![[Verified by Crosspatch]](./images/checkmark.png "[Verified by Crosspatch]")
Mirko
THEMATICALLY RELEVANT SONGS :
I'm-okay-I-still-feel-like-a-person Mirko:
I'm-not-feeling-like-a-person-at-all-my-existence-is-a-fever-dream Mirko:
General summation of his pitiful existence:
I'm-not-feeling-like-a-person-at-all-my-existence-is-a-fever-dream Mirko:
General summation of his pitiful existence:
Race: Ghost—former human, Inarta
Gender: Agender (he primarily uses male pronouns for simplicity's sake, as he was designated male at birth. He in no way identifies as a man, however.)
Age: 23, 20 at time of death
Height: 5'6
Birthday: 66, Spring, 491
Birthplace: Wind Reach
Appearance
To describe the way that Mirko—more commonly referred to as “Mange” during his time among the living—looks is to describe a kind of feral vibrance. In life he was visibly poor, ill, unloved, starving, but still he so looked wholly and violently alive. His new incarnation is no departure from this: What is left of Mirko is visual static moving in a haze of rich colors, piercings, freckles, flailing limbs, baubles, torn fabric, glass, stitches, bruises and homemade tattoos, all so poorly rendered that it strains the human eye to watch him pass. With that being said, objectively speaking, he looks a fucking mess. Analytically speaking, that mess embodies everything he is.
Resentful as he is of his former culture, Mirko's taste remains raucously Inartan. His hair is as wild, thick and jarringly red as it was in the healthiest times of his life, glittering with beads and ragged feathers—living as a drudge, he'd thread discarded trinkets into his braids with colored twine, amassing so many that the broken glass would chime as he moved. Dying only served to give him more color: He chose to intensify the bruising around his eyes and joints, retain the flogging scars on his back, lighten his eyes to a preternaturally icy blue and blacken his fingertips to represent his body disintegrating in the Tomb of the Fallen. Other signifiers of his death are an unnatural sunkenness to his gut and torn flesh around the piercings in his left nostril and ear—although generally crusted with dried blood, they tend to bleed freely when he's upset. Alongside the temperature drop that implies a ghost's presence in a room, he tends to introduce a scent of smoke and warm fabric, as well as a faint sound of glass beads clicking together (and possibly the cooing of a domestic pigeon that follows him around).
Mirko presents as neither male nor female. He is undeniably soft, feminine even: His limbs are delicate, smooth, creamy white beneath a spray of freckles, his hips subtly flared, and in life he touched the most abrasive surfaces the way a child would pet a fawn. He is also dirty the way a wild animal is dirty, with a wolfish smile that glints with chipped teeth and reckless ease, his face cluttered with poorly applied tattoos and rings. He loved to layer himself in colorful fraying fabrics (he was, granted, much shier about showing skin than most Inarta), piling on necklaces and bracelets made from street trash—the stupid kid even went so far as to embed small red beads in his canine teeth. Although much of the detail is lost due to his poor materialization skills, his apparition still reflects all this.
Tattoos and piercings :
-A little stylized bone, just about an inch long, on the top of his left thigh. This was his first attempt to tattoo himself, and it, ah...it looks...kind of okay.
-A tiny cross on his forehead based off of a carving on his heirloom, otherwise meaningless as far as he's aware.
-An “X” across the bridge of his nose, same as above.
-A pair of unrelated “X”s on his eyelids, symbolic of sleeplessness or dehumanization or subjugation or...something long-winded like that.
-A black crescent beneath his right eye, meant to allude to the look of a black eye or sleep deprivation. Essentially a mark of drudge pride and resistance.
-One red dot at either side of his temple—a response to many claims that Mirko was stupid and talentless, the dots represent holes from which, he explains, “my brain seeped out”.
-An emaciated eagle with an amputated wing on his upper arm, with a black crescent hanging in the background. Beneath is a Nari phrase that translates to “Trust No Rider”. This is a political comment: Like any of his people, Mirko feels connected to the Eagles and Wind Reach, but he finds the caste system to be immensely flawed and harmful to their people. ...He also really, really blindly hates Endal.
-Black dots across the knuckles of his hands, simply because he thinks they look pretty.
-Five thin bands down the length of his forearms, also replicated on his calves. The top four are black, and the bottom red, indicative of the five years he survived as a drudge—the red bands he tattooed on himself when he knew he was dying. The bottom two bands are also threaded with a small dot, representing years spent with his old mental illness.
-A pair of crows sewn together chest-to-chest in the middle of his sternum. This was actually a horribly done piece while he was alive, but when he became a ghost he touched it up (i.e. ensured it no longer looked like a featureless blob) and added small “X”s in the birds' eyes.
-Four black dots down the front of his throat. Just 'cause.
-A large black spiral on his right shoulder, and a red spiral on the other. He tends to give varying explanations for the meanings of these (i.e. he forgot what he originally got them for).
-A very tiny, upside-down rat on the inside of his right hip. A speech bubble attached to it contains the Nari word for "SCUM"...also upside-down. He was high when that happened. Verrry high.
-Both of his nostrils are pierced and adorned with rings.
-His earlobes are pierced four times each, filled with various sizes of hoop earrings. He's tied a piece of brown binding thread, strung with an incredibly old pearl, between one of these earrings and his left nostril ring.
-A tiny cross on his forehead based off of a carving on his heirloom, otherwise meaningless as far as he's aware.
-An “X” across the bridge of his nose, same as above.
-A pair of unrelated “X”s on his eyelids, symbolic of sleeplessness or dehumanization or subjugation or...something long-winded like that.
-A black crescent beneath his right eye, meant to allude to the look of a black eye or sleep deprivation. Essentially a mark of drudge pride and resistance.
-One red dot at either side of his temple—a response to many claims that Mirko was stupid and talentless, the dots represent holes from which, he explains, “my brain seeped out”.
-An emaciated eagle with an amputated wing on his upper arm, with a black crescent hanging in the background. Beneath is a Nari phrase that translates to “Trust No Rider”. This is a political comment: Like any of his people, Mirko feels connected to the Eagles and Wind Reach, but he finds the caste system to be immensely flawed and harmful to their people. ...He also really, really blindly hates Endal.
-Black dots across the knuckles of his hands, simply because he thinks they look pretty.
-Five thin bands down the length of his forearms, also replicated on his calves. The top four are black, and the bottom red, indicative of the five years he survived as a drudge—the red bands he tattooed on himself when he knew he was dying. The bottom two bands are also threaded with a small dot, representing years spent with his old mental illness.
-A pair of crows sewn together chest-to-chest in the middle of his sternum. This was actually a horribly done piece while he was alive, but when he became a ghost he touched it up (i.e. ensured it no longer looked like a featureless blob) and added small “X”s in the birds' eyes.
-Four black dots down the front of his throat. Just 'cause.
-A large black spiral on his right shoulder, and a red spiral on the other. He tends to give varying explanations for the meanings of these (i.e. he forgot what he originally got them for).
-A very tiny, upside-down rat on the inside of his right hip. A speech bubble attached to it contains the Nari word for "SCUM"...also upside-down. He was high when that happened. Verrry high.
-Both of his nostrils are pierced and adorned with rings.
-His earlobes are pierced four times each, filled with various sizes of hoop earrings. He's tied a piece of brown binding thread, strung with an incredibly old pearl, between one of these earrings and his left nostril ring.
Character Concept
Nearly nothing matters to Mirko. A creature of single-minded passion, he cares only for that which is his—and those few things he comes to love, he loves to the point of ignoring logic and laws of self-preservation. If he'd had friends or family or lovers, he would have spent life cutting rings from the fingers of the Valintar to feed them (except he'd fail and die). He'd have caved in the windpipes of those that tormented them (he'd fail and die at that too)—he'd have died to ensure them the most insignificant sliver of comfort (he'd fail at everything except dying), then he'd rise from his young, sorry, ill-advised grave just to do it again. But like so many before him, his overeager, naïve drive was wasted: Mirko was Dek, who had no one but themselves, and he didn't give a shit about himself. In a world where he had nothing else to call his own, the only thing he coveted in life was a tiny, dingy pearl he'd found in the trash.
He wasn't obsessed with an old wad of luminescent oyster excrete because it was valuable (it wasn't). In his confused, unfortunate little brain, he appointed it as a totem of his people—not the Inarta as a whole, but his people, the offal of Wind Reach who were dehumanized and disabled and abused for entertainment, the ones who died maintaining the luxuries of those above them, the only ones he trusted, the only ones he'd set fires for. The ones who were often kind of dumb, or at least reckless and unwise...all like him. Granted, most drudges didn't actually care for him much—he was notoriously needy, annoying even. He was also oblivious to this, but even if he hadn't been, he'd still be a ghost for one reason alone: The pearl was taken from him and taken from the Dek, so he wants it back. He doesn't care if it was melted in Skyinarta's maw, or ripped from his dead, cold face and thrown into the Void, or ground into a paste and dusted across the cheeks of unnamed gods. Until he reassembles every molecule that made up that pearl, returns to Wind Reach and fades away in the company of Dek, he's staying. Maybe he'll get ambitious and throw another rock at an Endal or something. Maybe he'll get so ambitious that he'll clumsily attempt to dismantle the caste system...
...and get dusted in the process, because he really isn't capable of that kind of brainpower.
In a sense, death has given Mirko a chance to reclaim himself. The last few years of his life were blurred by mental illness (an ailment known as paranoid schizophrenia on our plane of reality), and he still struggles to parse out the person he was before. He remembers that no matter how badly his shoulder blades ached, he'd still keep his hackles raised—he was always afraid, angry, wildly oversensitive. He remembers screaming socio-political rhetoric until his voice was reduced to a chalky whisper and some Chiet brute dislocated his jaw with a fish. He never did shit he didn't want to do, so he almost never ate. He was awkward, lonely, stubbornly irresponsible. He was desperate for someone to want him around, but he just as often pushed people away, unused as he was to maintaining friendships—he hated dealing with change, really hated it. From there, his memory starts to get fuzzy: For the remainder of his life, so many people characterized him as "crazy" that it was difficult to think of himself in any other way. Mirko didn't have anyone to tell him his delusions weren't real, that losing a grip on reality didn't define who he was. There was no way for him to know until he passed—when his delusions died alongside his physical brain, it was a clear indicator that something had been medically wrong with him, not spiritually.
Mirko worries that he lost part of himself in the entire getting mentally ill/getting physically ill/dying slowly and horribly process, but when it all comes down to it? There wasn't an awful lot to lose in the first place. He's just kind of a goofy, sweet, uncontrollably opinionated garbage nymph...or at least the shadow of one. Although he's an entirely different being now, he still works to echo his past self, gripping onto that sad, sick, life-threateningly passionate drudge he died as. When he holds that grip, the smallest details enchant him and he drifts through ghostly existence with his same lofty, endearing sense of humor and outrage-driven antics (...he does have a very serious anger problem). There's a pure, undiluted sort of spirit about him, not unlike a feral creature, all at once charming and unnerving and wildly unpredictable. Mirko the person is usually still there.
But as is the ghostly condition, every once in a while when he thinks about seeing so many suns rise without feeling their warmth, and carving patterns in sand with his fingers without feeling it pass over his skin, and walking through thick wafts of perfume that he can see but can't smell, Mirko the person may not be there. His existence is little more than a fever dream, and when that catches up with him, it's visible—nothing seems to sink into him, and nothing seeps out.
Ultimately, his psychological state doesn't matter—no one does what he did to himself and expects to feel fulfilled the way the living can. Mirko compromised himself because he so badly wanted to feel close to the people he trusts, to ensure that they're protected and that his pearl is returned—beyond that, there's nothing more for him but to be left alone and put to rest. And that's it. That's the extent of his deep-seated ethereal pain. His pursuits may not be scholarly, or even particularly useful, but that's all he exists for now.
History
Pre-Creation
Summer, 511
Mirko didn't know how long he'd been lying there. His skin was thin, nearly translucent, his bones shifting beneath its surface like silk stretched over seashells. He lifted his shoulder and felt it simmer, burned into the hot stone—a sheet of dead flesh was left cooking on the rock. He heard someone approach.
There was a hand on his shoulder. He slit his eyes open, but the world was hazy, its colors muted, its lights intensified to a blinding glow. Then a light tug on the side of his face. He blinked, trying to distinguish the muddy figure before him.
Nothing there. Mirko closed his eyes again.
He could hear his skin pop as his nose ring dragged through the cartilage, stretching the flesh until it tore out the other side. The pain was like rich, drowsy red flowers blossoming in his eyes, just as close as they were infinitely far away—another row of them bloomed as his earlobe was split. The figure walked away, his pearl in its hand.His pearl.
Mirko starved to death on the stone floor, but death didn't make him forget.
Unless he'd provoked a malevolent god on his way out of the womb, it would seem that Mirko inherited some unfortunate genes. He was born of the Dek—or at least his mother was Dek, he has no real way to know—and come fifteen years old, he gallantly swandived right back into the caste. He'd never been an exceptionally intelligent or receptive child, often refusing to comply with what was asked of him on sheer principle. He didn't read well and he worked at a hopelessly slow pace (if at all), expressing no aptitude or interest in practical trades. The harder he was pushed, the farther into himself he drew—Mirko hadn't even attempted to talk to an eagle by the time he was placed in his caste, insecure as he was.
Ultimately, he never would.
He worked for the next three years, forever struggling to keep himself fed—alongside his poor work ethic, meals were often withheld from him and his back flogged into a web of open wounds as he resisted the demands of higher castes. However, this habit slightly tapered off in favor of a new one: He took to intervening on the poor treatment of other drudges, then purposefully shouldering the blame (and/or becoming an insufferable liability). Although neither he nor the people around him had time to connect on a personal level, he'd grown massively protective of those within his caste, earning him a small criminal track record, a mounting number of zygomatic arch fractures and a drug habit. Nothing seemed to quell him, and although his social justice rants fell on deaf ears (even among the drudges), continue to social justice rant he did.
Mirko did not maintain this pace for long. He was barely eighteen when it happened, and he'd never experienced anything like it in his life: He began to hear voices. They were soft at first, then grew so loud that his ears rang—he thought that he may have earned the disapproval of ill-intentioned gods, or the eagles were berating him in strange, keening telepathic voices as they flew overhead. His work slowed, and then it stopped entirely. He pushed away the few who tried to reach out to him, whereas he used to be overbearingly emotionally needy. His last half-year was spent huddled in corners and pulling his hair out with mechanical diligence, afraid that the Valintar was tracing his thoughts through needles inserted in his follicles. He was debilitated, paranoid and desperate for intoxicants, and by the time he was twenty, he was never eating. Mirko died that summer.
Part of him always knew that he'd be coming back. Throughout his lifetime, he'd brimmed with far too much vitriol to lie easy—he wasn't going to allow himself such comfort if his people were left the way they were, and when someone had gotten away so seamlessly after ripping his petching pearl from his face. Mirko assumed his ghostly form and returned newly coherent, heartbroken and furious. He combed Wind Reach in search of his pearl for a sum total of five days—on the sixth, he clocked a passing Endal in the neck with a rock (he was aiming for the head) and was exiled by spiritists.
Ever since then, he's been drifting from city to city, blindly searching for his pearl. Although he does little to engage with his new surroundings, he's taken to buying ocarinas in each civilization he passes through—he pays local bums to let him possess them, plays the strange little instrument, then before leaving he buries it after marking the surface with a cross and a small “X”. Playing ocarina makes him think of birds, wind—the people he left, the only place that resonated with him. He had never wanted to be anywhere else.
After crossing Mizahar in a mindless haze, Mirko has begun to tire—he settled in Sahova for several seasons before coming to his current resting place in Ravok. By now Mirko has traversed three years' worth of unfamiliar terrain, having passed through strange webbed caverns, crystalline cities, swamps, water...but as far as he's concerned, the countless miles of alien land and culture are no more than a dream sequence, and he has learned little from them. What are these places to him if he can't feel their textures, eat their food, hear the call of their gods, smell their perfumes or sea water or forgotten carcasses piled in grimy alleyways? What are they to him if they're not Wind Reach, and what are they if they don't have his pearl?
Eventually, Mirko intends to shoulder his way back in to his homeland. He doesn't care if he has to wait until his entire generation has forgotten about him, or given way to a new one—there is no life for him until he returns. And when he does so, he'll have his pearl...and he'll be throwing infinitely better-aimed rocks.
