BASICS
NAME: Alakh
GENDER: Female
PRONOUNS: She/Her/Hers
ORIENTATION: Lesbian
BIRTHDATE: Late Winter 2751
AGE: 19 as of Early Spring 2771
LOCATION: High Reaches Weyr
OCCUPATION: Weyrling
WING: N/A
APPEARANCE
EYES: Brown
HAIR: Black
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'0", strong
PLAY-BY: Terra Strong
FULL APPEARANCE:
Despite her supremely unimpressive height being one of the first things most people notice about Alakh, she's also clearly not a weakling despite her size. She's muscular, with fairly defined shoulders and calloused hands that prove she's no stranger to work. Her skin is a warm, medium-dark tone. Her hair is black and tightly curled, though kept fairly short for the sake of practicality. The top tends to lighten a bit in the sun. Her face is oval, with soft features. Her eyes are a very dark brown.
As with her hair, her manner of dress is extremely practical. She favors trousers and skirts no longer than her upper calf--which for some reason seem to be considered scandalously short by many at the Weyr. Other than during the winter, she usually shuns shoes entirely. She doesn't like flashy colors or ornamentation; her sole jewelry is a pair of silver stud earrings that have been in her family for many, many years.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
Stubborn, self-sufficient, and resourceful, Alakh is good at adapting to just about any crisis life throws at her. Little is truly able to unsettle her, as she is almost always confident that she can figure out how to overcome it. Unfortunately, she never really learned much in the way of manners either: she's prone to speaking her mind at inappropriate moments, she's sarcastic, and she thinks that pushing people (with a stick if she has one handy) should be a perfectly acceptable thing to do. After all, sometimes it's easier to just push a sheep toward where it needs to go. Why not people?
Owing at least in part to her very isolated upbringing, Alakh is in some ways also extremely naive. She expects other people to be inherently good, and rarely prepares herself for anything else; no experiences at the Weyr will ever really change this impulse in her. She doesn't understand why people would ever lock their doors, because why would anyone take something from her? Why would someone intentionally do another person harm when it will only prevent the Weyr from benefiting from their productivity? The value of money similarly escapes her; why are Marks worth anything at all? What's the point of them when trading items directly is far more straightforward?
Despite her early lack of an education, it became immediately apparent to her that at the Weyr, knowledge is power. She gets frustrated when people point out things that she doesn't know, because it means that it puts her below them. She doesn't want to stand on top of the pile, but she knows that some regard her as rural and backwards, and wants to be seen as their equal. It's the same with her size: she will do whatever it takes to ensure that people don't see her as anything less as a result of how small she is, including making a show of just how much she can lift.
There's little that she allows to frighten her, but despite her efforts, she's still afraid of the dark.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
Mother, Qadan
Father, Nergui
Eight siblings: five older, three younger
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: None
BIRTHPLACE: Cothold
HISTORY:
The sixth of nine children, a large, rowdy family is all Alakh has ever really known. From an early age, she was expected to learn to help out with their holding in the far northern ranges of High Reaches, high in the mountains. When she was very young, she was only expected to help with holding things for other people. As she grew older, she was expected to help with tending to sickly lambs or folding laundry or hanging it to dry, and then watching the flocks to protect them from predators. The family really only had themselves to rely on, but it was enough. Even a Trader caravan passing by every few years was a big event.
It was a simple life, but Alakh found nothing wanting in it. There was no formal education beyond the Teaching Songs, and everyone's clothes were homespun wool and shearling and sheepskin, but she was happy. They were remote enough that the war hadn't touched them, not that she was old enough to remember it, and no riders ever came to take warm bodies away to the Weyr after. She was without the cares of the wider world, worrying only about the next day, the next season, whether the dung of a wild wher meant the sheep were in danger or if it had just been passing by.
The only real wrinkle in her life was her size: Alakh often found herself having to struggle to prove that she was just as good, just as strong, as some of her younger siblings, and later her parents. But shardit, she was not going to let anyone call her a weakling!
She was just a couple of months past her nineteenth birthday when everything changed. A white dragon landed, rather than passing their tiny cothold by. Her entire family was more than a little awed, finding it difficult to believe that this was one of the smallest of dragons. Of greater surprise was the offer that came after: that she return with them to the Weyr. Alakh, who had never dreamed of anything more than her life and home, immediately accepted, and was soon taken off to a world she'd barely even suspected existed. Everything was huge, and strange, and new... and yet, it was exciting as well.
