Zherne

Zherne (Жерне/ظهران) is a boy from the Arabic area who migrated north to Muscovy as a child. He has no living family and his powers revolve around shadows.

Appearance
Zherne is a 17 year old male with silver-white hair and a single light blue eye. His right eye is covered by his hair, though he does wear a bandage over the eye underneath it. Zherne has pale skin, a part of his albinism, and is usually painted with a joking expression. He is on the shorter side, and fairly lithe.

In terms of clothing, he wears a light blue cap with a dark blue ribbon tied around the middle and ending off into two strands that hang off of his hat. Around his neck sits an ocean-blue scarf with white stars spanning across it, a flurry of silver moons hanging off the ends of the scarf. For clothing, he wears a dark blue undershirt, a tan jacket that comes together with two straps at the end of a triangle cut that ends in a circular shape, and a necklace with a silver wild sun lays around his neck. Zherne also wears a pair of tan pants and plain black boots for shoes.

Personality
Zherne likes to joke around and laughs often, even if it is at the expense of others. He can take a joke about himself, a part of him that his clumsiness lends a hand in making possible. Often times, Zherne may take a joke too far without any sort of remorse, though that is mostly due to the fact he cannot understand where the threshold between joking and bullying is.

He cannot understand crying, as he tries to avoid the act himself, and can be considered callous when it comes to sensitive emotions. This is due to his upbringing, and while he won't be able to completely understand why, he will try and make an effort to understand.

Underneath it all, Zherne is a fairly serious guy. In his opinion, there is nothing more important for a person than to be able to survive in the world. As such, he is willing to go above and beyond, even murdering others without a care, if it means he will be able to keep moving forward.

Background
Zherne grew up with his mother in an Arabic desert city after his father disappeared. He never knew the man, nor did he ever really care to, and his mother did not speak of him. His parents moved to the area from the north, having left for religious reasons that his mother never spoke of. The boy and his mother worked as servants for a local lord and lived in a small house on the outer edge of town. The pair stole food and necessities when need be, though the boy's mother always made sure to remind him that they only stole when they needed to to survive.

The child did not have any friends in the city, so it often came down to him protecting himself. Due to his albinism, many people in the area viewed him as a lower being and treated him poorly, choosing to shun or mock him. One evening, the boy and his mother returned home from work to find thieves looting their home. While Zherne hid outside, his mother went in alone to confront them. From the window, the boy watched as his mother was tortured and killed by the men, left to die in their ransacked home.

After his mother's death, Zherne became a nomad, taking what he needed and heading north on the winds of rumors that there were more people closer to his complexion up there. As he traveled, the boy stole when he needed to and did whatever he could to survive, learning about the world and the different kinds of people there were.

When he was thirteen, he murdered a man for the first time. After being cornered in an alleyway by a vicious assailant, the boy used his dagger to kill the man before he could kill him. Strangely enough, it seemed as if the other had been frozen for a moment. From there, Zherne realized that he could make people freeze if he wanted to by concentrating on their shadows.

The teen used this to his advantage, stealing more easily by utilizing his power. It was only one day, while in Muscovy, that the boy was found by a member of one of the local churches and taken in after being recognized as a priest. While originally not wishing to join, the albino was quick to give in at the promise of hot good and shelter.

Powers
Zherne can control people through their shadows. Most often he will freeze others, but if he concentrates, he can make them move or do certain things against their will.

Relationships

 * Cherno - The god who gave Zherne his power. They don't get along very well.
 * Cyrus - A friend to Zherne.
 * Belo - His previous self.

Trivia

 * As a child, his name was Dhahran (ظهران), after the city they lived in. As he moved on, he changed to use his second name, and the name his mother called him at home, Zherne (Жерне).
 * He speaks a number of languages, having grown up with a mother originally from Muscovy in an Arabic land and having traveled so far for so long.
 * His weapon of choice is a dagger that he keeps on him at all times.
 * Zherne prefers to be covered up, as he has a few ugly scars underneath his clothing from some close calls.
 * His favorite food is Machboos ala Dajaj.
 * His blood type is AB-.
 * Zherne had a ferret at one point named Akil (أكــل).

Quotes

 * "Thieves are not born, they are made. That's what Ommah always said."
 * "Huh...? Why are you crying? I was just playing a joke."