Hezekiah

Name - Hezekiah (A name which he has the good sense to be embarrassed of) Clarke
Nicknames - Zeke, Heez, Kiki, Hey, Kez
Age - 22
Species - Red Squirrel
Height - 5'2"
Build - Lean with light muscle
Tail - Extra fluffy
Orientation - Straight... mostly, probably. Thanks to his religious training incredibly repressed about almost everything like that
Former Occupation - Missionary Priest
Skills - Botany, chemistry, physics, gardening, animal husbandry, basic medicine, counseling, mathematics, singing, piano, carpentry
Medical Conditions - Narcolepsy and Sleep Paralysis with accompanying hallucinations

Hezekiah has, from a young age, suffered from a variety of sleep disorders. Most severely fits of narcolepsy and rather frequent sleep paralysis. Those incidents are matched with vivid hallucinations that are often terrifying... and terrifyingly real to him. An orphan raised by the church in an exceedingly religious environment, various figures in his life to fellow clerical students and teachers have attributed the incidents to either incidents of divine prophecy or demonic possessions. Ultimately the church sided with the more sinister interpretation, partly as fine excuse to excommunicate him from their order and sweep his enslavement under the rug. Hezekiah himself is earnestly anxious of either possibility and what they might mean, though regardless of where he's settling his ideas at the moment they tend to distress him all the same.

Though he seems often quite the energetic individual, some of that chipper nature is a well reinforced facade as he has a tendency to often be quite tired. His interest in moving about and keeping busy is often to stave off the sleepiness that takes him whenever he finds periods of rest. Periods of high stress only exacerbate his symptoms... and his recent loss of freedom and collaring have been quite the stressful incidents indeed.

An orphan abandoned to the church, the squirrel truly didn't lament his fate too much. After all, he fit in wonderfully with the religious life! He had taken to religious studies from a young age and was possessed of both a sharp and inquisitive intellect and a passionate desire to see the good in people and help them. He was never a man of much ambition, truly just hoping to help those within arms reach of him, but fate had other ideas in mind.
Prone to vivid nightmares from a young age, he struggled to keep them from others until waking screaming one too many times brought questions from his teachers. As he opened to them the older instructors knew not what to make of the boys troubles. Many nights found him speaking of being transfixed to his bed while shadows leered and loomed over him, cats and rats pinning him and gnawing his bodies... but others had him floating towards grand lights or subjected to even more surreal experiences. While those stories sometimes fascinated his minders, even those more transcendental experiences terrified the young squirrel just as much as the more sinister sounding evening apparitions.
The rectors ever seemed split, some interviewing him and plumbing the depths of his visions for signs and symbols where they believed he spoke with the heavenly host, others decried him as being touched by demons and sin... and more than once subjected him to ritual and prayer to exorcise the evils that haunted him. The increased attention combined with his often sleepy behavior only earned the suspicion and ire of his fellow students and Hezekiah only struggled all the more to overcome that. The more he felt separated from his fellow clerical students the more he overflowed with love and empathy, the more tired he felt the more he forced himself to show a willingness to work and a boundless energy... until the first break found him dozing once again.
When he had been chosen for missionary work it was as much a testament to his capabilities as it was the desire of some for him to be just... away. The riddles of his dreams combined with an overeager friendliness that grew abrasive on some spoke of such opportunity and talent to others. Hezekiah himself took the news with a great joy, for bringing the word of God and what help he could offer to the ignorant seemed the greatest calling in life.
It was not the easiest of lives, and truth be told the tribal people he met with grasped little of what he was trying to bring to him. Though that was less a failing of the young man's empathy than of his training. The church having ill prepared him for the complexities of life beyond it's cloister. He was learning quick though, that unflagging attitude and genuine desire to help others above all else slowly winning him if not a congregation at least acceptance in the new community he was trying to find a headway into.
And then the slavers came. Hezekiah, in his youthful ignorance, first thought he could make peace with them. But when torches and weapons came, when the women and children were beaten and dragged from their homes the squirrel in a shameful act of self preservation thought that he could at least barter his own freedom with those he shared a language and a culture with. His pleas might have been in their tongue, but they fell on deaf ears all the same.
And his further pleas were ignored by each hand he passed through, from those who shackled him to those who sailed him to the island he found himself on. Yet desperately hoping that if word could get back to those from his old diocese they would surely come for him. They wouldn't leave him to this pitiable fate. But Hezekiah had always had more hopes than real friends in life, and much left of the cruelty of the world to learn.

Unbeknownst to Hezekiah news of his departure has reached the church. Not his enslavement per say, but the vanishing of the people he was sent to minister to along with himself. Though simple research would likely have outed the truth of things there was ever a strain of those in the church who still doubted the squirrel's piety. His frequent night terrors and visions always reeking of the foul and demonic to many of authority over the years. And with his vanishing those voices held sway as even the few who defended his certainly pious heart saw risks of black stains laying upon the church from the scandal. And while he might have had a few backing him, he had never had friends even within the church.
So it was far easier and convenient to simply excommunicate him. Stripped of more than his rank, he was removed by record and law from the very church he had devoted the entirety of his life to.
Despite the squirrel's most ardent and sincere protests and hopes, there was no home for him to return to.
When word finally reached the now former minister, his breakdown carried till he found himself once more in the company of Dystorted, not only one of the kinder faces he'd known in his time upon Guildereim but a woman he had found himself developing a sincere affection for. Though he still had no idea how to process the full depth of the loss in his life from his removal from the Church, continuing it in her care compared to the indifferent whims of the Tether seemed the best of what few choices he had. Swallowing best he could the torrent of emotions he accepted her offer of purchase, trying to push down his despair with a focus on not allowing himself to be a burden to her as he had been to so many in his life.

His mistresses departure from the island weighed upon Hezekiah. He loved her after all, and had freshly devoted his life to serving her both as a show of his affection and a means to hold onto his sanity after having lost the purpose he had been raised for. She had chosen to live off island with her own lover, it's own weight upon the squirrel's awareness of his place in the world, but while he remained to tend to her assets and raise funding for her he still was brought to visit and assumed one day he would join her permanently at her absent home, or that she would return. It was a difficult arrangement that weighed on his nerves the longer it lasted, but it was something he could manage.
Until one day she stopped sending for him. There could have been a thousand reasons for it of course, and he played over them all in his thoughts the longer he awaited word to be called back again. But as the days stretched into weeks it never came. He kept working, dutifully, but the alcohol he'd been self medicating his stress and depression with became more and more of a crutch until one day his public drunkenness had gone too far and caught the eye of the Tether establishment. He'd been accruing rentals enough to cover his expenses and stay at his mistresses suite long since her last visit. He hadn't intentionally meant to deceive them to his abandonment he had just... blindly hoped against hope that one day she'd be back for him.
But the Tether viewed things differently. He had been told he'd been abandoned, his meager possessions confiscated while he angrily and tearfully insisted it wasn't the case. But against their authority and evidence all he had was shouting and his words fell upon deaf ears. His collar once again bare, what mild freedoms he had regained taken away, and what hope he had lashed himself to vanishing once again as he was tossed back to the empty future that loomed ahead of him at the whims of an uncaring and cruel world.