Private Courier. Music Aficionado.
Former Student. Former sweeper. Involuntary Empathic Healer.
Family Outcast and Exile
An ordinary seeming young man at first glance, Mikkelus appears to be little other than a cycle courier riding an unusual recumbent tricycle. His lean body, toned by hundreds of miles spent on a cycle making deliveries each week, moves with the grace of a dancer and the stamina of a marathon runner.
Only with careful observation do some of his personality quirks come to light: he does not remove his cycling half-gloves to shake hands, seems to make a point of avoiding crowded areas, and all but flinches at every accidental contact with strangers. Too, he habitually avoids hospitals and clinics, to the point of walking on the other side of the street. (Except when he walks on the other side of the block, that is!)
Previously a sweeper in a local football club, Mikkelus hadn’t played enough to have established anything like local fame on the pitch. In the club locker room, he had been know to his teammates for three things: most likely to volunteer to coach in the peewee football program sponsored by the local club, most likely to get hurt while coaching the peewee programs, and most likely to be found warming the bench on the injured reserve list after getting hurt coaching the peewee program. How someone so graceful could be so accident prone was often a matter of speculation; it was rumored that he must have been in an abusive relationship with his girlfriend, or maybe a boyfriend, that regularly beat him.
What's not obvious is that his quirks and injuries are a result of his deep, dark secret: he is an empathic healer, from a long line of psychic and supernaturally gifted healers, with a dangerous flaw. Whereas most healers must concentrate to heal their patients, Mikkelus must use his willpower to avoid taking injuries or depression on himself whenever making flesh-to-flesh contact with someone not completely well. In a place filled with injuries and illness, he must use willpower just to enter the building , and willpower to stay in that environment for more than ten minutes.
To anyone who had seen him working with youngsters when he'd first arrived, it was obvious that he had adored the kids he coached. By all accounts, the feelings were mutual, since "his kids" rarely missed a practice or a game. Then, abruptly, after a five day long absence early in the summer of 2012, he quit soccer and coaching.
He
does not speak of what happened on the trip, though mentioning it to him results
in a look of sadness so intense that it nearly has a physical presence. Though
he cites economic necessity as the reason for withdrawing from the team and so
much of his previous life in town, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure
out something went seriously amiss on the trip. It's known that he departed with his pregnant fiancé to meet his parents
in Germany. Less known is that he returned, alone, three days before he and his
fiancé were due to return, no longer giving Vagus as a last name. Even more
curious was the wedding announcement in the Galway news, indicating his fiancé
had gotten married in Munich on the first of June, the day he after arrived, to
someone using a name that seemed quite common in his family.
A love for Skyah's music and an accidental touch that lifted her depression started a friendship, which deepened and led to indiscretion. For better or worse, this created a soul-bond between the two, a link so profound that if one should die, the other might immediately die from shock as well.
Mikkelus and Janessa had agreed to present the baby as their son to the world, including Mikkelus' parents. His mother, who had been hinting that she was ready to be a grandmother ever since the he had graduated from the upper grades, had no idea that her son had bonded with another and that Janessa's child was not his. Perhaps it would not have mattered; she was thrilled to meet the girl her son would settle down and marry, and doubly so to learn that the girl would soon bring a grandson into the world for her to spoil rotten.
The father, on the other hand, was far less thrilled. An accomplished mage, he could tell at a glance that his son had disregarded everything he’d been told about the dangers of giving himself to anyone but the woman he would marry; for all intents and purposes, his son had already married when he gave himself away and formed a soul-bond, and it was not with his future bride... totally unacceptable. Furthermore, since the 90 day waiting period imposed by Ireland would last longer than the pregnancy, the very idea that his grandson would be born out of wedlock absolutely appalled him; that sort of thing simply was not done by a member of the Vagus family. Ever. Certainly not by a son of his!
Three things of note happened as a result of the father’s displeasure. The first was that a more suitable match was provided for the girl in his new son, a being secretly created in love and purity, one that was, in every regard, the man she believed she was marrying. The next was taking the pair the trip to the Hauptstandesamt München (alien registrar’s office in Munich) where they were married the very next day (after filling out the proper forms).
And finally, in his wrath, the father cast his ineligible, compromised son out of the family, declaring him kinschrift: from that day forth, no member of the Vagus family by blood, marriage, fosterage, or adoption, could see or hear Mikkelus, save a more senior member of the Vagus clan. Nor could Mikkelus call on the Vagus family. So strong was the prohibition that Mikkelus could not even say what had been his family name.
At times, Mikkelus seems to spend nearly all of his waking hours working, often
taking the packages and deliveries far from town that nobody else wants to
handle. Much of the time, he
works as though his work was all he had left to cling to, his sole source of
identity or the only familiar thing left in his life. Other times, he calls in
unable to work; given the frequency with which he was injured playing soccer, or
the number of bruises he's been known to collect over the course of a day, it's
not too surprising that he he might need extra time to recuperate. Speculation
in the office ranges from abuse by a domestic partner to vitamin K deficiency,
or perhaps some disease that causes easy bruising.
Before leaving for Germany, Mikkelus made the thirty mile trip to Ashford castle, where he'd met and eventually proposed to his fiancé, nearly every day. During the week he frequently went via the Kylemore Abby . Since returning from Germany, he keeps well clear of Ashford. He does, however, often make the fifty trip to Kylemore Abby, sometimes staying for lunch, sometimes staying longer.
Cut off from everything else, he still retains the Sherer Touring model recumbent trike as his primary means of transportation for work and pleasure. And why would he not? The lever-propelled recumbent did not come cheap, representing four years of his savings. Other than Skyah's music, cycling is the only thing that moves him any more. Too, since he has never learned to drive a car (or gotten his drivers license), the other readily available options would be to walk or take public transportation; a courier on a public bus just doesn't cut it..
