Kayla Kavanaugh was born in Esterholt, Ohio, in the year 1996, to Martha Kavanaugh and a man she barely ever knew. Martha would take several other husbands throughout Kayla's lifetime, and other men she never married. (Martha's relationship history follows a pattern Ta'zhen would later describe as "meet guy in bar, give him tragic line about how bad her last boyfriend was, extract pity sex, coerce into whirlwind relationship, have violent breakup, meet new guy in bar by the end of the week".)
Kayla was born with her thalassophobia, as far as she later knows, but when she was four and psyching herself up to jump into the backyard pool with her stepfather, Martha pushed her in out of impatience, nearly killing her. The incident did nothing to cure the phobia and surely worsened it. Martha was assaulted that night, and Kayla pleaded with the officers not to take her stepfather, to no avail.
She moved through school mostly uneventfully until the eighth grade. Science teacher Nat Atrella noticed her bad mood one day and talked about it with her after class. He learned that Martha was beginning to lie about family members. He filed this away for later use, but as the science fair was coming up, he decided to teach her how to use a polygraph machine, so she could learn about lying while talking to townspeople about their military service to assess the machine's reliability.
During the preparations for the fair, Martha assaulted Kayla with a stapler in an attempt to get her to abandon her project.
The night she returned from the state competition, in second place, she snuck out to try to go to a party and met
Saeh'han in the fields. He chased her back to the house, only for her to attack him with a dining chair. After an additional whack, Kayla got him to stay put, at which point Saeh'han expressed admiration for her courage. Confused and flattered, Kayla asked him to teach her how to fight, and he agreed.
Soon it grew beyond teaching simple fighting techniques and into introducing her to the language, stories, and culture of the Stenza. Just before school let out for the summer, Saeh'han took Kayla to
Mudewei, where
Creyth offered her protection under the
cultural rules of hospitality. There, she spent several years learning the language, the customs, the rituals, and further honing her combat skills. (During this time, on a hunting trip, she says that she recalled learning in school that humans evolved as persistence predators and, seemingly with no lead in, followed an injured
Basket Horns across the
Frozen Wastes for several hours. Shortly after starting, a strange
pup started following her. She knew by then that pups were adventurous sorts and let the child stay so that she could return later with them and some food. She explained what she was doing to the pup as they trekked, until they found the Basket Horns collapsed in the snow. Kayla put it out of its misery and began the process of cutting out the heart and lungs for
Hunter, as instructed. It took a while as she was just one person, but finally she was done, and made the appropriate offerings, to find the pup consuming them already. When she told this story to Saeh'han and
Ŭlœsh, they tentatively floated the idea that she'd been tailed by Hunter the whole time.)
Finally, she was set for her citizenship trial, due to take place on a rocky hell planet known as
Desolation, where the water is filled with flesh-eating bacteria and the air can be toxic. She was sent with a granola bar and a canteen full of (exceptionally cold) water. During a brief fight with one of the robots she had accidentally activated, some Desolation water splashed on her right arm. She was forced to use half her water supply to kill the bacteria, and then to spend the rest of her stay with a dying arm.
To the shock of everyone, and perhaps most of all
T'zu-Crae, she returned alive. Saeh'han removed her arm and designed its gel replacement. She took a new name as a citizen of the Stenza empire: Ta'zhen (a name version of the Stenza word for "tiny", which Tzim-Sha had called her before her ordeal). She was fully adopted into the Clan of the Lost and joined their military unit (she still hadn't shaken the idea that she had something to prove).
Her first tour was spent on
Azor, and lasted just under a year. While there, among many other things, her effort to save Tzim-Sha's life resulted in their entrapment behind enemy lines. Their two-week escape back to the Stenza line involved hiding in caves and supplementing rations with the native enormous bugs. It also included sharing secrets: Ta'zhen spoke about the time her mother tried to kill her with a stapler, and Tzim-Sha mentioned the death of his entire clan (she noted his victory in this matter). They swore each other to secrecy in these matters following their return to their line.
She then spent year outside of
Mundeen, the capital of
Muxter, after requesting a transfer away from duty on
Albar. The human(-looking) cost and the near constant noise got to her finally, and she retired out of the military to learn a trade as a ship's mechanic and technician. Though she was attached to a drop ship and knew the troops sent to the surface of planets, this was a much more peaceful existence for her.
She and Tzim-Sha remained exceptionally close until the night of his challenge, and his disappearance. Saeh'han went to recover the body, but found the destroyed gathering coil instead. She volunteered for her own search effort, allowing her to also slip incriminating evidence out of T'zu-Crae's control.
What an interesting character. I feel so sorry for her that she had a bad start in life, but she seems to be in a better place now. I love that she has become at home as a Stenza citizen.
My MC's a good bean, and definitely doing a lot better than she was. Stenza culture did wonders for her self-esteem.