her skin had started to produce large sections of brittle scale with protrusions pushing outward. As the orange border of the Skyline disappeared, the protrusions had doubled back on themselves, connecting to each other, and encasing her cramped form in an egg-shaped container made of chitinous scales.
The night was full of strange dreams, flashes of places she’d never been, snatches of conversations about odd things in voices she’d never heard before. The worst part to her was when she heard her own voice reciting textbook passages to herself, from books she’d never read, and subject matter that seemed more Tolkien than Hawking.
As her experiences grew, so did her awareness. It was as if someone were slowly drawing a diaphanous curtain back from her eyes, and she could finally see. She’d been childish before, and she was still childish, but she was having a crystalizing moment – the kind we all have when we start to see the world through mature eyes, and the lenses of make-believe are removed. She started to truly grow for the first time in her 30 years of life.
In her room all was silent, but inside of her it was cacophonous beauty, like an orchestra tuning before the symphony began.
The sun rose enough to start lighting the room past the bluish street lamp’s hues, and a muffled shuffling noise started to grow from the egg. The lamps outside the window shut off, and as if it were the cue, a tapping and cracking started to come from the egg.
Lulu Odon opened the bedroom door holding a Sleeping Beauty breakfast-in-bed tray with a short stack of pancakes smothered in whipped cream and raspberries, a plastic cup of juice, a lily in a pink plastic vase, and a small wrapped box with a white ribbon bow. The tray clattered to the floor as she ran to the egg, confused and terrified. Lulu called for her baby girl, searching the room for a sign of her. The room looked like it always did: Lock on the window, a Descendents 2 backpack on the bedpost, and a normal disarray of clothes and toys. Nothing made her think her daughter was anywhere but here, and there was somehow a Dragon’s Egg in her daughter’s bed.
You may wonder why Lulu Odon, a successful mortal human journalist, knows what a Dragon’s Egg is, but that is beside the point. She does. Most importantly, she knows how to be a midwife for a dragon’s birth. Worry, exertion, tears, and laughs ensued as an enormous serpentine lizard slowly exited its incubated prison. It wrapped its 2’ long tail around Lulu’s torso, with the rest of its bulk resting in her lap. With a grunting, sobbing laugh, Lulu told her daughter, Karia, to ‘please lay on the bed instead of crushing her legs.’ The being made her wobbling way into the center of the fluids-soaked Elsa Bedding Set, and the cheap aluminum bed frame creaked and jostled with the movement.
Lulu ran to her bedroom, cupped a pendant with a strange design in her hands and whispered, “Karia’s a dragon, Darling.” She ran back to the birthing suite, and sat on the bed’s corner with a squelch.
Karia opened her eyes, and the slits surrounded by golden irises focused on Lulu’s tear drenched face. Her elongated mouth opened, and an incongruently clear, melodic voice issued through her sharpened teeth. She asked many questions. Lulu only had a few answers, but they were enough for now. Karia felt a strange tingling in her clawed feet, and focused on it. Suddenly, as if a wave washed over her from her toes to her head, a human girl lay where the serpentine Karia used to be. The human Karia lay there wearing an outfit she didn’t own, but had always thought she’d wear it when she became a grown-up: Navy overcoat; black skinny jeans; charcoal touc; denim button-up; white tee; black pleather boots; and black nail polish.
Karia was different.
Karia was learning, and growing.
Karia wanted to help.
Foremost, she wanted to be with Nicky, and see the things he wrote to her about.
Family Makeup
Mother: Lulu Odon – Political Activist, fled to Japan from China, then to Texas. She earns money as an editor and journalist for online publications
Father: Unknown (It may be a gift from him – freely given or coerced – that allowed the Odons to live in relative comfort.)
Older Twin:Nicholas Odon –Super Name: Zeau
Younger Twin: Karia Odon – Super Name: Quazi
Real Name: Karia Odon