Beautiful People: Skyler

            Out of the four characters that make up the Oddball team, Skyler is the only one that isn't a POV character. I don't know why. I guess I thought there'd be too many POV characters. I've considered giving Skyler her own book. One that either takes place before or after the Oddball series does. Both sides of her story are very elaborate and nobody in the Oddball series really knows what she's been through because she hardly ever talks about it.

         Otherwise, she's known as the small Shroobrian pilot who flies a staticlight for the Post. Also Rocky's girlfriend, though I never really think about using that exact term, but that is what she is.

1) What’s their favourite food? (Bonus: favourite flavour of chocolate!)

Hard boiled eggs and cinnamon sugar rolls. Back in Shroobree, when it was safe, she would wander the palace courtyard for her lessons and such. Her mother always packed hard boiled eggs with salt and cinnamon sugar rolls for her lunch. Skyler never tired of it and now associates it with safety and home.

2) What do they absolutely hate?

Violence, to an extent. She realizes that sometimes things like war is necessary. And she does love Rocky, who is always getting into fist fights. Other people’s violence when properly provoked she can overlook. But she herself is not a violent person. And a lot of people falsely think this is what she hates the most.

But really she hates always be so scared. She hates always running away and being a coward. And that’s what she is.

She hates what her country has become. She dislikes being hurt and having to hide and she hates death and sickness and darkness and small places. But she hates it even more when other people have to endure these things, she just hasn’t realized it yet.

3) What do they enjoy learning about?

Staticlights. They’ve always fascinated her with their fierceness and loyalty. How they can be so calm sometimes with electricity crackling through them. How they are such broken and angry creatures, and yet they can be healed and have peace. Everything about them. She really relates to them somehow.

4) Who is the most influential person in their life?

Commander of the Staticlight Elite (think the Shroobrian airforce). Unfortunately he doesn’t have a name yet. Her father was not a very good father, so the Commander is like her father figure. He taught her a lot about staticlights and let her hang out in in the staticlight keep.
 
5) What is their childhood fear?

The dark. Tight places. Being utterly lost and everyone leaving. Never being safe. To an extent, she lived through these kinds of this as a child.

6) What is something they have always secretly dreamed of doing, but thought impossible?

To be safe. To return to Shroobree and find that the civil war was only a nightmare, that the time when she was a kid has never changed. That everything was still right in the world.

7) What is something he is impractically afraid of?

Skyler cannot stand birds. Which is weird, because she likes flying. She rides on the back of a dragon. But birds. Birds are bad. So are snakes.

That everyone she loves will one day leave her. Whether leave, or die. Especially Rocky.

Tight places. She hates tight places. But she’s not exactly claustrophobic either. Because they don’t make her panic.

Being trapped, in general. But again, the feeling of no way out, doesn’t make her panic. Instead it makes her get over her fear and try to find a way out. It makes her think instead of shutting her brain off.

That she will be left somewhere in the dark for all the rest of her life. And not necessarily locked in a dark room or shut in a dark hole. But like the sun has gone out and she’s left to wander in some empty waste land for all the rest of her life alone.

8) Are they a night owl or morning person?

I’m not really sure, but I’d say night owl. Or at least I think so.

9) Do they say everything that pops into their head, or leave a lot unsaid?

Skyler hardly ever says anything. She leaves a lot unsaid. Rocky is the person she is closest to and he doesn’t even know her whole background. Not even half of it. He probably doesn’t know most of the things on this list that concern her past. He has no idea why she was always so scared and never said a word when he first met her. He has no idea she’s even of the family of the royal guard in Shroobree and she has an obligation to become the royal guard of the next king in Shroobree. He has no idea the oppression she’s faced. He doesn’t ask because he figures if she wanted to tell him she would, and to him it doesn’t really matter. He’d love her anyways. He’d rather not cause her more pain by bringing up something in her past that he knows was probably really horrible. Because at the same time, she doesn’t really know a lot about his past either.

10) What are their nervous habits?

She’s always nervous around people, so she definitely avoids eye contact. She gets really quiet and frozen. Her father was abusive and if her and her siblings ever made a sound or move at the wrong time, they were beat. She shrinks inside herself and has a hard time expressing herself. Because for someone who is so quiet, she can actually articulate very well when she is comfortable around friends.