Welcome to Gaia! ::

name: Sire is the name she took in her second baptism, and it's the name she calls herself now. Like many Sapmela people, she does not take a surname. (See-reh)
--nicknames: Siiri Pierasdotter is the name she was given for her first baptism, and though she can still recite it, it is not a name she associates with her identity - she thinks of her father as Biera, and she certainly no longer responds to Siiri.

age: idk early 20s??

appearance: Dark blond braids pulled into twinned buns, sweetly slanted bangs with longer tufts of hair framing her face...and dark, slanted eyes with creamy tan skin? It's certainly not what a Sunderlander expects, but her looks are common enough where she's from. Sire has been called exotic, although she doesn't like the term - it's an object's word, and she's sharp-minded enough to be useful to anyone; objects are things she makes. She dresses practically, in clothing made of stiff fabric that always carries an unfashionable bell-shaped silhouette, clean of style but for rich, lovely embroidery. She's plump, but far stronger than she looks for the trouble.

occupation: Why, she's an engineer of course! Specifically, she works with her family to design and build bridges, dams, and the like - irrigation is important for farming, and Sire enjoys thinking about shapes and materials and the way things break.

history: Sire does not look like a Sunderlander, and she does not participate in many of Sunderland's traditions - but she considers herself one. She and her family emigrated here, among a group of families, to escape the slowly spreading popularity and dominance in their own home of Naturism. They chose Sunderland for its climate: warmer by far than their own native land, but not different enough that their lifestyle would need to adjust much. They also picked it for its lore. Sunderlanders and their spirits and spirit-offerings were perhaps not well-known throughout the world (most countries, after all, still looked inward), but the families had been intelligent, and they'd done their research before making the decision to leave. And anyway, the tales of spirits contained something that tugged at the heartstrings of any self-respecting Sapmela person: guardians. Horse-sized deer who bonded with a single chosen human? That resonated with the families for whom reindeer had been sometimes a way of life.

Of course, when they arrived, there were no deer - at least, none of the sort described in legends. But there were farms, and sheep flourished here, and the Sapmela herders' sharp eyes, accustomed to picking out white hares from white snow, helped them trap. And the families lived together and shared their fortunes: a commune, of sorts. That was the way Sire grew up, in Sunderland but among others of her own kind. They'd settled in the countryside first, pooling their money to purchase a small plot of land and bringing their own bleating sheep. Sales of the wool they spun into yarn allowed them to expand, slowly, a little self-contained community. They interacted, of course, with Sunderlanders nearby, and Sire reveled in it: to see people who lived and worked with the land differently fascinated her.

Her parents indulged in her curiosity by allowing her to attend markets and play with Sunderlander children, for of course: they too were Sunderlanders now, even if only by name. But Sire had never wanted to be someone else: she'd always known who she was, and where she was from. She shared with them their way of coaxing sheep to obey, and they shared with her the best breeds of grass and how to get stubborn grains to take root. She sought not the Sunderlander way but the most optimal way.

And slowly, as she aged, her family became perhaps not the sole arbiter but the source of information behind big decisions, regarding how to build and sculpt the land the Sapmela herders tended. Not for the little girl, of course, but for her parents, and her brother, too: they all quickly saw the use in Sire's curiosity, after all, and had adapted their ways to better suit the community as a whole. It was specializing, nothing more than that. They'd settled, at last.

Of course, a few years previously, whispers bloomed across the countryside. Of a Ward-tree, tucked deep into the woods, with little wooden totems marked with whorls of bright, moving color. Of deer who grew as big as horses - rabbits who grew bigger than cats. Rooks spoke words again, carried snatches of gossip from across the winds. One day, young Sire wandered much farther into the Wardwood than she needed to go, to survey the land.

And when she came back, she held a little wooden sculpture.
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personality: Snarky, strict, and super smart, there's little doubt as to why Jophiel in particular chose Sire. creative, inquisitive, sarcastic - she's not a fighter; she makes things useful.