Calum

Abandoned as a kid, he was found by Grandma, who lives in the middle of Interim. Alone for most of his life, Calum is a well-meaning but erratic creature who’s had little time in his life for much but the concerns of survival.

Calum’s earliest memories come from the migration. His colony had been residing in a corner of Interim, in an area ajacent to the human district, for decades. That changed when a supply deficit hit, and the rations the human population handed out became scarce.

No one knew why the supplies form Deep Dwell stopped, but nobody seemed able to bring it back. Under the harsher rationing on one side and the threat of hungry wolves on the other, Calum’s colony saw little option but to move on and seek a life elsewhere.

A child at the time, full of energy and excitement, Calum proved too difficult for his single mother to manage. A few days into travel, he was told to wait while his mother found him food, only for her to leave with the colony, taking only Calum’s older sister with her.

A pup of only 4 years old, Calum would have died. The rat colonies had moved away, and he’d been abandoned inside the human residential area, which would shoo such rodents away.

Fortunately, a kindly, and ever so slightly senile elderly lady found him and took him in as her surrogate Grandson. She read him books, taught him to read and write, and they gave one another company.

Grandma gave Calum his own space, in the form of the small area beneath the concrete staircase that ran up to her front door from the street. When Calum discovered his teeth could boor through cement, he found his way into the crawlspace beneath her home, which he started using to stow any treasures he’d take a liking to, and as a hiding place whenever Grandma’s granddaughter in law was visiting.

At the age of 10, Calum had a near death experience involving a bat. He was outside of home late one night, when a dark shape swooped by him, and a buzzing pain split in his ear. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw a bat clutch hold of a lamp post and hang upside down watching him. When he touched his ear, it was throbbing-hot and pulsing with blood.

Terrified, he ran inside, and would have perished if not for the aid of Grandma.

The regular supply of food returning, the hostilities between the human and mal populations settled, wolf raids receeded, and a city-wide census was called to track deaths, immigrations and any other losses incurred by the unrest.

Aged 12, Calum attended the census alone, successfully registering as a resident of Interim, receiving an ID card and, unofficially, his first paycheck. However, he came home to discover Grandma had passed away of old age during the previous night.

Devastated, Calum learned from Grandma’s grandson that he was inheriting the home he’d once lived in. The man’s wife, Sibyl, wanted him gone, but her husband felt sorry for the rat and understood that his grandmother had raised him as something like a son.

He gave Calum informal ownership of the small space beneath the stairs (not realizing the rat had already found his way into the crawlspace) along with Grandma’s quite expensive collection of old books, the ones she used to read to him.

Calum is a choclate brown rat with leathery feet and paws, a tail which has a mind of its own, and large brown eyes. His

His ears are distinctive, being more akin to the ears of a rabbit than of a rat. His right ear beards a deep cut from the night he was attacked by a bat. He doesn’t like people noticing it.

Usually none, as he can’t afford any. And because a lifetime of nudity has made any kind of construction uncomfortable.

He has a blue sash given to him by Omar which he may wear on formal occasions. Not that he’s ever been to formal occasions. But if he did, he’d wear it.

Earnest	Never plays with words or tries to manipulate anyone. Is instinctively up front and honest about things he wants, likes and dislikes. He doesn’t do things ‘by half’ as he simply would not do something he doesn’t care about.
Polite and Helpful	Both Grandma, his books, and the fact of being the smallest creature in the room have taught Calum to always be polite and conscientious. He has found that humans accept his present much more easily if he speaks well, grooms nicely, and doesn’t climb on furniture to eat the scraps of food they’d leave on their plate. Even when they were clearly finished eating it always seemed to upset them.
Survival-Minded	Through the years of loneliness and self sufficiency, Calum has been forced to emotionally disreguard the wants and needs of others. He had no choice not to. This emerges in Calum, not through coldness or apparent selfishness, but in an almost innate ability to understand his own survival comes first, his own needs come first, to the expense of anything else or anyone else.
Fine-motor Difficulties	Calum struggles with the physicality of his own body and the world around him. Fluids spill, he hits his nose, striggles with simple tasks of hand-eye coordination like lighting a match. Of course it’s the universe’s fault that the match breaks or the pot boils over and the food burns, or that he scurried around the city in some vague excitement and forgot to find any food for himself. Symptoms become worse whenever he’s excited or joyful.

• His favorite food is cheese. At least, he’s pretty sure it is. People never really throw it out, so he doesn’t get to eat it often, and when he does it’s usually quite old and rotten and makes him sick.
• Candles; the warm glow they give off, the way the light shimmers and dances, bringing life and movement to the room that a static bulb does not, watching the wax soften and leak away.
• Routines, savings, and small comforts.

• He dislikes people commenting on the scar on his ear. Touching or pulling it is one of the only things that makes Calum prone to violence — a disproportionate, involuntary reaction, rooted in the memory and trauma of that near-death vulnerability.
• He fears the times when his searches for food come back empty and he’s forced to dip into his few savings for survival. He doesn’t like spending his savings on food, so when he can, he’ll eat from the bins of a local cafe, yet fears the stomach pains and sickness such food can bring almost as much.

• Despite his clumsiness, his rattish species makes him extremely able to navigate the world, climbing, ruining, dodging hazards. He learned years ago that humans weren’t as scary as their size suggested, for as long as you’re polite and groomed, they mostly ignore you, and even if one does give chase, there’s very little they can do to keep up with you.

Through his teenage years, Calum lived under the stairs of Grandma’s house, the steps that connected the front door to the outside street. It isn’t a big home, just the crawlspace where the vents, pipes and insulation goes, but he’s made it cozy for himself.

His furniture includes a children’s plastic table which Grandma gave him, his collection of books, some cooking equipment he manged to scavenge, including a cleaned-out catfood tin which he packs with candle wax and card and uses as a makeshift stove, and his bed.

His bed is a yoga mat, bought with the wages he was given from his one day of employment at the Census office. It’s propped up on scavnaged fiberboard and bricks. He has some other furniture built from bricks and scavanged wood, including a bookcase (to keep the pages off the damp floor)

He has something close to a shower and a toilet too. Although the toilet is only good for peeing, as it’s just a metal drainage grate in the corner of the crawspace, and the shower is just a pipe hanging above it which drizzles a warm leak whenever the home’s actual showers are used.

Calum explores around town every day, in the hunt for food, plastic bags, scrap, materials or tins. Anything he can eat, reuse or sell.

Every so often, he goes to the local cafe, which in exchange for chasing out the feral rats from the crawlspaces and cleaning the trash, he’s paid a small wage. On top of this, Calum managed to get permission to collect the candle stubs from the tables, which he takes home, melts, and recasts into new candles which he sells.

He doesn’t sell very many, and he doesn’t make much exchanging tins and plastics and the few jars he finds to the Interim Municipality, but Calum is not wastful with what little money he gets.

He mostly saves his money, burying things here and there to upgrade his house: a 40 watt light bulb, candle wicks and card for his stove, nails for his shelves (good luck finding metal like that in the garbage), and occasional treats, like a blanket for his bed, or some paper and art tools.

He lives simply, but is mostly happy with his life, and greatful for what he has. Not to say he doens’t long for more. A real house, a real job, real food and, most of all, a family.

• He has painted “221B” on the side of the steps that make the entrence to his home. The ‘B’ is not official, but the home itself is addressed as ‘221’. Calum added the ‘B’ as a reference to a famous location from one of his books.
• He owns a fairly large collection of classic books, including Sherlock Holmes, Don Quixote, Reynard the Fox, Dracula as well as some more contemporary volumes, and the complete Encyclopædia Terrana, all twenty-five volumes. He also has a copy of the Communist Manifesto, which he’s tried to read a few times, but couldn’t get in to. He instead uses it to pot his hot pans on after cooking.