Samantha and Harris are that couple who are always put together and unruffled on the outside, but who, after speaking with them, you realize you know next to nothing about. They are private people (a trait they passed on to Drake, for better or for worse) who have a fairly particular sense of style, taste, and the right way to do things. They are discerning, though I wouldn’t call them snobby.
Sam and Harris met in college, at UC Berkeley where Harris was studying Architecture, and Samantha was attending on an international scholarship to study Art History. They are younger than Cecelia by about five years, but older than John and Teresa (Collin’s parents) by about the same amount. They met Cecelia while she was earning her Masters of Social Science at UC Berkeley, and became fast-friends.
Samantha is bilingual—she speaks Spanish and English with equal fluency—though she did not speak Spanish around Drake. Samantha is from Spain, where the rest of her family still lives. She visits her family in Spain every two years and often takes Drake with her when she makes the trip, especially when he was young. Samantha likes things orderly, but organically beautiful. She is responsible for the artwork and other décor Leah notices in Drake’s house. Samantha is a shifter of a similar caliber to Ferris or Val (though not a ‘spontaneous’ as Ferris is.) Samantha’s family includes a long lineage of human shifters and the trait is not kept as strict a secret within her family as it is kept within others (such as we see of Leah’s family, in SHIFT.)
Harris is the oldest of the two boys in his immediate family (John—Collin’s father—is his younger brother.) He is a complete human shifter, as well as a complete animal shifter (like Drake is.) The King’s lineage is considered to be the longest living line of shifters, and because they are the only family line to be capable of both complete-human and complete-animal shifting, most in the shifter community regard the King family as ‘the source’ of all shifters. Harris is well-educated and very smart. He likes things in order, much the way Samantha does, but is also willing to pick his battles when it comes to making sure things remain that way. In the balance of maintaining control vs. letting things happen, Harris leans somewhat in the direction of control, but it is a trait he recognizes and tries to mitigate when possible/necessary. He generally confers decisions to Samantha, preferring to let her have her way as opposed to fighting about it, though the two of them have been known to argue furiously when they disagree.
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You’ll notice that I don’t have any pictures posted for this character study. That’s because I’ve found that I don’t think of Sam and Harris in as visual of terms as I do other characters (the same goes for John and Teresa.) While I don’t have lots of pictures that define them, however, I do have copious amounts of information, details and facts (much of which isn’t included here due to spoilers, or because it’s dreadfully boring.) So, this character study is a little more wordy, a little less pretty than others. Hope you still like it!
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