Sarina O'Leary

Sarina O'Leary

OOC
Member name: Gwen
How you found us: Ad hopping
Other characters: none
Roleplay experience: 7+ years
Activity level: should be online daily
Code word: Verified by Bee.

Basics
Full name: Sarina O'Leary
Gender: female
Age: 17
Divine Parent: Poseidon
Powers: Hydrokinesis, Communication, Atmokinesis
Playby: Marzena Godecki

Personality
General personality:
On first glance, Sarina might come across a little reserved and moody, though that is just the outside shell. When she first arrived at Camp Halfblood, she usually drew back from the others, loving to spend time on her own, but then she would get her moments again when she almost craved for someone to be with her. These mood changes confused her most of all herself, and she tried her best to overplay them and was glad when they died down a little.Once she feels at home with someone she shows a certain stinging and dry wit that may offend or make you laugh, depending on how much you can take. She has had a hard time settling into the camp and accept that she is not what she always thought she was and that she ought to remain at this camp so far from where she comes from. Sarina has a very distinctive view on what is right or wrong and she will not hesitate to make her standing point known and fight for it. She might not be the best diplomat, but others may rely on her to put the finger on the sore spot and bring things up that go wrong, so they don't have to do it themselves. As she can also argue her cases well, this has earned her a certain standing in the camp and her cabin.

Her refuge, especially on bad days, is and will always be the sea. It is there she feels most at home, especially in the company of her 'friend', a humpback whale she calls Miolmór, who has declared himself a bit of her care-taker when she's inside the water. It is underwater where she can forget her homesickness, or the confusing things going on at camp. Catch her on a good day and you will have a loyal friend who would swim to the ends of the world to come to your aid, catch her on a bad day and you might need patience and goodwill not to get fed up with her.
One thing she is also very passionate about is the wellbeing of maritime life and the impact humans have on the eco system. She can really get riled up about oil spills, trailing nets and sonar pollution – you better not stand on the wrong side of this conflict when she is anywhere near. It's one of the few times you can really catch Sarina losing her temper.

Likes:
the ocean, exploring underwater, swimming with Miolmór, stargazing, seals, Ireland and its culture, speaking Irish, having a debate / word fight
Dislikes:
The US, Camp Halfblood (it's complicated... it's grown on her somehow), pollution, greed, liars, missing home, having to stay away from water for too long
Goals: To one day return to Ireland without fear of persecution, Make the best of her time here, gain more control over her abilities
Fears: That she might not be able to leave camp ever again, that something will happen to Miolmór, monsters, losing her connection to the ocean

History
Claimed?: yes
Camp experience: 4 years
Mortal parent: Noreen O'Leary
Other relatives: Fergus O'Leary (grandfather), Cormac MacFarden (uncle)
History:
The area Sarina originates from is called Gaeltacht – one of very few regions in south and west Ireland where the first language is still Irish Gaelic, supported and ordered by the Irish government. Returning to the old language for many meant also returning to (or continuing for that matter) the old livestyles and their beloved culture. In a small village consisting only of a few cottages by the sea on the Dingle Peninsula there lived a fisherman, also operating the lighthouse, with his daughter Noreen. Noreen was deeply in love with the sea and spent years to learn apnoe diving, wanting to study marine biology as soon as she came of age. During her summer holidays she however always returned to the peninsula and it was in one of those holidays she encountered another apnoe diver – or so she thought – while exploring an old shipwreck. He had come out of nowhere and there was an alien beauty and elegance about him that made Noreen think he might not be all that met the eye. He never told her his name, but continued to pop up randomly whenever she was in the water. Not long and she fell for his mysterious charm.

They had a passionate affair during this long summer, but one day before she had to leave for university again, he told her that she should not expect him to be there when she returned next time, but that he would leave her something to remember him by. What that meant she discovered a few months later, realizing she was pregnant. Having a baby and being unmarried was still a big deal in Catholic Ireland and even more so where Noreen came from, so it took a lot of courage to come clean to her father. When she told him about the mysterious man in the sea however, he started to hum an old song, which Noreen recognized as „The Maiden and the Selkie“. It only occurred to her then who the man might have been. A selkie prince! A creature, half seal and half man, rumoured to live off the shores of Ireland and Scotland. Had it been a normal man, Noreen might have faced difficulties and scorn from her surroundings, but the people around Coum Dhíneol accepted the story of the selkie prince without much battering of their eyelids.

The stories about Noreen and her mysterious lover blossomed even more as soon as the baby was born and started to show an unusual affinity for water. It began crying and heating up like in a fever, if it was kept away from a bath or a pool for too long, it seemed to be able to hold its breath for an impossibly long time under water, though it never turned into a seal. That, however, everyone was convinced of, must be because her mother had been mortal. There ought to be a mix somewhere, right?
So Sarina grew up in the knowledge that she was different, but sheltered in the mythical beliefs of her people, accepting her in their own little way. She was even seen as a token of good luck. It never occurred to her that it might not be true what they said.

One day, when she was just about eight years old, an accident nearly cost her her young life. She had been playing on a high cliff near the Coomenole beach, letting a selfmade kite soar high above her, when a sudden gust of wind tore so strongly at the kite that it pulled her over the cliff and into the sea. She hit the water surface so hard she lost consciousness and would have been in trouble even with her water powers, had she not been rescued by a humpback whale on its journey through the atlantic. The first thing she remembered when waking up was being propped up securely on the whale's large snout, while an inward 'voice' – more feelings than actual words – assured her that she was safe, that he would look out for her. From that day on, the humpback whale – Miolmór in Irish – became her faithful companion. Even though he still followed his species' migration patterns, he stayed off the Irish shore as long as he could manage and when he was there, he and Sarina met daily. With him, she explored the ocean around Southwest Ireland to the deepest depths, learning to love the ocean even more. Each year he returned, being awaited eagerly.

Then, however, a shadow fell on her happy life, a shadow she had never foreseen. Sarina lived remotely, but some things just couldn't be hidden from those entities that searched for it. When she was nearing her thirtheenth year, she was attacked on her way home from school by some creature she couldn't describe anything else than monstrous. She escaped it by mere luck and dashed towards the shore, where she encountered her uncle Cormac. Disturbed, he tried to calm her down, but she told him that she needed to leave immediately, because she was chased by a monster that had tried to kill her. Miolmór in her mind urged her to follow him somewhere far away, to accompany him on his journey across the Atlantic, where he hoped no one would harm her. There was only time to tell her uncle to send Sarina's mother her love. She even left her clothes, carrying her smell on the shore, wrapping herself in a makeshift dress consisting of losely spun rough linen, something the irish fishers used for carrying tools around.



It nearly broke her heart to leave Ireland behind, but she was convinced that it would only be for a short while, that once the whales returned northeast again, whatever had been chasing her would be long gone. How wrong she was!
The weeks and months travelling westwards in company of her faithful friend, Sarina considers one of the happiest of her life, despite the circumstances. She was now fully in her element and learned to live in and with the ocean, became a part of it even. But Miolmór told her she couldn't stay with him forever, that he would bring her to shore, to some people who could look after her. She didn't want to, but she obeyed. She was only a few days out of water, straying along the shoreline of a land she had heard of but never thought of visiting, when once again she was attacked by a strange creature.

This time she was saved in time by a strange man, walking quite funnily as if his legs did not fully belong to his body. He told her that he ought to bring her to a camp where other young people like her lived – and with a few well-placed words he tore down the world she had been living in. All her life, Sarina had firmly believed that her father had been a selkie prince and that one day she might even be crowned princess of the sea like the stories told – but now this strange man told her that her father in fact would have been a Greek God and that she herself was a Demigod.
It was hard to believe and even harder to accept, and so Sarina followed him only very unwillingly. Everything around her was so different from the quaint and beautiful ways of Ireland, she didn't like the idea of being a demigod, she didn't like being shut together with a bunch of other kids, missing her time alone with only her whale and the sea, she didn't even like their peculiar twang of language. At home, Sarina's first language had been Irish and only her second English, and as she was seen as part of ancient Irish culture, the people around her had encouraged her to speak as little English as possible.

But things come as they come and Sarina soon learned that raging against the turn her life had taken wouldn't make it go away. She tried to adjust, even to make friends – and was succesful in some parts. Not too long after her arrival, Poseidon claimed her as his own and being considered an offspring of one of the 'big three', she developed a certain standing. Four years passed, with her growing more and more accustomed to her new life. However, the old dream of returning to Ireland is still kept alive in her heart.