i got thirty-six expressions
from 'sweet as pie' to 'tough as leather'
BASICS
RETIRE INFO: Retire T'lash, adopt Toyototh
NAME: T'lash (Trelashen)
GENDER: female
PRONOUNS: she/her/hers
ORIENTATION: demiromantic homosexual
BIRTHDATE: Summer 2735
AGE: thirty-five as of Winter 2770
LOCATION: High Reaches Weyr
OCCUPATION: rider, designated Big Sister, groundcrew
WING: Sunburst
APPEARANCE
EYES: blue
HAIR: blonde, spiral curls kept no longer than shoulder-length
HEIGHT AND BUILD: five foot one; petite and strong
PLAY-BY: Reese Witherspoon
FULL APPEARANCE:
T'lash is a tiny example of a rider. She's far shorter than her parentage would suggest, and her clothes do not help the illusion. She dresses in loose clothes, and rolls the hems of her trousers just enough to expose the tips of her boots. Incongruously, she takes impeccable care of her leather goods. Her leather vest might be made for a traditional brown rider, but it looks new. Her boots are kept a respectable level of glossy, and her belts would not dare crack.
For as little effort as she puts into her clothes, T'lash spends a surprising amount of time on her hair. While it spends much time drawn into practical braids, as a member of Moonshot wing, her shoulder-length blonde hair generally hangs in ringlets. Perhaps that's natural, but even if it is, she spends a great deal of effort encouraging it.
There is a saying about riders having soft hands, and T'lash is no exception. Her nails are often broken, but what callous builds up in deference to her riding is offset by the oil that soaks into her skin as she cares for Toyototh. She wears no jewelry either on her hands, around her neck, or in her ears. Her sleeves are the most tailored part of her wardrobe, if she has them. The most ornamentation she will wear is embroidery on her blouse. Otherwise, she prefers to blend into the sea of riders.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
A brown rider is expected to a determined hard-worker, it's practically a stereotype of this category. T'lash is no exception to the rule, and can often be seen hard at work with a mug of klah in hand. She is most inventive when wiggling around restrictions and regulations, although her creativity extends beyond these situations. Her strength is in looking outside the box for solutions that might not seem plausible.
When in doubt, check the dining hall. T'lash always seems to be hungry, and she does her best socializing over food. Even in her weyr, she keeps a stash of food on hand. She likes fruits, but anything that won't go bad is fair game. She's a hoarder, in that respect. Praise, too, she hoards, as well as interesting people and experiences. T'lash has a lot more freedom than Trelashen did, even at the end, and being praised for a job well done is still such a novel experience that she craves it.
HISTORY
FAMILY: a family of laborers, with two sets of twins and a set of triplets sprinkled in the extended family. T'lash escaped an abusive relative, and never looked back.
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: none
BIRTHPLACE: Ruatha Hold
HISTORY:
abuse tw: child abuse
Trelashen was the youngest daughter in a family made up of two pairs of twins and a set of triplets. She was frequently left under the eye of a healer relative while the rest of the family worked, with the assumption that surely a healer would be able to care for a small child during the day.
But that was not to be. Trelashen was born small, and lack of stimulation as an infant lead to weakness. She was called useless, and punished for tasks she was unable to complete. Even tasks that by all rights should have gone to someone older and stronger. Trelashen grew quiet and determined, desperate for escape and freedom. She found solace in Harper tales. Her parents never seemed to notice her stunted growth, and her siblings were not the most observant under the best circumstances. Trelashen's condition was considered her normal.
With the Harper tales she devoured so greedily came stories of the weyrs, and the women who commanded the huge queens. Trelashen fell in love with the idea of being weyrwoman. Having someone in her head was a small price to pay for the sheer power inherent in a gold's very existence. Her determination expanded from the original quest to leave Ruatha Proper into going to the weyrs. Which one didn't matter, but Fort would be closest, it being beholden to Ruatha and all.
By the time Trelashen made her escape, she had three broken fingers and two bruised ribs. She was folded into the Lower Caverns at Fort and given light duty until she healed. The first time she was healed enough - malnutrition turned out to be a more serious matter for the Healers than the broken bones, and some of the staff delighted in feeding this girl - healed enough to Stand for a clutch, it was Imorith's Blended Curse clutch. It held a rumored gold egg, which was enough for Trelashen to want to don candidate robes.
The gold egg was not for her.
By the time the gold hatched, twin browns had fought, and Trelashen was seriously reconsidering the merits of Impressing one of...those. But a queen had to be better, right?
Wrong. Serapheth seemed well enough at first, sitting on her chosen rider's chest. Trelashen was disappointed, but how could she hate a dragon for not choosing her? It was their choice, if the Harpers were to be believed, and she was only too small and too clumsy to amount to much. Impression was a lofty goal. Then, as Trelashen reconciled the thought of being left Standing, another candidate touched the hatchling, and lost his life for it.
Trelashen went to High Reaches with a contingent of Fort people to assist in the rebuilding. She didn't realize that was why she was chosen, because she still didn't see herself as being useful, but someone saw something in her, and since she had abandoned her candidate's robe after the hatching, she was no longer interested in being a candidate.
No, really, she wasn't.
Okay, so maybe when Lutrath Rose, Trelashen considered being a goldrider. Maybe, when the gold laid the Judge End clutch, she looked into sitting in on candidate lectures. Maybe when Telgar donated a queen egg, she quietly requisitioned a candidate's robe. She'd never formally renounced or reclaimed her candidacy, but High Reaches was in enough chaos that no one seemed to bat an eye.
Trelashen's Impression of Toyototh was followed very quickly by Toyototh's first act as her dragon - namely, protecting his rider from the advances of another candidate. Although advances was probably a strong term - the other candidate happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The incident led to T'lash's mentorship with Gasara of green Fovreth, where one of the things they worked on together was ways to avoid conflict. Toyototh remains convinced that the best way to avoid conflict is to be the biggest, baddest part of a fight in order to finish them quickly, and T'lash hasn't been able to dissuade him of the notion.
Along with Gasara, T'lash had to cultivate a relationship of sorts with the rider of white Beihath. Their dragons had hatched together, Impressed together, and seemed to be generally inseparable, to the point where Toyototh could not excel at something unless Beihath, also, could perform the task. And while T'lash had been frustrated that the gold hatched literally right after she Impressed, she was quick to realize that she wouldn't trade her brown for the world.
