Derecho (Ahren)

derecho is a 19-year-old agender sandwing/seawing mutt currently living on the sand kingdom coast. after somehow surviving a derecho right after thons hatching, derecho was considered cursed in thons town of butcher falls and blamed for the destruction of most of the town and the death of thons father. after moving away from butcher falls with xer mother, derecho became a fish merchant with her until her death. ae turned to art and writing to cope with aer mother's death, and has been able to turn that into a career. derecho is now a minor celebrity in pyrrhia, but is completely oblivious to that. 
derecho is my entry for bronzerattle's natural phenomena-based oc contest. please don't steal xem, as i've spent a lot of time working on xem and am quite proud of their overall concept/backstory. additionally, if you are struggling with derecho's pronouns, here's a good guide to neopronouns, their history, and their usage. 
== appearance==
*most of derecho's body is a sunny yellow
*however, there are also shades of orange and blue throughout
*face is mostly orange, with aer neck being orange blending into green blending into said sunny yellow
*tip of aer tail is blue, with some green.
*most of xer legs are yellow, but xer left right leg is green and blue.
*xer back is like aer neck: orange blending into green blending into yellow.
*derecho's face and snout is quite chaotic, with spots of dark blue and yellow blending together to make a nice shade of blue.
*has weird ears. they seem almost feathery, with their tips being blue and the base being red, meeting together to be yellow.
*thons wings are orange and green, with reddish tips.
*thons sail is orange with splotches of green and blue.
*overall thons coloration is like someone just blended a lot of tropical colors with a watercolor brush.
*has teal eyes and strange black tear-like markings under each eye.
*at first glance, derecho seems more like a weird sandwing. however, xer hybrid heritage is shown clearly in xer bright colors and lack of a tail barb.
* clearly a hybrid, but has blood from so many tribes that it's hard to figure out exactly what second tribe derecho belongs to.
*doesn't have a recognizable scale pattern. it somewhat resembles the seawing one, but without glowscales and gills.
*thons said is kind of messy and is kind of a mix of a sandwing and seawing one.
*very averagely sized. not particularly tall or short, not particularly thin or muscular. blends in easily with many crowds.
*doesn't have much to offer in terms of weapons or special abilities either. would be useless in a fight. 
*often seems disinterested or aloof, and has body posture that suggests that.
*kind of forgettable, but has a very strange look in thons eyes. both haunted and wise, it's hard to explain.
*doesn't like wearing jewelry much, but has two piercings in thons left ear; a hanging black earring and a black stud earring.
*sometimes has paint splatters on thons talons, but is something of a clean freak and cleans thonself whenever thon can.
*you know how like pet owners often resemble their pets? well derecho definitely resembles aer parrots.
==personality==
*derecho is probably unlike any dragon you've met before. didn't have many friends growing up, and spent most of aer teenage years alone with aer mom.
*doesn't understand social cues very well and is incredibly behind in terms of pop culture, ae forgets who the queen of the sandwings is most of the time.
*ae is very sarcastic- sometimes too sarcastic, seeming too serious and accidentally offending other dragons. refuses to apologize to the dragons either.
*is pretty horrible at apologizing, and has never really had to apologize for anything either. coupled with the sarcasm, this makes derecho seem genuinely mean
*xe is genuinely naive and doesn't really know much about the world apart from the little bubble xe lives in.
*derecho is very wary of other dragons though, and feels like every dragon xe talks to is out to get xem.
*however, derecho doesn't really care much about other dragons' opinions of thon at this point. this isn't even thon being overconfident or anything, thon genuinely does not care.
*after being ostracized and ignored for thons childhood, thon has had enough of caring too much about what others think of thon and just. tries to accept thonself as thon is
*derecho cannot handle stressful situations at all. thon kind of just- shuts down and blocks everything out until thon is ready to emerge out of thons shell
*struggles with handling xer emotions in general honestly. never learned as a dragonet, and xer mother had little experience with teaching dragonets life lessons and was ill-equipped to face others' emotions.
*when the situation is particularly horrible, derecho goes into a deep depressive state. xe feels numb for weeks at a time and someone needs to coax xe out of xer depression, that someone often being xer mother.
*kind of a scaredy cat? scared of a lot of random things. scared of swimming, scared of storms, scared of strong wind, etc. is something of a homebody to deal with these fears
*is extremely blunt, and doesn't like lying. likes saying things as they are and likes hearing dragons say things as they are
*knows enough social cues to not straight up tell a horrible dragon that well, they're a horrible dragon- sometimes it's hard, though. however, xe means every compliment xe says, and genuinely tries to find something they like about every dragon xe sees.
*some consider derecho to be cold or distant, but they just don't know xe well enough. xe is very attentive and tends to notice things other dragons don't, both about them and the world they live in.
*oftentimes derecho's hard stares and hard silence is misinterpreted as ae being pissed but they're just intensely observant. 
*conversation, surprisingly, flows easily with aem. derecho hates awkward silences and tries to contribute something good to a conversation that can keep it flowing. 
*derecho is also quite caring. thon becomes attached to things quickly, and is very gentle with things thon cares about. thon hates violence, injuries, and things being hurt or broken in general and is very careful in general.
*not very materialistic. does not care for money or comfort and just lives with the bare minimum. and that's fine for thon, honestly.
*hates messes but never really has many things to make a mess anyway.
*additionally, derecho hates fame. xe is very awkward in front of a large group where everyone's attention is on xe, and would rather just not live with the pressure and not give in to the pressures coming from others.
*although sarcastic and blunt at surface level, derecho is a caring dragon with strong morals. you just need to dig a little deeper to understand ae.
==history ==
ae is named after a derecho, a massive land-based storm characterized by a long line of strong thunderstorms with hurricane-force winds and flash floods.
one swept through aer small town, butcher falls, during aer childhood. this storm actually killed xe's father, beacon. caught up the disaster, xe's mother, sandstone lost her egg. the residents of butcher falls searched for sandstone's egg for days, yet doubted the egg could survive the storm that destroyed most of their community- yet miraculously, a tiny dragonet was found that looked strikingly similar to beacon. somehow, the dragonet had hatched during the storm and survived by itself for a few days. as such, sandstone's dragonet was known as the derecho dragonet, which eventually turned into just derecho.
derecho's dragonethood was... weird. thon grew up in a small town where literally everyone knew each other, the rumor mill spread like wildfire, and conformity to normality was key. unfortunately, thon was a constant reminder to the rest of the town of thons late father, who was actually the mayor at some point. derecho always had a weird stigma surrounding xe- many dragons considered xe as cursed and unnatural, for surviving the storm that destroyed everything else. some even wished that beacon had survived the storm instead of his strange dragonet, and blamed the entire storm on poor derecho. 
dragonets didn't want to be friends with derecho- what if their fathers died too? adults didn't want to associate with derecho or sandstone- what if the storm returned because of the two? although sandstone was generally a no-nonsense kind of dragon that didn't really believe in superstition, after years of being stigmatized, the town's opinions started to wear on her. she decided to move away with derecho and live alone closer to the coast, a few hours away from butcher falls. sandstone's fishing business took off a lot more after she moved, surprisingly (or maybe unsurprisingly). 
moving away from the town that all of her family and all of her late husband's family grew up in was incredibly hard but at the end it was worth it for sandstone and derecho's mental health. derecho helped thons mother with her fishing business for a few years. thon never really had a strong connection to fish, but it was a good source of income and thon was good at it. derecho's favorite part of the business, though, was being able to visit major cities to sell fish. cities fascinated derecho. having only lived in mild isolation and in a small town, cities were unfathomably foreign to xe. xe loved the anonymity cities provided, but knew xe could never survive in a city by xemself. 
stuff actually went well for a few years! sandstone and derecho were happy together, without judgmental neighbors and being free to be themselves. however, disaster struck- as it always does. the derecho came back.
since derecho and xer mother lived near the coast, they were particularly at risk. although they'd survived small hurricanes and strong thunderstorms, this second derecho was massive and probably stronger than the last one. derecho and sandstone just barely survived the storm- and i mean it. their house was in shambles, they lost most of their stuff, and worst of all, sandstone had gotten severely injured. sandstone could have perhaps survived their injury if not for it getting infected. a simple broken leg became gangrenous, which could not be treated as neither derecho nor sandstone could arrange transportation to the nearest surgeon in time. 
sandstone died when derecho was fifteen years old, and was buried in her family plot in butcher falls. 
derecho struggled a lot with processing thons mother's death. to thon, sandstone was everything- thons only parent and only friend. ae couldn't shake a chronic emptiness ae had inside of aerself instead of grief. ae felt- numb. and yet, instead of trying to find joy in something else, derecho busied aerself with repairing aer almost completely destroyed house, which took about a year. right as the repairs were ending, though, xe found a baby eclectus parrot with a broken wing caught under some rubble. xe started to care for the parrot (which xe named jewel), and this actually helped xe get out of the depressed state they were in after sandstone's death. 
derecho decided to not continue sandstone's fishing business because it just felt... wrong, to do it without sandstone- thon didn't really know what to do with thonself without it, though. thon started drawing and painting as a hobby, but art quickly became thons greatest passion. most of thons initial subjects were jewel and other parrots thon adopted- another eclectus and two hyacinth macaws- but grew to be more abstract as time went on. after a while derecho's art came to be more surrealistic and slightly nightmarish, kind of like a strange, brighter mix of salvador dalí and zdzisław beksiński. ae also started publishing poems and short stories expressing their struggles with depression as a way to cope with sandstone's death.
derecho's poetry and art is hard to understand, and derecho thonself doesn't really try to find a meaning in it either. thon thinks that explaining thons poetry and art is pointless because it takes away from the whole point of others relating to thons art in their own unique ways- plus sometimes you just have to let everything out. it doesn't have to make sense but it does have to break free. derecho's short stories are often written from the point of view of unreliable narrators, so you often have to question the sanity of the narrators as well as the reality of everything happening around them, something akin to dhalgren and gone girl. 
derecho's style in general is like surrealistic horror, with lots of motifs of death, witchcraft/curses, and fate. it's published in volumes, with there being poems, short stories, and art pieces/sketches all together in a volume. surprisingly (or again, unsurprisingly) derecho's writing and art has taken off across the artistic circles in pyrrhia- dragons relate to xer struggles and appreciate that derecho is brave enough to speak out about xer pain and help others as well. in reality, though, derecho has no idea that people actually read aer stuff. ae isn't trying to be brave either, ae literally just has nothing to lose. thon is kind of a minor celebrity, and the few times thon has gone out in public in cities thon has been immediately recognized. derecho is considered an icon of butcher falls as well, which thon hates- especially coming from the town that ostracized thon and thons mother. 
derecho continues releasing volumes of xer work and is enjoying a mostly quiet existence with xer parrots. 
==relationships==
sandstone: aer mother. aer everything. sandstone was derecho's rock throughout all of aer life, always sticking with ae even as the town grew to resent them more and more. sandstone could make derecho laugh even when xe was at xer worst, and xe would have followed her to the ends of the earth and back around. derecho lost a big part of xerself when sandstone died, and thon has been trying to get it back piece by piece through xer art and literature. 
beacon: thon misses beacon, surprisingly. thons mother never shied away from speaking about her late husband and so derecho grew to love him through sandstone's stories of him. derecho aspires to be like thons late father, as he was a very bright and positive presence in pyrrhia. 
butcher falls: derecho detests this town. xe considers it to be a place full of pathetic, suspicious, attention-seeking dragons, and never wants to come back there. xe has only returned their for xer mother's funeral and could barely stand being there even for a few hours. 
==trivia==
*derecho is inspired by my fascination of surrealistic art forms and stories with unreliable narrators. also, although xe was only initially named after a derecho, i decided to have the storm play a major part in their backstory because of a similar experience my small town had with one.
*derecho is considered a mutt because xe has heritage from many, many tribes. sandstone was a sandwing with a few mudwing relatives, and was probably a third cousin or something of innesi and birulai. beacon was actually a tribrid- one of his mothers was a seawing, while the other was a skywing/rainwing hybrid. he was also probably an uncle of aquaria.
*derecho has never met any of thons extended family, and probably couldn't relate to them much anyway.
*thon has around 10 pet parrots. most are unnamed, as derecho wanted to preserve jewel's uniqueness after her death.
*derecho is ambidextrous in a weird way: thon writes with thons right arm and thon paints with thons left arm.
*ae detests eating fish, has had wayy too many while operating the business.
==gallery==
Sahara sunrise.png|radar!
Category:Characters
Category:SeaWings
Category:SandWings
Category:Hybrids
Category:Non-binary
Category:LGBT+
Category:Occupation (Merchant)
Category:Occupation (Artist)
Category:Occupation (Writer)
Category:Status (Celebrity)
Category:Content (Atomic Ahren)