Name: Kieran Quinlan
Age: 9. Will be 10 in 2 months.
Hometown: Belfast, Ireland
Description: Kieran is a tall boy for his age, but extremely skinny. Not in the habit of measuring or weighing himself, he looks to be a bit under 5 feet tall and is probably at least 10 to 15 pounds underweight.
His delicate facial features are often slightly obscured by long, tangled waves of coppery brown hair. His hair reaches down to the middle of his neck, and is messily layered as if it were last cut by a blind person. Kieran doesn't seem to notice nor care.
His large, wide eyes are a sharp blue, honestly quite chilling to look at for a long period of time. This isn't helped by the fact that he doesn't seem to blink much. Over his eyes are light, thin eyebrows that are often raised in a quizzical expression.
The rest of his features are less fascinating. A small upturned nose, thin smirking mouth, cheeks and nose dotted with freckles. He has a faint scar on the left side of his jaw.
He walks with a noticeable limp, favoring his right leg.
Personality: Smart as a fox (in a street-smart sort of way) and similarly apt for getting into trouble, Kieran is possibly in the early stages of becoming a delinquent. He rarely thinks before he acts, a bit cocky in how much he trusts his own skills. He can be deeply emotional at times, often overreacting to small grievances. That said, he does have a streak of kindness in him, and is willing to help out anyone who makes it worth his while.
He has very little patience for those who lean too heavily on him, and isn't easily charmed by helplessness. He prefers friends who can work alongside him, and aren't too afraid of a good adventure.
Kieran has a vibrant imagination, fond of making up his own analogies and mythology. This also makes him a quite talented liar.
Overall, he's adventurous by nature, but is capable of compassion every now and again.
History: 17 year old Cara Quinlan dropped off her newborn son with her aunt and uncle only a few weeks after the baby was born. Nobody dared ask who the father was, and the Quinlan family was financially struggling as it stood, so little Kieran was an unwelcome arrival. Nevertheless, Ronan and Maeve Quinlan did their best to give the boy a decent childhood. That said, with both of them busy with work, there was plenty of opportunity for Kieran to run afoul of the rules.
On one such occasion, when he was about 8 years old, he and a few friends thought it would be fun to sneak into an old castle a few miles from the city. Finding the door locked, Kieran wasn't ready to give up and climbed in through an open window. Turns out that the window was positioned over a staircase, which led to an unexpected and injurious fall. His friends, quickly catching on to what had happened, selected a different window and were able to locate Kieran and carry him back home. They were able to give an explanation for Kieran's broken leg that didn't make it sound like they were trespassing, but Kieran's injury never healed all the way and he was stuck with a limp and occasional pain.
However, this incident clearly didn't teach the kid any lessons, as he went on to be just as reckless as before in the year and a half that followed. One fateful day on his way home from his second and final day of in-school suspension (following an incident involving flaming paper planes), he'd end up having another unexpected fall. But this time, he wouldn't have anyone to find him...