Vodyr

Vodyr is a young wildling of the Blacksole Folk. The blood of the First Men seeps through his veins, and in it dwell the gifts of Skinchanging and Greensight.

Appearance and Character
Vodyr is a scrawny little runt, gaunt as death. His hair is kissed by fire, and he has a pair of blue eyes set above sunken cheeks. His face is a heavily freckled one.

Despite his difficult youth, Vodyr is a boy of remarkable candor. Although timid and reserved, he is honest to a fault. An empathy resides within his heart, one he extends from the smallest mouse of the forest to the old branches of the weirwoods.

Early Years (430 AC - 439 AC)
He was the last of the three to slip from the womb. His brood-brothers came healthy and strong, but he was nothing of the sort. In the harsh world Beyond the Wall, that in and of itself was enough to doom one to death before they could taste the milk of their mother's teat. The first night was the longest, heavy with a snow dump birthed from a black storm that had blown in from the Lands of Always Winter. Ygga held her little runt to her chest through the darkness, and once the calm sheen of dawn spread across the clearing sky, her babe suckled his first. But he was smaller than any other infant she had ever seen, still, with a sickly skin that scarcely gloved over his bones. Aye, the babe's survival would be a struggle, but Ygga was not one to cast out even the weakest member of her brood. Her sister had lost her own infant daughter just a month prior, so milk would not be an issue--as such, it was a struggle she was willing to weather. At the end of his first week, his parents gave him his milkname: Boy.

Come their second year, most children shed their milknames and took upon a true, proper name. His triplet brothers, Son and Lad, were called Asben and Barkum by the time they were three. Boy, however, kept his milkname. Hamdyr Owleye, the Blacksole chief, advised against a naming, stating that he was not yet strong enough for survival to be guaranteed. Ygga and Torben heeded his word.

Boy's next several years were marred by illness. Whenever a cough ripped through his village, Camp, Boy would fall victim to it. Many-a-night he stood at death's door, with Ygga alongside him and praying to the Old Gods of the Forest, and many-a-night he persevered. When he was not sick and bedridden, Boy was out in the forest, watching the creatures of the wood. He used to sit out in the snows for hours on end to the point where he caught a chill on more than one occasion. Whenever his father hunted any animal, be it predator or prey, Boy would weep--when he ate it, he would retch. As he aged, he seemed to grow out of this phase, differentiating between 'eating' animals and 'looking' animals, but it was a difficult maturation.

During his eighth year, Asben was mauled to death by a shadowcat whilst on a hunt. Only moons later, Barkum succumbed to an infected wound he had received from a cutting knife when cleaning a buck. In a cruel twist of fate, the most feeble of the triplets was the only member of his brood to make it to nine years of age. Although still runty, he was not nearly as delicate as he had once been, both in look and nature. His father's survival skills were finally transferring to him, too. Hamdyr and Torben decided that it was due time for him to gain a true name.