" No one taught me
If this was the right path or if I should go on a different one
If I reach the end over there, I’ll stop
Saying it’s the end "
- The Road, Kim Yoon-ah
BASICS
NAME: Yun
GENDER: Female
PRONOUNS: She/Her/Hers
ORIENTATION: Lesbian
BIRTHDATE: Early Summer 1797 (Equivalent to Late Winter 2739)
AGE: 34 as of Early Spring 2774
LOCATION: Fort Weyr
OCCUPATION: Rider
WING: Dawn Squad
APPEARANCE
EYES: Brown
HAIR: Black
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'0", slender
PLAY-BY: Kichise Michiko
FULL APPEARANCE:
Yun is just dainty. She's short and slender, her skin soft and on the fair side—and she takes pains to stay out of the sun whenever possible. She doesn't want to age before her time, after all. Her face is narrow and rather angular, with a strong jaw, high cheekbones and a slightly hooked nose. Her eyes are an extremely dark brown, difficult to distinguish from black in poor lighting but brighter when seen outdoors. Her straight hair is black and kept but short in an almost boyish cut, a concession to practicality rather than the femininity she displays in most other aspects.
When not flying, she prefers to wear dresses in muted colors: soft pastels and faded earth and jewel tones. She favors quite a bit of embroidery and other ornamentation, as well as very fancy hats.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
Soft-spoken, demure-seeming, and a bit on the vain side, Yun often appears every bit the lady she was pushed from birth to be. She's a social butterfly, almost always eager to meet new people and usually seems honestly interested in them. She's usually polite and clearly well-educated even if she isn't very smart—she's well-spoken and knows facts, but isn't good at using that knowledge. She does have a bit of a bad habit of treating those she considers to be of low birth a bit condescendingly, assuming they're poorly-educated and need things explained to them; she thinks she's doing them a service by telling them how things work. Even her hobbies are unsurprising given her upbringing: needlework and hat-making. She sometimes mourns the loss of her hat collection, though it's really the least of her concerns.
Despite her love of new acquaintances, Yun is rather on the nervous side. She wants to meet people, but they also scare her a bit–she usually pushes through this fear regardless, because to do anything else would be a failure. She worries too much, especially about how other people perceive her. Her vanity demands that she present a perfect face to the world. Change stresses her out, and she deals poorly with stress. It overwhelms her quickly and often worsens the stutter and brings on the panic attacks that started with her accident, which make her hate the appearance of being imperfect, which stresses her out more… It's a difficult cycle to break out of sometimes.
Yun seems soft, and in some ways she is. She doesn't like dirty work, she cries at the drop of a hat, and a tear in her clothing seems like a catastrophe. But she's also caring and stubborn and determined; she won't change for anyone or anything. She's comfortable with who she is and who she wants to be, so long as no one else is privy to what she sees as her imperfections.
HISTORY
FAMILY: Centuries gone
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: None any more
BIRTHPLACE: Minor hold near Fort Hold
HISTORY:
Yun was born at the tail end of the Sixth Interval at a minor hold. She had one job in life: to marry well and produce grandchildren. Not heirs for her own family—that task fell to her younger brother—but for her husband's. And for most of her early life, she accepted that duty. Someday she'd be just like her mother, and how could that be a bad thing? She was fostered out to Fort Hold in her early teenage years to broaden her horizons, and it was there that trouble struck. Hormonal trouble. Puberty hit, and Yun could find no interest toward boys; instead, the pubescent stirrings that she felt were directed at another girl.
She knew she wasn't "supposed" to feel like that toward girls, so she squashed the feelings down and, at seventeen, returned home better-educated and with all the proper manners that could be taught to her. It would soon be time for her parents to find her a suitable husband, after all. She went from eagerly accepting that lot in life to absolutely dreading it. She hoped for anything that would give her an excuse to never marry without dishonoring her family: getting Searched, some horrible disfiguring accident that would cause men to flee her, an incurable illness that wouldn't kill her but would make her contagious all her life.
She turned eighteen, and then two more Turns passed without a husband being found; she began to hope it was an impossible task after all. Only it wasn't. Her parents found Majou, and everything happened faster than she had ever wanted. Everything was arranged, and Yun grew increasingly desperate for a way out. That was when the Searchdragon came. She all but begged the rider to take her to the Weyr, she didn't care if she wasn't suitable for a dragon, just take her anywhere else so long as her parents were told she was being Searched. Lying was fine! Only when her parents were told, it wasn't a lie. Yun would be a Candidate.
Life at Fort Weyr was an adjustment. Yun spent most of her first Turn there stressed about everything: was she saying the wrong things, not saying enough, exposing herself to too many people in the baths, acting too prudish in the baths, too eager about the possibility of Impressing or did she not want it badly enough? It was exhausting and exhilarating all at once. And yet it was at the Weyr that Yun learned that she wasn't alone. She wasn't the only girl who liked other girls—and at the Weyr, she was allowed to feel that way, even to feel it openly. That was enough to make everything worthwhile.
She was almost twenty-two when Bolth found her on the Sands. He was small for a blue, but made up for it with sheer exuberance and not-insignificant volume. He loved everyone he met, but her most of all. Yun thought her life was perfect then. She changed her mind when she met Kya. She was a Weyrling, and the other woman had been a rider for Turns, but they were around the same age—Kya had just Impressed much younger. It was just a chance meeting in the Dining Hall, but the two were soon inseparable during Yun's limited free time. When she graduated to join Nimbus Wing, she never even got her own weyr, she just moved into Kya's.
For several Turns, the two women and their dragons were happy together. Threadfall was stressful of course, and Yun never really hated it any less, but their lives were good. Not perfect, but good.
Things got turned horribly upside-down when Bolth and a green collided during Threadfall. The green's knee hit Yun's head; she was knocked unconscious for almost an hour. She wasn't quite the same after that. Aside from needing to re-learn how to do things from walking to how to hold a fork, she got frequent headaches and her natural nervousness worsened into panic attacks. She got confused about where she was often, and for several months she struggled to communicate: words came only with difficulty. It was the better part of a Turn before her life got back to some semblance of normal—the difficulty speaking lessened but didn't disappear, and the headaches and panic attacks happened with decreasing frequency.
She got frustrated with herself often, but that didn't make things improve any faster. Her relationship with Kya was occasionally strained; she felt like a burden, and it was a stressful time for both of them. In the end though, they came to have a stronger relationship for it.
It was almost two Turns before she was cleared to fly a Fall again. At that point the Healers told her things had probably progressed as far as they ever would. She still sometimes stuttered and had trouble finding words, and she still occasionally got headaches, but she hadn't had a panic attack in months. She thought they were behind her for good.
Her first Threadfall back with her wing, she had a near miss with another dragon. She felt like everything was closing in on her again and, recognizing the warning signs of her panic she tried to have Bolth take her back home. It was difficult to think straight, and something went horribly wrong with the trip Between.
They never made it home.
