Mooira Minakis

Mooira Minakis is a young minotaur woman who lives and works on her family's dairy farm about an hour outside Lisbon. Her father, Stavros, grew up in a small mountain village in Greece and moved to Portugal shortly after Mooira was born, so she grew up with both sides of her family history present in everyday life. She considers herself thoroughly Portuguese while retaining a collection of Greek family traditions, recipes, expressions, and relatives with strong opinions about how frequently she should visit.

Mooira has worked around the farm for most of her life and is enormously capable in the quiet, unshowy way that comes from doing physical work every day. She's strong even by minotaur standards, comfortable around large animals and machinery, and perfectly willing to spend a morning doing work that leaves somebody else exhausted before lunch. None of this has made her particularly dramatic about it. If something heavy needs moving, Mooira generally moves it.

Her temperament is considerably gentler than her size initially suggests. Mooira is patient, thoughtful, and happiest when life has some kind of dependable rhythm. She likes cooking, quiet evenings, local markets, long drives, and the satisfaction of finishing a day's work knowing exactly what was accomplished. She's also a habitual planner who brings water, snacks, sunscreen, an extra layer, and a basic first-aid kit on outings that other people would describe as “going for a walk.”

Her best friend, Raposa Silva, is responsible for a substantial percentage of those outings. Raposa is quiet enough that people sometimes mistake her for a homebody, but remaining in one place for too long makes her restless. She'll casually mention a trail she found, a village she's never visited, a café forty minutes away, or a stretch of coastline that supposedly looks beautiful this time of year, and Mooira will recognize that an expedition has just been proposed.

Their friendship works largely because neither expects the other to become more like herself. Raposa gets Mooira out of the house; Mooira ensures Raposa's spontaneous ideas contain food, directions, weather-appropriate clothing, and some consideration of when they're supposed to return. Raposa has learned that Mooira's planning isn't reluctance, and Mooira has learned that not every worthwhile afternoon needs to be scheduled three days beforehand.

Mooira is affectionate, dependable, and quietly protective of the people she loves. She's not difficult to persuade into an adventure. She simply wants enough information to pack appropriately.

Raposa calls this overpreparing. Raposa also eats the snacks. 🐮🥪