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Shath
Bonded to: Brick (male) Bakalt
Age: 45 Sex: Female
Soul Name: jhao'cht Known By: herself only, discovered while mentally exploring and fighting being Mind Held by a distant elf
Mate Status/Sex Preference: Single, straight
Children: none, worries that she might not be a good mother (for no apparent reason)
Parents/Relatives: Mother Amanth, father unknown GoBack - looking for him
Height: 4'1" Build: healthy, shapely and curvey
Hair Color, Length, Style: strawberry red, straight, to thighs in 2 pony tails
Eye Color, Size, Shape: holly green, very big irises, little white ever seen
Skin Tone: pale shaded, but doesn't burn (mother's skin is quite dark)
Voice Quality: deep, husky, slightly raspy
Clothing -- Summer: very little (in the desert anyway)
Clothing -- Winter: as seen, body suit in green/hazel silk, cloth leg wrappings and leather boots of poppy red-orange
Jewlery Worn, Made: loves copper things, has a lot of bangles, earrings and such, she is talented at making jewelry
Tatoos/Markings/Scars: none
Pets/Animals Kept: tended zwoots (camel/horses) back at the Village
Notable Posessions: none
Holt Function: animal tender (6/10), using tethers and ropes (8/10), far-sender, also she has developed a written language which is all but unknown to Abodean elves, but she's very good at jotting things down in it and getting other people to understand it at a glance (9/10)
Magic? How Powerful? Sending (poor, 1/10), Magic Feeling (almost non existant), Far-Sending (6/10, a good distance to sense)
Climate/Locations Preferred: shade with dry air, loves the desert but feels there's more to her than just her mother's side; can handle both desert and frozen extremes very well (possibly magic?)
General Likes: Jewelry, stones and gems that are easily made into things, observing people, making up her own mind
General Dislikes: having to hunt or kill for food (but she does it anyway out of necessity), being out in the very exposed open desert, also dislikes being deeply hidden or in humid weather
Fears/Worries: that she will never be able to find her father - she doesn't even know his name, he was only at a large gather for one or two nights, and possibly had relations with several of the females at the Village. This means she knows she has siblings, somewhere, but worries that they will not accept her.
Special Strange Info: She's got an uncanny ability to throw things that you wouldn't expect: bowls, buckets, the odd small animal... with some training and access to it, she'd be able to throw just about any weapon at least to stun things.
Stats: Strength - Average; Dexterity - High; Agility - Extremely High; Health - Above Average; Intelligence - Extremely High; Appearance - Below Average; Charisma - Above Average; Magic Power - Below Average
Basic Personality: Curious, stable, but vaguely dissatisfied with her life in the Sun Village. She is willing to leave everything she knows, to go about into the world.
How they feel about
Humans: never met one, but from what she's heard they're a varied bunch. best not to judge until she meets them
Elves -- herders: good hard work, especially with stubborn zwoots!
Elves -- magic users: is very pleased and honored to be among them, never lets herself forget that it's a skill she must expand
Elves -- bond-riders: the Wolfriders are said to have wolf-blood, but they sure don't look it. The wolves are amazing, team players instead of just herd-animals. She's curious about them, and any other animals that might be more intimately mind-paired.
Trolls, etc: yeah, yeah, they're the ancient enemies of the elves... but why? why fight? why not share, learn from them and trade!
Bond Animal Info if any: None yet
Shath had been aware that something was bothering her for a while. Almost exactly the same amount of time since she'd developed her Soul Name. What was it about having one, she wondered, that gave her nightmares or visions, did it make her more or less vulnerable to outside attacks?
The Wolfriders who lived in the Village told her that her name was important. Many Villagers born and raised there didn't have one, they lacked telepathy too. But she had a little, she was able to use some mental magic which distinguished her from the group.
Her mother was directly descended from the elegant Savah, mother of memory - perhaps that was where this power came from. Because it was certain it wasn't her father's side, the GoBacks didn't appreciate magic. She chuckled. The Gobacks didn't like magic, and the Sun Villagers could hardly use it. What a pair to choose for parents...
The messy gather that brought her mother and father together lasted more than a day - but not long enough to find out who he was. His name even eluded the elders, there were so many GoBacks, they could hardly keep track of them all. The Palace's keepers were wandering now, lost without their very goal in the north lands.
Some groups of them were friendly, some were not. Her father's were among those that celebrated life whereever they could, and obviously left a trail of children out of Recognition (herself among them) across the continent. Since there was little magic in use at the Village, it was not any kind of taboo to have a child out of Recognition - hardly anyone there had Recognized in eights of turns.
So she was prized as any child was (and she had age mates! lots of them were pale-skinned like herself, some had inherited their darker-parent's features), and raised by her mother and others in the Village. There, she learned how to survive in the desert, of course. But she was at ease with it, even if she didn't much care for direct sunlight. Her pale skin was at first a worry for her mother, but soon it was apparent that she could remain in the sun as long as any dark-skinned Villager without getting burnt. So unlike the Wolfriders, who took years to get used to the heat and sun.
She took to throwing as soon as she could grasp. Shath unerringly strikes any target she aims at - when she's throwing things that aren't meant to be tossed! A dish, pot, even dirt, winds up in extraordinary places when she's got ahold of it. Her mind though, was so much more on target than even a thrown rock. Shath's memory was strong from the start, and her ability to organize thoughts into small pictograms drew more attention to her.
Humans use pictograms, didn't they? They were able to give ideas to each other just by symbols - not the way the Wolfriders did by howling, or from scent-markings (eew) - but really by recording their thoughts down so others can think the same thing, even long after they've gone! To Shath, that's an amazing feat. Even elves normally have to rely upon stories, meditation or magic to recall things that happened long ago. Her pictogram set was always expanding, even now. Teaching others to use it was difficult, but eventually she's sure that there will be some use to it.
Her skills with stones and bead work was also something that attracted attention. For someone who liked to sit in the shade, this was an ideal task, and she took to it easily. Putting holes in small stones or rolling clay into shapes to be baked and later painted was just the start. She has a strong eye for gems laying half-covered in the sand, or embedded in cave walls with ores glittering around them.
For many turns of the seasons, Shath was content to drift between learning to use her far-sending power - stretching her mind as wide as it could go, without breaking from her body; to helping with the beadwork and crafters; to tending the ornery zwoots that were kept in the Village.
But then came that day when she found her Soul Name.
Something else was out there, something distant but powerful, angry and seething. Savah mentioned a name, Winnowill, and this name struck a terrifying chord in the younger elf. Knowing that this elf was out there, waiting to prey on other minds, made Shath worry that her own training would be of little use: if she was able to be trapped (like Savah had once) why should she keep at it? Why not be safe and sound within her own body?
But eventually she did go back to her studies. And after a while, reaching out far to the west, she felt something. Winnowill, perhaps, it was a radiantly dark presence - a presence that hurt just to be around. Like the sting of a wasp striking a toe or the tip of your ear, this presence spread like an itch and burn.
And then it struck Shath like the sun, like a wall of heat when you've come up from the underground dwellings into the midday sun. The pain and anger made Shath immediately close off a part of herself, wrapping herself in a cloak that was jhao'cht. The other presence could not get through this wall of power, and Shath retreated from it, memorizing the direction that it lay in, so she wouldn't make the mistake of going that way.
Nothing could make her head toward the ... the sea? She knew that the world had desert and forest, lake and mountain, and there was something so completely unlike what she knew: the sea. An endless huge lake, with water that swelled up and down... Other travellers had spoken of it. It was best to leave it alone, then.
But soon after this event, Shath knew that there was more to her than she seemed here at the Village. She wasn't 'gripped' by wanderlust, but she was now more curious than ever about the rest of the world. She'd touched minds with very distant elves that were sleeping, or perhaps they were even dead, she couldn't tell. There were glimmering presences that remained near elfin minds, too. And those, she was curious about the most.
So she set out, just after she'd turned ten hands of age (that's forty). She was prepared, carrying enough water and food to last a while, clothing for both hot and cold weather, and the well-wishes of all her friends. She also carried supplies to draw and write with - scrolled paper made from the lake-shore's plant matter pressed into sheets, and a stylus with ink drawn from charcoal fires. Upon the back of a somewhat elderly female zwoot (no longer producing calves, no longer needed in the domestic herd because she didn't give milk) she headed east.
The rocky lands of her Village home eventually dwindled, days and days of riding at twilight and dusk, sleeping between and hunting in the night brought her to the edge of her 'known world'. The desert was still warm, she could feel its presense to the west still, baking in the summer. But there were flatter areas, now, places where there was no sand, indeed it was lush compared to the Village! Even the scrub lands didn't have the oppressive feel of the raw dune desert.
Then, instead of continuing eastward, one evening, Shath decided to send out her mind again, seeking others. The spotty glimmers of elfin minds came to her 'vision', some closer than others. A batch which shared itself with stranger, but still strong minds caught her eye.
She headed north, toward the sloping hills and lush countryside.
And on the way she met her first Humans. They were kind, actually, not at all like the ones that the Wolfriders described to her in tales of escape and woe. These were painted in bright colors with ochre and charcoal, sporting long feathers from birds, some of them even had the pelts of animals complete with the head as proof that they were strong.
She respected this strength, and apparently her expression showed that fact. The tall male with the dark lion's head dressing his shoulders seemed to enjoy the wide-eyed and smiling expression that she gave him. She was no hunter, she pantomimed 'spear', 'club', and then the human laughed loudly and nodded. He along with several of his group reinacted his hunt, his prize.
Shath took out her writing supplies, and put these images down - a lion crouched in the brush hunting gazelle; humans surround him; a fierce fight; and a battle won!
She showed it to the chief, and though it took him a moment, he realized that the scratching marks did resemble men with spears, a curved line with a bunch of marks at one end a lion. He summoned a young boy, and gruffly told him things that Shath didn't understand. Until, the boy's eyes went wide with interest. He was also a symbol-maker, a historian in training.
For two eights of days, Shath remained with these humans, learning a little of their speech and trading symbols with the boy until they could easily communicate. She also showed him how, on even these plants nearby at the stream they were following, he could create papyrus himself, for easier writing.
Shath eventually parted with them, they were nomads on their journey around these scrublands and would return by the next year. Perhaps they would see Shath again, perhaps not. But they harbored no stories of death or destruction toward elf kind - they knew the 'spirits' existed, but they had never seen one until then. Since Shath was friendly, and clearly had no weapons, they were easier to deal with. They were all quite tall and slender, even the young boy was almost as tall as Shath and he was hardly able to grow a hair on his face. (She knew they did that, all the older men had face-fur as the Wolfriders called it... did humans also have wolf-blood?)
Shath would always keep the first of her messages exchanged with this human tribe: it would always remind her of their strong and brave chief, and that the chief was also wise and kind. He could easily have snapped her in two, or speared her from a distance - their hunting equipment had a similar tool to an atlatl that was common in the Village, she demonstrated she knew of its use, but unlike being able to simply throw a spear - which she was good at - this was an awkward tool at best, and she made all the group laugh heartily when she tried it herself.
So with the knowledge that these plains would turn to hills and then to forest, she headed north again. It was another several hands of days travel, slow travel because she wanted to soak in every bit of the world around her (and, the zwoot was tired, and would hardly last another few hands of days from the looks of it). She made it up to an area where those elfin minds and the 'other' minds mingled strongly.
Who were these other minds? Where were they? Did they speak as elves did? Or were they Human? She'd never been able to think with a human, she wasn't sure it was possible. So they couldn't be... But then what?
She wondered until she saw a shape in the sky - at first thinking it was a huge bird. But it wasn't, it scared the zwoot so badly that she simply up and died from fright. The creature came down to land, investigating the bellowing that the zwoot did before it expired: and saw Shath.
The beast was huge, striped with a complicated pattern of narrow red-brown over a creamish shade. It had wings, but no fur nor feathers like a bat. A long tail, and strong limbs with huge claws on them completed this image. Shath stood terrified, but then...
Well what have we here? May I eat it? It was yours, it smells like yours. You have things on it. They are being crushed. Take off that harness thing, you will need it again I think. RASP! Come see what I've found!
The mind! It was bright, redly tinted, alien but at the same time, it felt so comfortable speaking to an elf! "I.... what ... what are you!" She said, finally able to speak. She moved without turning her gaze away from the dragon, while he introduced himself.
I am Lorewrath, my bond is Rasp - there she is.
An elf - an elf! She came out from the bushes and loudly chided Lorewrath for being so greedy with wanting the deaad animal. "It's not like him to be so pushy, but he is hungry. You're traveling ... well, you're here," Rasp said. She had short, curly hair that was both yellow and red, and a loud, happy demeanor once she saw Shath.
"Where have I found, then?" Shath asked.
"This is Bald Mountain holt, we're dragon riders... That, he's already introduced himself, is a dragon. They are not from here... But we're working on breeding em. They work on it all the time..." she laughed.
Shath was introduced to Apogee and the rest of the Holt, and told of their travels to other worlds, where dragons lived. Shath thought about this: her father .... could wait!
If she could have a mount or friend that was like these creatures, she could travel more easily. Even if it couldn't fly - she didn't know whether she was afraid to be so high up. She saw the elves of this Holt (the Wolfriders called their home a Holt too - and there were a couple Wolf riders here too! travelers like herself!) up on the backs of these great flying beasts...
She knew she would be of use, when they asked her what all that colorful scratchy stuff was in her scrolled papers... and they recognized what it was: words! Though no one in the Holt read nor wrote, Apogee decided that it was high time they did. They would be recording births soon enough - in fact three had already happened and one on the way. Dragon bonding, wolf cubs and cat litters, all those things needed to be put down more permanently. Shath was just the elf to do it.
But first.... she would need to find a dragon!
Most of the dragons living here could flip between these strange worlds, and Shath understood easily the idea that the stars in the sky could be suns to a world just like this one. Some had moons, some were moons! So they set her up with one of the teleporting dragons, and he asked her where to go.
"I am not sure," Shath said. "Let me think a moment... Wait, you said you could go somewhere between worlds, go there... and then I will look."
She clung on to the dragon's neck, while he flew up into the air, and headed into the Nexus. Once the chill vacancy of 'real' struck her, Shath sent her mind out again. This time, there was no ocean, no east or west, no desert or plains. There was a world, her home Abode, and there was another: a place that she vividly could make out at the edge of her mind. The dragon headed there, to a place called Lantessama.
And there, Shath waited to become a dragon rider...
What was really strange, was that once there she met up with the blond haired Springflower - .... but... Springflower already had a lovely green colored dragon, didn't she?
It dawned on her after only a few hours, that ... she'd not just traveled away from the Holt and Abode. She'd traveled back in time. It was difficult to talk to Springflower without the added burden of memory, so though it looked as though she was giving the lovely plant shaper the cold shoulder, it was really because Shath didn't know quite what to say whenever they spoke.
And she had such a lovely lifemate, too, handsome and dark skinned like her tribe's people! Shath wondered where they came from, that they were both so dark. And they were ... well, Shath didn't think about it too hard. She'd be going back to her own time, so that wouldn't be an issue.
She was interested in the languages which were used at Lantessama, able to learn a few symbols here and there before the hatching. But then such a hatching! All these lovely colorful dragons, bowling their newfound friends over and ...
When would one come to her? It was almost over, Springflower - she bonded her moss-colored dragoness here! That was so weird! And ... wouldn't that mean that whoever she found here (if she found a friend, as there were fewer and fewer eggs) were from the same nest? She wasn't even sure they were all from the same parents, though, because their features were often so different.
And thus very late in the hatching, a male of darker red hue, still tempered by the lightness of the plains/desert coloration that permeated all the hatchlings, came to sit between the last of the candidates in the area. Finally he turned and looked up at Shath.
Your hair goes much better with me, so I'll take you. My name is Bakalt.
The elf smiled not knowing to either be happy with the choice or to take it as a joke and answered: "And they say blonds have more fun." She wasn't sure where she'd heard that, but was positive people thought it funny. Back at Sorrow's End, of course, blonds were rare - Springflower was blond! But they did indeed seem to be a bit more... bouncy and bubbly.
But redheads were definitely 'in' for this dragon's tastes.
Before eight days had passed, the dragon who'd brought Shath to this place came back, and they headed back to Bald Mountain.
She almost asked him to take her back to the past, but that was something that she'd always just have to wonder about. Or, to write about! She'd seen what they called a 'library' - it was a huge room, filled with paper bound in leathers, squared off and easily opened. Scrolls filled little nooks and could be read by opening them too. And every one of them had information in them!
Some, she was told, were stories about real things: like this hatching, it was recorded in the newer area and tucked away, copied so others might read it again and again. And others were 'fiction' - stories that weren't all true, that were made up and intended to entertain. That inspired Shath to start making more paper than ever, so she could write her own accounts of things! After all that was what Apogee wanted her to do!
And now that she knew: her arrival had come quite late in Bald Mountain's history, she'd have to catch up. Who arrived when? What happened to each of the arrivals before they got there? Oh there were so many things to document!
Could you do that after we hunt?
"Of course, of course.." Shath said. She fixed up her riding gear. Among the Holt's riders, only a few prefered to use riding saddles or straps, but for some elves their dragons were either too big or too quick in the air to ride bare. Shath just felt more comfortable on this dragon's back, with a single loop of leather strapped around Bakalt's neck. He didn't mind it, claimed it was practically not even there. But then, Bakalt wasn't small! Shath's weight was nothing, they sped through the air, and Shath clung on while Bakalt located some springing antelope to catch.
It didn't surprise Shath that Springflower's dragon hardly recognized her clutch mate, after all it had been almost as long as Shath had been alive, that they'd been apart! As she cooked (she didn't like eating raw meat, about half the Holt did so though) her leg of antelope, scrounged from Bakalt's meal (grabbed so that she could have something for herself, really) she pondered it.
If what the elfess said was true, they'd arrived to the Holt ... just about the same time that Shath had been born! Maybe even just a little earlier! She wasn't that old, so this was not really a surprise, but it was so strange... She'd gone back in time, and if she'd only moved sideways in space, following Springflower back instead of coming directly, she'd have come back before being born...
Chuckling, Shath started jotting down notes about this, she was going to write a story about it, for sure!
Put me in it, Bakalt announced, and put more hunting in it. We look good when we're hunting.
"We do indeed, others have even said so," Shath admitted. "Orangepeel especially," she giggled. "He likes me, I think. But he's got a daughter, already. I wonder what that means..."
It means that he can be a good father, Bakalt said.
"But elves don't usually have many children, I ..."
Maybe you will, maybe you won't. If he likes you and you like him, why do you not go to him? He smiles as much as you do when you are together. Maybe that means something more than you think.
It was true, Orangepeel, though he'd recognized Morning Glory and given her a lovely daughter Chamomile (who was strong and a little strange (she senses ghosts, apparently, and there are some here who followed the Chieftess to this place from their old home), Orangepeel had a friendly face and a strong mind. They might yet get together...
It was only after becoming lovemates for a few seasons that Shath realized... she was half Go-Back! She could have babies if she really wanted them. Her father out there somewhere, High Ones bless him, had given her another gift that she would eventually thank him for... the gift of life!
She hadn't even thought of it, but... Eventually Shath went to the armorsmith, the elfess named Jade. And when she did (mostly to get her information about her child, since she had no dragon yet) she realized something extremely important.
Jade was a Go-Back. She had volumes to say about their exile, the strange events leading up to the Go-Back lodge having broken up. And it was at that moment when Shath realized: Jade would surely have known her father!
"Come to think of it," Jade said while trying to clean up Granite, her little boy of a hand of turns. "You do look familiar. Not your hair, but ... your eyes. I think, we didn't stay with the same group, but when we all broke up I knew your sire." She nodded, as though that was enough to satisfy Shath.
"But," she blurted out, "what was his name? Do you know anything else? I've... I've been trying to figure this out for so long."
Jade got a strange look on her chiseled face, "huh, didn't even leave you that, eh? Well that's not uncommon. After all, Go-Backs are known for having enough kits to fill a den." She paused a moment, in thought, while sending little Granite on his way. He loudly sped out, ready to pick up more rocks and hurl them ... he really liked doing that...
"Frydir," Jade said after a while. "His name was Frydir, I remember now. He was a great storyteller, singer, had a very good voice for it. Like yours, only male." She chuckled, while Shath turned colors. "Come to think of it, you've got more in common with him than I realized... I remember when we'd go hunting - this was ... so long ago..."
She took a deep breath and sent an image to Shath. She knew that Shath wasn't all that hot with sending thoughts, but was pretty certain she would recieve this. He was short, with a pointed chin and high cheeks, short ruddy-brown hair and big green eyes. Muscular, looked too skinny to be holding a weapon. But he did, well. The memory showed a hunt along a tall mountain ridge, several other elves bundled up but it was summer, the snow hadn't fallen in hands of days, and it was clear skies.
Shath noted well what it was about this Frydir that caught Jade's attention: he used a lasso to hunt small prey. Just like she did...
"And he liked using beads, he would make clothing too. He used them on everything. And he had this ... this whitestripe." Jade laughed, waved her hand below her nose. "Can you believe it, a whitestripe as a pet?"
".... If they're anything like the ones we had in the desert," Shath laughed, "that's some pet!" She refered of course, to skunks...
So now she had a name, a sending-memory she could cherish... But ... could she still find him? She knew they'd gone distantly west, but... that would bring them closer to dangerous people.
"Do you ever wonder about your tribe mates, Jade? Where they've all gone?" Shath said, writing out her notes and making others more private on another piece of pressed papyrus.
"Nah, I'm here now. This is a good home to have, people who need my works, dragons - heh, the dragons alone, if they ever wanted me to armor them up, I'd be busy for turns!" She paused, Jade was brusk, blunt, like many Go-Backs. But she was also quite smart. "Oho, you want to go find him, eh?"
She elbowed Shath, with a knowing grin. "You're such a young little kit, why would you want to do that? He's seen plenty of the world, and he's got more kids than just you, I bet," Shath had to nod and smiled a little. "Well, I'm ... I'm sure that he'd know you if he saw you, but... We Go-Backs, we're not ..."
She stood up, and looked out. She spotted her son, Granite, who was dangling from his knees over a pile of stones. For whatever reason, the kid wouldn't be harmed even a bit, should he fall on them. Put him over grass on the other hand...
"Granite is a good kid. Son of a near High-One, Kolgar's his papa," she commented, though Shath knew that already from having spoken to him earlier. "But ... when he's ready to do what he'll do, I'll teach him whatever he wants to learn and he'll be on his own. That's our way. We support each other, but we don't cling to each other." She spotted a slightly older boy, Hush, who was approaching Granite and about to tell him to get down from there lest he hurt himself. And sure enough, a moment later, Archive and Dreamwhisper his parents came trotting out to help.
"Not like them," Jade said. "We're not like that, all ... huggy-kissy all the time. We like our romps in the fur," she grinned, "I know you do too. But we're not too worried about the kids. They... they sometimes die. You know when we were warring with the Trolls, we had many, many children die."
Shath's stomach tightened. "I ... I know that, but I didn't really think about it until now. You have many children, because you need many children. Like the deer in the herds, almost. Something is going to eat them, whether they like it or not, so the best way to keep everything going is... to have more babies than can be eaten."
"That's about it," Jade said with a sigh. "I know, that doesn't sound too appealing."
"But... it's ... it's all right," Shath said. She grew quickly to this idea. "I suppose that even though I was born in the desert I was never really a part of it. Obviously, I left it."
Jade nodded. "You're catching on." She looked at some of the scribbly things on Shath's paper, "say, that'd make a good looking symbol for a shield to bear..."
Shath looked down, and saw her word for Granite, and she laughed, "it should - it's your son's name!"
With that, they shared more laughs and information than ever, while the kids outside got into trouble under the watchful eyes of the 'better' parents in the Holt. Frydir would wait - he might even be dead out there somewhere. But if they ever did meet, or if Shath ever did go looking for him, Shath would be proud to say she was a Go-Back too.