Name: Allende ( Al-lend-dae)
Character Ref Song(s): Rascal Flatts, Unstoppable along with Love and Theft, Runaway
Age: 16
Sex: Female
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual
Craft: N/A
Rank: N/A
Physical Description:
Despite being all of 16 turns, Alle towers over all her male siblings and her father at an imposing six feet even. Though she is proportionate enough to carry the height, she is still teased for it and does her homely best to stoop her shoulders to lessen the effect. Her hair is a dry, oftentimes frizzled, mess of wheat colored blond locks that she usually keeps loosely tied at the nape of her neck. A wide brimmed straw hat usually tops her off, shading her bright blue eyes from both the sun and view. Perversely, she favors light colored clothing that fits her angular frame loosely. Though she knows that her favored patterns of vertical stripes run counter to her attempts to minimize her height, she shows no sign of changing and appears to be using such choices as a passive aggressive rebellion against the older male siblings that tease her, as they cannot do anything to her physically, but she can certainly dress to remind them of that fact while appearing to cow tow to them for the sake of her parents.
Personality:
At first blush, Allende would strike the viewer as a shy wallflower with scarcely a spine to stand with. She is careful not to meet the eyes of strangers, and goes out of her way to be accommodating when circumstances call for it. A second look, however, taken when she is out form under the eye of her parents, tells a far different story.
This tall holdergirl is far from plain on the inside, and as a child, the traveling teaching Harper twice complimented her parents on her mental aptitude during her childhood lessons. Ironically, the compliment was followed by the heart breaking admission that had she been born a boy, the Harper would have liked to have her come with him to the Harper Hall for training before being sent out to teach others all across Pern. Had she known how close she was to her dreams then, Alle would have likely festered a deep dislike for masculinity and the patriarchal society that her world revolved in. As it stood, she was hardly eight turns at the time, and the exchange faded into her memories... replaced by other childhood memories. To this day she doesn't know the source of her deep discontent with her lot in life, but she can scarcely stop it.
Still, Alle has big dreams and high hopes for her personal future. She's considered apprenticing herself to one of the local craftsmen, but has thus far resisted making a commitment for fear of losing out on her true ambitions. Alle wishes to travel to width and breadth of Pern, be it on foot or by ship, she is completely willing to set out by any means necessary to reach her goal. Reality, however, keeps her wandering heart safe and secure in he parent's cothold outside of Lemos, where she patiently bides her time and her limited resources, exercising a resiliency she never would have thought herself capable of when dealing with the day to day monotony of her life.
Since coming to Ista, tall Allende has found her world expanded in more ways then she had ever dreamed possible. Between Thread, the Red Star, Gay Men, and gushing Blood... her fine backwoods-holder sensibilities have been tried, tried, and tried again. She never dreamed that her upbringing could have been so absolutely backwards, nor her mind as closed as it was, but being all of sixteen, she is learning quickly the way of things at Ista, and is assimilating these new teachings into herself admirably. She is proving to be highly adaptable once the shock of new things wears off, and rather staunch in her moralistic approach to other things. Her still-developing personality shows early signs of being a bright, curious, extrovert with a firm foundation of basic moral principles. Never flighty, Alle serves as both a grounding point for her friends, and a supporter when they seek to do something new. Likewise, she is not at all shy about trying new things, even if they do scandalize her at first...
History:
Raised believing that Thread would never threaten Pern again, Allende could almost be considered privileged in the sense that her childhood was uncomplicated and straight forward, despite being wrong. She was never faced with a methodology different from what she learned as a child, and has been the recipient of years of solid parenting from both her mother and her father. Close mouthed and ignorant as the pair might be, no one can fault the woodsmith or his homemaker wife when it comes to providing a steady home for their family.
So Alle's wanderlust comes as something of a surprise for the earthy folk who birthed her. She's never fooled them into complacency (as she has her siblings) and her father in particular watches out for her whenever strangers visit the Cothold. He is well aware that his youngest will take the first opportunity fate grants her, and in his own way, he both wishes her well, and seeks to keep her safe. This conflict within his heart tends to lead to some frustrating times for both father and daughter, leaving one feeling angry and confused, and the other just disappointed. Alle senses that flying free is the only way she can be happy, but she has yet to find the words to express this to her parents.
Following her unexpected search by L'thor and his green Raith, Allende arrived at Ista with what she thought was an open mind. Fresh as she was from the Lemosian woodlots, several things struck her almost immediately about Ista Weyr. First, it was crowded, so crowded she found that she was delegated to a dingy strung hammock in the corner of the girl's barracks since the Candidatemaster just didn't have enough bunks. While she wasn't exactly used to sleeping while swaying, Alle adapted readily enough and went about her chores and classes with positive tenacity. The second thing that struck her, rather forcibly, was how far behind she was academically. When it came to the standard Teaching Ballads, she knew all of the ones that did not once mention Thread except as an ancient problem, thus purely past tense... and not very scary.
Coming to the Weyr brought the inadequacies of her childhood learning into stark prospective, and Alle found herself in a rut when she fell far behind the other girls she was rooming with. Blessedly, none were cruel about it, but Allende was beating herself up more then enough to make up for the generosity of her roommates... at least until she met one older, oftentimes frazzled, journeyman dragonhealer during her shifts serving in the dining hall.
Cautiously, she'd approached him on the topic of dragons in general. He hadn't been the most forthcoming at first, but Alle was persistent and she'd eventually managed to convince him to talk with her a bit if she promised to bring him lunch a few times. The conversations she managed to bribe out of him were enlightening, if sometimes confusing, and she was surprised by how much he knew about the abstract astronomical concepts that governed not only the Red Star, but the tides and weather as well. Never once had her parents or the traveling Harpers mentioned things like this, and she found herself completely enamored. Between draconic biology, botany, and tidbits of the starsmithing and fisher crafts... Alle's mind had found fertile grounds indeed.
Around that time she stood at her First Hatching, but she was oddly relieved to have walked away without a creeling dragonet. She was of the opinion that there was still far to much she needed to catch up on, and honestly felt that she would have been a burden to the Weyrlingmaster. Her rooming arrangements improved because of it, since a few girls had impressed and moved over to the Weyrling Barracks, she was able to get into an actual bed (at least part of the time) when she stated rooming with a young girl named Illabel and two other girls. With only two cots and a pile of bed-furs available, the four of them rotated out amicably enough... though Alle found that she preferred the floor most of the time because the bed was a bit too short for her frame.
Pets: Brown Firelizard, Ranger. Obtained while beach hunting with a friend, who also took home an egg from the clutch they discovered.
Other/Talents:
Will this character be a candidate? Yes
