Shiosai

潮騒

quixotic // sincere // self-indulgent // credulous // unassuming

Shiosai was born during a raging storm. The ground was submerged under waters that rose from the flooded river basin. He fell from his mother's womb directly into the turbulence, and his panicked mother was quick to pull him out.

Ever since he could walk away from her on his own, he has gravitated towards the sea, rivers, lakes and ponds. He has always dropped everything to go for a swim. The fascination consumes him. He dreams of transforming into a water creature. His mother, an extremely superstitious deerssert, believed throughout his childhood that he was possessed, that his eventful birth, and the fact that his first breath was a mouthful of water, cursed him. She practically tortured him throughout his childhood in her attempts to counter the curse, trying everything from sweating the water out to denying him drinking water. Nothing worked.

Unable to keep him from swimming, his mother proceeded to instill in him a deep fear of sharks. She would tell him gory, horrible tales of other deersserts being torn to pieces, and showed him pictures of deersserts with huge bites taken out of them (none of which were real shark attacks, but she wasn't above lying to him). Swimming in pools or lakes he is fine, but in the ocean he is petrified of the danger. Sharks frequent his nightmares. Despite this, as a child, he was able to befriend Cayo Hueso, a deerssert with a shark tail. Hueso constantly tried to quell his fear, but was never successful. Shiosai warily admires him, but is still petrified of sharks.

Shiosai has always adored but feared his mother. He believed she was right about him, though, and was always willing to comply with her strange demands. Because of her, he has grown to be a superstitious young adult. Perhaps if he had other family growing up, he would have realized she was a fraud, but his father was never there when he was a child. His mother claimed that his father died, and he has never questioned it, although his friends always joked that his mother probably scared his father away with her strange behavior.

His mother has since died (he believes stress killed her) but his desire to swim has not.