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Personality: Yona is very much the epitome of a book "child". She's fun-loving and kind hearted, full of imaginative innocence, and is endlessly fascinated by the world around her. Don't be fooled into thinking she's brave, however; she's secretly a worrier, and can't stand to be alone. She won't go out seeking thrills unless she's around someone she can trust.

For the most part, Yona can be very literal, and most adult concepts (and some abstract ideas) fly right over her head. Despite this, she's more self-aware than might be immediately obvious. As she acts around ten years old, she is constantly fluctuating between childish innocence and actual maturity-- she can be more "adult" than she lets on, but she still is very much dependent and in need of a parent.

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• J'adore: Yona loves many things. The very world around her delights her, and she can derive simple joy from the even the most mundane tasks, people, or objects.
  
  
• Curious Bird: What do you have? Can she see it? What's over there? Why do you wear that? No question can ever satiate the intense curiosity she feels for the world around her, so she seeks to answer them herself. There is no limit to what she will snoop through, get into, touch, and (sometimes) break, which often gets her into more trouble than it ought.
  
  
• Wide-Eyed: And completely innocent, Yona is almost painfully naive of the way the world works. She can't initially seem to grasp that people might actually hurt her or use her for their own ends, until they actually do so. She's very trusting-- incredibly gullible, even-- until that trust turns sour. It's not hard to plant things into her head and make her believe things that aren't real or true.
  
  
• Pacifist: "Do onto others as they would do onto you" is a rule she holds close to her heart. She finds misdeeds that hurt other people-- emotionally, financially, physically-- abhorrent. She'd never raise a hand against anyone, for the concept of pain and evil frightens her badly.
  
  
• Sunbeam: While she understands defeat and failure, she's far too stubborn to let them stick around for long. She detests seeing people in grieving or loss, because she detests being sad herself, and will always attempt to cheer others up-- especially from things that can't be healed by hugs or words. Hope springs eternal for her.

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• Flighty Heart: Yona is in fact a gigantic coward. She will not hesitate to flee from danger, with no thought given to those she leaves behind, until she is far, far away. She is shy, and slow to warm up to new people. As well, a lot of things scare her-- she's terrified of the dark (nights in Library City are quite the trial for her), of pain, and death-- even the "death" of automatons upsets her immensely. She is terrified of anything that has caused her pain, be it emotional or physical. Though she can be helped through her fears by another person, she herself is unable to conquer them one on one.
  
  
• Open Book: A simple creature of naivety, she wears her emotions on her sleeve. It is not hard to make her laugh, and neither is it hard to make her cry. Though she may try to fib, or hide her feelings to avoid confrontation, she is rather terrible at keeping any sort of secret.
  
  
• Who, Me?: It's no secret that Yona has a strange sense of right and wrong... especially when it applies directly to her. Her curiosity has a tendency to get her into all kinds of problems, but as she would never do anyone real harm, she thinks of her failings as benign mischief. She's very good and nice! She didn't mean to rip your precious thing. So she doesn't understand why she, a creature of good intentions, should ever get in trouble.
  
  
• Black and White: There is good, and there is evil. Gray areas easily confuse her, and she never seems to understand how the two can coincide. Trick Yona once, shame on you, and she'll not believe you again for a second go around. The moment you cause her actual pain (and don't immediately make it up to her), her naivety will be shaken, and she will think you a force of evil.
  
  
• Tenderfoot: This girl has no pain tolerance whatsoever, be it physical pain or emotional pain. She has no semblance of survival skills or common sense, either-- Yona needs to be sheltered and protected in order to function well, and she has no ability to be independent.

Story: The Mourning Dove. This story is written in Hebrew. Yona is unable to retell the story in "English". Though she might be able to translate as she learns the language of the City People more extensively.

The Mourning Dove is a children's story, much like an old fashioned fable. And it effects Yona, as a new book child, in many ways: she is a product of her book, a complete derivative of all the symbolism in the narrative. In the present, Yona seems both effected and compelled to make up for the failings of the Mourning Dove character within the tale, though she is not immediately aware of such trappings.

Once upon a time, there was a vast world, filled with nothing but water.

On this world there was a single boat, which housed a single man. This man owned nothing except a golden cage, which housed a pair of turtle doves, who were nesting mates. For all his life the man sailed around the world, catching fish for his meals, and living simply upon his boat with his two doves. He sang to himself when he was lonely, or he would talk with his birds, teaching them things of the outside world. The birds would always ask him about the sky, and with a heavy heart, the man would always try to explain to them things they had never seen.

Many years passed until the man and his birds grew old and tired.

"How I wish I could sail to a single shore," said the old man to his birds. "I have not seen land in all my life."

"We could look for land among the sky," offered his turtle doves, who also yearned to see the world outside their cage.

The old man shook his head. He was going to refuse to let his companions go, but then thought otherwise. They had lived their whole lives in a cage, as he had, and he could not deny them their wings. He doubted they would ever return if they left. But they were all old, and the sailor thought that at least they should pass away in dignity, among the skies and seas.

"All right," the sailor agreed reluctantly. He slowly unlatched the cage door, leaving it open for the birds to freely pass through. "If you do find land, bring something of it back to me, so that I may know."

The birds agreed, cooed farewell, and then each flew out the cage door. They flew out from their small room, and into the world beyond their small boat. But as they soared out the door, they were immediately stricken with confusion. The sky looked exactly like the sea, and neither could tell which way was up.

"The clouds are up!" said one dove, seeing the white streaks among the sky. But the other disagreed. "The clouds are down!" said he, seeing the foamy caps of the waves.

They both quarreled, until flapping separate ways, intent on finding the sky and finding land. The first dove flew up and into the air, passing by the clouds, as she looked around for an island. The second dove flew down, crashed into the sea, and drowned.

The first dove flew on, until the sun set and it was night. Eventually she found a small shoal, of which grew a single, gnarled tree. She cooed in delight as she danced around her discovery, entranced by something she had never seen, and rested among its branches for awhile.

"Surely this is the shore that we were looking for!" cried the dove in joy.

But looking around, she realized that her mate had not followed behind her, and neither had her boat. The sun had long set on her journey. All around her was a vast world of endless black, which stretched infinitely in every direction.

"Where is everyone?" she quailed in fright. No answer came.

"I am all alone," she cried, and in terror, she grabbed a small twig of the tree in her beak and took off, hoping to find her boat and her mate.

Far and long the little turtle dove flew, until morning had come again, and the endless darkness had gone. She flew and flew for many more darks, and many more days. She flew all around the world, searching for the home she had left, until one day, she finally came upon a small boat drifting on the horizon.

"My boat!" she warbled in joy. She was old, and she felt her strength leaving her. Yet she still held the old, dry twig in her beak, intent on at least finishing what she had promised.

But when the dove arrived at the boat, there was no one there. Simply an empty golden cage and an empty vessel, left to sail alone on the wide, lonely sea.

RP Log

PRP
Work Never Ends (Caveat x Yona)

ORP
Eyncastor Twilight

SOLO

AU

Songs: When You Believe - Prince of Egypt
Seven Years - Norah Jones
How Clear She Shines - Anois (and Emily Brontë!)
Something There - Beauty and the Beast


Yona actually came into being while listening to the Prince of Egypt soundtrack; she was originally going to be based on the dove and the olive branch story from Noah's Ark, but thinking that too specific, she was modified. Some hebrew themes still remain in her personality and her story, though she is no longer affiliated with any religious context.

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