APPEARANCE
Name: Aoife (pronounced EE-fa) Oakheart
Race: Human, Drykas
Gender: Female
Age: 22
Birthday: 12th day in Fall, 493 AV
Birthplace: Wind Reach
Appearance:
Aoife is a rather average looking girl. Her skin is only lightly tanned despite spending years under the hot sun and more often just burns leaving her with flakes brushing off her nose all through the warmer seasons. During winter she pales up to a pasty white that makes her freckles and blue eyes stand out in stark contrast.
Her face has a nose...a mouth..a couple of eyes. Other than that there isn’t anything particularly stunning about it. She isn’t ugly but she wouldn’t win a beauty contest with that slight asymmetry, nose a little bit crooked, and eyebrows that are constantly too thick or too thin. She has (thankfully) grown out of her teenage acne but even that has left slight imperfection scars as reminders.
The girl has a light build, slightly athletic due to the pressures of constant moving. She’d be much better at running a race than hand-to-hand combat where her 5’1” height and 100lbs of weight would usually be a disadvantage. She isn’t very strong though that wouldn’t stop her from trying to lift or move something if she had no way around it.
Aoife’s typical wardrobe might consist of a cloak over thick rough padded leather which keeps her warm in the winter topped off with fur-lined gloves and heavy boots. In the summer she opts for an airy tunic with a lighter pair of pants and worn travelling boots. All of the items of clothing are generally quite plain browns due to the nature of the fabric. She isn’t one for decorating her clothes, deeming generally that they are meant for suiting a purpose, not for showing off, but for special occasions she might attach a little flower to add a personal little touch.
As much as she might deny pretty clothes, Aoife does wear a pair of white earrings which don’t do much against her white face but at least she tries.
Despite all of this, the first thing that someone else might notice about Aoife is the thick hair that sits atop her head. If she let it out they would see large light-blonde curls cascading away from her face. In certain light someone might even be able to pick up the elusive strands of faded red that tangle in with the rest of it. However, Aoife sees her hair as a bother. She keeps as short as socially possible and always tied up in a braided bun atop her head. Even then, it still seems too heavy and there are always strands which absolutely refuse to cooperate and stick out everywhere. It is an untamable beast that gets in her way.
Aoife’s windmarks are a mixture of very light blue swirls that work their way from the base of her spine, up along her back, and around stopping on the side of her neck. She’ll often reach her hand to touch the part of her neck that is marked when she is bothered or has something heavy on her mind.
CHARACTER CONCEPT
Aoife is generally a happy girl and is often considered to be an “old-soul.” She almost always has a smile on her face with the tender personality to back it. However, she is a true empath and can feel the weights, tensions, and pain of people around her. As she feels these different feelings her mood can change dramatically without her really knowing why. This isn’t a burden she enjoys and often forces her to automatically try to fix others’ problems out of selfish reasons even if she wouldn’t normally be interested. These feelings can also force her to leave situations (physically or mentally) that are too overwhelming. She has been trained in medicine but can’t be relied on if things get too intense.
Aoife has a fascination with bees that she inherited from her father. Like him, she is a strong believer in the healing properties of honey and its many uses. It was an easy career move to focus almost entirely on the collecting, using, and selling of wild honey with the help of her honeyguide bird, Khyrmn. She hopes to one day cultivate hives of her own rather than relying on wild bees, but knows that it wouldn’t be feasible with the nomad lifestyle of her people.
For the future Aoife plans on trying to breed a new species of bee that can be kept while travelling. Whether it will actually work or not is yet to be seen (“bee seen” ha, so punny) but that won’t stop her from trying.
CHARACTER HISTORY
It all started with bees. Her father, a proud young Drykas of the Opal Clan was nearly obsessed with the little things, even as a boy. So much so that he’d often leave his training to go study them. As he grew older he eventually branched out into what could almost be considered a scientist, examining the uses of different plants and animals and how they might be used to better the medical methods for his people.
But it always came back to bees and their honey.
The problem with honey in the great grasslands is that it can be relatively difficult to come by. Travelling around so much limited the amount of honey that the Clans could produce by themselves to near nothing, leaving them to purchase it from traders or markets when they moved close enough to a town. This wasn’t good enough for Aoife’s father who was dousing patients with the golden liquid.
Sitting at the campfire with a weary traveller one night and boasting about his research, the traveller made mention of a bird that he heard of up in the Kalea Region -- Wind Reach in particular that found beehives for people. The next day Aoife’s father was gone, riding across the grasslands following the trail.
When he finally reached Wind Reach he set about his search. He spent days, weeks, before finally requesting a guide to help. That guide happened to be a Dek who seemed a little quirky to him and he found it odd that she didn’t have much to do with the rest of the people but it wasn’t all that important to him. She was friendly and he needed a guide.
He didn’t only return home with a pair of the honeyguides two years later, he also returned with a small baby that was Aoife. Her twin brother had been taken on the trip as well but hadn’t survived the harsh cold quite as well as she had and died in his father’s arms. Aoife’s father had stayed in Wind Reach as long as he could but as soon as the babies were born he realized how much their mother really had no care for them and the rose coloured glasses of love came off. He begged her to come with him, family after all is the most important thing, but refused stating that the mountains were the best place for her to be. She let him take the babies without a fight and went on with her life without knowing anything that had become of them.
Aoife knew none of that. Ashamed at his lack of holding together a proper family, her father lied and told her that her mother had been a Drykas he had run away with who died when the girl was born. No one else knew any better nor would she question him further as she aged. She looked every part the Drykas though maybe on the shorter side and it was always a bit special when her father would speak to her in Nari. Their own secret special language. There was simply nothing more to it.
When Aoife was fifteen she was out looking for hives when a horse found her and followed her home. She felt rather let down by the lack of ceremony he gave her, it wasn’t anything special to him, it just was. He was wild roaming the land and the next day he chose her. She called the strider Harvest -- or just Harv for short as his buckskin colours matched that of golden wheat. He is stubborn as a mule and though she was taught from a young age to ride fast with her Clan, that’s generally the only time she can ride fast. If Harv isn’t running beside another horse that he feels is challenging him, he just won’t try and settles for a comfortable slow speed. This makes Aoife’s hive finding excursions probably take longer than they should but she doesn’t mind all that much. As much as she may disagree with the horse she can’t help but feel tied to him as before he knew the first thing about her he chose her.
Aoife grew quickly into the woman she is today. She was swallowed into her Clan and taught medicinal practices including some herbalism. She worked with her father and the honeyguides and the bees so it wasn’t a hard decision to take it over the family business when her father one day was taken by the grasses, back by the earth. Just like most events in her life, there wasn’t much ceremony to it. One day he was there, the next he was gone. Life had to go on. She inherited her father’s prized possession, Khyrmn who is was the last bird he trained after his previous one passed away shortly before he did. Khyrmn is trained to come to her call and stays close without the use of the cage (though she does always have to keep a supply of beeswax and larvae around to make sure he follows her).