-- profile.
name Chavi ("KAH-vee") Ramona Sievert.
age 24.
birthday April 26th.
sexuality: Heterosexual.
occupation It varies. Mostly she performs as a singer and dancer, but the rest of the time she's doing what the family does. This includes being a seamstress, an artisan, spinning and dyeing yarn, weaving blankets, trolling for junk that can be refurbished and resold, whatever. When pressed, she'll happily take short-order work as a cook, waitress, dishwasher, laundress, etc.
fairytale Mother Hulda, otherwise known as Frau Holle/Holda, depending on the variation. In Germanic folklore, as regurgitated by Jacob Grimm, Mother Hulda was an ancient Norse Goddess, the supernatural matron of spinning, childbirth and domestic animals, associated with winter, witches and the Wild Hunt. Though they are not one and the same, the Tale-bound Hulda inside Chavi (from "Children's and Household Tales", 1812) retains all memories and experiences from her mythological counterpart, having been written that way in the story.
ability Traditionally, Hulda is a judge, rewarding those with honest or hard-working natures while punishing, scorning, or simply intimidating those with the opposite. In keeping with that theme, Chavi is empathic. She is able to both read and project emotion, an ability that turns most people into open books -- with enough scrutiny -- and makes it very hard to lie to her. It also makes her an excellent performer and counselor.
relationship Unlike most Tales, Chavi and Hulda are two separate entities. While they are certainly not multiple personalities, they are nevertheless unintegrated. Except during specific moments of deliberately hiding away, Hulda exists as a palpable personality at the back of Chavi's head, rather like a kind of shoulder devil or angel. She can make commentary -- obviously no-one else will hear it -- and provide access to the memories of previous incarnations whenever it seems appropriate, but for the most part Chavi and the old woman have an inherent truce of mutual coexistence. Hulda is simply too old, stubborn, and immense to merge -- cramming a few thousand years' worth of memories into some poor girl's head the day she hits age thirteen is more likely to drive her insane than benefit her -- while Chavi has the right to be her own person. This is mostly my own personal flavour text, though; I don't expect it to come up much and it would be very rare for anyone to interact with Hulda directly.
status Chavi is pretty open in general (and Hulda is, for the most part, long since past the point of caring) so I can't imagine many situations in which she wouldn't answer honestly if asked. She's not going to go around with a nametag stapled to her forehead either, though. That would be obnoxious.
personality The best way to describe Chavi would be to say that she's a strange mix of youthful vigor and old-world sensibility, but what tends to come through most immediately to strangers is her playfulness, warmth, and all-around good humour. Capricious and charming, she has a voracious appetite for games, shenanigans, and tongue-in-cheek teasing; she definitely isn't above getting her hands dirty with a good prank on those with whom she is emminently familiar. As a result, her default state is generally one of perpetual bemusement. She also takes particular delight in riddles, puzzles, and learning new things. Despite her complete lack of formal education, Chavi is an extremely intelligent person and has gone out of way to improve her academic knowledge as much as possible through the acquisition of second-hand textbooks, informal lessons, and whatever else she can come up with. Always in the thirst for knowing more, understanding more, exploring more, she is one of those few people who can actually handle being wrong with grace.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, she is also more extrovert than introvert. Confident and at home playing to a crowd, the daily ins and outs of Chavi's life revolve entirely around other people and she would be the first to tell you that she is at her best when interacting with someone else. As quick to anger as to let it go, and as receptive to laughter as to tears, she exhibits a strong changeability of emotion that has nothing to do with sullen mood-swings. It's a rare thing to find someone who doesn't question or second-guess what they feel, but that's typical behaviour for her; she believes as implicitly in her own feelings as in those of others, both of which she approaches with a trademark lack of self-doubt or recrimination. This attitude comes from an inherent understanding of the idea that every emotional reaction has a reason and that every hang-up or personality knot has a valid root behind it. Such absolute validation makes her easy to talk to, which in turn tends to make her into a confidante. It isn't all rainbows and sunshine, though; while she doesn't believe you can fault someone for the way they feel, you can fault them for what they do with those feelings. How a person handles him-/herself, whether they hurt or help or bother to untangle their own emotions at all, and how they treat other people, are the real test. Like the Tale who is her other half, she does judge others by those criteria and reacts accordingly. Thanks to both Hulda's presence and ten years of juggling her Tale-born ability, Chavi is also capable of displaying -- quite frequently, even -- a wisdom far beyond her years with regards to people, their behaviour, and their motivations. She's a hard person to fool no matter how you swing it.
Underneath all her mirth and joie-de-vivre, Chavi has a tangible, earthy kind of solidity. Hard-working, pragmatic, and certainly not the type to whine, she can come off as awfully unflappable, especially in her optimism. Her stance is that there's a way to achieve or accomplish just about anything, and that most of the trick to doing so is just in coming to that realization. In the unlikely event that it really isn't possible, being able to accept it and adapt to it without developing self-inflicted blinders is likely to open up new doors that will lead you in directions which are just as good, if not better. "Que sera, sera" is her zen.
Despite how easily she gives affection and how willingly helpful she can be when it's appropriate, Chavi is very clear about what is or isn't her responsibility to take on from other people's problems. This, like so much else, was something she had to learn the hard way. Because her empathy is always on, she is constantly going around with one foot inside everyone else around her. That's an extreme kind of intimacy that can't be helped and, while she is much better at controlling it these days, she still gets overwhelmed by the constant wash of sheer other-people-ness. The fear of losing her individual identity and sense of self is sometimes very real; she gets frustrated and claustrophobic, desperately seeking the clarity of actually being alone (or at least as alone as she'll ever get with Hulda always puttering around somewhere in the back of everything). Everyone needs room to breathe, and sometimes Chavi needs more than most.
When one follows that out logically, it's only natural that she would feel constricted or chained down without the freedom to come and go, without the choice of taking breaks and breathers and significant chunks of space. Where most people could have emotional distance, she often can't, and so she compensates for it by putting physical distance between herself and others instead. In short, our gypsy girl winds up being as transient in relationships as in geography. So, while Chavi loves easily and passionately and well, she does not love wholly. Though she is actually very reliable in her own way -- she will not stop caring (or even care any less!) for having been absent, and handling each person individually means that caring for one doesn't in any way diminish caring for another even at the same time -- she isn't often seen as such. Most people aren't fond of sharing, and can't readily adapt to such coming and going. Though it will be a lot of lovely things, no relationship with Chavi will ever be stable in the traditional sense.
Overall, she's really a very strong and resilient person. It takes a certain fibre of character to be who she is, to life the kind of live she leads, and have it be a healthy, generous thing instead of one that gets twisted up into ugliness and hurt. That she could take the hand she's been dealt and get it to blossom is really the best measure of her spirit. For Chavi, the value of live is in the adventure of living it. She is, if not happy, then at least willing to weather any number of knocks or hardships in exchange for seeing, doing, and being more; after all, the point of life is to be a part of it, in all its
grit and glory.
history Chavi is a gypsy of Romani descent. Her family is extremely large, not necessarily bonded by blood, and scattered across both Eurasia and the United States. Her roots are in India and the Middle East but, as with all gitans, their roaming nature has created a great mix of ethnicities over the generations. The migration of her particular branch of The People lead them to Spain, where they became known as the Gitanos. Like most of the Romani before them, the Gitanos are primarily singers, dancers, and tradespeople. (Even the flamenco is theirs.) Unlike their more Eastern counterparts, however, the Gitanos have lost a significant portion of the Old Ways. While they still maintain the heart of their religious and social traditions, they are far less strict about them, and the Gitanos are also less insular than other branches of the Romani people.
As for Chavi, her story starts with her mother.
Majandra Sievert spent most of her teenage years as 'the belle of the ball', so to speak. She had it all -- beauty, brains, facility, charm, and a fantastic singing voice. She was the gypsy rose, the prima donna, the estrella fugaz. Headstrong, impetuous, and disinclined to acknowledge the word 'no', she was used to both capturing attention and getting what she wanted. It wasn't that she was a bad child, just a wild one, and generally far too inclined to shrug off whatever restrictions she didn't care for. While traveling with her family through southern Spain, she caught the eye of a young police officer and fell head over heels into the sort of love that only sixteen-year-old girls can experience. Eager to affect the older, more sophisticated woman, she lied about her age and encouraged all his advances. Less than three months later, the troupe had moved on and her period was late; the rest is nothing more than history and a little basic biology. This disaster essentially blacklisted her to her own people: according to Romani law, Majandra was twice sullied; she was marimé, the Romani concept of physical, spiritual, and social uncleanliness. In a stricter cadre of The People, she would probably have been expelled. Instead, what followed was essentially a lifelong probationary period in which she was considered devalued as a person.
As a half-blood born in what amounted to spiritual dirt, Chavi grew up under a stigma despite not knowing the cause. Fortunately her mother handled this with the same set of cojones with which she'd handled the pregnancy, which is to say with defiant spirit, cleverness, and a lot of perserverance. (Even when she was younger, Majandra was a force to be reckoned with, and it's not hard to see where Chavi came from after one has met the perpetually wry and stunning titan that is her mother.) She grit her teeth, saw it through, and kept her head held high, none of which was easy to do considering the circumstances.
Ten years later, Majandra met and married a man of her own people, who was himself remarrying after the death of his wife several years prior. It was seen mostly as a pity marriage to the clan -- taking on a sullied woman with an outsider's child couldn't possibly be anything else -- but fortunately neither Majandra nor her new husband saw it that way. The marriage gave Majandra redemption, and she was allowed back into society as a whole and worthy person. (She managed to handle this with grace in public and a lot of scathing commentary in private. The responsibilies of motherhood, as well as the soberingly harsh reactions of her culture, had by then gone a long way towards tempering her wild streak. She eventually found much of the wisdom she'd lacked when she was younger.)
The next few years brought about a lot of change. Two new children were born, giving Chavi a pair of half-sisters, and the clan began emigrating to the United States in pockets. There was already a reasonable network of family across the ocean, and it took some time to get the rest over. On top of all that, Chavi also officially came into her Talehood, a transition that hit her much harder than changing continents.
Though a belief in and healthy respect for the supernatural comes with her culture, Chavi was not prepared for the slowly stirring mountain of Hulda's awakening. If it weren't for Hulda, though, the sudden trainwreck slam of developing empathic abilities would probably have driven the girl insane. It was Hulda who taught Chavi -- every bit as headstrong and impetuous as her mother was at her age -- how to get some control over the input she received and how to close the metaphorical fist that would mostly turn it off, as well as providing an essential introduction to her other-self and all that that entailed.
Coexistence wasn't easy to come by for several years, but eventually the two wore each other into a tidy jigsaw-puzzle fit. It helped that Hulda seemed to have an eternal kind of patience, even if sometimes that manifested itself as abandoning Chavi to weather out on her own the messes she'd gotten herself into. Hulda's certainty in the idea that things would play out, sort out, and continue on was equal parts frustrating and comforting, though it gradually became more and more the latter as Chavi got older. In this and so many other ways, it was Hulda who mollified the defiant flame of a young girl's passions into something finer.
Of course, every stone makes a ripple and every sword has two edges; being a Tale, and more specifically being an empath, drastically altered the course of Chavi's life. This has lead to a lot of behaviour that her people don't approve of, which in turn has carried consequences that she has had to weigh out and knowingly shoulder over the years. The most notable of these sins has been in her many relationships with outsiders, whether as friends, lovers, or -- more frequently -- a mix of both. (When you are emotionally intimate with everyone around you and are comfortable with that fact, the tendency to get involved with those people on more than a superficial level is inevitable.) Her road hasn't been easy: she has had to make a lot of compromises between her dignity and her culture, and it took a long time before she was able to handle the interpersonal conflicts involved in her ability without screwing it up royally, but she's happy with where she is and the journey she's had to get there.
storylines Here!
soundtrack Here!
pb Maria Mena
mun 'Chelle ♥
disclaimer I am not Maria (though she is extremely cool), nor either of the Brother Grimm (who are entirely too dead, for starters, and male besides). Alas, I own nothing but my imagination and a fairly recent copy of Photoshop.