NEWT
"N/A"
BASICS
RETIRE INFO: Adopt (dragon)/Retire (Character)
NAME: Newt
GENDER: Female
PRONOUNS: she/her/hers
ORIENTATION: Aromantic Asexual
BIRTHDATE: Winter 2754
AGE: 16 as of Turn 2770
LOCATION: High Reaches Weyr
OCCUPATION: Candidate
WING:
APPEARANCE
EYES: Sea green
HAIR: Reddish brown with lighter orange tints
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5’1, wiry
PLAY-BY: None
FULL APPEARANCE:
Newt is a scrawny, scruffy girl, who cares little for her appearance most days. Her hair is a mass of wild curls that fall in her face more often than not. They hang to her chin in a haircut she obviously has given herself, and only partially bothers to maintain. She’s scruffy and unkept, with loose threads hanging from her tunics and breeches. Her face is narrow and pointed, her eyes often seeming dim and unfocused as they flicker about. Her nose is long but snubbed, her lips thin and often unsmiling.
Newt’s left arm is shorter than her right, courtesy of a childhood injury that’s left her with a large scar she keeps hidden. As a child she rarely used her injured arm, keeping it drawn up close beside her. Her adopted father has worked with her on using her arm, and while she’s gotten a lot better with it, she still struggles with some things.
Newt’s clothing style is unusual, and entirely pieced together from odds and ins she’s collected or made herself. As a result, the colors often clash, and the fabrics too, making it seem as if Newt is running about in a patchwork quilt. She prefers long sleeved tunics and breeches, and often dresses in layers. Often going barefoot, she’s only recently—and reluctantly—begun wearing shoes.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
Newt is strange. A shy, skittish girl, she is easily overwhelmed by people and her environment, though she tries not to show it. When she can’t ignore it anymore, she retreats to her room, where she stays until she’s calm again. Often she eats her meals in her quarters, as she finds the dining hall too stressful.
Though she’s usually quiet, Newt can be assertive. She’s stubborn, often convinced she’s right and that everyone else is wrong. She has little respect for authority for authority’s sake and will fight against injustice wherever she sees it. Viewing everyone with the same all or nothing, rigid thinking, she won’t back down from a conflict, though she’s much more likely to use her fists than her words in her pursuit of justice.
Self conscious about her looks, her arm, and her speaking habits, Newt is convinced that others find her as strange and off-putting as she often finds herself, Though she can sometimes take a perverse sort of pride in her differences, even viewing herself as superior, for the most part, she keeps to herself, thinking that nobody outside her adopted father will ever really accept her. She’s told herself she’s happy in her solitude, but really, she’s lonelier than she’ll let on.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
Ratha, mother, 36, alive
Unknown, father, 40, alive
Tybir, adopted father, 45, alive
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: None
BIRTHPLACE: The wilds near High Reaches Weyr
HISTORY:
Child neglect, injury
Newt was not born as Newt. Newt was born as Daisy, the oldest of three children who were born to a young woman outcast from her family. She had run off with a Holdless vagrant, attracted more to him because his status would horrify her family than out of any real love between them. Despite that, they stayed together for four years, having three children, and eking out a living squatting in caves and scavenging.
Eventually though, her mother grew bored and disaffected with her life, and left the children to return home. Newt’s father cared for them as best as he could, but accidents could happen, and one day one happened to Newt. She was out playing and wandered too close to a wild wherry. The resulting attack damaged her shoulder and left her skittish around wherries for a time.
Newt’s father tended to Newt’s shoulder as best as he could. The injury healed poorly, the ligaments damaged and torn so that the limb was constructed. Newt retreated into herself and rarely moved from her spot by the fire. Her father managed to keep her alive and clean, but just barely. Plagued by flashbacks and nightmares, she lashed out at anybody who tried to get close, only rarely letting her father near enough to care for her.
They stayed that way for four years. Eventually her father grew desperate, realizing that the scavenger life was no way to raise a child, especially not one as troubled as Newt. With nowhere else to turn, and fearing for the three younger children, he contacted his estranged brother, Tybir, a wherhandler at High Reaches Weyer.
Tybir came at once and returned home with a mostly feral Newt in tow. Newly traumatized from the change, Newt spent w great deal of time hiding under the bed in her new room, or trying to run away back home. Only Thak’r’s wher, Birsk, was able to calm her, as the chipper green could speak to the girl telepathically.
Birsk was patient with the girl, allowing her to get comfortable before approaching. Birsk gave Newt her other name, as the girl’s hair reminded the wher of a salamander. Newt, who preferred the name Birsk had given her, used it Asher name on d she began to speak. Birsk also taught the girl to speak, but, being a wher, when Newt began to talk back—aloud, so the wher could hear her—she adopted Birsk’s unusual speaking patterns. She also calmed considerably. Though she still had nightmares and flashbacks, they lessened when Birsk was around, eventually fading almost completely.
It was a slow process, but by the time Newt was eleven, she’d learned to speak reliably, though she retained the wher grammar she’d learned in childhood. While she finally mastered complete sentences, she still tended to refer to herself in the third person, and often spoke in short, clipped sentences.
Thak’r also helped Newt with her arm, teaching her exercises to help with it. Eventually she managed to regain some limited use of it though it remained shorter than the other. Newt used it with more ease the older she grew, but would still sometimes favor it, especially if she was feeling anxious or self conscious.
A few months ago, Newt decided she wanted to enter candidacy. She found the candidate barracks difficult to deal with, but she was adjusting. More than anything, she wanted to make her adoptive father proud, and, just as much, she wanted to prove that she was worthy of a dragon—to herself and everyone else.