Post by Fox on Jun 23, 2010 8:19:58 GMT -8
Name: L'nan
Age: 20, Summer <+2 since creation>
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Heterosexual
Rank: Winglet, Tawnyrider, midwife
Location: Currently, Eyrie. Originally from Itnala.
Personality:
The first thing that strikes a person about Leannan when seen in her full capacity as midwife is that she is unfailingly cheerful, always smiling at her patients, and more often than not humming a little tune in time with her work. She’ll chat happily with the women who come to see her about anything under the sun; so much so that people often forget that this young woman whom they so trust to deliver their babies is barely more than a child herself. In truth, Lea is rarely as cheerful as she makes herself out to be. Stepping into her mother’s shoes was not an easy task, especially not for a girl who was all of fifteen and still grieving. But at the time, there were people whose problems were more immediate; that needed her skills if they or their babies wished to survive. Her own unhappiness was pushed to a meagre second place. Happiness, good cheer; they became her shields, both because women tended to relax more in the company of a smiling face and also because her smile paired with her competence made people forget that Lea is still only eighteen. She’s never even kissed a boy. Now, even when she’s sad or angry, the smile remains on her face, because she truly no longer remembers how to function without it.
There is no doubt at all that the girl, young as she is, has a great capacity to love. She cares greatly for many people, and can become quite the mother bear if someone that she cherishes is threatened. It isn’t uncommon for the person who insulted or otherwise injured her loved one to find himself suddenly the target of every smiling insult that she can throw at him. He would also do well to check his sheets and his clothes for nettles, stinging insects, or other similar irritants, as Lea’s temper is nasty and vengeful when roused. Oh, and grudge-keeping? Please. She practically invented the practice.
Even normally- while her cheer is mostly unfeigned- Leannan is hardly a happy-go-lucky sort of girl. Outside of her role as midwife, the young woman is rather prone to sarcasm. Extremely quick on the uptake, she rather enjoys making people squirm now and again. Usually, though, her respect for authority and ingrained manners lead to her biting her tongue on the comment before it is born; only if a person is close enough that the snide comments will not be mistaken for anything truly malicious will Lea loosen her grip on that side of her personality. With strangers, she is as polite and ladylike as her parents taught her to be.
A hardworking girl, Lea takes a lot of pleasure and a certain amount of pride in a job well done. More often than not, she is nitpicky to a fault, mostly because she had learned that, as a midwife, even a small mistake could lead to problems with the mother or the infant or both. Having even one patient die on her watch through negligence was an unacceptable idea. Unfortunately, partnered with this is a mulish streak that ensures that when Lea says she wants it this way, she will not tolerate any other variations on that image. It is a blessing that Lea is usually rather careful about making mistakes since when she does actually make one, it is difficult to get her to see it, and even more difficult to get her to admit it. Pride kept her going when little else did, and very few things are as stiff-necked as she is when something gets her back up.
Appearance:
At a petite 5?? Lea is slim and extremely light of frame. Almost everyone else is taller than her, which can sometimes be rather annoying as the eighteen-year-old rather dislikes having to look up at everyone except the children. Long hair that is almost black falls past her shoulder blades in thick, unruly waves. More often than not, Lea puts her hair in a ponytail to keep it out of her face, though by the end of the day, the severe style is usually found to be listing over to the right due to her unshakeable, slightly juvenile habit of twirling her hair between her fingers when she thinks.
Her skin is fair and seems to be perpetually resisting a tan, no matter how much time Lea spends in the sun. For her, there is apparently no middle ground between white and red, and rather than browning like most ordinary people would, after spending too long outdoors, Lea will come in again with a bright, blazing, sometimes painful red sunburn. And when it heals again, the cycle will rinse and repeat. Dark brown eyes, framed by long, thick eyelashes, are set deep in her delicate, finely-boned face. With a small, straight nose and a wide, ever-smiling, full-lipped mouth, Lea is decidedly feminine, which she is rather glad for, and is generally the furthest thing from the mind when one conjures the image of a Rider candidate.
Plainly, Lea is no fighter. Her hands are strong and somewhat large, ideal for catching babies and gripping the hands of mothers in labour. They are not scarred or calloused, beyond what would be expected of a person who writes a great deal. The evidence of her obsessively detailed patient records can be seen on the third finger of her right hand where a Scribe’s callous shows just how tightly she strangles her pen. She has few scars; the only ones she has are the ones gleaned from a childhood of climbing trees with the neighbours?boys, being a right little hoyden. Never in her life has Leannan ever picked up a weapon, and her total lack of any such experience shows.
Family:
Father- Nathanael, 46, Surgeon
Mother- Robyn, deceased, former midwife
Pets:
None.
Simourv Name: Eoreph
Simourv Color: Tawny, E1A95F
Simourv Age: Zero months
Personality:
Calm, quiet, motherly, shy, prone to utter silences.
(Full personality coming soon)
Appearance:
(Written description coming soon)
Parentage:
(Grey Eceph x Black Alianph)
History:
When Nathanael married Robyn, it was considered to be quite the fortuitous match. He was apprenticed to the local surgeon, with a stable, if not particularly substantial income (those who couldn’t pay for his services often bartered him something instead. They never lacked for fish pastries.) and she was a young midwife, competent and with a reasonably independent income of her own. They met when over work, and hit it off from the start; honestly, Robyn fell for the calm, collected, kind young surgeon almost immediately whereas it took him a while and some pointed pestering before he got the idea. The two had much in common, and by the time he proposed to her- not that she hadn’t been expecting it already- they were very much head-over-heels in love.
Nathanael was adamant about waiting until he took on the role of surgeon in full from his aging mentor before marrying, but Robyn didn’t care. She waited two years for him to complete his apprenticeship, and in those years he convinced her to allow him to support her as he would a spouse despite the fact that she was fully able to support herself on what she made from her midwifery. She did put up quite the fight, too; Robyn liked her independence quite a bit, thank you very much. But she gave in to his stubbornness eventually, since it was perfectly likely that if she refused he would simply do it without her consent. Not that she didn’t enjoy being able to loosen the tightness of her purse strings. In fact, Robyn thought it rather sweet, and certainly very chivalrous that he should make such an offer and carry it through even when his own finances weren’t the most stable things in the world.
When they finally married, it was a little less than a year before they were blessed with a child; a bright-eyed little girl whom they named Leannan; ‘sweetheart? Both parents were smitten with their daughter, and Nathanael in particular would have spoiled her rotten if Robyn hadn’t intervened and confiscated the candy just in time. As she grew, it was plain that mother and daughter were nearly spitting images of one another, save that Lea had her father’s dark, dark hair. She spent many days in her father’s surgery, as well as in her mother’s practice. Growing up as she did, it was hardly surprising that Lea eventually chose to follow her parents into a medical profession. The only debate had been on which she would choose.
Eventually, when Leannan reached thirteen years of age, she made her decision to follow her mother into the practice of the midwife. Robyn was overjoyed. Nathanael was slightly disappointed. But neither of them really minded too much, since Lea was bound to learn from both parents no matter which profession she chose.
The young girl spent the next two years shadowing her mother everywhere; whether it was to check up on a mother who was due, or getting up at all hours of the night to deliver a baby; Lea immersed herself in all of it. She was a fast learner, and it wasn’t long before the people of Itnala knew that Robyn’s not-so-little daughter would turn into a promising future midwife. By the time she was fifteen, her mother occasionally sent her on calls alone when she was busy, trusting in her daughter to make the right choices and to say the right things. It was lucky that she had. Otherwise, Lea might not have been able to step so neatly into her mother’s place as midwife when tragedy struck in the form of a koxi attack, in the winter of Lea’s fifteenth year.
On that fateful day, Lea had been spending the day with her father, helping him with patients, as she occasionally did. When the screams had first alerted them to the danger, Nathanael’s first act was to order his daughter into the woods and up the tallest tree she could find. It was a good thing that so much of her childhood, when not following either one of her parents, had been spent playing more with the boys than with girls her age; it meant that Lea could scale a tree with the best of them. Frightened, but still determined, the girl obeyed her father’s order, but made sure that she brought as many of the children with her as she could. She ferried them up trees and instructed them to hide as best they could amongst the branches. Only once she could find no more children did the fifteen-year-old scale a tree herself to hide, sitting there with her gut clenched in dread and worry, for what seemed like hours until the koxi retreated and the townsfolk were left to pick up the pieces.
When they finally returned to Itnala, Nathanael found his daughter almost immediately. Even before he had said anything, the ashen, stricken, infinitely sorrowful look on his face told her all that she needed to know. Her mother had not survived the attack. Her practice had been crushed by the giant lizards, with her still inside. It was a small blessing that she had not been killed and eaten. They, at least, had a body to bury.
Lea didn’t even have time to grieve. A pregnant woman went into labour, and suddenly she was no longer Leannan, Robyn’s daughter, but Leannan the midwife, and she was all that they had. So the girl threw herself into her new role, hiding from her grief and her father’s pain, training to fill her mother’s shoes. She cultivated new, smiling facades to hide behind, both to protect herself and to give confidence to others. The only one who saw- who recognised- what she was doing was her father, but Nathanael was too devastated by his wife’s death to be able to comfort his daughter. Eventually, what started as that inability to offer comfort turned into a rift between father and daughter that neither could span. Now, at eighteen, Lea has gone from child to adult in a short space of time. She is mired into the endless cycle of life in Itnala, but even with her hands full with squalling infants and training an assistant, she silently, secretly dreams of flying. It’s about the only childish dream she has left anymore.
