⊰• Harper Mae Dyson •⊱
LollyxBeans
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» B A S I C • I N F O R M A T I O N
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Nɪᴄᴋɴᴀᴍᴇ: Harper
Bɪʀᴛʜᴅᴀʏ: May 12
Aɢᴇ: Fifteen
Gᴇɴᴅᴇʀ: Female
Rᴀᴄᴇ: Demigod
» P H Y S I C A L • I N F O R M A T I O N
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Hᴇɪɢʜᴛ: 5'2
Wᴇɪɢʜᴛ: 140 lbs
Hᴀɪʀ Cᴏʟᴏʀ: Brown
Eʏᴇ Cᴏʟᴏʀ: Blue
Dɪsᴛɪɴɢᴜɪsʜɪɴɢ Fᴇᴀᴛᴜʀᴇs:
» Has a spattering of freckles across her nose
» Pale and light blue eyes
» Tattoo of a bird on her left wrist
» C H A R A C T E R • Q U I R K S
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Hᴀʙɪᴛs:
» Chews her nails compulsively.
» Eats one item on her plate completely before beginning another.
» Wrinkles her nose when she's confused.
» Sticks her tongue out when focusing.
Gᴏᴏᴅ Tʀᴀɪᴛs:
» Broad & open minded
» Honest
» Generous
» Hard working
» Imaginative
Bᴀᴅ Tʀᴀɪᴛs:
» Cusses. Often.
» Easily distracted
» Soft hearted
» Clingy
» Impulsive
Fᴇᴀʀs:
» Masks
» Dolls
Lɪᴋᴇs:
» Climbing
» Change
» Sunlight
» Flowers
» Getting her hands dirty
Dɪsʟɪᴋᴇs:
» Staying still
» Stagnation
» Winter
» Stuck up people
» Math
» I N N E R • W O R K I N G S
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Above all else, Harper is happy. It is something that her father has strove to accomplish for her throughout her entire life. Some would say that she was a bit spoiled in this regard, and in saying so they would be right. Tucker was never afraid of sacrificing something of his own for his daughter, and his family - this is something that he imparted to his daughter. Harper is a very generous soul, able to put herself second despite being spoiled as a child. Having been in a few poorer situations in her life, she can understand needing something to live rather well - and if she has something to spare that someone else could need, she has no reason to keep it to herself.
Like her father, Harper is very hard working. She likes to see things through once she has started them, and believes that a person's work is a person's worth. If they can't finish a simple job, after all, can you really trust them to do much else?
She isn't stubborn, though - Harper is aware that sometimes, some things just can't be done. She can accept change easily and readily, being a rather flexible and easy going person.
From all of her travels, Harper has become rather broad minded. She's experienced much in her fifteen years, and knows that different folks come from different strokes, but that's no reason to condemn them. Rarely will you find someone more open and accepting than Harper Dyson.
Sweet and kind, Harper has a very gentle soul. You'd be hard pressed to find a malicious bone in her entire body - at least, when it comes to human beings. With monsters, Harper is a bit less forgiving. She does, however, have a formidable capacity for forgiveness. If someone shows a true desire to change, she will extend a hand to help them.
Do not make the mistake of assuming this is weakness, though. This rose has thorns, and she isn't afraid to use them if she needs to. In defence of herself, her family, or her friends, Harper can be a fierce and determined opponent. One is not raised around truckers, after all, without learning a thing or two about standing up for yourself.
No amount of hard edged men and women could harden Harper's heart, however - she wears it on her sleeve and allows many inside of it, trusting easily and rather quickly. It is a risky business for someone so gentle, as many are apt to take advantage of her and some would think of it as an invitation to hurt her.
Once Harper lets someone in, it takes a lot to tear them away from her. She is a very clingy person thanks to her father's helicopter parenting. She's never really been alone before - despite having few friends while growing up, she always had at least her father, or Stacy near her. Harper despises being alone, and so she attaches herself to the people around her. This doesn't always go well, but if you're looking for a friend who will stand with you through thick and thin, Harper is your gal.
Harper doesn't let much get her down, though, preferring to look at the silver lining of situations rather than wallowing in the bad. Pessimism never got anyone anywhere, she believes, and so she sees no reason to start being a rain cloud over the rest of the world's parade.
She does, of course, have her own moments of self doubt and worry. She's never been an overly effeminate creature - even her favoured hobby of gardening is a little on the rougher side. Worms, dirt, compost and fertilizer aren't exactly things that a proper lady is willing to shove her hands into, after all. Thus, Harper feels separated from some of her peers - not only thanks to that, but also thanks to her general detachment from popular culture. Raised on country music and old rock and roll, Harper has scarcely heard of Rhianna and One Direction, and you can often stump her with references to games or newer movies or TV shows.
It doesn't help that most people that she meets immediately ask why she has a boy's name. She's getting kind of sick of answering that question...
One thing that Harper has never been able to shake would be her inability to focus on one thing at a time. Easily distracted and also easily swayed, Harper's desire to experience as much as she can as quickly as she can lends her a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to needing to focus or to make decisions. She usually goes with her gut, though, relying on impulse to make her decisions for her. This...usually goes... alright... Sometimes...
In any case, despite all that has happened in her life, you can safely say that Harper is a well adjusted individual who will not go crazy and axe murder her classmates, and at the end of the day, isn't that what matters most?
» L I F E • S T O R Y
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Tucker Dyson had never been anyone's first choice. The middle child, average his whole life, he had resigned himself to a life lacking in magnificence. At least, magnificence in anyone's 'normal' sense of the word.
Born in the a** crack of nowhere, somewhere in Georgia, Tucker's one desire as a child was to get out of his backwater home town. As opposed to dreaming of Hollywood or running away, though, the down to earth middle child got himself a respectable job as a truck driver.
Being behind the wheel of a big rig offered Tucker the chance to go to many places - all across the united states and sometimes past it's borders into Canada and Mexico, he made a name for himself as a responsible, hard working driver. He did his logs to a T, had a record of clean driving, and admittedly lacked the temper that had become characteristic of so many drivers. Finding jobs was never hard for him, even when a few of the companies he'd been working for went under.
Through his job, Tucker was able to see all of the things he'd only ever dreamed of seeing. Snow, the white house, the empire state building - he made an effort to hop from job to job, simply to get the furthest from Georgia as he could. He lived out of his truck, and kept himself bound to no one.
As far as he was concerned, it was perfect. Then, his father died.
Despite having two older siblings, Tucker was found to be the only one who could 'afford' to go back home to care for his mother and her two remaining children. He was only a truck driver, after all, and he had always been such a pushover. He wouldn't mind!
In actuality, Tucker minded very much, but he wasn't the type to turn his back on family. Dutifully, the then twenty two year old returned to care for his mother, parking his truck in the unused barn and resigning himself to captivity.
Tucker took care of basically everything - the only one in the house with a license, he went into town for his mother and fetched what she needed. He ferried everyone to and from church, did the heavy lifting, the harder chores, and kept the old farm house from falling apart. All without a single complaint, of course. When night fell, though, Tucker refused to stay within the house. He slept in his truck, and kept it immaculate. One day, he was sure that he would be able to leave again.
He was not wrong, but it was quite some time until he was able.
Tucker's mother had never been a very capable woman. Hit by a car when he was just nine years old, she suffered from memory problems and could barely walk. She was a sweet and kind woman, though, who always did her best to do what she could. No amount of effort could make up for the fact, however, that she did need near constant attention and assistance in her day to day life.
A wealthy widow, Tucker also felt as if his mother required protection from those who would take advantage of her. She was still a beautiful woman, and she'd received quite the settlement from her accident, not to mention the life insurance she'd collected when her husband died.
When Stephen showed up, Tucker was less than eager to let him near his mother. She was an adult, though, and fully capable of making her own decisions, much to Tucker's initial chagrin. In the end, though, Stephen more than proved himself to Tucker. By the time Tucker was twenty seven, his mother was married, and he was finally able to begin working again.
All was well - or rather, Tucker thought it was. Things never seemed to really go his way, though.
On the eve of his departure from his home, he was returning to his truck when he heard what he thought must have been some animal crying - because there was no damn way there was a baby in his cab. Sure enough, though, when he clambered up and into the truck, that was exactly what he found, plunked in a small bundle on the front seat.
A baby girl. She settled when Tucker lifted her up, and instantly the man was hit by a wave of confusion. Where had she come from? How had she gotten in? The doors had been locked, to both the barn, and the truck. Besides that, why here? Why him? There were a thousand and one better places to abandon a baby if you were going to be callous enough to do so. Namely, hospitals.
It wasn't until a very confused Tucker carried the baby girl into the house to his mother and stepfather that they found the note tucked inside her swaddling blankets. She had no name, but by some miracle, she was his. Thinking back on it, he supposed the timeline made sense - there had been a woman, about nine months ago, with whom he'd had a brief romance. She'd disappeared, though, and he hadn't seen nor heard from her until the note.
His mother was furious. How could a son of hers be a deadbeat father?! How could he be so careless as to create a child, who was now motherless? In the rush of the initial shock, she certainly ripped Tucker a new one. For the first time in his life, though, he did not lie down and take it. He'd taken every precaution with that woman, and had honestly intended for things to turn out differently, but she had disappeared. When his mother switched tactics and demanded to know what he planned to do with his new found child, however, Tucker lost his steam.
He had no idea.
Stephen turned out to be the calm one in the group, helping Tucker through his decision. His mother was willing to take the child in for him so he could leave and go back to work again, if he so wanted. Tucker could not do that, though - to the child, or his mother. Adoption was mentioned, but he brushed that away. She was his. He had to take care of her. That ideal right there made the decision for him. Tucker's departure was delayed, and he stayed in town to care for his little girl.
For three years, they remained, raising Harper carefully. It was not easy to be a single father in such a small town, and rumours flew as to who the mother was. Tucker bore the weight of the tales dutifully, though he could not say that their accusations did not hurt. They ranged from that he'd been taken advantage of by some lying hussy to the positively scandalous and unrepeatable. For three years, he bore the brunt of their words. Then, as it came time to put Harper into pre-school... he began to consider the effect those words would soon have on his daughter.
Once she was able to understand their meaning, once she was able to hear their poison herself, what would that do to her?
She had become such a shining and happy child in the three years he'd been gifted with her. He couldn't let the small minds of his home town ruin her. They'd done enough to him - he wasn't going to let them at his daughter.
So, against much advice from his mother and the other busybodies, Tucker got his truck back up and running and loaded both him and his daughter into it. He wasn't staying here. He didn't know where he was going, but anywhere had to be better than where he was now.
It was his intention to find a small place somewhere quiet to raise Harper, but he could not deny that his job was not the sort that one could keep whilst raising a child. He was away, and often, sometimes for weeks on end. While it was true that he could take shorter jobs, those paid less, and were harder to come by after the eight years that he had been out of work.
It was in Indiana that he met Stacy Jones - he'd managed to find a small apartment near a small logging company who promised him steady work and short trips. He only needed to ferry the wood to the lumber mill for processing in the next town over. It wasn't bad, but he still needed someone to care for Harper while he was gone. It was in his exhaustive search for a proper babysitter that he found Stacy, and both he and Harper fell in love with her.
He was nervous, at first, leaving Harper alone. She had never been away from him before, and he anticipated trouble. There was nothing to fear, though.
As any four year old child would, Harper wailed and cried as her father drove away. Stacy managed to dry her tears, though, assuring her that he would be back and that they would have lots of fun while he was gone. She coaxed the little girl inside, and soon Harper had managed to forget her woes entirely. All was well when Tucker finally returned, and thus began a steady life for the small family of two.
Harper grew up fairly well adjusted, all things considered. When she was young, she didn't have a hard time making friends. Her naturally kind and generous nature earned her people's trust quickly and easily, and her earnest and honest attitude made her many a teacher's favourite.
Though he was often gone, Tucker ensured that his daughter never felt unloved, and in his absence, Stacy did the same. They made up a small, strange little family.
It was when Harper was five that the word 'mother' slipped from her lips, directed at Stacy accidentally. Until then, it had never occurred to Tucker what Stacy had become to his daughter - what she had become to him. The idea grew on him steadily from there, and after some hushed conversations with his daughter, he decided to take the plunge. Happily, Stacy accepted. By the end of that year, Stacy and Tucker married, and none of the three could be happier.
Such is the life of a halfblood, though, that such happiness cannot last.
Secure in the thought that Stacy and Harper were safe at home without him, Tucker began to take longer and longer trips. It wasn't that he yearned for freedom as he once had - they simply paid better, enabling them to afford more. He wanted to give his new family the best lives that he could, and the further he drove, the easier he could accomplish this. Neither Harper nor Stacy minded. Though they missed Tucker terribly when he was gone, they had each other.
As Tucker prepared to leave for his longest trip in thirteen years, he kissed his wife and daughter goodbye, not an ounce of worry on his shoulders.
He had barely made it halfway before his dispatch was able to reach him. There had been an accident. A horrific one.
More than a few traffic laws were broken as Tucker raced back home to his family, praying for things to not be as bad as they had sounded over the radio. When he arrived, though, he found that this was not so.
Their home was destroyed. Burned down and completely gone.
All that remained was Harper. Stacy had not made it.
All attempts by authorities to learn what had happened were futile. Harper was of little help, saying that a monster had broken into the house and tried to eat her from her bed. She told her father that he had started the fire when Stacy had tried to fight him off, saying that he would cook and eat both her and her step-mother.
Harper told a lot of stories, about that day - about demigods and monsters, of goddesses and eating children, but very few of them made sense. Struggling to cope, Tucker couldn't handle it. His wife was dead. His home was gone. And now, it seemed, his daughter was damaged because of it.
Harper was now faced with something she had never encountered before - loneliness, and the distinct lack of her father in her life. Tucker withdrew from his daughter as he tried to deal with his wife's death, leaving her in the care of several therapists as they tried to work out what was 'wrong' with her. It was here that she was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, but the doctors could not prove much else other than that. She was reasonably upset after her step-mother's death, but she was not developing or showing any signs of any other disorders. She was just...sad, and likely had an overactive imagination. She could not handle the truth of her mother being murdered by a child abductor, and thus reasoned it into being a monster. The rest was the result of this.
As time passed, Tucker came to realize that he was not the only one who had lost Stacy. His daughter was now without a mother, and if he kept up the way he was going, she would be without a father as well. Picking himself up off of the floor, he steeled himself, and worked to become the father that Harper needed.
For quite some time, life was hard. Tucker was reluctant to go far from his daughter, even pulling her out of school to keep her safe. They lived in their truck on a lot a few blocks away from where their home had once stood, and Tucker became something a little worse than a helicopter parent. Harper went nowhere, and did nothing, without him at her side.
Eventually the school board appeared and told Tucker that he either needed to send his daughter back to school, or teach her himself. He chose the latter, keeping her at his side where she could not be hurt.
Near her father, Harper was careful to watch her words. Speaking of the monster upset him. It made him give her that look, as if she were...crazy. She knew she wasn't, though - she knew what she had seen, what had really happened. She was seven. Not stupid.
She and Stacy had spent the day tending to the garden - it had been her idea to grow the flowers and the plants, to bring colour and life to their drab yard. They had been growing like crazy - as it turned out, Harper had quite the green thumb. After a long day spent out in the sun weeding and tending to the plants, she'd been put in the bath to clean off the dirt on her hands and everywhere else she'd managed to get it. They'd had dinner, watched a movie - a normal night. Right up until Stacy had tucked her in and left her to go downstairs and clean up.
Then, something strange had crept in from outside her window - it had at first looked like a man, but as it whispered that it would eat her, and Harper had screamed, that visage changed. Contorted, into something that she had only seen while peeking toward the horror section of their local movie rental store. A monster.
Drawn by Harper's scream, Stacy had arrived just in time. Armed with a kitchen knife she attacked the creature, embedding the knife deep into it's shoulder. It had done little to stop the monster, though, who wasted no time in setting fire to her bed. It had screeched about cooking them. She could still remember the fire licking up the sheets toward her, her own inability to move. If it had not been for Stacy, she doubted that she would have.
Stacy had snatched her up and cradled her close, fleeing the room chased by a column of fire that consumed everything in it's path. They had barely made it to the door before Stacy had cried out - the creature had gotten her. Bitten her, and poisoned her.
Stacy hadn't gone down easily, though - she'd made it to the living room, and more specifically, the gun case. With Harper in one arm and the gun in the other, she made a decision.
Harper had ran while Stacy shot. She'd left her mother to die.
Worst of all, she had no one to talk to about it. Her father didn't want to hear it. So...Harper said nothing. She refused to believe, however, that she was wrong.
Of all the ways to be proved right, Harper wishes to this day that being attacked by a pack of two headed dogs was not how she convinced her father that she was not insane. That was exactly how it happened, though. Walking through the parking lot of a local diner, headed back to the truck, the dogs had appeared from what seemed like nowhere. Even while running, Tucker could not deny that they definitely had two heads.
The wheels of his big rig made short work of them, and although he knew it was a bad idea to stop, Tucker could not help but go back to double check. The first thing he noticed? They did, in fact, have two heads. The second? They weren't dead. Faster than he knew he could move, he hopped back into his truck and fled the scene.
To say the least, Harper's "I told you so" didn't do the situation justice.
Finally, she was able to have the conversation with her father about what had really happened the night Stacy had died. Finally, he considered her words as truth. From the story, two things stood out to him. Demigod, and a name.
_________[Goddess name here].
He hadn't heard it in years, but he still recognized it on the spot. The woman he had fallen in love with, the one who had given him Harper... how had the creature known her name?
He felt as if he was missing something, but thought that he would perhaps find the missing piece in the letter that had been delivered with his daughter. So, bundling her up, Tucker brought them both back down to Georgia. Always a fan of photo albums and keepsakes, his mother certainly did still have the letter and the envelope it had come in.
While Tucker read the letter, he left Harper to play with the envelope, wanting her to feel involved. To his surprise, it was her that found a second note, written on the inside of the letter's packaging.
Carefully, Tucker unfolded what was inside, and what he found was the truth. Greek goddesses, demigods, monsters that wanted to eat his baby... it was a lot to take in, but after the two headed dog incident, he was ready to believe a lot.
He knew that he had to protect his daughter, but he didn't want to leave her at some random academy in the middle of nowhere. Neither of them was quite ready for that, yet. He decided to make her a little harder to find, a little harder to track. By travelling around in his truck with him, surely they would be safer than if they kept still and waited to be found.
Bidding his mother goodbye and taking the letters with him, just in case, Harper and Tucker began their new lives as nomads. Tucker took jobs as he used to, with one difference - Harper was with him for everything, now.
Though she missed her mother, and though things were certainly weird, Harper had to admit that she loved her new life. Home schooling was much less difficult than regular schooling, for her, and she got to see many things that most kids her age weren't able to. She loved travelling, loved to see new places and learn new things. She also found that the truck drivers that frequented the truck stops that were their havens on the highway weren't as bad as everyone made them out to be. Some were creepy and smelly, sure, but most were only too happy to entertain the little girl on the CB radio who filled her father's truck with wild flowers.
Things weren't without their difficulties, though - Harper found it difficult, now, to make lasting friends. Always on the move, restricted from phones and internet thanks to the horrible discovery that it made her easier to find, it wasn't as if she could keep in contact with them. Being in a transport made snail mail hard to come by. Not only that, but there were certain things that her father couldn't exactly help with. He could try, and he certainly did, but all this resulted in was awkward conversations about Harper's body that ended in her hiding in the bunk for a few hours hoping to erase the conversation from both memory and existence.
It wasn't a bad life, though, and ultimately, Harper and Tucker were happy. Eventually, though, they were found by a Satyr. He explained that Harper would be safer in the camp, where she could learn to protect herself and could make friends. It took a bit of convincing, and it was a decision that took a few weeks to make, but eventually both Harper and Tucker conceded the point. Loading the Satyr into the cab of his truck, Tucker drove them both to the camp and bid his daughter goodbye.
Now, Harper is a year round student, with few intentions of that changing any time soon. She misses travelling, but here there is earth for her to dig her roots into. She can have more than a dixie cup full of hastily picked wildflowers, here, and there is enough to entertain her for the next long while. Not bad, as far as she's concerned.
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