"live to fly, fly to live, do or die... aces high!" - Iron Maiden, Aces High
BASICS
NAME: Ae'flaed
GENDER: Female
PRONOUNS: she/her/hers
ORIENTATION: Panromantic pansexual
BIRTHDATE: Early Spring 2700
AGE: 72 as of 2772
LOCATION: Fort Weyr
OCCUPATION: Dragonrider
WING: Daylight Wing
APPEARANCE
EYES: Blue
HAIR: White
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'1", slender
PLAY-BY: Judi Dench
FULL APPEARANCE:
Ae'flaed never was a tall woman, but she's still hale and hearty as Pernese tend to be. With snow-white hair kept short and bright blue eyes with a habit of twinkling, there's an air of mischief about her undimmed by the years, though on first meeting her she might seem demure and every inch a proper lady.
Usually to be found wearing riding leathers, when she does wear something else it tends to look stylish - but then she's one of those people who could make a tuber sack look like a product of the Mastertailor. When she chooses to dress for an occasion she's absolutely eye-catching, although her left hand and arm, and her right shoulder - and the threadscores they bear - are rarely on display.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
Ae'flaed is and always has been trouble, in a very genteel way. She rarely stooped so low as to play pranks on people in childhood; hers is a more refined sense of humour. Instead, her friends would be presented with beautifully-embroidered cushions 'incidentally' containing swearwords, and the like. She positively enjoys presenting herself as a perfect role-model, proper and demure, and watching the expressions on peoples' faces when they realise the truth of her. She's also a terrible flirt, who sees no reason to limit that flirting or anything more serious, but has never had a long-term relationship. It's been joked more than once that she's married to the skies.
Headstrong and wilful, she found herself in trouble more often than not, especially when she Impressed to Hurricath. Ae'flaed and her beloved green dragon spent more time doing punishment drills than most - not that they really cared. Who cared if they ended up mucking out the latrines, if they'd managed to get a couple more hours in the sky?
Even now - especially now - Ae'flaed does what she wants. It's not exactly 'hang the consequences'; she understands the consequences, it's just that sometimes she thinks they're worth it. She's the sort of maverick spirit who'd be almost impossible to deal with if she wasn't usually right, which just makes her very difficult to deal with. When it comes to fighting Thread, Ae'flaed and Hurricath excel as trouble-flamers, watching peoples' backs and intervening where they need to, rather than being in a static position in the wing. This often causes trouble when they're supposed to be in a particular place at a particular time, although the need to intervene has reduced drastically since the desperate days of the start of Threadfall and they can now go whole seasons without feeling the need to step out of place.
HISTORY
FAMILY: A couple of grandchildren
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: N/A
BIRTHPLACE: Fort Weyr
HISTORY:
Being short has never been a bar to Ae'flaed; in fact, if anything, it's driven her to greater heights. Born to bronzerider Ae'marin and brownrider T'laed of Fort Weyr, great things were expected of young Aethelflaed, but when green Hurricath flopped out of the egg and chose her, Ae'flaed couldn't have been happier. She hadn't wanted some lumbering great barge of a dragon - she wanted to fly with speed and agility, instead, and fly she did, and she does.
Ae'flaed and Hurricath got a name for themselves as daredevils before they ever left the Weyrling wing, and it was a reputation they only built on over the following decades. Even now, when they're technically old enough to know better, they'll occasionally buzz whoever's on the fireheights at speed.
Ae'flaed settled into life as a dragonrider, and as a disinterested greenpair she and Hurricath didn't see much of Weyr politics or anything of the sort. Their career during the Interval War was just the same as many other small dragonpairs; always a pawn in other peoples' plans, never a player in their own rights. Still, they came through, and when Thread started to fall they rose to meet it with far more interest than they'd ever tried to face down other dragons.
Ae'flaed and Hurricath adapted to Thread much faster than many others. The hours, days and seasons they'd spent just flying stood them in good stead, and they used their speed and agility to help keep others alive, picking up a few threadscores of their own in the process, though as the wing got to grips with the new threat and how best to fight it they intervened less and less (and were to be found where they were supposed to be more and more, in the process).
Ae'flaed and Hurricath are still flying, still flaming and still flirting. They can still do all three, and see no reason whatsoever to stop now.
