"Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination."
BASICS
NAME: Mayalaran ("Maya")
GENDER: Female
PRONOUNS: She/Her/Hers
ORIENTATION: Not interested
BIRTHDATE: Early Fall 2754
AGE: 22 as of Late Fall 2776
LOCATION: Fort Weyr
OCCUPATION: Apprentice Healer
APPEARANCE
EYES: Brown
HAIR: Auburn
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 6'1", strong
PLAY-BY: Ayoola Smart
EXPY SOURCE: Mayalaran (Stormlight Archive)
FULL APPEARANCE:
Mayalaran is a rather tall woman with a muscular build. She has warm-toned, medium brown skin. Her face is oval-shaped, with a notable smattering of freckling and moles, including a larger one that touches her lip. She has mahogany brown eyes and low-set eyebrows that are on the sparse side. Her nose is broad but not very large. Her ears are rather small, with attached lobes. She has tightly coiled auburn hair formed into a number of thin locs of around shoulder length.
She tends to dress practically, favoring trousers over skirts and dark colors over those that will more easily show stains. She prefers somewhat loose cuts, even after transferring to Fort where the climate isn't hot enough to all but mandate it.
Her voice is on the somewhat lower side, both in pitch and in volume. She has a faint accent from Ista, though growing up at the Weyr around people of many backgrounds means it isn't especially strong.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
Mayalaran is a woman of rather few words, when she thinks she can get away with saying little or nothing. She frequently speaks in incomplete sentences, and sometimes prefers to sign or simply point rather than speaking. She's not shy, she just doesn't always have much to say--or at least nothing she wants to say enough to draw attention to herself. She's hyperconscious of the fact that at least some people in the Weyr would consider her an oddity if she spoke of her previous experiences as a rider, or at the very least an object of pity, and she absolutely hates being pitied. She knows she can't go back to how things were and the person she used to be, she just wishes people would stop being sorry about that fact. When she does get involved in a conversation, she can be incredibly blunt and frank; she hates small talk, and doesn't shy away from hard truths. She considers lying to be abhorrent, whether it's an outright falsehood or a simple lie of omission.
For the most part, Maya just wants to help people. It was what led her to become a Healer in the first place, and what later led her to become a rider. However, can be rather rigidly principled, sometimes finding it difficult to accept that she has to help anyone who needs it, not just those who she likes, or at least who she doesn't actively dislike. She's highly protective of those she cares for, and would stop at absolutely nothing to keep them safe from any harm, real or imaginary. This includes social harm, and she can have a habit of immediately jumping to the wrong conclusions about jokes. She has a bit of a temper and tends to lash out at people who offend her--and when she can't do so due to needing to remain professional during her work as a Healer, she lashes out rather more indiscriminately at the next person she sees outside of that context. While she usually manages to stop herself from physically fighting, this isn't always a guarantee.
Maya is a bit of a traditionalist, believing that gold and bronzeriders should be granted a higher priority in all matters. Their wellbeing should come before anyone else's. She doesn't think that chromatic riders or non-riders are necessarily undeserving or in any way inferior, just less important if there's a metallic rider in need.
Nature is Maya's happy place. She likes plants, and just being outdoors with nobody else around. It's calming to her, even in poor weather. She talks to plants probably more than she does actual people, because they listen without judgment. She doesn't know much about them besides their uses in medicine, if they have any, but she still likes their company.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
Brownrider mother
Greenrider father
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: None
BIRTHPLACE: Ista Weyr
HISTORY:
Mayalaran was, like many Weyrbred children, the product of a rather temporary union between two riders. She never really knew her parents, has never had a conversation with either, and has never resented that fact; it simply was what it was. She grew up happily surrounded by the other children in the creche, and that was that. Like most of her peers, she dreamed of being a rider, but not just to fight Thread. She wanted to be a Healer too, to go and make daring rescues of those in need.
She apprenticed at eleven, dreaming of becoming a dragonhealer. She thought those seemed to be the most noble and steadfast of all Healers, helping Pern's glorious protectors. Training came easily, her interest driving her to excel even when she might have otherwise struggled with sitting still long enough to learn. When she came of age, she stood for Candidacy as well, intent on seeing her dream to fruition.
Just before she turned seventeen, there she was at a Hatching: Vedeleth. She was a graceful, elegant green whether on the ground or later in the air. Fierce, with a burning passion to remember the needs of those who might otherwise be forgotten, she often argued with her more traditional rider over who was more important at the Weyr. However, they both agreed on one thing: their place would be in the Healer's Wing. The question of where to go when they graduated was a perfunctory one, as they'd made it clear a long time before what they wanted to do.
For several months, things were good for them in the Healers Wing. They got along well with several of their wingmates, Maya's garrulous nature making it easy to make at least acquaintances, and some she regarded as close friends. Many of them had been people she'd known for Turns while she trained as a Healer.
In the last Threadfall of the Turn, the pair went to help a bronze who had been in a collision and crash-landed. Maya was focused on her work, Vedeleth on trying to calm the other dragon, when a clump of Thread fell past the lower wings. Vedeleth didn't have time to react before it hit her square on. In a blind panic, she went Between. Maya knew immediately that the green wouldn't return; she felt a part of herself die even before she had time to take a breath.
She can't--or really, won't--remember the Turn that followed. She knows from being told that she refused to stop working on the bronze dragon until help came from the Weyr. She's uncertain of much else, and she prefers it stay that way. It was a Turn of barely existing, shambling from one moment to the next with no real focus. Everything but the bare necessities for survival fell by the wayside, and she neither noticed nor cared.
Slowly, she returned to a sense of normalcy. Not as she had been before, but a normal. Gone was the chatty, talkative young woman she had been, and in her place someone more quiet and somber. But she returned to her studies. Sporadically at first, only on what could be called her "good" days, but eventually she showed up consistently. Eventually she got back to doing more than just studying and actually began to work with patients again. However, her dreams of being a dragonhealer had died with Vedeleth; she had a marked preference for working with human or wher patients over dragons, though in an emergency still wouldn't turn from her duty regardless of who it might mean having to face.
Eventually though, it was clear she needed a change of scenery. She'd never known a life outside a Weyr, but she was finding it difficult to be around her former wingmates. Knowing that they'd known her as she was both before and after was painful. Whether it was true or not, she was certain she saw nothing but pity in their faces every time they asked her a question and she gave a monosyllabic answer. She didn't believe they could understand, and given what it would take for them to, she didn't want them to understand. But she still had to get away, and so she asked to be placed in another Weyr. She didn't necessarily choose Fort specifically, but she didn't care where she ended up. One place was as good as another, she supposed.
