Khya is one of those people who pass almost completely unnoticed wherever they go, and she likes it that way. She stays in the proverbial shadows of her own volition, because if nobody sees her or pays attention to her, nobody can judge her. Khya is deathly afraid that nobody will like her and that she really will be left alone. She hides this insecurity under a guise of complete apathy. Khya, perhaps mistakenly, believes that as long as she pretends not to care what people do, then maybe they'll afford the same treatment.
Khya naturally has a very laissez-faire attitude. 'Whatever' may be the most-often-used phrase in her entirely vocabulary, with 'I don't care' being a close second. She doesn't say these words to be mean, she says them to let people know that, as long as it makes them happy, she doesn't care what they do. What she wants to see most, in the world, is her friends smiling, and she's willing to sacrifice her own wellbeing and happiness to achieve that end. (For example: at a sleepover, she'll deprive herself of food because she feels some sort of strange guilt for eating her friends' food)
Most people completely buy into her façade but if, by chance, someone actually gets through to her real self, they'd find that Khya is a very odd duck. Her train of thought is as erratic and disconnected as it gets, with her frequently quoting TV shows, internet memes and saying random phrases that catch strangers entirely by surprise (ex: when saying goodbye to a friend, her farewell phrase might be 'See you later, don't get eaten by a squid!'). Seeing this side of her means that she trusts a person so implicitly, that she isn't afraid of scaring them away by being herself.
Because of her tendency to seclude herself, Khya has become well practiced at keeping herself entertained. She can tune out reality at will and lose herself in her imaginings. She never goes anywhere without her iPod, since music helps the daydreaming process by blocking out reality's sounds as well. She writes, she draws and, sometimes (only when no one is around), she plays the piano. She loves playing the piano, but accute stage fright prevents her from playing for anybody except herself.
When she was three, Khya was sent to a daycare facility, near her house, that also functioned as a preschool and get her through junior and senior kindergarten. Being that little, Khya was able to be herself, because she didn't know anything about bullying yet. All of her peers were just as unaware as she was, so nobody thought her behaviour was odd. She loved it there, especially when they were allowed time to read. From the moment she'd learned how to read, Khya had done so nonstop. By the time she was in senior kindergarten, she was bringing her own short novels to daycare because the books there weren't long enough.
Far too soon (to her), however, she graduated that daycare and began to attend public school. That was around the time she began to think there was something wrong with her. The school she was sent to went from kindergarten to grade 5, and everyone in her grade one class had been in kindergarten together--except her. She was the odd one out, the one who thought differently, the one who didn't play the same games or read the same picture books; she spoke using big words that nobody, but the teachers, could understand. She was different. She was strange. She was weird.
It started off quietly, at first; Khya was the last person to find a group for a project, or she would be the last picked for dodgeball. Nothing too worrisome, and certainly nothing she thought was out of the ordinary. Then, it escalated. None of the other kids would play with her, or speak to her; she was forced to play by herself during recess. For a short while, it seemed as thought things were looking up; there were a few kids who would still play with her and seemed nice. Then, one day, they told her, to her face, that they were nothing more than 'pity friends'. Khya was alone again, except for the times when people called her names or poked her with sticks.
By the time she met her six, now-closest friends, Khya had already learned to shut herself down as a defense tactic. She crafted another personality entirely, one that she thought people would like more, and she hid behind it. This personality was somewhat of a ditz, and a klutz. She pretended to be absent-minded, forgetful and clueless. She dumbed herself down so that no one would call her a geek, or a dork, ever again. She kept her love for things like art, literature and music a secret, just in case it wasn't 'cool' to like that kind of stuff.
As far as romantic relationships go, Khya has never had much luck. She's not sure she's ever had a crush, or even considered a guy as something more than a pseudo-sibling or acquaintance. However, she is a hopeless romantic at heart and is waiting for the person who sees her for who she is, and doesn't judge her for it.
Now, she's opened up a considerable amount, though only to her six closest friends. She shares nearly everything with them (they know she plays the piano and draws, but she's never willingly shown them anything), save for the dreams she's had all her life. Dreams of a strange, but fantastical, world that was being ripped apart by a terrible war. Dreams of someone she didn't recognize or know asking her for help.
She doesn't mind the dreams--in fact, she finds them mildly entertaining--but they've been growing in freqency and it's beginning to make her nervous. She hoped that this trip with her friends would leave her too tired to dream at the end of each day.
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