"No need to search that mirror for the years.
The menace in their message shouts across the blur of tears.
So this is Beauty's finish. Like Rodin's "Belle Heaulmière",
The pretty maiden trapped inside the ranch wife's toil and care.
Well, after seven kids, that's no surprise,
But why cannot her mirror tell her lies."
Lies, by Stan Rogers
BASICS
RETIRE INFO: Retire
NAME: Mayella
GENDER: Female
PRONOUNS: She/Her/Hers
ORIENTATION: Heterosexual
BIRTHDATE: Late Spring 2707
AGE: 63 Turns as of Late Fall 2770
LOCATION: Fort Weyr
OCCUPATION: Headwoman
APPEARANCE
EYES: Blue
HAIR: Gray-blonde
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5’2”, wiry
PLAY-BY: Shelagh Fraser
FULL APPEARANCE:
Mayella was never a tall woman, and she’s only gotten shorter as she’s aged, though it’s never stopped her from doing what needs to be done. While not bulky, she’s definitely muscular, all lean and wiry, with little extra meat on her bones. Her skin is tanned and wrinkled from Turns of working in the sun, and her once mousy brown hair is much lightened, to something between grey and blonde; it’s kept cut to about her ears, to keep it out of the way. She looks a bit older than her Turns, the result of a lifetime of hard work outdoors.
Her features are rather on the narrow side, and her eyes are light blue. She’s often quick with a smile. In general she’s not especially fussed about dirt. Dirt is a thing that happens when you work on a farm, and she’s never really changed from that mindset. Her clothing is often covered in flour, dirt, or whatever she happens to have been interacting with that day, despite her apron that’s meant to keep her clean; the only time she really neatens up is for special occasions when she’s wearing her Gather best.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
While Mayella isn’t an especially loud woman, lacking a whole lot of presence when she walks into a room, she is still a force of nature to be reckoned with when she sets her sights on something. She’s incredibly tenacious, and allows nothing to stand in her way: tragedy, Thread, or smaller misfortunes, nothing is going to stop her. She can, on occasion, be convinced to change course slightly, but one way or another, Mayella will almost certainly get her way.
Perhaps it’s from raising seven children, and many Turns of doing so on her own, but Mayella is not a woman who will take any of your mischief or trouble. She’s stern, but fair; she’ll try to hear both sides of an argument before passing judgment, but when she does judge she’s more disappointed than angry, with a tendency to ask “what would your father think if he could see you now?”. While this worked well to keep her children in line, it’s likely rather less effective with other folk, but her appeal to guilt remains the same.
While not exactly neat, she’s relentlessly organized. Though she can now read and write, spending most of her life uneducated and illiterate means that she’s fond of color-coding everything; for the Weyr, she both writes out what others can read but also ensures that some part of her own system remains, for she’s loath to give up something that worked so well for her.
She’s fond of children, and while she’s strict and doesn’t tolerate any nonsense, those who behave tend to receive sweets on a fairly regular basis from her. She also enjoys cooking,and is glad to have found a position that allows her to pursue that love, though she’s accustomed to having to work under rather more restrictions and scarcity; to her, the Weyr’s bounty is nothing short of miraculous.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
7 children, 4 children-in-law, 11 grandchildren
Karmay, Son, Farmer (36)
SPACINGIlliad, Daughter-in-law, Farmer
SPACINGKaril, Grandson (17)
SPACINGIlmay, Granddaughter (15)
SPACINGArtay, Grandson (11)
SPACINGMaiad, Granddaughter (9)
SPACINGAyka, Granddaughter (5)
SPACINGMarter, Grandson (3)
SPACINGKalliad, Grandson (1)
Mater, Son, Farmer (33)
SPACINGPendara, Daughter-in-law, Farmer
SPACINGMara, Granddaughter (10)
SPACINGPenter, Grandson (7)
SPACINGTerra, Granddaughter (4)
Tella of Blue Orvath, Daughter (30)
Elkar, Son, Farmer (27)
SPACINGHipaqua, Daughter-in-law, Farmer
SPACINGQuar, Grandson (1)
Karella, Daughter, Trader (25)
SPACINGDanor, Son-in-law (note: also Esther’s brother), Trader
A’rel of Brown Tuaqueth, Son (23)
Termay, Son, Farmer (21)
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: None
BIRTHPLACE: Cothold near Ruatha
HISTORY:
Mayella was born the third child, and eldest daughter, of what was to eventually be five children. Her existence and place in life was always certain: she would grow up, like her mother, to be a farmer’s wife. And honestly, she had no problem with that. It was a good life, a stable one, one that she found rewarding and interesting. Even if their fields had a bad year, being beholden to a major Hold like Ruatha, they never had to worry about starvation, and with Fort Weyr to protect them, they had little else to worry about either.
And so she was raised learning those things which were of use for the woman of a farming cothold: cooking, mending, the basics of planting and tending to crops, what to do come harvest-time, and of course, child-rearing.
She knew that there was a chance she’d have to marry for practicality, rather than for love, but that she accepted as well. However, Mayella got lucky: when she was nineteen, she met a younger son of another farming family named Karter while at a Gather at Ruatha proper. It was love at first sight, and the two quickly arranged to get permission from Ruatha’s Lord to have their union recognized and to start a cothold of their own, for Karter’s family was prosperous already, and had no need to increase the population.
They shortly began having kids, delighted by each of them in turn, and the farm grew to be successful as rapidly as their family grew in number. While there were some hard times, they were largely prosperous, and the family was happy.
By the time Mayella was in her late thirties, the family had grown to include seven children. The youngest, Termay, was an infant when disaster struck. A nasty virus hit the family that spring and cycled through all of them, but for whatever reason, Karter, who was otherwise hale and hearty, succumbed to it. Mayella hardly had time to grieve. The planting still had to happen, or there wouldn’t be food on the table come late summer and fall.
For fifteen Turns, she ran the farm on her own, with only the help of her children, and later with her eldest son’s wife, Illiad. It wasn’t the most prosperous of farms, but they survived on their own. She took over all of the labor with Karmay’s help, and Mater and Tella largely minded the younger children and helped with the cooking.
The kids grew up, and Mayella couldn’t have been more proud of them. They started families of their own, or in the case of Tella and Ayrel (now A’rel) were Searched and Impressed dragons. Slowly the family began to scatter, but everything began again with her grandchildren beginning to toddle around underfoot. She still missed Karter, but they’d made it.
However, no peace lasts so long. One disastrous Threadfall, a burrow went undiscovered in the outer fields. Before it was found, it had ravaged the soil throughout most of their land, destroying the crops and worse, ruining the earth for Turns to come. Nothing would grow there in the near future. Karmay and Illiad decided to start again with another plot nearby, but Mayella wasn’t ready to begin again. Not on a new farm, not when it wasn’t the one where Karter had been buried all those Turns ago.
So she left, heading for Ruatha Hold, where she hoped to find some sort of employment. However, the Hold had nothing for a woman who couldn’t even read and write. Mayella learned those, but still there was nothing for her, so she moved on again: to Fort Weyr, who she had never blamed for the burrow. Things happened in a Fall, and riders gave up so much to ensure that most Thread was killed in the sky.
She eventually ended up helping out as an Assistant Headwoman, learning the ways of the Weyr in the process. However, only a short time later, that deadly plague swept through the Weyr, taking the Headwoman with it. And so it was that Mayella ended up as Headwoman, a position she was prepared to take on, but not one she’d wanted to end up with in such a manner.
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