Caleb was a child born as an abnormality, he was larger than normal and that is all anything anyone ever told him about his time as an infant. He was so big. He was gigantic, and that was a theme that followed him through life. He was always tall and large, stretching up to the sky like the powerful redwoods that grew around him. He was the only one in his family like that as well, he was three bothers and all of them were dwarfed by him, his own father was at least a good foot shorter than him.
In school he was always picked for sports teams but it seemed like the other kids were afraid of him. Always treated like he was older than he was, always left to his own devices because obviously someone his size was an independent person. Those muscles meant he didn't need help and could shoulder it all. A tree isolated from the forest. The friends he had were kids who had no other friends themselves and talked to him, helped him with his school work, and in return those fists would keep them safe from the perils of school social hierarchies.
Like a tree he grew up and up, strong and stalwart, his home the same familiar house tucked away in the trees. Of course all things in nature are bound to change, even this life he had lived. That summer it was dry and hot, and when the wildfires broke out they burned through the community Caleb lived in. Ravaging the place like it was all just tinder, the school, homes, the library. Everything was leveled and the people of his home were displaced. The had escaped with their lives and no possessions, luckily Caleb's family was able to relocate to Sacramento where he would finish high school and start community college. That was short lived though, as his talents were not the mental sort and it wasn't lon g before he was joining the volunteer firefighters, and then going on to train and do it professionally. Using that otherness, that strength that set him apart to fight back against the think that had swallowed his childhood whole. It was in this he found a purpose he had never felt before, saving people. Saving places. Saving memories. Keeping those around him safe and sound, safeguarding the places these people held dear.
Getting on a plane for a conference on the east coast, there was a strange storm that had them landing in New York and it only got weirder from there. It felt like something in him had awakened, that he felt that there was something important, more important than fire fighting. More important than any purpose he had ever felt. A voice. No. A song? A hymn, deep in his soul making him march forward to seek out what it was that drew him in.
