"He's the one for me, that's all. He just is."
- Aya Nakahara
BASICS
NAME: Lavanya
GENDER: Female
PRONOUNS: She/Her/Hers
ORIENTATION: Homosexual
BIRTHDATE: Spring 2743
AGE: 35 as of Winter 2778
LOCATION: High Reaches Weyr
OCCUPATION: Dragonrider
WING: Starfall Wing
APPEARANCE
EYES: Dark Brown
HAIR: Black
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5’11”, Slim
PLAY-BY: Tanaya Beatty
FULL APPEARANCE:
- A tall, slim woman with warm golden skin, high, defined cheekbones, and full lips. Her eyes are dark brown, close enough to black that it can be hard to differentiate the iris from the pupil. Her eyebrows are straight, barely curving above her eye, and her lashes are fine and defined. Her nose is straight, and her hair falls in black waves to the bottom of her shoulder blades.
Lavanya enjoys dressing in light, flowing fabrics. She can be practical, braiding her hair tightly when she’s in her riding leathers, but she prefers to feel airy when she’s off duty. This is sometimes a bother with the cold High Reaches winters, but she manages with soft colors when her favorite floaty fabrics are too thin to be practical.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
- Lavanya is all heart. She loves freely and gives all of herself to the ones she loves. She also does well with change, thankfully; it could have been a very hard adjustment when her life suddenly turned from that of a kitchen worker to a dragonrider, otherwise. She’s generally a very light, easygoing person who wants to spend her time with friends and family and, of course, Kinlath.
The downside to Lavanya’s big heart is that she doesn’t always make the best decisions. It is more important to her to support those she loves than it is to do the right thing. If it comes down to the good of the many or the few she loves, Lavanya will choose those she loves every time. Obviously, the one closest to her heart is Kinlath; somehow, he is also the one that she gives the most grace.
For the rest, the humans that she loves, Lavanya expects great things. It isn’t that she thinks everyone should be riders or handlers. She just expects them to be the best they can be in the places they are. She expects her family to be ideal weyrfolk, her friends among the other dragonriders to be perfect dragonriders. She’s also hard on herself, holding herself to the same strict standards, which means that after the fact, when she puts her loved ones before duty, she feels terribly guilty … but it never changes her behavior.
Unfortunately, since perfection is impossible, Lavanya tends to be frequently disappointed. She doesn’t lash out, but she does get very disappointed, in the way of heavy sighs and mournful looks that let everyone know she’s being judgmental.
In her free time, Lavanya very much enjoys embroidery, although she is rarely sure what to do with finished pieces; she tends to give most of them away as a result. She also likes to press flowers, and is much more likely to keep those to decorate her weyr.
Lavanya is also frightened of bugs. She knows there’s no logic behind it, but she’s pretty sure that nothing should have more than six limbs. Spinners and springs are the worst, but she doesn’t like any bugs at all.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
- Father, Lavrentios, 69 [+34]
Mother, Ifunanya, 70 [+35]
Brother, Ifentios, 46 [+11]
Brother, Ifunos, 42 [+7]
Sister, Lavrenya, 37 [+2]
BIRTHPLACE: High Reaches Weyr
HISTORY:
- TW: MENTIONED DEATH
Born in High Reaches Weyr late in the Ninth Interval, Lavanya was the last of four children. She was only twelve when armistice was declared and all of fifteen when Thread began to fall again. She didn’t enter candidacy, content to learn how to work in the kitchens alongside her father, but no amount of keeping her head down and continuing on with her life could keep her ignorant of the goings-on in the Weyr and in the world at large.
Galore’s rise to power led to refugees fleeing High Reaches Weyr, and the following turn, even dragonriders fled. It was a relief, although a guilty one, when Golre and Vizeth were killed and chromatic dragons from Fort came to take the lead of the Weyr and help rebuild.
Things settled down then, and Lavanya was able to be comfortable again in her role in the kitchens. She spent half her time up to her elbows in flour, but at nineteen Lavanya had her first serious relationship with another woman among the weyrfolk. Things were peaceful.
She was not expecting, when at twenty-one she attended the hatching of a clutch donated by Benden, to have the first egg hatch into a blue that demanded without words that she come down from the stands. She stumbled down to him almost as though in a trance, and she missed out on the rest of the hatching as she got to know Kinlath.
It was only because of the roars and screams that she noticed when Brown Gadoroth hatched and killed Naveed on the sands. The hatching of twin golds right after was almost overshadowed by the ferocious brown.
That autumn, the first Weyr Council was elected in High Reaches.
It was a turn later, before the weyrling class had even graduated, when a holdleass man murdered Azana, claiming he was hired by Pellay of Blue Qth, who poisoned the dragons in a weyrling class at Fort Weyr.
Mere months later, Gold Midath’s maiden flight was the same day as Ariath’s flight, leading to the young gold’s death and the older gold becoming permanently grounded.
There was to be no peace in High Reaches. As Lavanya and Kinlath tried to settle into their place in Starfall Wing, the Junior Weyrleader was assassinated, the death blamed on former holder Xander, who was attacked while imprisoned. At least Gold Terminath’s maiden clutch hatched safely.
Things settled down a little more after that. It was a turn and a half before an assassination attempt was made on the new Junior Weyrleader.
Lavanya was glad, in the following turns, to be only a bluerider. Not that she ever would have traded Kinlath for anything! He was perfect, and there was something deeply intimate in the way the pair of them communicated, with Kinlath giving her color and emotion and images. Lavanya understood him easily after half a dozen turns together. But since he was blue, and she had no desire to seek a position on the council, it meant that the two of them were not of interest by either side of he political conflicts that tugged the Weyr back and forth.
Things settled slowly, but they did settle, as the Council went through growing pains and elections and the anti-gold sentiment in the Weyr faded somewhat. It was, perhaps, a good thing when Gold Galdeneth chose a male rider in Zagreus. At the very least, it was appropriate for a Weyr as progressive as High Reaches.
Pern slowed. Lavanya and Kinlath’s lives became more predictable, with time spent with friends or lovers between threadfall and other duties. They started to think that things might even become relatively peaceful - at least, as peaceful as things could be during a Pass - when blight struck the crops at High Reaches Hold in the fall of 2773. A turn later, a mudslide hit the hold, pushing holders into the Weyr. When the holdless were invited into the Weyr two turns later, leading to even further overcrowding, Lavanya started to feel bowstring-taut in a way she hadn’t felt in turns.
Tensions rose in the Weyr, and once more, Lavanya tried to keep herself and Kinlath from being unduly noticed. The poisonings in the fall of 2777 terrified her, and she had to wonder if things were going to continue to get worse before they finally got better.
UPDATES
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