“The world ends tomorrow, but the day after that, people are going to ask what’s for breakfast.”
-Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson
BASICS
RETIRE INFO: Character - Retire, Dragon - Adopt
NAME: Lift
GENDER: Cis female
PRONOUNS: she/her/hers
ORIENTATION: Aromantic asexual
BIRTHDATE: Mid-fall 2745
AGE: 25 as of fall 2770
LOCATION: Semaca Weyr
OCCUPATION: Squadrider
WING: Pavane Squad
APPEARANCE
EYES: Brown
HAIR: Black, mid-back
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 4'11", sturdy
PLAY-BY: Yalitza Aparicio
FULL APPEARANCE: Lift used to be a scrawny, short child. Turns of access to consistent food have changed the scrawny, if not the short. She has little in the way of a figure, being built like a tree trunk more than anything. Other than that, she's not especially remarkable, with black hair she keeps as long as she can manage, bright brown eyes, and a dark tan complexion. She has an oval face with rounded features, with few harsh edges to be found. She enjoys clothes that let her move around easily, with little regard to fashion.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY: Lift cares too forsking much. She's tried not to care in the past. After spending three Turns of her life in silence, without anyone to care about, she's done not caring. She wants to do what's right. She wants to help. She doesn't want to be some fancy leader, but prefers to take things into her own hands. She certainly doesn't comport herself like a fancy leader, to the despair of some. She swears, drinks, and belches with the best, and though she has more regard for hygiene than she did in the past, she's still not the most well-groomed person to grace Pern. She tends to be blunt to the point of rudeness, calling people by unflattering nicknames to their faces if she feels they deserve it. She hates people not saying what they mean and doesn't feel the need to restrain her tongue.
To further add to her unrefined manners, Lift has an unconventional sense of morality when it comes to possessions, especially food. Food should, first of all, go to herself, but if there's a juicy game wherry available to only the richest patrons at a Gather, Lift thinks it's foolish not to redistribute it to those who can't afford it. She thinks little of possessions in general, seeing them as useless and burdensome, and aggressively regifts most things she's given. Possessions beyond the bare minimum of clothing and weaponry still feel odd to have, and she feels trapped by them.
Lift still values her freedom highly and chafes at the strictures of Weyr life. Though she knew she was helping Fort and its people by fighting Thread, she jumped at the chance to move to Semaca, where she could spend her days roaming the jungle. She loves challenges and volunteers for dangerous assignments on purpose. It helps her feel more at "home" - out in the wild, with just her and Icolenth and their wits keeping them alive, it feels almost like old times again. She cares little for authority, but has learned that cooperating with them if they're being sensible gives her more freedom to do what she wants, since she's not spending all her time getting punished.
HISTORY
FAMILY: Lairah - mother (deceased), Fital - father (deceased), Gawx - adoptive brother, bronzerider at Fort Weyr, various adoptive uncles
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: N/A
BIRTHPLACE: Fort Hold territory
HISTORY: Lift was born to a Holdless woman. Her father had died before she was born, killed by a wild wher when he accidentally intruded into her territory. Lift grew up knowing nothing of reading, writing, or manners, but she learned to hunt, to gather, to survive. And above all, she was taught to care about others. Someone had to care, Lairah told Lift over and over. No one cared for the Holdless, but someone among them had to care no matter what the state they were in.
When Lift was ten, her mother received a wound which was beyond either of their capabilities to treat. It soon grew infected, and Lift's mother succumbed. Lift was devastated - her mother had been the only person she'd truly loved. Sure, she'd interacted with people other than her mother, but usually only for brief periods, for trading food or mutual shelter for a night.
Lift stopped caring.
How could she care, when the only person she'd ever loved was gone?
She kept on keeping on, having to work harder to feed herself since she was neither as strong nor as fast as her mother had been. She stopped speaking for three Turns, until she was thirteen. There was no one to talk to anymore.
Until Gawx.
Lift encountered the boy who would become her dearest friend - though never anything more for either of them - more or less by chance. He'd tripped over a trap originally meant for a wherry Lift was trying to kill, falling flat on his face and knocking himself out. Lift raided his pockets, only to quite literally run into an older man, who invited her back to his cave where a small band of Holdless including Gawx made their home together.
Lift figured that multiple people would have more food, and silently accepted the offer.
Slowly, she began to open up. The men taught her how to hunt, how to belch, how to swear, and above all how to love again. Gawx even gifted her a firelizard egg he'd found that autumn, the season her mother told her she was born. It hatched into a fussy green Lift named Wyndle because it sounded like "wind." Some of the men were shocked when Lift referred to Wyndle as a he, but he was a firelizard and it wasn't actually affecting anyone.
It was rather unwillingly, a Turn later, that fourteen-year-old Lift and seventeen-year-old Gawx were thrust into Weyr life. The older men in their little band wanted to give the two children a chance at a better life. They knew they had no chance of ever being welcomed to Weyr life because of their parents' crimes, but thought that a patrol dragon might scoop the children up, or maybe even Search them. They sent Lift and Gawx to scout ahead in an area they knew was part of the Weyr patrol area, withdrew, and waited.
Unluckily in Lift's eyes, as they were crossing a clearing, a dragon flew overhead. The green dragon swooped down, blocked her and Gawx's path, and refused to budge until the two of them went back with her rider to Fort Weyr. Though they probably could have tried to run, it was Lift and Gawx's first time seeing a dragon up close, and no amount of bravado could make up for the experience. Rather terrified, the pair were swiftly deposited on dragonback and whisked away. Lift was a Turn too young to become a candidate at the time, but Gawx was promptly thrust into candidacy upon the patrol dragon's recommendation.
Lift hated life as a weyrbrat. She had to bathe, and wear Proper Clothes, and where were her uncles? Gawx had a much easier time adapting, learning to read and write with relatively little difficulty and taking very well to having baths and latrines. Lift's handwriting would always look like wherry scratches, and she prefers to avoid reading to this day. Both she and Gawx were unpopular due to their Holdless background.
The only thing that stopped Lift from trying to run away was the food. There was so much of it. She didn't have to hunt or gather - there was just food sitting on tables ready for her to eat. It was forsking amazing.
Gawx Impressed a bronze at his first clutch, to the envy of several of his fellow male candidates, and the resulting feast made Lift decide to become a candidate on her fifteenth Turning-day. Barely a season after she aged in, she Impressed green Icolenth at the same clutch where Pern's first female bronzeriders made their bonds. She thought it was about time for female bronzeriders, not seeing why everyone was so shocked. Dragons were dragons and humans were humans, and if a dragon wanted to Impress to a particular human they liked, who cared about their gender? Her firelizard was a green male, or at least Lift was stubbornly convinced he was.
She chafed at weyrling training even more than she had at weyrbrat life. She got to run around and wreak minor havoc as a weyrbrat, at least. Now she had to learn about duty to the Weyr, and how to be a proper rider, and other nonsense, while there was a forsking war going on. She had a similar attitude towards garnets as she did female bronzeriders - dragons were dragons, some of them just looked different and maybe laid eggs. She thought that Lexien was doing as fine a job as any - she was competent, even if she did punish Lift just as much as the candidatemasters had - and helped rebel against Kallia.
For several Turns of her life, despite the changes in leadership and the political machinations of Pern, Lift kept doing what she was doing. There was always Thread to fight, and Lift requested patrol duty as often as she could. She loved feeling free again, feeling the wind in her long hair and getting to cover distances she could only have dreamed of before she'd been relocated to Fort Weyr. She did take interest in Fort Hold withholding their tithes, if only because it meant hardship for the Weyr. Especially a lack of food, but she let the higher-ups handle it.
After having her very capable wing of greens and blues taken over by a stuffy bronzepair who was too large for the wing, and then High Reaches stealing eggs from Fort, Lift decided she had finally had quite enough of Northern continent machinations and put in for a transfer to Semaca. Pavane squad seemed like a great place to not worry about politics and backstabbing.
