Shade and Marina from the Silverwing Series...
Shade: Curious and inquisitive; resourceful and determined; second guesses people and situations often yet is somewhat guilable and too trusting of others (Goth and Throbb in "Silverwing"). Even though he is a runt and phsically smaller and weaker than other newborns in his colony, he has the rare and intreging ability to control sound using echo-location. In "Sunwing", when he and his colony found the "paradise" forest, everyone else accepted their new home and quickly settled into a living routine, but he remained suspicious (and rightfully so), and was constantly hunting for a way out, or complaining about how everything was too good, and thie search eventually led him to danger.He has a bit of a prideful ego, especially in the third book, after he is considered a "legend" to many other bats in his colony. His father, in Firewing, refers to him as reliable, but easily distracted. Able to "discover some evil plan to destroy the world, or accidently start a war (along the way)." In "Firewing" he is appalled to have information kept from him, and it was a scene that just screamed harry for me!
QUOTE
Firewing
"I fear your son may already be lost to you," said Lucretia, the cheif Silverwing elder.
Shade shook his head, trying to expel her terrible words.
"There's no way we can know that yet."
..... Shade knew that unless he turned back immediately, he, too, would be dragged headlong to whatever waited beneath. He wanted to go, anway, to hurtle himself after his son. But he couldn't. Not yet. At the very least he had to tell Marina. Labourously, he'd dragged himself back up the tunnel into Tree Haven. And now, at its summit, he shifted impatiently as he listened to the four elders roosting above him.
"Over the centuries," said Lucretia, "similar cracks in the earth have opened. We have accounts of bats who fell down them. None ever returned. Shade, where your son has gone, there can be no rescue."
"I'm going," he said hoarsely. "I only came back to tell you."
"Our legends tell us it is the Underworld. The land of Cama Zotz created for the cannibal bats after their death. It's a place of utter darkness and torment. For our kind, Nocturna created a different afterlife, a wonderful one. But in Zotz's Underworld, there are only the Vampyrum Spectrum, all the billions of them who were ever born."
The Thought of his son in this hellish place-the wrong place- was almost too terrible for Shade to endure. "I won't leave him there."
"It is said that those who enter the world of the dead, become the dead."
"Legends," Shade muttered.
"They are all we have," Lucretia reminded him kindly, but firmly.
"I've never heard of these legends," Shade said, unable to contain his frustration-and indignation, too. "Why weren't we ever told about Cama Zotz pr this Underworld?" He'd spent a lot of time in the echo chamber , the perfectly spherical cave where the Silverwing colony stored its history. He'd even sung some stories of his own to the polished walls. So how was it possible that he-a hero, in case anyone needed reminding!- should be shut out like t his? It was outrageous. ..... Shade said nothing, not trusting himself to speak. He hated the idea of secrets being kept from him, as if he were some silly newborn. Why shouldn't he-why shouldn't everyone?-know all there was to know?
"Well," he said, his mind already leaping ahead, "who started these legends?"
"We don't know that, Shade."
"All I'm getting at," he pressed on, "is that someone must've gone down to the Underworld and learned all this stuff, about the billions of dead cannibal bats and the darkness and Zotz-"
"Perhaps-"
"-and he must've come back alive, or how would we know?"
"This is all conjucture, Shade."
"If he came back, I can come back!"
..... (and later) "Of course I would have (done the same for you). But I'm not just your mother anymore, Shade," said Ariel. "I'm also an elder. And my own wishes sre not always those of the council."
"The council can't stop me," he said.
Shade's relationship with Marina is a great one. Even though when he first meets her he finds her irratating (like Harry's first impression of Hermione), they gain a great friendship throught the first book and she journeys with him to reunite him with his family. Marina was an outcast from her family due to her being banded by humans (Hermione's introduction to the wizarding world), but in the end, even though she was able to return home, she decided to stay with Shade and the rest of his colony. (sort of like how Hermione chooses to stay with Harry rather than visit her family, or rather cuts her visit short to go to him.) Marina is older, and more mature than Shade, but at most times more inseccure, though she tries not to show it. It is her wish to just fit in. In Sunwing, when she finally had a chance to be free and normal, she became angry with Shade because he was too suspicious and did not relax and have fun with her, but she could not stay mad at him for long. Shade was slightly jealous of her and the other newborn Chinook spending so much time with each other... he for a short time believed that she had agreed to be Chinook's mate, until she asked Shade to be her mate, to which he replied, "you're not allowed to be anybody's mate but mine"