Maiah Thomas

[Maiah Thomas]

The Basics

Name: Jeremiah Caron Thomas

Nicknames: Maiah (to everyone), Jem (family only)

Age: 16 (practically 17—born March 5, 2003)

Pronouns: he/him

Orientation: pansexual

Desired Rank/Job: Lance Corporal School Mascot! What—what do you mean I have to say student? It says “desired rank/job”. Ugh, fine, student. Boring. Also part-time assistant at the local vet’s.

Powers:
Animal Communication: I CAN TALK TO DOGS!! It’s been five years (okay, almost five years) and I am still blown away by the fact that I can talk to dogs. What’s that? You control the weather? Well your dog says you have extra-stinky morning breath. (Just kidding. They are legit as loyal as you think.) All dogs are different, but there are some broad strokes. A feral dog will be different from a fox will be different from a domesticated dog, and I do not have the ability to control any of them. Bargain, yes. That’s why I have jerky in my pocket. But not control. Not everything translates well to human speech, either; sometimes a howl communicates intent, but you feel that, too, you just don’t know how to listen. Syntax can be a little different with animals and going from speaking Dog to speaking Human is like rewiring my brain; it can take time, make things hard to say and harder to understand. Like humans, dogs use physical expression; unlike humans, they use scent marking. Sensitivity to physical expression is mostly an advantage, though sometimes I use it without meaning to, which can be frustrating because dogs rarely read it from me but humans do. The scent marking is something I cannot turn off. Ever had your girlfriend trying to kiss you against a streetlight and all you can think is, this is someone else's territory? It's not a huge disadvantage, but it is inconvenient. 

Biological manipulation: in addition to understanding dogs, I can help them. If I touch a dog, I get sort of a draw to what’s wrong, and in some cases I can identify and fix it. There are limits—for example, I could mend a broken bone, but the dog would still need medicine for worms because I can’t affect the worms. Unfortunately this does not extend beyond dogs. Show me a cat with broken ribs and all I can do is take him to the vet’s and hope he’ll be okay. It can be used for tricks—I once made Rizzo’s dark fur grow a white stripe—but it feels wrong. It’s a power meant to help along nature, not change it. The biggest drawback is definitely taking on injuries; if I’m not careful, rather than fixing a hurt, I take it onto myself. Fatigue is less of a problem than winding up injured, but it is inevitable. Healing always takes energy and anything major, especially more than skin-deep (like a cut or shallow bruise), requires sleep and snacks afterward. (Theoretically. You trying being a 17-year-old dude and tell me how your metabolism is!)

Play By: Kit Young

The Details

Hair Color: black

Eye Color: brown

Height: all of it (like 6’1? 6’2? I dunno, you’re all short)

Any Piercings? left ear helix (unless Dad asks, in which case, no)

Any Tattoos? none

Any Scars? No cool ones.

General Appearance: Just the most glorious image you can imagine. Maybe more glorious—how good is your imagination? At first glance, I don’t slouch and I smile more than I don’t. I aim for fluidity of movement but there can be some knee-and-elbow gawkiness. My sense of style has been described as ‘lacking’ (wrongly I might add, though I’m not averse to a little flannel plaid now and again). Mostly I wear jeans and button-down shirts, and yes, said shirt might be unbuttoned over over a graphic tee, but I’m still wearing it. Not generally one for makeup, but again, I’m not averse to a sparkly eye shadow sometimes.

Sitting still is not one of my skills, passions, or hobbies. I tend to not do that. In situations requiring not-moving-too-much, I keep something to fidget with, even if it’s just a zipper bracelet or beaded keychain.

Personality:
Here’s what Dad says: I’ve a good heart but a nose for trouble. And I’m not sure he’s wrong. If you ask me to make a serious decision, I’m going to look at how to minimize the damage, and sometimes I’ll make a… well… an arguably “bad” decision. I hate to hurt my friends or to see them hurting, it’s not on purpose but that’s my instinct. I lie.

But hey, no need to start with the bad stuff first! Despite the fact I just did that. First thing I am is fun. Is there a joke to be told? I’ll tell it. Someone needs to be the first one on the dance floor? That’ll be me. Are you wondering if it’s worth jumping into the lake butt-naked on a day ten degrees above freezing? I was soaked before you finished wondering. I genuinely have no desire to cause harm to anyone—usually—I just want to have fun. And for other people to have fun!

Holding a grudge… I don’t. At least I don’t like to. Sometimes a good brawl clears the air and you just need to find a non-supervised area to duke it out and move on. Unless you are fundamentally a bad person, like a Republican or something, there’s no reason we can’t be friends. With those closest to me, I consider myself a reasonable degree of protective. It’s why my temper doesn’t get lit from people talking about me, but if you talk about my friends or especially about my family, we will have problems.

I have been called unambitious, which I suppose isn’t wholly inaccurate, but isn’t entirely fair, either. People who have ambition are waiting. I’m not, not long-term. I’m just waiting for the next opportunity to throw myself into.

Your Vices

Likes:

Dislikes:

Strengths: Friendly, fun, pretty good with plants, super good with dogs

Weaknesses: History homework, sitting still, keeping out of trouble

Family Ties

Father: Gerallt Thomas (fun fact, he used to have to say, “G-e-r-a-l-l-t,” every time he met someone. Now he has to say, “Aye, it’s an old Welsh name.”)

Mother: Judith Darius (deceased)

Siblings: None. Me and my cousin shared a growth wall, though, so she’s basically my sister.

Spouse/Partner: None… currently

Any Other Important People:
Jonas & Rosaline Darius - grandparents
Owain Thomas - uncle
Frankie Kennedy - cousin
Elena Kennedy - Frankie’s mom. Never married Owain, so… my cousin’s mom =/= my aunt.
Rizzo - best friend (dog) (deceased)
Okay, this one’s complicated. Two years ago I met a fox called Snowmane, he’s dead now, but I knew his pups and three are still alive today, along with ten of their pups, so basically… I’m the Godfather of Foxes.

History

I was born on New Year’s Day at the stroke of midnight, my arrival heralded by booming thunder that shook the earth, raindrops crashing like pennies against the windowpanes—

What do you mean, do it properly?

Fine, but this version’s boring.

I had a pretty normal, uneventful childhood, unless you count Mom dying and I don’t want to talk about that. I was five. There was a drunk driver. Anyway, Dad’s the most normal man imaginable. He owns a nursery, the kind with plants not babies. He was sad after what happened, in a heavy sort of way, and when he walked me to kindergarten I felt how heavy his steps were. He dealt with his hurt by being normal. He packed my lunch, took me to school, went to work, and picked me up from after-school, and then we went home and I whined about baths (too numerous) and bedtimes (too early). At least, I did until I learned he couldn’t hear me over his own snoring. All I had to do was outlast him, then I could explore the house in the dark. In the dark, the house could be anything. I could sneak around an enemy pirate ship. I could crawl through the lair of a monster. I could pick my cautious way through the wicked witch’s house to rescue Hansel and Gretel. I could get caught and sent back to bed, but that was a good deal better than staying in bed, so I did it anyway.

Once, I tried climbing the curtains. They were the rigging of Dread Pirate Marcus’s ship (bear with me here, Marcus was in my class at school and he was a little prick). Except they were just curtains. So there I was, standing in the living room in the middle of a torn-down curtain, still gripping the fabric, several hours past bedtime and claiming I didn’t know how it happened. There’s very few times I would say I full-on deserved to be spanked but that was one of them, for stupidity if nothing else.

I did well enough at school. I was never quiet and didn’t sit still well, so, you know, things could get a teensy bit awkward. Standardized tests went very badly, since they weren’t for a grade or a candy or anything else important, so in first grade I drew dinosaurs on the scantron. We had a meeting—with the principal and Dad—and I remember feeling very small as I tried to explain that I didn’t mean to do anything bad (Dad was disappointed) but it wasn’t very important and I got bored. They explained it was very important actually (I didn’t understand why), and I must do better next time. I didn’t want to be the reason Dad looked upset, so I promised.

My second grade teacher set the stage for the rest of my life. Though Dad never wanted me tested, she believed I had an attention issue. Some teachers would have responded by making me sit in the front of the class, singling me out, making me clean the classroom during recess. (I know because they did.) Miss Alvarado did the opposite. She put me in the back of the classroom so I could get up and walk around when I needed to, and encouraged me to keep a few toys on my desk, though she shushed me if I made too much noise during class. Not only did she teach me that I could belong in a classroom, she helped me learn to manage my excess energy.

One Saturday, a friend’s mom dropped me off at home after a sleepover. I waved and ran up to the front door, ready to tell Dad all about Sam’s new hamster… and got myself a much better story than a dumb hamster, because sitting at the kitchen table, eating dry Froot Loops, was a girl. She was little and skinny—I was skinny, but I was strong-skinny and one of the best runners in my class; she was skinny-skinny, with too-thin arms and too-big eyes and dark hair in a wet braid. I tried to make sense of this unfamiliar girl. She stared back at me and kept eating her Froot Loops one by one. Those were actually my Froot Loops, by the way.

Finally, I told her, “That’s my Ninja Turtles shirt.” Dad cleared his throat and I added, “But you can have it.”

That was the day I learned I had a cousin. And an uncle. Owain was less impressive, asleep in a stinking heap on the couch. So… basically, Sam and his dumb hamster could suck it. I had a cousin. At the time, I just thought it was weird to see her wearing my shirt like a dress. That first day was weird a lot, but not always bad. Frankie was an excellent follower. Let’s go play pirates outside and I’ll be the captain and you can swab the decks. I was seven. Seven-year-olds are usually dicks. Frankie was thrilled and took to deck-swabbing and shanty-singing with great enthusiasm. And now I had someone to “rescue” when she was “taken captive” and someone to “avenge” when she was “killed horribly”, so by the end of the day we were friends. When Dad gave her significantly less to eat at dinner, I assumed it was a mistake and gave her some of my food, which she ate and then puked back up. That was when Dad explained that she was sick, she and Owain both, not the kind of sick you catch but the kind he needed me to trust him in fixing. He was my dad, so I did.

I told everyone about my cousin, my whole class. I must not have shut up, because my teacher commented to Dad about me being “more imaginative than usual”, but he confirmed that Frankie and Owain were in fact real. For maybe a week, I had a shadow. We played together, ate together, Dad even tucked us into bed together—we didn’t have anywhere else to put her. He told us we were a pirate king and a princess, and if you’re wondering why a princess swabs decks—in this economy, even royalty needs a side hustle.

And then one day it was over. I came home from school and Frankie was gone. As was Owain, but in all honesty I didn’t care. Owain was and remains a tool. I missed Frankie, though. And I was hurt that she didn’t say goodbye until Dad promised she wanted to but didn’t have the chance. I was still hurt, just not mad at her.

Grade school… yeah. That happened. Mostly classes are a blur. Workbooks about addition, vocabulary, eating healthy. A lot of detention, but that’s not so bad. It’s built up like this life-or-death situation but… you clean up the classroom for half an hour? It’s not the end of the world.

After-school activities were better. Twice a week, grades three through five, I stayed late and learned karate. On reflection it was the most basic shadow of an actual martial art, but it was fun and I was less fidgety through karate than any other class.

Dad worked a lot and I spent a lot of my childhood at the nursery. If that sounds sad, you are clearly unfamiliar with nurseries. There were always plants growing, there were burbly little fountains, there were stray cats that had taken up residence and never saw fit to move on. It was the perfect place for a boy who wanted to be a pirate, to explore rainforests, to… well, chase kittens.

Here’s my theory: happy kids don’t have a lot of memories. Memories come from variance. Ask me to pick one single memory of the nursery and I can’t. I remember skinning my knees, sure, it happened many times—but was I six or eight years old? Was it the day I clambered to the top of all the bags of planting soil and declared myself king of the nursery, or the day I helped transplant strawberries to showcase a terracotta planter? I remember nabbing a strawberry now and again. For the most part, my childhood was one long, sun-drenched day.

That’s why my strongest memories don’t feature Dad. It’s like asking for memories of your heartbeat.

I do remember visiting my grandparents in Miami. They wanted to be sure I had a sense of my Haitian identity and history, that I knew who I was. Mostly I spent time with them over the summer, when I could stay for longer visits and learn a shred of Creole and how to cook diri kole. Possibly the saving grace for my whiter-than-paper father, in my grandparents’ eyes, was that he was devout. Not Haitian, not Catholic, but at least a good Christian. It did not rub off on me.

And I remember Frankie. She would just show up. One time we came home in the evening to find her asleep on the doorstep. Another time, social services called and we took a two-day trip to pick her up from a foster home in Tennessee. She might show up like a whirlwind, but she grew up to be a way more responsible kid, making the bed and washing dishes without needing to be told. At the time I thought, cool, someone who'll make my bed for me in exchange for a Snickers. It wasn't until later I put together the pieces about what her life must have been.

When I was nine years old, a stray dog showed up at the nursery. Before anyone could drive him off, I fed him my leftover lunch. This happened a few times before Dad gave in—I had asked multiple times for a dog. We kept this one. I named him Rizzo, like in Muppets.

When I was twelve, I was petting him and asking, like I always did, “Who’s a good boy?” and Rizzo rumbled back warmly, “I’m a good boy.”

That’s how I learned I had superpowers. Cool, right? My dog could talk to me! I did all I could to ensure no one learned about this.

You might be asking about now why I would do that, why I would want to hide my powers. If I wasn’t ashamed, why hide them? Because of Dad. No, I wasn’t worried about telling him. I knew he would accept me, probably sent me away to that special school. And then who would help him out at the nursery? Who would keep him company on the way to church? Who would keep him from eating his meals alone? Who would take care of him?

I had no idea how easy it is for a meta-human to be found. I lasted about a week, apparently they just know. When a recruiter turned up, I peered around them, trying to find my cousin. Turned out they weren’t those sorts of officials. They weren’t here to leave someone but to take me—even though I said I didn’t want to go. The worst part was that I sort of did. What they were offering sounded… cool. I wanted to go with them, to their school, to Vermont—that sounds exotic to a kid from Florida! But my loyalty was to Dad first. Luckily he supported the idea, though I think he was more impressed with the academic program offerings than the meta-human stuff. Leaving him was hard. Rizzo promised to look after Dad—maybe he would forget his promise in a heartbeat or two, but I know in that moment he meant it.

The Institute was… amazing? Yeah, it was pretty amazing. I didn’t want to like it (what? A kid? Petulant?!) but it had a pool for pity’s sake! It was going to snow! Okay, yes, and the teachers and faculty were nice, I’m not made of stone. (I wonder if a person can be made of stone… not a meta I’ve seen, but one never knows.)

Over the next few years, the Institute became my home. I was still the same bundle of energy I had always been. I turned in the same well-intentioned, last-minute scrambles as homework. Training was interesting. Learning to talk to dogs was fun, in some ways unsurprising, and often the real challenge was slipping back into talking with humans. Learning to heal dogs was another matter. No one was going to intentionally hurt a dog just so I could practice—I wouldn’t have worked with them if they had—and in a way that made it easier for me. It wasn’t planned. I’m not always good with plans. That also was the hardest part—look, dogs have listened to humans making stupid dog noises for millenia, they don’t care if we get messed up. They genuinely are some of the most loving, forgiving creatures on the planet.

When I was thirteen, having a perfectly legitimate reason to have snuck out of the dorms and not just doing it to see if I could climb a tree at night in the snow (I like a challenge), I overheard muttering about backleg nonsense. That was how I met Snowmane, a fox with an inexplicable white ring of fur around his neck. He had taken some damage to his leg, probably from barbed wire. It took a while to convince him to trust me, but once he did, I was able to patch up his scrapes and even push back against an infection that was setting in. Snowmane promptly snapped his jaws at me and bolt off, ungrateful little rat that he was. I still planned to climb the tree, just needed a moment to put my strength together. So… that’s the story of how I got caught almost asleep in the snow at night, and yes I do know that was extremely dangerous (thank you, Doctor Neville) and I do realize I could’ve gotten myself injured (thank you, Doctor Neville) and yes I did complete the absolutely fair time being hyper supervised for my own good (thank you, Doctor Neville). Needless to say that’s not the only time I was in trouble, but it was the only time I met the coolest fox in Vermont. Not Snowmane, Snowmane’s honestly a whiny little bastard (I loved him anyway), but he came by later. To everyone else, it would have seemed like an animal randomly barking at the dorms one evening, but I heard him saying his version of my name. Snowmane had brought me a squirrel to share. I didn’t partake, but I did sit with him and eat a snack of my own (Oreos) while he chowed down on Mister Nutterbutter. Snowmane seemed like a weird, grumbly bastard until one day in April when he showed up early (woke me up, but that wasn't new for this big rat) and insisted I had to follow him now-now-now-now-now so I did, with my boots and coat thrown over my pajamas (yes I wore my coat in April, it was really early and I’m from Florida!), tromping after Snowmane into the woods (which is something I really should have thought through before doing, I know, thank you, Doctor Neville). I thought another fox must have been hurt, how he kept going on about me being too slow and needing to hurry. Turns out he was just proud of his pups! They were really cute, too, all tiny and curled up against their mama. She bit my hand that day (oh what, I was already going to get in trouble for this) but later she softened up. Even let me call her Jolteon, which fit because her fur ruffed up at all angles.

I was fifteen when I almost got expelled. It started with a boy from town. Ollie. I’m not saying I have a type, but if I did, guys with sweet smiles and freckles wouldn’t not be my type. Ollie knew I was meta. That’s how we met, actually, his dog was holding her paw wrong and I helped her out. If you expected any shame, you clearly do not know me, because Ollie said he didn’t know how he could thank me and I told him he could buy me dinner. We spent so long talking, I broke curfew, but since it was already broken we went to the playground and climbed the rope wall and crawled up the spiral slide. Ollie was smart, funny, very cute, and easily my whole world for four and a half months. He was also extremely shy of physical affection. I… wasn’t. I didn’t push him into anything, I’m not a monster, but I did enjoy a few tangled minutes with someone else. Maybe it would have been better if I had kissed another boy, maybe there’s no way Ollie would have accepted it (probably there’s no way), and I knew it was wrong. That’s why I told him. I couldn’t argue with his choice to break up. For the first time in a long time, I was furious about being at the Hammel Institute, furious about being meta. I knew I had screwed up; I was hurting and lost and wanted Dad. Since he wasn’t there, I opted instead for—look, I was fifteen, I had been bawling my eyes out, I was not thinking straight (not that I ever do anything straight)—I stole a bottle of vodka from 7-11 and, while drunk (though I had the sense to “hide” the bottle), decided I really needed to climb something. So yeah. That’s the story of how I broke into the auditorium after hours while drunk on stolen booze.

I can’t say I’ve been on perfect behavior ever since. I still get bored in class. I still forget homework assignments. I still sometimes have a fox or coyote buddy show up. And as Dad could tell you, I’ve always been a little too ready with a joke in serious situations. But I’ve tried. There haven’t been any serious infractions. (Okay, there’s been some playing that broke a chair, but everyone agreed it was an accident, and sometimes my crepuscular friends need me outside normal human hours. But nothing major.) Last summer, Ollie started talking to me again—friends only, of course, which is more than fair. And he asked me to call him Oliver, which I’m working on, but I still think of him as Ollie. I’ve been with a few people since, but I might have actually loved Ollie. Oliver. I’m an idiot. Thoughts like these are why I watch so many monster movies.

I don’t do a ton outside the Institute, but since we’re not allowed to have pets… when I was fourteen and found with a litter of fox pups in my room—apparently the administration disagreed that they counted as guests not pets—I had to take them to the humane society. That’s how I first got involved there, I would go to visit them, and that turned into volunteering regularly. Sometimes it could be… problematic, like I’d come back to school in Dog Mode and need to be by myself and reorient my brain for a while, but I loved doing it. At the start of junior year, I (by some miracle) got permission to apply for a job working with a local vet. She knows I’m meta and knows I can talk to the pups. I won’t lie, I’ve overextended myself more than once. Honestly it’s made me to a lot of uncomfortably grown-up thinking, being around so many dogs who are scared and hurting, and knowing it’s my job to not make all of them feel better even though I could.

What is it with all this “being a serious adult” business?! It sucks! Enough of that. This is why my free time goes to sports, movies, sweets, and whatever other fun is on! I used to think Peter Pan had the right idea but then I found out he was all murdery, so adulthood might eventually be the only option.

Player Information

Name: Til

Age: Tridecadal so easily old enough to be here

Player Pronouns: she/her

How Did You Find Us? You asked me if I would be interested

Other Characters: N/A (yet)