I'm very excited to be here and can't wait to get started writing. I will go ahead and warn you now that I'm not the best when it comes to condensing an entire character into just a few sentences. I'll try my best not to write a novel, but I make no promises.
I'm bringing you Cian Tierney. Faced by Colin Morgan (any other Merlin/Humans fans out there?) Cian is 29 years old, born and raised in the small village of Liscannor, Co. Clare in Ireland just a few miles away from the Cliffs of Moher. He is the only child born to a very devout Catholic couple who tried for years to have a child before he was born and tried for a second before ultimately giving up after suffering several losses. He had a rather happy childhood, but it didn't take long for his parents to notice that there was something different about him. Back then it just seemed that he had an uncanny knack of inexplicably being able to locate lost items, and describe the misplaced thing in great detail even if he'd never seen it. Out of concern, they went to their priest who assured them everything was alright and that it was likely just a show of the young boy's heightened intelligence, but warned them not to encourage his strange behavior.
As time went on, it became clear that his abilities weren't a fluke. Despite their avoidance of the subject altogether, things seemed to be getting worse. The particular event that solidified this for his parents was when at age fourteen he somehow knew the exact whereabouts of a young girl's body who had been kidnapped the previous year when police hadn't found any leads on their own. After seeing on the news that the girl's body had been found, his parents once again sought the counsel of their priest, Father Geoffrey. It took years of interviews with Father Geoffrey and what Cian felt must have been every other member of the Irish clergy, medical and psychological exams, and even a short stay in an in-patient facility as a teen for everyone to conclude that Cian wasn't mentally unstable or otherwise physically unwell. This led Father Geoffrey to believe Cian's mind was being influenced demonically and the only course of action for that in his opinion was exorcism.
While obviously nothing came of the exorcism, which took place just before his seventeenth birthday, what did change was his trust in Father Geoffrey, his relationship with his parents for putting him through all of that, and his belief in the Catholic church as a whole. He stopped going to church, he stopped speaking to his parents, he became very quiet, distant, and withdrawn. As soon as he turned eighteen, he left home and hasn't been back since. He travelled for a year finally finding himself in Edinburgh with new friends and a new passion for the art of glassblowing. One of his new friends worked at the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington and he suggested Cian should come study there if he wanted to learn more. Fast forward about six years and he had finished his course of study, an apprenticeship, and had been working as a full time glassblowing instructor and artist in residence on the school's campus. He's since gone on to pass his U.S. naturalization test after living and working with a green card for five years.
In all that time, his abilities were still growing and developing. He didn't talk to anyone about them and they were becoming increasingly hard to ignore. When it started to interfere with his ability to do his job and all but destroyed his social life, he decided to look for a therapist. It took him long enough to find one that didn't think he was insane, which just brought up all of those past horrors from back in Ireland. When he did find the right therapist for him though, it wasn't too long before he was given the information to contact the Institute. He thought it over for a while before eventually making the move a little over six months ago.
He's still a relative newcomer and can be a little guarded and quiet, but that's just nerves. He excited about the prospect of learning how to better control and hone his abilities, and he's overjoyed that for the first time in his life he's in a place where he doesn't feel like he has to hide who he really is for fear of being poked, prodded, exorcised, or called insane.
If you're interested in more of the details, I direct you here. Otherwise, let's brainstorm some awesomeness!