"And what will you give me in return?"
BASICS
RETIRE INFO: Retire
NAME: Miryem
GENDER: Female
PRONOUNS: She/her/hers
ORIENTATION: Demisexual
BIRTHDATE: Early Winter 2743
AGE: 24 as of 2767
LOCATION: Fort Weyr
OCCUPATION: Dragonrider, ex-trader
WING: Daylight
APPEARANCE
EYES: Blue
HAIR: Brown
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'1, skinny
PLAY-BY: Miryem (Spinning Silver)
FULL APPEARANCE: Miryem is a pleasant enough looking girl despite her claims to the contrary. She's filled out some from her days as a twiggy teenager although she remains on the slender side. She favors clothing that is of good quality but simple, well-made but cost-effective clothes that couldn't be called shabby but also don't cross the line into ostentatious. She wears a simple gold chain around her neck, one of the first luxury goods she purchased with her newly earned marks.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY: Miryem is a trader with a firm sense of what things are worth. She doesn’t trust the world outside her caravan not to try and screw her over the first chance they get. While she is fair in most of what she does, she is rarely kind to those who have not earned her affection. Giving something for nothing is a symptom of weakness that people will take advantage of given the chance. Being cold inside is the only way you survive. She doesn't expect anyone to respect her and she doesn't have much respect for them in turn. She'll obey the people in charge but only because it's more trouble not to- not because she genuinely trusts them to use their power wisely.
Miryem's business sense is excellent. While she rarely has the chance to use it as a rider, she remains very good at keeping clean records especially of things like storerooms and trading what she has for something better without ever crossing the ethical lines that exist in her own head. She is quite proud of her haggling and recordkeeping skills and can get herself in over her head with her steadfast belief in her ability to dig herself back out again.
To the ones she loves, Miryem is very loyal. With them, there is no need for caution of hardness. She’ll give them all she has and it is for their sake as well as her own she has little mercy on strangers. Because someone needs to take care of people and that someone is going to be her. She’ll be strong and merciless so they don’t have to be.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
Mother: Miralda
Father: Karyem
Various cousins, aunts and uncles
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: N/A
BIRTHPLACE: The roads around Benden Weyr
HISTORY: Miryem’s father was a trader but he wasn’t a very good trader. He was kind and decent and genuinely well-meaning to everyone he met, which didn’t lend itself to making a profit. Their small family caravan was perpetually short on food and dressed in shabby clothes as he sold what he had for less than it was worth and accepted promises of future payment in place of marks or goods, debts that were never collected.
That changed when Miryem was sixteen. Her mother had taken ill and they didn’t have enough marks to buy her a thick enough coat for the winter. That day, Miryem took their cart of goods to the nearby hold. She didn’t ask her father. She simply went, collected their outstanding debts and sold what they had for not a half-mark left than what it was worth. Because Miryem unlike her father was an excellent trader.
From that day on, Miryem took charge of setting prices and negotiating with the holders and things started to slowly get better. She was committed to her family with every hope of seeing them prosper and everyone suspected she would one day lead the caravan herself. Until the day the Search dragons came.
When they first said they wanted Miryem, she laughed. But the dragon insisted. And her parents both ordered her to go. It worried them- watching her haggle for every last ounce of grain and lose what sympathy she had for the world at large. Maybe being a dragonrider was the sort of change she needed.
Because Miryem loved her parents, she went despite her own reluctance on the condition they came to the weyr with her. Her mother remained too ill to travel the roads as she once had and maybe it was time for her to settle down somewhere out of the winter winds.
And they so they went to Benden Weyr, where Miryem quickly Impressed to a blue. It wasn’t all her parents had hoped for in a place where chromatic riders had to fight and claw for every bit of respect. Her mother had heard that Fort was more favorable towards chromatic riders and requested that they relocate there around the times sanctions were imposed and conditions started further worsening. Miryem agreed because it didn’t much matter where she was. Miryem was still a trader at heart, not the sort to put down roots. True she had heard tales of Serapheth and her bloodthirst but she wasn't a goldrider- she stayed out of such things and if it would ease her parents' minds, that was reason enough. After seeing how Benden's own bronzeriders were first marginalized and then killed, she has her doubts but given that she herself has been more or less left in peace, she remains tentatively hopeful that Fort will prove as good a place as any to settle down.
