Kika
======= Biography =============
I was born on the Kuril Islands. I don’t know which one. My parents never thought the specific island name important, as they were wandering performers, so instead they instilled me with a love of our people and culture. Japan held our islands as their own since early times, and as such I was brought up in amalgamation of Japanese lifestyle. My parents were the heads of our clan. I have two brothers and two sisters, all older than me. I was blessed with a very family oriented upbringing and my folks tried to give us the opportunity to do everything there was to do, revel in every experience, both inside the comfort and familiarity of our performing troupe and our ventures outside in the world at large. I was a performer. It was in my genes. My specialties were making the colorful garments we wore to impress our audience, a lithe supple flexibility that added grace to our balancing act and knife throwing. My twin throwing daggers were my closest companions. The latter served me well in later years. I spent much of my childhood on the water, traveling from town to town and ocean to ocean with my troupe. I met Sachiko shortly after I left my teens. She was a wild and brilliant pirate. We became fast friends and she tried to convince me to join her band of scoundrels, but I declined, feeling that I had audiences still to amaze. When I had reached my twenty-second year, my family life had changed to the point where I felt I was more of an outsider and even though I wasn’t pushed out I felt I needed to strike out on my own path. As fate would have it, I ran into my friend Sachiko. Again, she asked me to join her, and the life of a Rogue on the sea had more appeal this time so I happily accepted. We were crew under the gregarious Captain Moon on his ship, The Rising. We joined him in the pub until that glorious day when Sachiko Zetsumei was given the most honored and deserved title, Captain. Captain Zetsumei extended me the invitation of joining her on her new vessel, The Koumori. I readily accepted and put my sewing skills to use as her Sailmaker.
All my life, I knew that was something missing. I loved my family, I loved performing, but now, with the salty brine in my face and the wind in my soul, I have finally found freedom, making a living for myself without conforming to what I was born into but never was a perfect fit. I have found my calling. Now I need a name. My crew calls me Kika, which is the closest that they can come to imitating my strange foreign tongue, but I long for a name that fits as well as my lifestyle.
