" It's a secret I keep tucked inside my chest
With this heart of mine that's guilty, not remorseful
There is love that doesn't have a place to rest
But it would have buried you if it had settled on your shoulders
On some level, I think I always understood
That a ship could never really love an anchor
So, I did the only thing that I could
And severed the rope to set you sailing from my harbor "
- Never Love an Anchor, The Crane Wives
BASICS
NAME: Saerin
GENDER: Female
PRONOUNS: She/Her/Hers
ORIENTATION: Heterosexual
BIRTHDATE: Late Summer 2744
AGE: 31 as of Late Winter 2775
LOCATION: Semaca Weyr
OCCUPATION: Rider
WING: Pavane Squad
APPEARANCE
EYES: Dark brown
HAIR: Dark brown
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'5", average
PLAY-BY: Angel Coulby
EXPY SOURCE: N/A
FULL APPEARANCE:
Saerin is of about average height and build, though she can appear slightly taller due to her particularly upright and regal carriage. She has an oval-shaped face with wide, dark brown eyes, a slightly broad nose, and full lips. Her skin is a medium tan. Her hair is long enough to reach her waist and curly; she cares for it meticulously, and usually has it arranged in some intricate half-up style unless performing duties that mandate she put it into a more contained braid.
She has notable scars on her left bicep from fighting a spotty during the invasion. She considers this to be a serious flaw, and usually wears elbow-length or longer sleeves to cover it up—even if other people aren't going to think anything of it, it bothers her. Her vanity demands perfection.
Despite Semaca's climate and general informality, Saerin tends to dress in nice dresses whenever she can, only bowing to the practicality of trousers when absolutely necessary. She enjoys being what she thinks of as fashionable, even if those fashions are several Turns out of date now. Her only real concession to the realities of her home are her gravitation toward light colors and fabrics.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
Though Saerin is a rather nice person, she isn't necessarily a good person. She's inherently selfish and really only thinks about herself and Caffeth; everyone else is a very distant second. She's mostly cheerful and friendly, an accomplished socialite, but she doesn't really care about the acquaintances she makes. She does what she thinks she has to in order to maintain the friendship, including being helpful, though she does so less out of altruism than out of knowledge that having friends is beneficial to her as well. The same goes for being a rider. She didn't choose that path out of any desire to help or protect people, but because of the benefits and stability that such a life would bring.
While she has some regrets about her past actions, she doesn't feel any actual guilt over them; she only regrets the consequences. Despite the Turns that have passed, she misses the cushy life she once had. She doesn't like hard work, or having to get dirty, or having to put herself in danger. She wants to sit around, do pretty embroidery, wear nice dresses, and not worry about anything other than herself. She still keeps up embroidery as a hobby, even if it's not quite the same. She's quite vain, and accepts nothing less than beauty and perfection in her appearance, though she recognizes that being a rider means there are times she can't attain that.
While Saerin will follow most rules because it's more advantageous to be seen as compliant, she also won't hesitate to break those that she finds inconvenient when she thinks she can either do so unnoticed or come up with a convincing lie to get out of any consequences.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
Coyosto, Ex-Husband
Current name unknown, Daughter
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: None
BIRTHPLACE: Hold on the outskirts of Fort territory
HISTORY:
TW: Post-partum depression
Saerin was born the pampered sole child of a pair of Holders, whose only expectation in life was to be the sort of Lady who could marry above her station--maybe even to one of the Blood, though even her doting parents thought that a very unlikely hope indeed. To that end, she was well-educated and always told that she was far better, far more deserving than those around her. In that environment, she thrived. She had few really close friends, but she was good enough at socializing to always have a sufficient number of acquaintances that she never felt lonely.
When she grew up, it was to marry a second son of a more prosperous Hold. It wasn't quite the lofty position she'd aspired to, but it was a good position, and she found she rather liked Coyosto even if she knew love wasn't a factor in her marriage. Everything seemed to be going well. So she did the next thing expected of her: she got pregnant. Motherhood was just the next part of a life that had already been determined for her. She hadn't been certain she wanted children, but Coyosto did, and everyone assured her she'd love the child when it was born.
She didn't. She hated the way the baby cried, hated being responsible for her squashy little girl, hated the way everyone expected her to coo over the baby and the way everyone else seemed to think her daughter adorable while she just... couldn't. She felt like a fraud, trying to pretend that she felt the way she was "supposed" to when really she was just intensely tired of all of it. And worst of all, she was certain that Coyosto knew she didn't feel the way she should. She thought he had figured her out, and was planning to take the baby away from her--a baby she didn't want but couldn't bear the thought of giving to anyone else.
So one night, when everyone else was asleep, Saerin did the only thing that seemed logical to her at the time: she stole a runnerbeast she barely knew how to ride and ran off with her infant daughter. She didn't know where she planned to go, she didn't even know what direction she was going, but she knew she had to go somewhere that wasn't home. Somewhere around her fifth day of aimless travel, she realized what a terrible mistake she'd made. She couldn't subject her daughter to... whatever exactly this life she'd caused for herself was. She spent the next two days looking for any signs of civilization, and finally dumped her daughter (and a few Marks for the trouble she knew she was causing) at some cothold in the middle of the night. It was better than nothing, she reasoned; her daughter would have a chance at a better life than with a failure like her for a mother.
She couldn't go home, where she would be rightfully accused of horse theft and without her daughter beside her, probably accused of infanticide. She was certain that was enough to see her branded Holdless. That would be worse than just having made herself Holdless through her own thoughtless actions. She managed to find a cave near a stream to hunker down in and was able to sort of scrape by on her own, though she had absolutely no clue what she was doing.
One afternoon late that summer, which had seen the skies hazy with smoke more often than not, she encountered some travelers getting water from the stream where she'd been washing a now rather threadbare dress. They exchanged pleasantries, and then the others asked if she was fleeing to Fort Hold from the fires; they said they'd come across others on their way as well. Saerin saw an opportunity to get out of a solitary life that she'd found both hard and highly unpleasant. She said yes.
On the way, she concocted a story about how her cothold had burned, how her husband had lost his life trying to save livestock in a barn, how she had nowhere else to turn to. It sounded like most everyone else's stories, and she was quickly accepted at a very crowded Fort Hold. Having people around again was more of a relief than she ever could have imagined, though she soon found that being a "poor farmer" with no farm any more wasn't the glamorous life she'd been accustomed to. In all likelihood, she was lucky that everything at the hold was so chaotic at the time that nobody seemed to notice that she didn't know the things a farmer should--or if they did, they either didn't find it suspicious or didn't report those suspicions to anyone in authority.
That winter, a rider showed up at the hold and offered Saerin the chance to become a Candidate. She accepted, because a rider held greater status than what she currently had... and how hard could being a Candidate be, anyway? As she quickly found, it was more difficult than she expected. Chores remained difficult for her; she didn't like the work and she didn't like getting dirty. She stuck it out anyway, because it was better than what she'd left behind at the hold, and it offered her the chance of being something more important, even if that "something" was also inherently dangerous. She was tempted by thoughts of a safer life at Semaca, but ultimately rejected the idea; she cringed at the thought of such an unsettled place.
Three Turns passed with eggs and Hatchings coming and going, and Saerin did not Impress. At the age of twenty-six, she was obliged to either leave Candidacy or go to another Weyr. She considered High Reaches, but in the end decided to go to Semaca; surely by now it was more civilized than it had once been, and the idea of not having to fight Thread still appealed to her. She didn't care about protecting Pern, she only wanted to live in relative comfort and security. Being a rider was hard work, but at least riders were well rewarded for it.
It was three more Turns before her persistence was finally rewarded. The final egg of a clutch hatched a green, who at long last approached Saerin. There. I'm sorry it took so long. I never meant to make you worry that you would be forgotten, the green had said.
The two had their clashes. Saerin was selfish, and Caffeth was inherently generous. Caffeth cared about people, while Saerin saw them mostly as means to an end. But they eventually reached an equilibrium of sorts, though each still occasionally sought to sway the other to her own point of view.
Upon graduating, the pair joined Pavane Squad. Saerin refused to consider the fighting wings or the labor of Chopin Squad, and Caffeth wouldn't consider Mazurka Squad, which she saw as not being as helpful as other destinations. As Pavane seemed to be the less dangerous of the remaining options, it was there that they landed. Their belief that it was a "safer" squad was somewhat shaken during the spotty attack, during which the pair (at Caffeth's insistence) attempted to help track down and then dispatch spotties harassing the pirates--a battle from which they did not emerge unscathed, though their wounds would heal--it was still better than the alternatives. After all, spotties attacked far less frequently than Thread fell at the other Weyrs.
