Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you have power over instead of craving control over what you don't. - Steve Maraboli
BASICS
NAME: Risae
GENDER: female
PRONOUNS: she/her/hers
ORIENTATION: aromantic demigreysexual
BIRTHDATE: Late Fall 2734
AGE: thirty-six as of Winter 2770
LOCATION: Semaca
OCCUPATION: rider, formerly a figure of gossip, beleaguered older sister
WING: Minuet
APPEARANCE
EYES: blue
HAIR: brown
HEIGHT AND BUILD: five feet eight inches, more muscled now
PLAY-BY: Meghan Ory
FULL APPEARANCE:
Time in the southern sun has worked some kind of magic on Risae. She has far more good days than bad, and her appearance has changed to reflect that. Her skin has taken on a golden hue, and there are even little freckles on her cheeks.
Like many of those who populate Pern's newest weyr, Risae has dropped weight since she transferred. Never particularly heavy, Risae has gone from slim to lightly muscled. Gone are the little bits of softness that clung from an over pampered upbringing. Her clothes have gone from somewhat ostentatious to much more practical, and gone are the Gather and Hatching finery that once took up so much space. Risae wears her dark curls in a practical braid, ornamented only with a pretty ribbon. Her favorite color turns out to be green, followed by pink. It's far more common to see her in breeches and an open shirt than a skirt, and she now has a signature look for her boots.
Even her cosmetic routine has changed. Instead of the full face of cosmetics a Weyrwoman is expected to don, or what she spent Turns adhering to, she wears only enough kohl to pull the glare of the southern sun away from her eyes. Every so often, she might put color on her lips.
Those are the bad days.
But on good days, Risae wears her curly hair in a loose braid, tied off with a spare bit of ribbon. She genuinely prefers trousers to dresses, but she still likes long tunics. Those are the days her blue eyes shine, and the corners of her mouth might even tilt upwards against their perpetual frown.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY: Risae struggles with a lot of self-image issues. She was raised to be weyrwoman, which required certain personality traits that Risae just never had. So she wore a facade for a long time. So long, in fact, that she still has trouble parsing out what is her actual personality and feelings, and what she had to pretend. The overlap is disturbing.
She has a well-developed fawn response, always wanting to please people, but the presentation of it is twisted. Since she was supposed to be a leader, uncaring of the needs and wants of others, Risae began acting on the opposite of her urges. When she wanted to cry into somebody's shoulder, she would make them cry.
Since Impressing Savanth, Risae is happier. She will probably never be kind, but when she is genuinely happy, she is not cruel. She is still amused by even the crueler side of Savanth's pranks. There may always be that twisted conditioning that tells her that her place is above suffering, but Savanth's presence has already gone far towards fixing that.
Risae is... different, these days. It's not so simple as saying that Laretta's failed eldest has outgrown her trauma. She'll always be a little mean, a little twisted. Her trauma response is never really going to go away. But several Turns living lean in the South has left their mark, a better one. Risae is less defensive than she used to be. Her wardrobe is simpler, and she is no longer in one-sided competition with everyone else. She is Greenrider Risae long before she is Laretta's daughter, Savanth's rider more than a failed gold candidate. Her status as a member of Minuet Wing far outstrips her status as a member of the Benden Elite.
It's a better existence. Risae has very few days that are truly bad, and while she will never be able to make peace with her deceased brother and her deposed sister, she is beginning to have hope that her youngest sister might not despise her. She has enough distance to put perspective on her life's story, and she's allowed herself to begin forgiving people.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
- Mother Laretta of gold Ravneth (deceased)
- Father R'sil of bronze Vatith
- Younger Brother R'set of bronze Kujumath, Late Winter 2735, deceased (killed as part of the Benden Bronzes plot)
- Younger Sister Luetta - Early Summer 2737, cook, Semaca Weyr
- Younger Sister Sido of gold Nuuth, formerly Benden's Junior Weyrwoman
- Younger Sister Laera of white Tarth, Early Winter 2747, Semaca Weyr, Minuet Wing
- Younger Brother S'et of blue Nephthyth, Early Fall 2748, unknown location
BIRTHPLACE: Benden Weyr
HISTORY:
Warnings:
- Child Abuse parents to children, children to siblings
- Emotional Neglect parents to children
Risae had the dubious honor of being the first child of Weyrwoman Laretta and bronzerider R'sil. She was the favorite, the future weyrwoman. She held the hopes of her parents, and would most certainly Impress gold! Risae was raised to be a child of privilege, guaranteed a gold as soon as she set foot on the Sands. How could this child fail?
Well, not quite. Risae was not a leader. Risae wanted to please everyone, and learned very quickly that she was not acceptable. Her parents were cruel in their expectations, and it twisted her view of herself. Being herself was taboo - all that mattered was what she was supposed to be. She had a standard to achieve and maintain. Individuality was dismissed. When Rilset was born, their parents put him into the same rigorous training. He would be a bronze rider!
So it went with every new child. Risae had to help mold her siblings into metallic riders, even as she began to despair. If she, and Luetta, and then Sido all Impressed golds, surely one of them would have to go to another weyr? How could there possibly be so many gold eggs meant for their family, when gold dragons were so few? Her siblings would remember Risae as being cruel, but there was no one she was more cruel to than herself.
Laretta finally died, weakened in childbirth and too sick to recover. Risae now had five siblings, three girls and two boys, and she hated them all. It didn't occur to her that their parents were the source of her unhappiness, and that if she worked with her siblings, instead of against them, they might all be happier.
Most of them.
Rilset Impressed bronze before Risae managed to get a gold, the first of the weyrwoman's children to continue the family tradition of metallic dragons. Risae was devastated, because now she was in disgrace. True, she was still within candidacy age limits, but time was running terribly short. And gold eggs were not guaranteed with every clutch. The only other one to manage the feat was Sido, and that event sent Risae into near total disgrace. As the eldest, she was supposed to Impress first. Just before she aged out of candidacy, Risae was one-upped once more, this time by a nobody. Nuuth's first gold daughter went to a liberal loudmouth of a candidate, one who had barely been allowed to Stand. Furious, because by now she was convinced that the only way she would ever be accepted was to Impress the next gold, Risae fled Benden.
She did not keep in touch with her family, and they had no way to contact her. Fire lizards were frowned upon, since their Impression was less prestigious. So when Setet appeared at her new home of High Reaches, she hid. That was easy enough - Risae had no status that required her to interact with dragon riders. She never so much as learned his dragon's name, though he had Impressed at the same clutch as Sido. No word ever came of Luetta, so Risae assumed she had aged out.
Risae had never intended to Impress at High Reaches. She just wanted to be away from her family. Even the location was an accident, after a chance dalliance at a Gather led her north. She was Aged Out, a disgrace to her very name. But she was late to the Hatching Grounds when the weyr turned into bystanders for garnet Avellareth's clutch. She entered the Sands, intent on getting into the stands to watch the lucky bastards get their dragons. It was tradition, by now, and Risae had almost mastered the bile that rose in her throat each time a candidate walked away with a dragon.
Green Savanth greeted her not two steps into the Grounds, having left every candidate standing in favor of Benden's failure. Risae spent the next several hours in tears. For the first time in her life, she was seen on her own merits. More importantly, she was loved for them.
Weyrlinghood is not easy. Laretta and R'sil fed their children only fantasies of Impressing metallic in a traditional weyr. Risae has had a lot of long-held beliefs dispelled in some violent ways, and she is sometimes slow to catch up. But with time, and patience, Risae and Savanth have promise.
"Hope rises like a phoenix from the ashes of shattered dreams."
