#I like Mechi's bed hair

[pushing500]

It's time to get Kwahu back to running at Full Power Plus™ with a brand-new bionic arm

He's so happy to be able to hi-five people properly again <3

And it's not long until Mechi is fitted out with a new bionic, too. He's one step closer to matching Yamka!!

Look at him gooooo!! <3 <3

Aww, Mechi apparently doesn't cope with anesthetic as well as Kwahu does. I think this might actually be his first mental break of the series, if we don't count the cube ones.

First | Next | Previous

[i-belong-in-space]

Naia: A Character Bio

Name: Naia Addington

Appears in: La Vie en Bleu

Character Summary:

Star Sign: Pisces

Personality Type: ENFJ,-A/-T

Physical description: Naia is of Japanese descent like her creator. He made her as a homage to his lost country. She has soft brown eyes and black hair that she keeps cut just above her shoulders. She usually pulls her hair back and in the later books ties it up in a red kerchief as she’s working about her sweet shop. She’s described as having a proud but kind face.

Break-down: Naia is a Mechi, or an advanced form of AI. Mechi are sentient at this point in Lacuna history but they still face much prejudice and are of the working class. They aren’t very trusted and most humans in Zenith do not afford them their basic rights. Most Zenith laws are against Mechi, not for them, and so of course this springs many troubles. Being one of the first generation of sentient Mechi, Naia faces much backlash and emotional abuse by those who do not understand Mechi and she feels the sting once she is  pushed out into the world. She barely has time to learn about the world around her and to develop her personality when her creator sells her.

Her first job comes in the form of the Addington family who buys her as a maid. She keeps her head down and does her job, ignoring the gossip and tittering of the other servants,that is until the eldest son of the family arrives home from the boarding school he was forcefully shipped off to for his strong personality. Her first encounter with a decent human being becomes a passionate affair that must be kept secret in a world that would see her love for a human as a crime. Naia’s personality eventually reveals itself to be kind and loyal, someone who will always be there in times of need. Later in life she becomes an independent Mechi and a pioneer for others in her position.

Relationships:

Loki (sibling)

Details: Naia and Loki were made by the same creator and so they refer to one another as siblings. They have a short time together after they’re made, learning with one another before they are seperated and pushed into different forms of labor as the Zenith law decrees. Later in the series, Loki and Naia do reunite and keep in close contact. They continue to see one another as family and Naia eventually uses her status in a high ranking corporate family to help Loki throughout his own tumultuous journey towards autonomy and freedom.

Isaiah (romantic)

Details: When Isaiah Addington comes home from boarding school, Naia isn’t sure what to think of him, but as they get to know one another, and she learns to trust him, the boundaries between human and Mechi are blurred and she finds herself falling in love. Isaiah treats her as what she is, a sentient being with thoughts and emotions and together they navigate this strange new world.  Their story spans decades and her love for this human carries her through an often difficult life to an end no one expects. 

Miel “Blue” Vauquelin (friend)

Details: Naia meets Blue through Loki and becomes a fast friend to her brother’s cherished lover. As Blue comes into his own, Naia is there to hold out her hand to him and help him along. She’s a very generous individual and Blue feels a genuine connection with her because she’s the only family that Loki has in the world. Naia sees in Blue the struggle she had to go through being a Mechi that harbored feelings for a human. She understands the pain and heartache that follows these forbidden unions and will do anything to help someone walking in her shoes.

Excerpt:

“Is this the new model?” A woman’s voice came from somewhere above me but I kept my head down, waiting to be acknowledged personally. I was used to people talking over my head as if I wasn’t there. In their minds, I wasn’t really. I was just a shell, a body that walked and talked but didn’t really have thoughts of its own. I was an it, and had been one since I was created.

“It’s in much better shape than the last one,” The woman said with a dismissive sniff. “Girl, what’s your name?” I glanced up, keeping my face smooth as my creator taught me.

“They do not know what I have made here,”  he had told me once. “I have played God, and you are the result.”

“Naia,” My voice sounded so quiet, a little bird chirping, trying to find its way out of a house it didn’t belong in.

“You will take the surname Addington,” The woman said. Her eyes looked down her nose at me, sharp flints of jade. My new mistress seemed to be made of sharp angles; her face, her tone, her personality. They all cut with razor sharp precision.

And so I became Naia Addington and I learned to walk on tiptoe, a nice accompaniment to my bent head. I hardly ever enjoyed the sea in those first days as I learned my new role. I could smell it on the air, the scent of salt water, and something putrid. Dead fish, the Mechi butler had whispered to me once. We always talked in whispers if we talked at all. The only reprieve we had was our noon break and the moment we fell into bed, not to sleep, but to give the mistress and master of the house their own reprieve from our strange presence. We could have worked into the night, but the master was kind and he pushed his wife’s hands on many occasions in favor of the servants of the house.

I would lie awake in bed at night, resting my system, looking at the whorls of wood in the ceiling above me, smelling salt and dead fish on the air.  

“In Greek a naiad was a water nymph,” Loki had explained in the first few weeks of our creation, as we were learning about the world around us, our hands touching, sharing information. “You were named after that. How curious.”

My room was in the basement of the house, hidden away with the other metal objects and discarded antiques. Sometimes in the dead of night I would wind my way through the stacks of dressers and books, and once or twice I slipped from its hiding place, an old world photograph book. In the book were photographs of generations of Addingtons. This particular home had seen a century of the same bloodline filing through its grand doors. I always admired humans for their ability to procreate, something that wasn’t within my grasp.

As I looked at the faces, sweeping by with each turn of old brittle pages, I noticed a pattern to the family; they all had fine, handsome faces. Only a few had had abnormalities about them and the pictures of those particular relatives were scant and few between as if to hide away their human imperfections. Humans were amusing. My mouth had tilted slightly at the corner as my fingers danced their way through history. When I had gone through all the photographs, I slipped each book carefully in its place. I had gotten very good at placing objects exactly where they had been left.

A few times the mistress of the house thought to test me. She would move a book from the bookshelf and place it on a coffee table, or leave a glass of water sitting somewhere unseen, and often changes were barely detectable, a candle moved a centimeter out of place. She would know if I had cleaned thoroughly, and I always did. When she was certain I was thorough, she began to leave me to myself and objects stopped moving unless I picked them up to clean under and around them.

“You’re clever,”  Ethos the butler said when I had worked for the Addingtons a month. “More so than the last. I hope for your sake that you remain clever.” Something in his tone, in the way his eyes shifted away from me and swept the room made me wonder what he was truly speaking about. This was before it was common for humans to take Mechi lovers, and I had barely been alive a year, a child really.

I never had eyes for the master of the house. He was handsome as all the Addingtons were but he was also old, kind, and reminded me of my creator. He would compliment my work when he was about the house which was rare, and then drift away to more important things. It was the mistress who dealt with the servants, her calculating gaze was what mattered, what kept us all trying to please her. We didn’t want to end up on the scrap pile earlier than our expiration date.

If you would like to know more about the series this character is from, stay tuned to this writeblr. I’m going to put up many more character bios and short stories, or stop by my website https://amdailybooks.com/ for more info and many freebies/short stories that will be popping up soon! I’m always up for asks and will talk nonstop about these beloved babies.

This story will be free on the website when it is completed!