Apollonia "Nia" Karahalios

[Fenris]

Name: Apollonia "Nia" Cassia Karahalios
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: 12th
School: George Hunter High School
Hobbies and Interests: Learning, acting, divination

Appearance: Nia stands at 5'6" and weighs 165 pounds, both above average for a girl her age. Her body is soft and rounded, and her weight is carried evenly, making her overall rather shapeless. Her face is noticeably harder than the rest of her body, with a strong square jaw, dark, thick and expressive eyebrows, upturned grey-blue eyes and a slightly hooked nose. Her lips are large, and her cupid's bow is particularly prominent. Her skin is medium olive in tone year-round, as she doesn't spend enough time outdoors to tan significantly. She has a very noticeable scar on her neck from her childhood surgery. Her hair is dark brown, almost black, and slightly wavy, reaching her shoulders. She also has blunt bangs, cut straight across just above her eyebrows.

Nia doesn't have much of a sense of style and prefers clothing that is comfortable and allows for ease of movement. She wears a lot of t-shirts and sweaters in muted colors and typically wears jeans or jean shorts depending on the weather. She doesn't wear makeup or jewelry, or accessorize at all beyond what's necessary to deal with the weather, with the exception of a plain, slightly tarnished silver bangle she always wears on her right wrist. On the day of the abduction, Nia was wearing a plain, faded pink t-shirt, knee-length jean shorts, brown Birkenstock sandals, and her usual bracelet.

Biography: Nia was born on December 21st, 1999 to Dimitris Karahalios and Catherine Callas, a respected surgeon and a public defender, respectively. The pair were born and raised in Tennessee, with Catherine hailing from Chattanooga and Dimitris coming from Nashville. Both attended Vanderbilt University, where they initially met, and a long courtship proceeded their eventual marriage, after which they moved in together in Chattanooga to be near Catherine's ailing mother. Neither had any particular desire or intention to have children, preferring to focus on their careers, and Catherine's pregnancy in her late thirties came as a surprise to them both. After some debate they decided to keep the child, whom they named Apollonia after Catherine's mother, who at that point had passed away.

Nia spent most of her earliest years with a rotating set of neighborhood babysitters, as both Dimitris and Catherine were constantly busy, with Catherine only taking two weeks of maternity leave before returning to work. She was never particularly active or troublesome and did not cry as much as would be expected of the average baby. When she began to learn to talk, though, she quickly became quite talkative, preferring sitting with her babysitters and talking to them in one and two word sentences to playing with toys; she wasn't particularly fond of toys in general, seeming to prefer being read to or listening to music to active playing.

When Nia was two and a half years old, an accident occurred that would shape the rest of her life. She had been left with a babysitter, as usual, a sixteen-year-old high school student. On this particular day Catherine had been in a rush to finish cleaning the bathroom before having to run out for work and had left the bleach in a spot easily reachable by a toddler. Due to a combination of Catherine's mistake and the babysitter's carelessness, Nia found the bottle of bleach and was able to drink a fair amount before her babysitter found her. She called 911 in a panic and an ambulance quickly arrived, rushing her into emergency surgery.

Thanks to the quick work of the surgeons who worked on her, Nia survived the incident. However, she was left with a number of permanent scars from the bleach and the surgery itself. The bleach permanently damaged her esophagus and stomach. As a result, she has regular severe stomach pains, bad enough to wake her up at night. The esophageal damage is significantly more dangerous, though, as while Nia can go for weeks or even months with no issues, the scar tissue on her esophagus sometimes becomes particularly irritated to a degree where it is nearly impossible for her to even drink water, let alone eat. On these occasions, she has no choice but to return to the hospital for an esophageal dilation. These occasions have become more frequent over the years, and at present, it is rare for Nia to go for more than a month without requiring a dilation.

The surgery, while successful, was not without complications, and a surgical error caused her most noticeable symptom, that being almost total muteness. Her trachea and her vocal cords were damaged during the procedure, the former slightly and the latter quite badly. It quickly became clear when Nia began to recover that her voice was not returning, and though a number of surgeries would be attempted later in her life to restore it, none were successful. The damage to her trachea was relatively mild but still caused her some difficulty breathing, similar in effect to mild asthma. It was obvious to Dimitris after Nia's condition became clear that someone involved in Nia's surgery had made a terrible mistake, as the bleach in and of itself would not have caused her to lose her voice. However, in respect to the difficulty of the surgeons' jobs and as thanks for saving his daughter's life, he chose not to pursue any legal action.

After leaving the hospital, Nia was nearly unrecognizable as the calm and talkative child she had been. One of the only sounds she was still capable of was screaming, which she did often, for practically any reason. She became aggressive where she had once been placid, throwing tantrums at her parents and her babysitters at every opportunity. Without her voice and not yet able to read or write, Nia was constantly frustrated by her total inability to communicate. Catherine had no choice but to quit her job to care for Nia, both because she was increasingly difficult to handle and because after the accident Catherine was loathe to let Nia out of her sight.

Dimitris, having confided in his colleagues about his worries about his daughter, had a speech therapist he worked with recommend that she be taught ASL. Recognizing the wisdom in the idea but also recognizing that neither he nor his wife were qualified to teach her, he asked his colleague for advice and through him found Nia an ASL tutor. Nia's ASL lessons became a regular facet of her life up until middle school, and she was very excited to learn from the very beginning, delighted to have found a means to express herself again. She was still frustrated, though, by how few people around her could understand her signing. Her parents learned some of the basics themselves, but they never learned any more than that, limiting Nia's ability to communicate with them.

Recognizing her daughter's voracious appetite for knowledge and for communication, Catherine made an effort to introduce Nia to the written word from a very early age. By the time she entered kindergarten she was capable of reading simple words and writing letters, though she did not yet know how to write words. She began to spend much of her time reading, despite how little she was capable of at that point; she would spend recess puzzling over books that were slightly too difficult for her. She learned quickly with help from both her mother and her kindergarten teacher, who was happy to encourage her. Nia did not bother spending much time with other children, who couldn't understand her signing and who occasionally teased her for her lack of a voice.

By the second grade, Nia was impressively competent in both reading and writing, enough so that she could readily communicate without using ASL. She began carrying a small sketchpad and a pencil everywhere, which she would use to communicate as well as to write or draw whatever came to mind. She was still frustrated by the amount of time it took to express ideas, and by how her schoolmates would generally get impatient and wander off before she had time to write anything down, but she was now capable of expressing her boundless curiosity to her mother. She bombarded Catherine with questions about everything from why the sky is blue to why there are so many stray cats to whether dragons were real, and Catherine's response was always to sit Nia on her lap as she looked up the answers online, so that the two could learn together. When she got a little older her mother let her use the internet on her own, with parental blocks in place. With her newfound ability to learn just about anything she wanted at any time, Nia spent as much time as she was allowed online.

Entering middle school, Nia had become extremely withdrawn, spending all of her time alone and generally ignoring attempts to communicate with her. Her parents did not worry about her behavior, saying that she was a natural intellectual and other kids her age simply wouldn't understand her. Catherine returned to work, and Nia was even more isolated as a result. She found the other kids around her interesting from a distance, much in the same way the average person finds animals at the zoo interesting, but she had a hard time relating to them and lacked any real desire to spend time with them. Her mind was changed when she first encountered Jeremiah Widdlestone in the sixth grade, and she found herself totally fascinated by him. She had no idea what circumstances in his life could have resulted in his skin being blue, and she found herself compelled to ask, handing him a note that read simply "why are you blue?" From that introduction, Jeremiah became Nia's first real friend, and his friendship taught her two important things—how much she could learn by talking to others, and how nice it could be to occasionally spend time around her peers.

Jeremiah left their middle school after the 6th grade, leaving Nia quite sad in his absence, but the change he had caused in her was permanent. She began to follow her curiosity, actively making an effort to speak to others who piqued her interest through writing things on her sketchpad. Though sometimes she was rebuffed or mocked in her efforts, she found it was worth the effort, as many of her classmates were more than willing to expound on their hobbies and interests, and she learned far more than she would have learned purely through researching by herself. For her part, Nia gained a reputation as being a great listener, if a bit of an eccentric one. She was more than willing to lend an ear when her classmates wanted to talk about their lives or their friends, though she found those conversations kind of dull. She found it worthwhile to power through in the hopes of getting something in return.

As she spent time around others and learned more and more about different things, Nia began picking up hobbies at an impressive pace, often learning about a new thing, learning as much as she possibly can about it, and getting completely sick of it within a week or two. She could not play sports due to her health issues but took the time to learn the rules of a number of popular sports anyway, along with obtaining over the years a working knowledge of all sorts of pop culture, and bits and pieces of more esoteric hobbies like woodworking or building models. One particular interest that stuck with her came about when she befriended a musical theater kid in the eighth grade. While at first she didn't find theater very interesting, primarily because she would never be able to participate, in her research she came across a number of theatrical performances done entirely in ASL. By this point practically fluent in the language, Nia was totally fascinated by the idea of acting without having to speak. While most of her interests inevitably fell by the wayside in favor of new pursuits, theater and drama stuck with her. She would later join the drama club in high school, and though she was inevitably disappointed by how little she was able to do, she'd take any opportunity to play an interesting non-speaking role.

Nia entered high school with a wide array of acquaintances, though very few close friends. She was delighted to find that Jeremiah was rejoining her at school, and the two fell back in together as though they'd never been separated, acting as close as siblings. It was only in high school that Nia came to the sudden realization that she was interested in girls. She had never given the matter much thought, as it seemed like a waste of time to her, but it quickly became clear to her that she was, in fact, a lesbian. She never bothered telling her parents of her realization, but never made any effort to hide it or avoid discussing it with others, either, seeing it as a simple fact of her life. Nia stopped cycling through hobbies quite so quickly in high school, sticking with things for longer periods. Her most recent obsession has been divination, particularly in the form of tarot and astrological charts. She doesn't believe in it whatsoever, but she finds it intellectually fascinating to play around with, and she finds the history of the subject to be even more interesting.

Nia continues to spend most of her time reading, researching, and learning from others, though she also continues to avoid most social situations, with the exception of drama club and ASL club, which she helped to found. Her grades are surprisingly mediocre considering her intelligence; she considers most school work to be a waste of time and prefers to spend her time researching things for herself, leaving her little time to study for exams or finish homework. She is full of random and often useless information and seems to have a random bit of trivia for any situation. Nia has strong opinions on a number of topics and always has the facts to back up her convictions, though she finds debate pointless due to how set others inevitably are in their beliefs. She makes an effort to spend time with and speak to people with significantly different beliefs and outlooks to her own to learn where they're coming from, though she rarely takes them seriously.

In general, Nia has a bad habit of not seeing other people as people so much as potential vehicles for more information, and has rather low empathy overall, though she has strong and genuine connections with and love for a select few. She is very capable of understanding the needs and feelings of others, but outside of her few close friends she rarely actually cares much about them. She has a special affection for anyone who takes the time and effort to learn ASL, though, and is always happy to hold a conversation in the language in any situation. Nia is generally considered an odd girl, if relatively harmless. Very few people know the extent of her medical problems, and Nia doesn't care to let them know. More than anything she hates being treated as something other, and is happiest when she can get away from the inevitable taunting or, worse, pity that inevitably accompanies her condition.

Advantages: Nia has a wide circle of acquaintances and is overall reasonably well-liked by the student body. She has a lot of knowledge on a wide variety of topics, which could potentially come in handy, though her practical skills are lacking. Her detachedness and relative lack of empathy for others may make it easier for her to escape the worst psychological consequences of the island.
Disadvantages: Nia suffers from a number of medical conditions, and should her esophageal stricture act up on the island she could potentially die of dehydration as a result. She is out of shape and incapable of doing much physical activity due to her breathing problems. Her muteness could serve as a major barrier between her and potential allies, especially if she doesn't have access to anything to write with.