Character sketch and interrogation -- Daniel Workman

Here is a character sketch with what I call an interrogation (although, ironically, it's done with open-ended questions so it's not really an interrogation):

Daniel (Daniel Workman)

Role in Story: Anna’s future partner; member of When Hearts are Mountains, Mari’s son

Occupation: Jack of all Trades; security 

Physical Description Tall, lanky, with long chestnut hair, light brown eyes, and café-au-lait skin. 

Personality: Low-key, gentle, bemused, righteous (not self-righteous). Jokes about being an outlaw. Has some baggage from No-Space detention.

Habits/Mannerisms: Touching/settling into objects to make sure they’re solid. On rare occasions, dissociating. 

Background: Daniel is the offspring of Mari, a woman of Lakota/African-American Archtype heritage, engendered for the Buffalo Soldiers in 1866. This makes him relatively young. He is one of the renegade Archetypes that left InterSpace 500 years before to visit Earthside, and one of the ones who never checked back in on InterSpace. (Most of the commune has origins in this exodus, as do Lilly and Adan. Others bounced in-between Earth and InterSpace like Luke. He spent 30 years in No-Space from 1920-1950, so he has no recall of that time. He particularly likes his Wild West Days from 1870-1895.  He was the one who suggested the commune build out in the high desert.

Internal Conflicts: At times, feeling like he’s lived too long but at the same time enjoying life; Does not know if he’s good relationship material with his dissociation.

External Conflicts: With Jude, who later betrays them to Free White State. With Anna when he discusses how his Nephilim son was born and talks about why he's not good for her.

Notes:

Me: Daniel, tell me about yourself.

Daniel: I am called Daniel, and in the world of men go by the name Daniel Workman. I am an Archetype, young at 200 years old. My mother is Mari, known as Mari Ettner in the world of men, and Valor Burris is my father. As an Archetype, I was born full-grown and able to participate in human culture, which I have. I have always found the West a haven from my early days on the frontier when someone who was half-black, half - Lakota was accepted at face value. Back then, I had an affair with a comrade; same-sex couplings do not produce offspring.

In 1920, not knowing that I had the potential to engender children, I visited a prostitute in Reno and had a child.  That child was Nephilim, of course, and ran away immediately. I did not know who he was until 2022, when Luke Dunstan found him on a farm in Nebraska and brought him here. Jude has taught us much about subsistence farming and founded our herd of Navajo-Churro sheep, which is big enough for plenty of  wool and occasional meat. We now know that Nephilim can live to over 100, although he is starting to show his age now and we estimate his lifespan will take him to 150 or maybe 200.

The Powers that Be arrested me soon after in 1920 — this was when the Triumvirate held power in the Council of the Oldest. The charge was engendering a Nephilim, and my sentence was thirty years in NoSpace. I believe it was done to break me; I later heard they tried to capture others but did not succeed. Perhaps I was the slowest and the weakest; I don’t know.

Me: I’m sorry to hear about your stint in NoSpace. You sound very upset about it.

Daniel: NoSpace is an evil place. No sound, no light, no touch, no time. No anchors. That could drive one crazy after a day, a week. I spent thirty years there. It took away a piece of me, the piece that keeps me rooted in the moment; I sometimes detach from the world and float in nothingness, and someone has to touch me and speak in my ear to bring me back. When I hear of the Triumvirate — who now spend their time in NoSpace — or any of their free minions, the vision turns to red and I dissociate. I’m told I yell a lot when that happens.

Me: You talk more than my usual interviewees.  You don’t need many prompts.

Daniel (*chuckle*). Mari says I could talk the ears off a mule, but Eldon tells me she doesn’t know a mule from a mosquito. 

Me: You all talk like cowboys.

Daniel. We’ve picked up Earthside speech mannerisms — partly because we can’t help but do it; particularly to provide protective coloration. I can talk like many, many types of humans.  

Me: Tell me about your relationship with Anna.

Daniel: Anna is quite an interesting person. She’s one minute pulling out her field notes and another minute laughing at something happening around her. She’s joyful, which is surprising despite what she’s gone through. When she gets mad, she’ll go toe-to-toe with me, and I appreciate that. She pulls me out when I dissociate. I don’t know if I can give her as much as she gives me, and that lessens my chances of bonding with her. Plus, what happens when she finds out I’m an Archetype?