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Name: Kylara
Age: 15
Gender: Female
Rank: Candidate, at 1.5 turns in
Appearance:

Kylara has naturally tanned skin, some shades more bronze for the outside work she does. She has thick, brown-black hair that is decidedly a straight, dead-weight. She is one of the lucky candidates for which a chin bob-cut looks nice, and so this is the length she keeps it. Her eyes are amber-brown. Kylara stands at 5'6", and certainly has a few more inches to grow before she's finished.

Personality:
In a shorter summary to begin: Kylara is a 15 turn who is determined to put her best foot forward and be the best perceived young lady a girl can be, but courses through doubts and negative emotions that seep out as often as they would with any other teenager trying to find their footing in life.

In length:
Kylara has an excellent grasp on where she’s come from and who she was then. She knows exactly why she’s where she is now, and even in moments of greatest insecurity never once would have gone back and changed that decision. Kylara is not completely sure where it is that she’s going though, and she’s not sure who she is now. She knows she’s not exactly who she was, and though she has times of resolve one way or another, she is not always confident in what future there might be for her. That might be a relatively common thing among the Hold-born candidates of any Weyr.

Kylara knows that she doesn’t want to be alone, because this place where she is surrounded by so many people and even lucky enough to have a family member along for the ride, she learned very swiftly that here she would feel the most alone than she ever had. It was a double-learned lesson when her little clique of initial friends who’d taken a liking to her either aged out or impressed at the very first hatching she was able to witness. So Kylara is social. She believes in giving everyone the time of day, and she believes that simple gestures can possibly mean the world to someone else. So she’s happy and kind. Because she is 15, she is sometimes the fanciful and childish sort of happiness, but there is a mature well-roundedness to her, and even in moments that might ask complaints of another, Kylara only falls into such a tendency a moment before something reminds her and she is drawn back. Then she is a determined and purposeful sort of happy, sometimes a little over-the-top, because in her youth she has not yet learned that gentle kindness is sometimes more desirable than forced smiles and searchings of amusements.

Determined is a good word to describe a good deal of what Kylara does. She is determined to learn, and she’s determined to do well. She is deeply embarrassed when she fails, and has been known to shed tears, especially in her first few months of candidacy, but she does not give up. She finds people to befriend or bribe that might help her, and she doesn’t allow her stupid cousin’s ringingly hurtful words of “it’s because you’re a girl, and you know candidacy isn’t really made for ladies” cause her to slack or fall off. No. He might be right, she might not be a dragonrider one day, but she might gain the attention by being a good candidate of someone who can really make her into the closest thing to a lady that she’ll ever be able to achieve. So she must put her best foot forward. Besides, if she treks the road and another sibling or cousin is searched, she can make it easier for them. Somehow.
When Kylara is honest with herself, sometimes she doesn’t know how she puts one foot in front of the other. But she can’t not move forward, and so she continues to trudge on.


History:

Kylara was born on a joint farm-beast land. Her mother, the eldest of the two surviving children in her family, had technically inherited the beast fields, though it is in all minds her father’s now. The farm belongs to her uncle, who is both her father’s elder brother and married to her mother’s younger sister. The families are tightly knit, and to outsiders seem to move seamlessly amongst one another. The cousins even refer to each other as brothers and sisters more often than they do cousins.

It was a very good life, Kylara was very happy in it, and her mind-frame is still duty-first to her family. It just so happens that her greatest opportunity to fulfill the greatest honor and duty for her family appeared in the form of a search dragon when she’d just begun her fourteenth turn. Kylara asked the searchrider to remain for dinner while she thought of the offered proposal, but had made her decision in an instant. Between her siblings and her cousins, there were fourteen children. Though her family didn’t bicker, they did worry, and the girls that remained in earshot of their parents more often than the boys had a better idea of the concerns the adults had about their children’s future. What could they possibly offer their sons and daughters for their futures? Kylara knew that accepting the search would both give her opportunity and possibly even open the door of opportunity for others of her family.

When her cousin, Everenten, accepted this second search of his only on the basis that she’d accepted for herself, Kylara felt a slight thrill of victory for it. It was confirmation to her that her decision was exactly right, and her suspicions well-founded. She was the trail blazer of this generation.

Kylara has found this past turn and a half at the Weyr to be both far easier and far more difficult than Everenten ever did. In her mind, she couldn’t consider the possibility of ever returning, unless she aged out and then lucked out by achieving a position somehow in the nearest hold to the lands. Yet here she was at every bend, with every struggle, unable to really admit her struggles and homesickness because she had this stupid, idealistic, naïve cousin preemptively hounding her and trying to make her feel even WORSE so that she would give up and go home. Despite the comfort of having him about, he was often a burden that she found herself avoiding in times when she really needed him the most, and because she thought that he was making a great embarrassment of not only himself, but of her as well by association, Kylara also has done her very best to hide all of her hardships from everyone else as well. She didn’t want to be deemed unfit and sent home.

So Kylara, by far the more realistic and down-to-earth of the two cousins, has put her nose to the ground and not caused a single ripple except when she had to defend her stupid cousin (because he WAS stupid, but only SHE was allowed to say that, and she’d bust anyone’s nose and argue with ANY authority that said OTHERWISE). She’s worked hard, not only on the basics of the candidate lessons, but also in observing the behavior of those around her. She’s worked hard on networking to the best of her abilities, knowing she’ll never garnish a position in a craft, but certain that she could befriend someone either in the kitchen house or among the harper craft that might one day be able to recommend her for a better position. She’s done much to try to learn the mannerisms of those that she thinks have the chance of being someone, or all ready are, but she really is much too young to have succeeded in doing more than looking like what she is: A 15 turn old girl who is shrewd enough to see the need to hold onto the best opportunity for her future, but who has not yet been fully able to let go of all the parts of her past she needs to.

I don't think I've ever in my life been so embarrassed with a character application.

Please forgive me for her name. It's been about 15 years since I've actually read the Pernese books, and I didn't realize that was one of the canon names. I was just combining two names I know that I thought would fit her well. (Kyla and Marla) Of course I will change it! (Please tell me I didn't stumble upon a character that is similar in design also?)

Is it possible to request an IC dragonrider that she could have been squire to? I sort of intentionally skirted over the Weyr history in order to be able to make connections once I get them in. I think there's very little fun in having created a character that's been an island her whole Weyr life.

Also, I would have never counted her personality as a perfect personality. Is it possible to just to point out implied traits instead of editing through all of it? For example:



I'm really, really sorry for coming off that way. Again, I don't see her as a perfect character, and I don't think I could apologize for writing her up in a way that makes you guys perceive her as such. I blame it on the fact that I've had a LOT of practice in making negatives sound positive as a teacher. =)