Areo Hotah did not know the cold.
Beneath a sun high in a blank, blue sky with hard, cracked ground of dried mud beneath him, Areo Hotah had drawn his first breath. It was heat he had known first and heat he had known throughout his years of training and of protecting. Intimately, Areo Hotah knew the signs of heat exhaustion; Areo Hotah did not know the signs of hypothermia. Until four months prior, he had never before seen snow.
It was not for him to decide whether he liked or disliked varying temperatures. It had been drilled again and again into his head he was nothing more than a protector, a pillar of strength to stand between those who would go on to do great things and those who might seek to tear them down. Areo Hotah would not consider himself smart in the way he would consider a leader smart. He knew to fight and his slate grey body, littered in scars, spoke enough of it for him to never need say a word.
He had not been born or raised to be a figure of company. He had been raised to stand quiet, to think himself a statue and protect whoever it was he was asked to protect.
Without an individual to protect or even a home to look after, Areo Hotah was adrift. In the time following the great fall of his home, Areo Hotah searched and searched for something new, but the same in essence. Disregarding the different topography, he searched instead for someone to serve.
Serve. Obey. Protect.
Simple vows, for a simple man.
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