Stage: Prentice
Race: Pure Water
Gender: Girl
3 Base Traits: Adaptable, Experimental, Reactive
Personality:
- + Adaptive: Fin absolutely refuses to let the world bring her down. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, and she knows that she’ll get by no matter what comes her way. Flexible and versatile, Fin tends to impress with her work ethic and her willingness to do pretty much whatever someone asks of her. She can bounce from job to job and place to place with relative ease, and there isn’t much that causes her to bat an eye.
+/- Exerimental: A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do… and Fin’ll do juuuust about anything once. That’s fine when it comes to food in new places or trying out a new job – experience is everything, after all. Less fine is when she watches someone leap over a large fire and decides that she needs to try and do the same. Sure, she’d made it (mostly) over the flames and the blaze of adrenaline rushing through her had been wonderful, but she’d also gotten a severe burn on the top of her left foot. All in all, this trait mostly balances itself out. It brings both good and bad her way, and she’s more than willing to take both.
- Reactive: Once her emotions or her gut get involved, Fin is pretty much done thinking. There is no time for reflecting or considering sides; she already has a plan (though often ill-informed) and is following through. This has kept her from being able to truly settle down in any of the lives she’s tried to craft for herself, and also prevents her from actively seeking anything more permanent. Fin has never sat down and thought about what she really wants; she sees what the world around her is offering and reacts accordingly.
Description: I’d like her skin to be on the darker side, and maybe a bit more green than blue if possible, while her underbelly is light enough to almost be white. Her eyes fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum offered on the species info post, and I’d love for her hair to be the darkest color that’s in that same post.
Fin is short, standing at just about four feet, and since she hasn’t grown since stepping on Nated, she doesn’t hope to get much bigger. Almost as if to compensate, she keeps her hair long – enough that it would touch her lower back if she left it loose – then piles a great deal of it on top of her head in various buns and twists that add a couple of inches to her height. She might or might not add elements of fishing nets to her hairstyle, depending on the artist’s preference. I’m thinking maybe a rougher version of one of these styles maybe, or something similar: x x x
It wouldn’t be visible in her Prentice stage and maybe not any of the others, but on the top of her left foot, she does have a pretty severe burn scar.
Clothing: Fin is absolutely fascinated by the netting used by the fisher-folk to catch their meals. Ever since her stint in Besaji, she has always incorporated it into her clothing in one way or another. While I imagine that as she grows (and has more resources at her disposal) the netting will get finer and richer, when she’s a prentice it really would basically be fishing net. She might have a whole shirt of the stuff, or it might be limited to a sleeve or one leg – that’s up to the artist.
Fishing net refs: x x x
The rest of her clothing I don’t really have a complete fix on; I’d probably leave that up to the artist as well.
Accessories: The only accessory I see her really holding on to is one given to her in Besaji. I’m thinking a necklace, made of pretty rough leather or maybe the same sort of fiber as any fishing nets she’s wearing. I’ve got a picture in my head of a pretty large fishing hook – one used to catch one of those occasional 30 footers – that’s a bit bent out of shape and mostly rusted over. The only smooth and maybe even shiny bit of it would be a patch of the curve, where she was told to rub whenever she needed a bit of luck sent to her from Len.
History:
If Finealys was ever a slave, she doesn’t remember; if she ever had parents or other family, she’s chosen to forget. It’s easier that way, without any of the baggage she watches so many of her elders drag heavy behind them wherever they go. There’s not many memories in her, at least not any that are more than four years old. She remembers coming to Nated by ship, and she’s pretty sure it wasn’t the first time she’d traveled that way. The rest – what she calls ‘the Before’ on the rare occasions that she speaks on it – is lost to whispers in the wind and her dreams. Young and without anyone to shelter behind, Fin realized she’d better get to creating her own life pretty quickly. Or lives, really – if she only had one and she lost it, that would be a tragedy. With a host of them at her disposal, she’ll always something to fall back on.
In Nated, she put herself to learning about boats, because the lives of everyone there seemed to hinge on the things, one way or another. While she wasn’t really old enough to do more than fetch and carry and hold things in place, she watched and she soaked it all in. Begging for work and being willing to do whatever anyone asked of her earned Fin enough food and goodwill to thrive despite her lack of family. She learned to patch sails and tie knots, and found delight in creating nets of all sizes to sell to the fisher-folk of Besaji. That part was so enjoyable that, when the chance came she hopped a boat to that very village. There she built a life as a fisher, finding a place with an elderly couple that had lost their son to slavery. Fishing was wonderful… but the weight of the baggage that Ildrim and Naivarra carried with them began to drag her down as well.
Back to Nated she went, though she was careful not to knock holes in any of her boats before she left; she would never willingly end one of her lives. When she can manage it, she sends bits and pieces of treasure that she’s earned or found their way. She visits as often as she dares, and Ildrim and Naivarra are the closest thing to ‘family’ and ‘home’ that she has.
Boats and ships and sail repair were the absolute last thing on her mind after she watched a traveling gypsy dance along the beach in the rays of a dying sun. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, and Fin was determined to make that her next life. She talked her way into joining the gypsy on his journey to Edrao, and picked up a few tricks. Fin might have stayed with him, but he turned his attention to the wider world of Tendaji, and for the first time, she hesitated. She wasn’t ready to leave Matori yet, and some part of her knows she won’t be until Ildrim and Naivarra pass away.
Still, since then she has managed to see every settlement Matori has to offer, and picked up a host of possible lives to fall into. None of them have quite enough allure to make her stay, but she knows she’s running out of time to choose. Those who were once willing to let her sit and learn at their feet now want commitment – they don’t want a child trapped in a woman’s body only looking to feed herself for a few days before moving on. She knows that soon she’s going to have to pick a life and really make it hers, but… she’s just not quite ready to make that leap.
After all, she still hasn’t tried her hand at being a temporary priestess, or learned how to tame a beast. She’d harbor regret in her heart for the rest of her life if she picked a forever-trade without doing either of those.
Additions from Crits:
Suhaba asked: Does she ever think about her parents over the years or wonder where she came from? I know you said she thinks it's easier to not know/care, but I'm curious what her feelings are on the off days where she might think back on where she came from.
Answer: Hmmm... as far as the Before goes, I think most days she'd rather eat glass than think or talk about it. She's lived the aftermath of Matori's freedom, after all, and she's seen that kind of baggage destroy people. So if anyone were to ever ask, she'd offer a very flippant response, and maybe even make up an absurd story about being a lost sea princess or something of the sort.
They don't need to know that some days she wakes up with the ghost of someone's hand stroking her hair and the whisper of someone's voice in her ear. No one needs to know that on some days every year she feels inexplicably joyful and on others she feels unreasonably sad; they definitely don't need to know that both kinds of days are bracketed by intense dreams of events that she may have lived through. Nobody needs to know that part of her is terrified of settling down and creating a forever-life only to lose it to the wind once more.
Overall, I think she has herself pretty well fooled into believing that none of it matters. I imagine that when she has off days (the ones following an especially vivid dream or where she sees something that sparks just a hair or recognition) she works very hard to pretend it's because of something else. She'd attribute it to something she ate, or maybe a longing for something new, and she'd throw herself into various tasks to keep from realizing her own lies.
Probably the only time she really thinks about it is when she's alone at night, and if a few tears slip from her eyes and she wishes she had something, anything - even just scraps of memory - of her former life to hold onto... well. Nobody needs to know that either.
