"I'd always had nightmares, but now the ghosts didn't wait for me to sleep. I drank every day. Help others and you help yourself, that was my motto, but I hadn't saved anyone in months. It seemed all my patients were dying. I'd waited, sure the sickness would break, tomorrow night, the next call, the feeling would drop away."
- Frank Pierce, Bringing out the Dead
BASICS
NAME: D'cara [Dracara]
GENDER: Trans male
PRONOUNS: He/Him/His
ORIENTATION: Bisexual
BIRTHDATE: Spring 2749
AGE: 27 as of Spring 2776
LOCATION: High Reaches Weyr
OCCUPATION: Apprentice Healer
WING: Healer's Wing
APPEARANCE
EYES: Dark blue-grey/lead
HAIR: Sandy blonde
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'11"
PLAY-BY: N/A
EXPY SOURCE: N/A
FULL APPEARANCE: D'cara is undoubtedly feminine. From curves to long, lanky limbs and the small, delicate chin and fair features upon a tired face. Yet his chest is flat, and his voice just a touch below the octave one might associate with a female. Hair more robust than your typical blond drift in waves across the foramen magnum of his skull and linger, loose and wild, before his dark-blue-to-the-point-of-black eyes. A set of spectacles rests upon his pointed nose, punctuating the lines and shadows beneath orbital pits. His entire aura is ... tired. D'cara favors loose, silken-textured clothing that slides easily about his skin. Anything he wears must absolutely cover his neck - a quirk he's retained since becoming a young adult.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY: D'cara is convinced that the world is against him. He is always on the defensive, often automatically interpreting others' motives as malicious. As a result he typically acts negatively around them as a result. His assumption that everyone around him hates and judges him ends up making him judge or reject others preemptively, making it difficult for him to become close to others and foster the relationships he longs for. His resulting loneliness only serves to confirm his views, because obviously he's alone because he is so despised. D'cara reads into things in all the wrong ways.
In his professional side, D'cara is an extremely accomplished healer ever for an apprentice. He is meticulous and detailed, rarely missing anything. He is talented in analyzing and working with complicated subjects. Complacency is his worst enemy. D'cara is constantly on the venture to better himself and his understanding of the dragon body as well as pursuing advancements in medicine. "A smart man knows how much he doesn't know" is his motto. He is incredibly self-conscious, however, and often feels that he does not do enough despite the near-exhausting efforts to mold himself into something of a master. Failure is not something he can deal with well, especially if one of his patients happens to succumb. To D'cara, this is a sign of his own worthlessness. Even if he has a track record of recovery several dragonlengths long, one bad experience can send him crashing down.
D'cara can often be seen talking to himself ... and no, it isn't to Sendaith although it would be a healthy assumption. He isn't nuts - it's just his coping mechanism. He imagines seeing the 'ghosts' of those he'd lost and will have 'conversations' with them as a way to process his grief. He doesn't actually see folks appearing from beyond the grave - they're more him 'playing pretend': performing a soliloquy to an audience that isn't truly there as it allows him to get things off his chest, with or without resolution. Because of his alcoholic vice, one might assume these supposed hallucinations are brought on by intoxication.
Alcohol has long since evolved from pastime to need for this young man. D'cara is what you would call a 'functional alcoholic'. He can perform well and good with it in his system and has been known to take a hit of wine before venturing into the infirmary to care for those in need - which he does, thankfully, without going overboard. Each day ends with a night cap to lull his grief into silence. But when the bottle runs dry, and inevitably it will, he finds himself driven into an overwhelming panic. It has long been Sendaith's desire to break his rider from the habit, but it will take work.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
B'yorta of Bronze Khujoth - father †
Tascha of Green Vitrollath - mother †
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: None
BIRTHPLACE: High Reaches Weyr
HISTORY: TW: Transphobia, body dysmorphia, bullying.
Dracara was born a weyrbrat, and a female, in High Reaches Weyr to a bronzerider and a greenrider whom he had taken as his bedmate during a flight. From the getgo her mother, who had birthed many other children and would continue to do so for a few more turns, wanted nothing at all to do with her. Dracara was surrendered to the creche as a newborn. B'yorta was disappointed of being granted yet another daughter to carry on his lineage.
Under Golre's tyranny, the majority of High Reaches Weyr was ripe with bullying. Several younglings would tease and gripe for the sake of meanness, for any reason - from her appearance to her birth mother to her low voice, it didn't matter. She did not consider the creche as a safe haven and became incredibly self-conscious of her body. Riders of 'lesser dragons' and other women weyrfolk often assisted in soothing her mental wounds but as time went on, Dracara found herself uncomfortable in her own skin. Perhaps it was her desire to become somebody else after being shunned, but Dracara did not ... feel like a girl.
When Dracara's hormones began to display her gender, she began to bind her chest tightly. She began to identify as a boy. With Dracara's revelation of becoming transgender, he began to feel ... at ease. Right with himself. Clarity. Like a chrysalis bursting to expose the pupated butterfly inside, Dracara felt himself become one with his new identity and felt whole again.
One of the folks who assisted in caring for the creche happened to be a healer. Dracara took under his wing to learn the practice and felt the first real glimmer of respect and admiration. As he grew, there were whispers of becoming a candidate when he came of age. As long as Golre was in power, Dracara had no desire to face her scrutiny. In fact there were droves of riders, handlers, and folk who were in the process of vacating to other Weyrs or even holds simply to get away. Weyrlings could not wait to learn how to between fast enough.
And then 2761 came. Golre was killed in a final assault on Fort Weyr. With her fell B'yorta and several other bronzeriders. Dracara's mother had passed the month prior when she and her green were sent forth as canon fodder. High Reaches Weyr suddenly became calm. A collective breath that was being held unleashed in a hurricane blast.
It took a long time to feel the ground stabilize beneath them but gradually High Reaches would become a friendlier place. Dracara the young boy would evolve into Dracara the young man and took pride in his work as an assistant - then apprentice - healer.
He just turned 16 when the plague struck. The infirmary became filled with sick people overnight. Graves took place beneath freshly turned dirt. Dracara could not keep up with the workload, yet kept going ... even when his mentor succumbed to the illness and left Dracara with a heavier workload among the other healers. Too many in his care passed away. It ate away at his sense of worth which had only just begun to repair itself. In the final throes of the pandemic, he too began to fall ill. It felt like a sick joke when Dracara was able to pull through when so many others had not.
He was still feeble from illness when gold Terminath rose. A hardening clutch on the sands was the talk of hope after a long and disastrous end of turn. Their numbers were so few now, with very few candidates left to stand. Dracara had held no ambition before to join candidacy but he felt some kind of pull telling him that he ought to try. Just this once.
When the winter chill did battle with Hatching Sand heat, the eggs broke open. A one-eyed blue spilled onto the grounds and claimed him: D'cara! Sendaith was his. Imperfectly beautiful and wonderful Sendaith!
Joining the class of Etudes, D'cara graduated into the Healer's Wing based on his craft. Sendaith did not let his missing eye alter his worth and D'cara found inspiration in his strength. Together they faced down many a threadfall with only minor burns and injuries. This continued until their luck ran out in 2770. All it took was an unexpected wind to blow a clump straight into Sendaith's face, destroying his good eye and rendering the blue completely blind.
D'cara was at a loss for a good long time, although Sendaith was doing his damndest to remain positive given his current predicament. High Reaches' tensions with Fort came and went without D'cara paying much attention and caring very little. The guilt of his bonded's newfound disability added onto the already accumulated sorrow from witnessing the plague's death toll, and the rider became a slave to the bottle - to the point where he could not seem to function without it. Although it ebbed and flowed with Sendaith's pursuasion and the assistance of others, D'cara had not been able to break its hold.
D'cara remains a healer for the Weyr, assisting during such times as when the High Reaches Hold suffered a landslide or when holdless were given shelter from a blizzard.
