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Name: Holi
Age: 19
Gender: Female
Appearance: Pretty and just slightly eerie, Holi is pretty enough, but owes a fair amount of this to being vaguely striking, and a large part of this is owed to her large, dark, expressive eyes, which are so dark a shade of brown as to be nearly black, a sharp contrast to skin that prefers to turn pink and burn rather than tan, and almost bleached looking blond hair that threatens to turn to an early white in not too many turns. (Holi blames stress for this, as evidenced by the frequently thin set of her lips, and her tendency to bite them.)

She's slender, but this is largely due to her tendency to feed others before she feeds herself, since if she turned the impulse to control bad situations with food toward herself, it's doubtful her metabolism could win out over her insatiable sweet tooth.

Otherwise, like many candidates, she sports calluses and scars, and is no delicate, fainting highborn, hiding tolerable stamina and strong wiry muscles from hard work under her clothes.

Personality:
Holi is the first to admit to herself as a cry baby, strong emotions and stress easily bring her to tears, and she has never been able to get around this, much as she tries. She may be arguing loudly as tears roll down her face, or even... say, attempting to bludgeon someone with the nearest weapon, but if the situation is fraught with almost any given high emotion, she's probably in tears, and probably furious about it, which makes any given situation where she's actually angry kind of worse, since she'll blame the subject of her ire for her tears as well.

She tends to come across as a soft, gentle girl, which pairs with her tendency to cry freely in moments of high emotion (including joy) to make her look even weaker, and throughout her life has bolstered her parents tendency to try and coddle her as much as possible, and caused others to either react similarly, or to see her as ridiculously fragile, or possibly both, and its easy to expect her to bend in the wind of others strong opinion like a reed.
To be fair, she does bend frequently, it's easier, it upsets fewer people, and who wants her opinion anyway... but she has a hidden reserve of strength she has not begun to tap. Steel in her spine that is not yet tempered, but which if she can be encouraged to tap, will give her great strength, and the will to stand strong even if she never does manage to stop the free flowing tears.

She struggles hard to prove her worth to others, though unlike some others, she's also still in conflict as to her own worth. Part of her yearns for the same respect a male rider has, another part of her still honestly believes that maybe the traditionalists are right, maybe women are just less. They make less, people treat them as being more fragile, and it's harder for them to get ahead in life after all.... and many places won't even let them inherit... And everyone thinks she's fragile and delicate, so maybe that's really all there is to her.

For all this, she loves her home Weyr, and is likely to be quite upset at anyone who speaks ill of dragon riders on the whole. Speaking ill of specific dragon riders is a different mater, but by Faranth you had better respect the men and women who risk their lives for Pern! Even the candidates, who risk their lives just to have a chance to bond.

She does not consider herself particularly brave, and doubts her own courage the way she doubts her worth, and pretty much considers herself to be holding a place holding role on the sands, for stories she may someday tell her children or grandchildren.

History:

Holi is a Weyrbrat, born to a quiet bonded couple from the kitchen staff who fell for each other late in life. Given the later life pairing, neither of them really expected to bring a child to term, so Holi was a happy surprise, and an only child, much loved by her parents, who gave out small treats on the sly as frequently as they doled out kisses and hugs, and while this did not mean she was never corrected for making a mistake or behaving poorly, forgiveness was often accompanied by a small sweet, slowly underscoring the image of food (especially sweets) as an expression of love. Sharing these sweets with others in the creche likely made for an drifting army of temporary friends who mostly wanted a goodie, but Holi still has trouble letting go of the idea that this sort of sharing and what others might see as bribery is intrinsic to friendship and love.

The rigors of Candidacy have been difficult on her, and her go to relaxation point is desert, especially if she can share it with someone she can sit back and talk to, and if she could comfort eat her way through struggles to keep up, or even to celebrate any occasions on which she's praised for her performance, she probably would. Likewise if she had the power to do so, she would produce people's favorite dishes to praise or console them for their own difficulties, and to try and make friends with her fellow candidates.
She is squired to an NPC female blue rider, who possibly hopes to see candidacy help Holi come to a bolder conclusion about the role of women on Pern, but otherwise has not pushed severely in one direction or another.

Before she could stand, and as soon as she was able, she frequently joined her parents in the kitchen, learning how to cook and bake and otherwise work the kitchen. Her parents cooked with passion, and she took to it with a similar intensity, though her strong suite is definitely in the area of things that involve pastries and sugary confection. She considered it a point of pride to stand when the time came (even if she did miss feeling pretty with her long hair, she'd never really expected anything else, and it was something less to fuss with in the exhausting rigors of candidacy.)

She has stood for some of the previous clutches, but has yet to impress (obviously), and she's just grateful not to have been scratched up too badly by some of the aggressive hatchlings in the recent clutch.