Post by sonny on Nov 25, 2011 3:16:20 GMT -5
Sonny Marie Stafford
name, Sonny Marie Stafford, Sonny
gender, Female
shifter, Yes, Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever
age, Twenty-three
birthday, March 8th
occupation, Humane Society worker
orientation, Heterosexual
height, Five feet, four inches
weight, 120
hair, Wavy red hair just past shoulder length.
eyes, Warm dark brown.
face claim, Kate Mara
generally, Slim, modest, prettyCompared to other people, Sonny considers herself quite average. She's five feet tall with an extra four inches tacked on like an apology but hey, what can you do? Genetics aren't always fair. She's relatively pale mostly because she burns with ease. Being perfectly tanned for Sonny is a wistful dream. She's one of the few people born a carrot top that actually maintained their red hair throughout their life and it's one of the few things Sonny actually loves about herself. She doesn't consider herself self-centered but she does love her hair. It behaves just right, is naturally wavy and takes to curling when it's humid but unlike some peoples' it curls in an attractive way. When she curls it by hand, it turns out perfect and even when she straightens it, it turns out fine even though she seldom does straighten her hair. Sonny's got warm brown eyes that are openly expressive in many ways like her shifter forms' and it sometimes gets the better of her because she's horrible at acting okay when she's depressed. On her stomach, spiderwebbing over most of her abdomen is a massive web of scars. They're burn scars from when her brother set their house on fire.
when shifted, Soft, trustworthy, attractiveWhen she shifts, Sonny maintains her red hair. It turns soft and medium length. It's the kind of fur that makes little kids want to just bury their faces in it and more often than not, being the friendly Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever that she is, Sonny lets them. She loves it, having little kids play with her as a dog because she makes them so happy. She's not obnoxiously big as a dog, an is actually on the small side of the breed average despite being an average human. Her eyes are expressive and warm, the kind that say "trust me, I'm a huggable dog." More often than not her eyes have gotten her out of sticky situations as a dog with dog catchers. The scars on her belly are hidden by her soft red fur since as a dog she seldom shows her belly so that no one sees them through the fur.
likes, Warm days, gentle breezes, dogs, cats, horses, helping others, feeling loved, being hugged from behind, guys that are taller than her but not giants, blue eyes, being warm, reading a good book, keeping her hands busy, Italian food, good red wine, tiger lilies, the beach, mountain climbing, rock climbing, handling animals
dislikes, Chinese food, rodents, most reptiles, spiders, her scars, showing too much skin, two piece swimsuits, guys that are extremely tall, too many piercings or tattoos, most types of hard liquor, beer, being cold with no one to snuggle, public pools, cheesy romance books
strengths, Her patience with others, her kindness and her 'knack' for handling animals.
weaknesses, Majorly self conscious about her scars, crowded places tend to make her nervous and she's not that great at math.
habits, Twists her hair when she's nervous, hums when she's lonely or thinking, smells her food before eating (subtly of course) and talks to herself a lot
secrets, Her brother set their house on fire while she was drugged with sedatives and then shot himself when he found out she was a shifter. The scars from it on her stomach, she hides them as much as humanly possible.
traits, friendly, patient, giving, funSonny is a girl that as soon as you look at her, you know you've made a friend. She loves to meet new people and is all about having fun. She's great for cheering up others which makes a lot of girls love having her as a friend. Sonny is an open lover that will take anyone under her wing. Foster dogs and cats, stray people, Sonny takes them all in with a smile and a gentle hand. She's had it tough in the past but Sonny faces the world with a smile because she's cried enough. Life is hard but she's learned in the past few years that she's not the only one struggling or that has struggled so why be angsty about it all the time? She tries to teach others this, more often than not through animals and sometimes it works like a charm while other times they just think she's insane. Sonny has patience that astound those around her.
You can hurt her time and time again, scream and yell and pitch a fit but Sonny will just cross her arms and lean against the wall waiting for you to get it out of your system. In this way, she has a quiet sort of strength, facing her tragedies and those other people have on a daily basis without batting an eye. At least, that's the way it looks. Sonny really takes a lot of things to heart and can be hurt by nothing more than a well placed word but she has to remind herself that people say a lot of things in anger that they don't mean. Sonny forgives in a heartbeat, chosing to live in the now rather than live in what happened which is actually one of her more canine qualities. Dogs don't remember what happened a long time ago and they don't worry about the future, they live for now. If you're sorry now then that's fine, you're forgiven. If you're sad now, she'll try to make it better with a homecooked meal or a game of fetch, whichever works better.
mother, Anna Lynn Hoster-Stafford, deceased
father, Thomas Stafford, deceased
siblings, Jacob Thomas Stafford, living, 30
lovers, Slate (future)
others, Samantha Emily Watson, living, 74
pets, Cajun, Beta fish, a few months
story, sadSonny was born the daughter of Anna and Thomas Stafford, their second child. Their first child was a son named Jacob whom was eight when Sonny was born. Her early life was extremely normal. Her parents lived in Rhode Island and she grew up close to her brother, always following him around and trying to do what he was interested in. Her mother was a nurse that worked nights at a local hospital and her father was a teacher at a private school so Sonny and Jacob grew up sheltered and were offered the best education on the east coast. Early on Sonny discovered a profound love of dogs and at age six was given her first puppy for Christmas, a sweet golden retriever named Daisy. Everything should have been perfect for Sonny, until she turned eleven.
Anna and Thomas were invited to a Christmas party hosted by the hospital for staff and their spouses. Sonny was eleven and Jacob nineteen when their parents went to that party. They stayed home and watched scary movies until three in the morning when a police officer woke them up knocking on the door. Their parents had skidded out on black ice and hit an oncoming car head on. There were no survivors. Since he was over eighteen, Jacob fought the necessary court battles to keep his sister out of foster care and soon became her legal guardian. He was going to school at a police academy two towns over. The funerals, the move, the court battles, it was all extremely stressful for Sonny and she became withdrawn. She broke down crying at random during school and ran away from home a lot.
One night when Jacob came home from a late class, he checked on Sonny in her room, only Sonny wasn't there. What was there was a red retriever curled up on Sonny's bed whimpering. He snuck away and for a while, Sonny was sure she'd managed to hide her shifting from her brother. She had been scared when the shifting began just after moving in with him but being a dog made her feel better. She'd run away and play with the neighborhood kids that simply knew her as a friendly stray. Seeing them laugh and giggle made her happy and the simpler emotions and impressions of a dog took some of the sting away from her grief. When jacob found out though, he was better at hiding his knowledge.
During late spring, Sonny came down with a sinus infection and was put to bed by her brother with a good dose of every cold medicine they had. She thought he was just being overprotective and she let him do it. She fell asleep and Jacob, under the pretenses of going to class for the night, lit a pan of old bacon grease on the stove and left. The grease fire spred like wildfire through the house. Sonny didn't wake up. Jacob hadn't just given her cold medicine, he'd given her sedatives he'd stolen from a pharmacy down the street. Everyone in town had assumed it was just some desperate druggie. Those sedatives kept Sonny asleep until a beam fell through the ceiling onto her. It burned her stomach and debris rained down.
Sonny was barely able to drag herself out through her bedroom window, burned and hurting, Sonny didn't know what to do. Her brain was still addled from the sedatives but she turned into a dog, sprawled on the lawn, before she passed out. Firefighters that came to the house never found Sonny Stafford, they only found a dog the neighborhood kids had named Sweetie. No one had known it belonged to the Staffords but the dog was taken to the vet for burns on its belly and smoke inhalation. When authorities tried to call Jacob Stafford, he answered and quite calmly accepted the information that his home was burning down and his sister was MIA. While still on the phone with police, he shot himself. When police made it to the academy where Jacob had been going to school, he was dead with the phone in his hand.
When Sonny came around she was still a dog and being cared for by a vet whose daughter Sonny had played with many times as a dog. She heard the vet talking to a tech about the Stafford fire/shooting. Apparently it was common opinion that Jacob had shot his sister and hidden her body somewhere and set the house on fire in a fit of madness. Sonny didn't stop howling for days in her cage. Her brother had tried to kill her. He had known. It was months before the vet deamed her ready to be put in foster care. She stayed with the family for about a week before running away. She was barely eighteen and on her own. She was a shifter and she was scared.
It was a little old lady named Samatha Watson that caught Sonny when she spied Sonny trying to sneak through her yard as a dog. The old woman was in her seventies and lived alone but she too was a shifter. She didn't shift anymore, her joints simply too stiff to find comfort in her cat form, but the woman was smart. She offered the dog Sonny food and then coaxed her into shifting back into a human. With a sad smile and a consoling pat on the arm, Samantha took Sonny in and helped her get back on her feet. She got Sonny into the school for shifters and gave Sonny a place to live while she looked for work after school, finally going into work with the Humane Society collecting animals from abusive families and rounding up wild animals that got too close to civilization. Sonny thinks of Samantha as a grandmother and is extremely grateful for the older shifter's help.
name, Sonny
experience, years
other characters, NA
read the rules, yes, checked by the staffers Echo!
example post, canine fantasy with character CoraIF Cora had been born a human, she would have been sweating bullets.
NOT because it was hot or because she was particularly scared or nervous. Oh no. She was concentrating. Concentrating hard enough that she was sure her brain would burst from the pressure. Her honey eyes were locked on the horizon, a distant line between the dark blue sea and the light gray spring sky that promised rain. Since she wasn't human and therefore couldn't sweat, Cora settled for having her jaw clenched so hard it hurt and her eyes so intensely focused that they ached. Another wave broke over her making her rise and fall, another bullet dodged so to speak. Standing on the surface of the rolling ocean, Cora knew that a single moment's loss of concentration would send her straight down to the bottom of the sea. Considering she was fairly far out from the shore, it would be a bit of a ways down. Don't be alarmed though, Cora could breathe underwater far better than she could walk on it.
NORMALLY this spirited red border collie would be all about tumbling about on the bottom of the bay, exploring the reef, chasing colorful fish and scoping out the sea caves just beyond the bay. Today though, she'd thought she'd work on her water walking. So far she'd made it past the reef but the tide was beginning to flow back into the bay and it was determined to take Cora with it, above water or below it. Cora was determined not to give in though. She wanted to be better at water walking so she could actually confidently tell others that she could do something other than breathe underwater like any common fish.
WHEN she'd begun walking, the sky had been light blue and beautiful. The sky had been a playful one, one that had almost made Cora turn away from her thoughts of practice and instead turn to chasing seagulls or dabbling in the shallower tides just for the sake of getting all wet. Too bad she was too stubborn. Now clouds had rolled in and the water was getting rougher the farther out she walked. Each step was getting harder. A few yards back at the reef line she'd nearly toppled and given in to being pushed back to shore by the waves, but Cora was nothing if not stubborn. She wanted to go as far as physically possible before giving in even though her eyes and head hurt and not just from concentrating so hard for hours on end. Foam and salt stung her eyes and burned her nose and her ears felt numb from the constant crash of waves that steadily grew stronger and harder to walk through or over.
A seagull's cry overhead was, in the end, all it took to make her capsize. Like a rubber band pulled too far, Cora's concentration snapped. Her feet sank through the water and a well placed wave sent her tumbling nose over tail backwards into the salty brine. Her lungs heaved, her body switching from air breathing to water breathing with almost no hesitation but it didn't help her disorientation. Her world had gone from sky and sea to bubbles, churning foam and pushy currents. There was almost no way to tell up from down.
TRYING to stop her tumble through the surf, Cora tried to bend the currents to push her skyward only to find she was too tired. The exhaustion really hit her then, her head throbbing in time with her thudding heartbeat. Overall when she reached for her powers they reached with a sharp ache, like a muscle used too much that needed rest to recover. Cora groaned and closed her eyes to try and fight off the dizziness of being tossed like a ball through the waves. Somewhere in the mess, a rock rose up and cracked against Cora's head as she was shoved past it by the water. She couldn't smell the blood but she felt the sharp blinding pain of sea salt in the wound. Keeping her eyes firmly shut, Cora figured she must be back in the reef as rough corals snagged at her fur and her claws broke bits of it when she kicked out. She stopped trying to fight her way to the surface, knowing all too well that if she got into a rhythm of having her head continually pushed up to air and sucked back down to water too fast she could actually suffocate, or drown depending on how you looked at it, since her body had to adjust. If she didn't give it a chance to, she in essence couldn't breathe.
SO, Cora tumbled through the reef, more or less aware of all the currents playing tug of war with her until another something reared its head. That pain was sharp and lightning quick but oblivion followed in a heartbeat.
~~~
CORA groaned. Rough wet sand scraped against her muzzle and overall she felt sticky and sandy. Her head throbbed as if someone was trying to split it open and she felt her legs only distantly. Everything hurt and she felt impossibly tired but she was aware enough to know she was breathing air. She'd been...pushed? Dragged? Back to shore. Honey eyes cracked open. Had the ocean spit her out or...With a groan Cora closed her eyes again and stayed limp. She could smell rain over the salt, feel the tide tugging at her hind legs and feel rain pelting her.
SOMEWHERE, Cora swore she heard someone bark but maybe it was just the ocean riling with the coming storm. Who really knew when your head felt like someone had taken an ax to it?
