Name: Medein Kyrkos

Meaning of the name: Medein meaning to protect. Meanwhile, Kyrkos represents idealism, intuition, romance, generosity, creativity, wisdom and tolerance. I chose Kyrkos with the intent of romance and idealism, because Medein is a character who yearns for romance with his lover and is very idealistic at times about his relationship with her.

Species: Gorgon

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Unexplored beyond his known attractions to both Percia and you.

Description: Medein has wavy black hair with green streaks that is long enough to brush his shoulders. He rarely wears a shirt of any kind, enjoying the feeling of the sun on his skin, and only wears tattered looking loose leggings when he wears the bracelet and assumes a human guise, provided by the magic of said bracelet. This bracelet was gifted to him by the gods when he assisted Percia in saving those she loved, including the princess Andromeda.

Medein has a natural bronze tone to his skin, due to a combination of heritage and constant basking in the sun. His eyes are a blend of green and gold, mesmerizing for those caught in his gaze that actually somehow manage to survive.

Personality: Once he would have been described as withdrawn and easy to anger. But after meeting Percia, he became more willing to seek out company, even if only in the form of Percia herself. After she vanished from his life, he grew bitter, once again prone to anger and fits of rage.

It was only after centuries passed and you came into his life that he calmed himself again, curious about the lone human that came to his island of imprisonment with the air of someone seeking sanctuary. After finding your journal and seeing the various drawings that accompanied the strange foreign writing, his curiosity grew, desiring to learn more about what else was out there beyond the boundaries of his prison.

He is most often showering you with kindness and affection, having swiftly grown attached to the human that had become his lone connection with the outside world, seeing the beauty in you that others might miss. He basks in the warmth of your smiles much as he would the sun, memorizing the curve of your lips and the shape of your eyes. His eyes worship the way you move as you walk and his ears the sound of your voice when you speak, much as he used to worship at the shrines of his chosen gods and goddesses in ancient times long past.

You have become his chosen one, his living goddess, and he would do anything to keep you close to him forever, even if only to see your smile each morning when he wakes and to hear you whisper sweet nothings each night before he sleeps. Each kiss would be a blessing from you and he could only pray at your feet that you would continue to bless him so.

Favorite things: He has come to adore the variety of foods from the port town's market, Souvlaki (a dish of grilled pieces of meat and sometimes vegetables on a skewer) being his second favorite after the discovery of Loukoumades (Fried balls of dough drenched in honey with cinnamon) which had captured his favor after you brought some to his island during one of your frequent visits. For a more commonplace treat, he rather enjoys grapes, especially when he can convince you to eat the ones he offers to you with a smile upon his lips.

He never used to care about one color over another but has grown to adore the color of your eyes over all other colors, spending hours at night as he lays awake on his bedding wondering what words would be able to do justice to such a beauteous color. If eyes are truly the window to the soul, he can only wonder how he can become worthy of seeing a soul as perfect as the one reflected in your own eyes.

He enjoys learning about the changes that have been made in the world since his entrapment, especially when it means he gets to have your full attention upon him as you point out pictures of places and things he had never even imagined to exist before.

But his most favorite thing of all is you. You dazzle and bewitch him, shocking him with how much stronger you grow with each passing day, never letting the hardships of the world conquer you. Instead of letting your past overshadow you, he has seen you stand tall and slowly grow into someone breathtaking to behold. And because of that, you have captured his attention beyond ever what Percia once had. And along with that, you have captured his heart.

Hobbies: Medein has made it a hobby to spend his time sculpting statues of those who matter to him so that he can gaze upon them even after they are no longer a part of his life without actually turning them into stone with his gaze. The number of statues he has actually carved and kept can be counted on one hand, very few people actually holding a place of importance in his heart.

Many of the statues he surrounds his home with are actually the results of tourists refusing to heed his warnings to leave the island, the few words he had mastered in English being the results of hearing the phrase "You don't belong here." over and over again through the years. Usually through native Greek fishers coming to 'collect' the tourists that tried to sneak onto the supposedly haunted island.

He used to have a hobby of collecting other forms of art, but many of them lost their appeal over the centuries, becoming tired of staring at the same things every day until he began to forget they even existed. It was only after you opened his eyes and enable him to see their beauty again that he recognized just how far he had fallen into the despair of his imprisonment, making the beauty he saw in you even more remarkable to him that it had managed to shine through anyhow.

His newest hobby has been people watching. Specifically, watching you and learning everything he can about you, especially before communication had become a decent possibility without stumbling over every word, although he still has trouble with translating some thoughts and ideas into the English tongue.

History: Medein had once simply spent his time on the island of Sarpedon, turning to stone any who dared intrude upon his home, never feeling the bite of loneliness. That all changed when Percia came, begging for his help in saving her homeland and those she cared about from the wrath of the gods. Boredom getting the better of him, he traveled with the warrior-maiden and slowly began to see her as more than simply a curiosity in his long and boring life.

Never before had he enjoyed someone's companionship, Percia being the first being blessed with such strong protections from the gods to ensure she would not become stone upon meeting his gaze. Though, truly he had never cared before about spending time with another living creature, having long ago grown tired of hearing his sisters' talk of their 'collection of statues' newest additions. He'd even tired of hearing the complaints of other types monsters that wandered past the home he'd shared with his family before he left to find his own home where he could finally find the seclusion he longed for.

His time with Percia changed all of that, introducing him to the joy of companionship, the wonder of love, and finally the pain of heartbreak. He'd known she already loved another, had thought perhaps he could be happy with just being her friend or that maybe she would even change her mind and come to love him as well, but it was not to be. And when he cursed the gods for allowing him to feel the pain of a love never to be returned, they cursed him in turn.

But not so bad a curse that there was not some hope to be found hidden within it. If he was willing to look, that is.

My personal thoughts on Medein: When I first started writing Heart of Stone, I didn't realize how long it would take or how much brainstorming I would have to do. Oh, I knew it was going to be a big (but not this big) project, but as I wrote it, it kept getting bigger. What was supposed to be just a short stand-alone story slowly grew until it (just by a bit, I swear) surpassed the boundary of what makes a short story. It also became the first of the (what will be many) books in what is now turning into a series! What was supposed to jumpstart my Muse back into writing oneshots, instead turned them into a ravenous beast dedicated to creating an entire world for a series of books, each one staring a new figure from myths and legends from around the world. Even now, I can feel the list of characters trying to grow longer. As if 12 books plus a couple of side stories is not enough to work with! >.<

No, Medein was just the character that let me know where my future storytelling was going to go and I couldn't be happier than I am with him and the series he helped to spawn. Even if I am only up to book two thus far, with potentially years of writing ahead of me to look forward to.

And it wasn't just the series that grew as I wrote, but Medein himself. The story started out with just a few general ideas of who and where, but with each glimpse of Medein I got to see more of him. His past, his present, and an inkling of his possible future. The whole story changed subtly in my mind as I wrote because it had to change to match who he was becoming. It was not a seamless change, as I am sure some of you noticed, but it was a change for the better.

What started as a character who was simply secluded on an island, hidden away from the world, quickly became someone who was imprisoned on the island he once called home. He became someone who had been alone and lonely for so long that he yearned for someone to talk to, but at the same time he was afraid of becoming attached and then abandoned again. Almost as soon as he was being introduced to the reader, he had become something more than he was when I started.

At first, it was him trying to scare the reader away as she slept, even as he couldn't help but trace the scars that lined her face. He was curious already. By the time she actually saw him, he had grown into someone who wanted to learn more, even as he wanted to escape the island and hoped that somehow she could find out how it could be done. All too soon, his curiosity had become a fondness for her and her strange ways as he began learning her language and the meaning behind so many words, as well as images of things he had never seen before.

And oh, how the world had changed from what he once knew! There were so many humans, so many cities and towns where they lived! And the things they had created as the centuries passed him by! Cameras, fireworks, cars, and planes! They could fly across entire nations in a fraction of the time it used to take just to get to the next city on horseback! They built houses out of wood, stone, glass, and even metal! Some of the buildings even reached into the sky!

And still, Medein grew. And even though his book has reached an ending, his story continues. In Bios, in Drabbles, in messages, and on occasion it will appear within the pages of another book somewhere in the series. But mostly, it continues within my mind where he can stretch and grow and become something more than he already was. At that time, I will likely rewrite his book from beginning to end, hoping to create something even greater than what is already there. Because he deserves better than what I can offer even now.