" Well the way I feel is the way I write
It isn't like the thoughts of the man who lies
There is a truth and it's on our side
Dawn is coming
Open your eyes
Look into the sun as the new days rise "
BASICS
NAME: Mahairi (usually goes by Mahai)
GENDER: Female
PRONOUNS: She/her/hers
ORIENTATION: Panromantic pansexual
BIRTHDATE AND AGE: Late Fall 2740
AGE: 27 Turns as of Early Fall 2768
LOCATION: High Reaches Weyr
OCCUPATION: Wherhandler
WING: Windsong Squad
APPEARANCEEYES: Blue
HAIR: Dark Brown
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'7", average
PLAY-BY: Mei-fa (Cowboy Bebop)
FULL APPEARANCE:
Mahai is of around average height and build, tending toward slightly more muscular for her size, though not by much. She has medium-fair skin that gets slightly more tan in the summer and fades once more in the winter. Her eyes are a fairly dark blue beneath thick eyebrows. Her hair is a dark brown and thick, cut to approximately her armpits but usually worn in twin braids to keep them out of her way.
She habitually wears a pink headscarf; though it started as a measure to keep wood shavings off of her scalp, where they’d poke and itch, it eventually became something she just did, whether or not she was doing any wood working that day. She also tends toward dresses, rather than pants, and she prefers to dress in warm colors when possible. Her appearance is usually fairly neat.
PERSONALITYPERSONALITY:
Mahai is a relentlessly optimistic, if not always necessarily cheerful, young woman. Though she’s determined to believe that everything is eventually going to work out to the best possible outcome, whenever things go poorly she’ll tend to fixate on them, waiting for things to turn around. She’ll stubbornly hold to the belief that things will turn around, no matter what evidence she’s confronted with. She prefers to convince people to see the best in things and people rather than fight and argue, and when faced with an actual physical fight is fairly likely to just run away.
She’s a bit of a scholar, but tends to lack the focus necessary to sit for long hours with records, and in either case she finds interacting with people more interesting than words on a page. She wants to know what makes people tick, and is especially fond of engaging people in discussions of the differences between right and wrong, and why things are that way, as well as why some people seem to turn a blind eye to their own wrongdoings while obsessing over those who have wronged them.
Despite having been away at the Weyr for a few Turns now, she’s still extremely fond of her home and family, and sends letters home on a regular basis. High Reaches Hold will likely always have a special place in her heart, no matter where she ends up spending the rest of her life. She puts a high value on connections with the past, both her own and Pern’s as a whole; she believes that if people don’t have at least some understanding of what things were before, they have no way of making things better than they were, and improving things in whatever small way she can manage is one of her goals. For this reason, despite her mild fear of wide-open spaces, she’s constantly trying to get better at living with it, going for frequent walks outdoors or sitting alone on the Heights.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
Father, Maharan, Weaver
Mother, Irinia, Butcher
Older brother, Aran of Blue Grenrath
Younger sister, Raniria, Weaver
Younger brother, Hariran, Smith
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: N/A
BIRTHPLACE: High Reaches Hold
HISTORY:
Some might have considered Mahai unlucky to have been born during Golre’s tyrannical reign. After all, with High Reaches being so close to the blighted Weyr, they were a frequent target for kidnappings and supply “requisitioning”. However, Mahai was largely sheltered from all of that. Her parents kept her from the worst of it while she was young, telling her that the riders who came were only there to get the supplies that they were rightfully owed and telling her that the rumors of kidnappings were only rumors. She never did find out if her parents honestly believed the Weyr was within its rights to take whatever supplies it wanted, though by the time she was ten she was well aware that many of the teenagers being taken away to be Candidates were not going of their own free will.
Still, she figured that they were the lucky ones. They were getting the chance to ride dragons. They would be the ones to figure in legends and stories for Turns to come, just as the riders who had come before them were in the teaching songs even then. She always thought that if the Weyr came to take her as a Candidate, she would go gladly, no matter who was in charge. After all, Golre could hardly live forever, and she could survive living under a mad tyrant if it meant being chosen by a dragon or being deemed worthy by a wher, for those occasionally featured in the stories as well.
However, for a long time nobody came. For Turns she worked with a few other carpenters in a workshop, making use of what little wood the Hold could acquire and keep. While she improved her woodworking skills, she was also spending a lot of time learning about other people and how they worked. She was fascinated by the fact that other people would speak about how someone needed to take Golre down but would never do anything about it themselves, and how they revered riders on one hand and reviled them on the other. She was drawn to inconsistency, and wanted to know why people were inconsistent. What was so terrible about Golre? Despite the kidnappings and the theft of supplies, she was also protecting them from the attacks of other Weyrs.
When she was seventeen, a Trader caravan stopped at High Reaches Hold, carrying with it something Mahai had been waiting and saving for: a clutch of fire lizard eggs. She eagerly purchased one of the littler of the eggs, entirely expecting it to contain a blue or green, and was more than a little confused when the fire lizard inside looked like nothing she had ever seen. He was all yellow and orange without being metallic like a gold, and unlike a gold, he was also very definitely a he. She named him Tien despite not knowing what color he even was, and a few weeks of research later led her to decide he would be called a “jarosite”, like the mineral with which he shared coloration, and was able to stop calling him a “whatever-he-is”.
Only a few months after Tien hatched, at yet another Search in which she fully expected to be passed up once more, Mahai was told that she had two choices: come to the Weyr of her own free will, or come anyway because the Search dragon had decided that a dragon would perhaps choose her after all. She chose the former, eager for the chance to Impress and hoping that things would be better than the rumors she had heard. The war was over; surely the situation would have improved.
Things were not better. Things were, if anything, actually worse. She had always assumed the rumors were exaggerated, that even if Candidates weren’t there of their own free will they were there because they were needed. Instead, she found that they were expected to either Impress to a bronze or gold and live a life of comfort or to a “lower” color and be a living shield for their betters. And until that happened, those who hadn’t apprenticed with a craft were basically worthless. Apparently, carpentry was not considered an essential craft, and Mahai spent the next few Turns as little more than a drudge who occasionally showed up to Hatchings, both wher and dragon, only to be ignored every time.
Still, her optimism never faded. Though she found herself hating her circumstances and wishing for better, she still always assumed that things would eventually improve. And they did, when Golre was finally killed and Weyr leadership was transferred to people who didn’t share her views. Mahai wasn’t sure what to think of that; on the one hand, some of what Golre had done was unquestionably wrong. On the other hand, what made the new leadership’s views any more right? What gave them the authority to decide that golds and bronzes no longer had the right to rule by birth? What would it take to determine that the metallic colors did have that right? Atrocities had surely been committed in the name of tradition, but there were many aspects of tradition that had kept Pern going for Turns. How were people to determine which aspects were ‘right’ and which were ‘wrong’?
So, optimistic that things would still continue to get better, and that the new leadership would do the right thing by the people of High Reaches Weyr, Mahai decided to remain even when given the choice to return home. After all, she’d come to the Weyr of her own free will, and she hadn’t changed her mind since.
UPDATES
- Impressed to green Mahaisk
- Has mostly been trying to keep her green from trying to grab power for herself ever since.
- Mahaisk pushed strongly for having a wher lead the Weyr, though that didn't happen. However, 'Wherleader' became a position. Thankfully, the green didn't get it. She's unhappy about that fact, though Mahai is relieved.
- Impressed to white Mahsk, who is quite different from Mahaisk
- Has been trying to keep Mahaisk from "corrupting" Mahsk ever since
