short skirt, long jacket; cake XXXXX fishies; the cat empire XXXXX the light before we land; the delgados
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XXXLaíra'alethya Celessí Æthiriel; stars, pure, galaxy
H U M A N NAME
XXXAurélia Bellerose; golden one, beautiful rose
NICKNAME/S
XXXLaira, Lair, Rawr
AGE
XXX315; December 31st, 1699
COURT
XXXSeelie
NATIONALITY
XXXSyreli; hidden in the deepest depths of the world's oceans in what mortals know as the Mariana Trench, Syrel is the third largest Fae settlement in the underwater realm and the largest of the Western Pacifc holdings. Neither light nor human eyes have ever penetrated the Seelie territory, as many of its inhabitants are highly sensitive to sunlight. The water pressure in Syrel is over 1000 times the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level and can scarcely be frequented by those unaccustomed to it.
XXXThe majority of Merpeople in Syrel, that is, those possessing the bodies of fish and man, are descended from Kaia'raen Emrys, who was the first Asrai. Nearly all Syreli are of mixed-blood, as unlike some underwater communities, Syrel is home to all types of Water Fae, though Merfolk and Shapeshifters represent the majority.
SEXUALITY
XXXMates for life
DIALOGUE COLOUR
XXXdialogue; #3B9C9C
XXXthoughts; #C77777
which is like silence but not empty."
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XXXXXXX
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XXXThere is often a fragment of truth in mortals' recapitulation of Faerie tales, The Little Mermaid being one of them. Once upon a time, a water nymph by the name of Kaia'raen Emrys fell in love with a mortal, the human slave of an honoured delegate and the greatest Unseelie Elf to have ever lived. The foreseeable tragedy of this tale seemed obvious to all but the enamoured pair, who sought to desert a community opposed to Fae and human relations beyond that of master and slave. Yet it was not this taboo that would doom them but the fragments of truth describing the Merfolk to be so breathtakingly beautiful that a single glimpse of them would render any mortal mad, as they pined all their lives for something that could only be found at the bottom of the ocean.
XXXThe Dark Elf succumbed to a comparable insanity, wanting nothing more than Kaia'raen's devotion. When he discovered her heart belonged to his servant, a powerless human who wielded no title or strength, he cursed the woman he claimed to love, and every daughter borne to her. Thus the first Asrai were forged, mermaids christened Ashrays for their deliquescence to water when struck with light. For generations, they were confined to the Aphotic zone, the darkest caverns of the ocean, where no light could penetrate.
XXXThe Nix, Neck, Nicor or Nokken are less of a species than an immunity to a condition, being definitive products of innumerable variations of Water Fae exclusive to Syrel. They are descendants of Kaia'Raen, who was originally one of many Naiads, water nymphs with the heads and torsos of human girls and the lower bodies of fish, singing songs to enchant mortals and Fae alike. To allow them control over their transfiguration, the Asrai or Ashrays bred with aquatic Shapeshifters who possessed the forms of beast and man, like Kelpies, Selkies and dragons. However, despite countless millenniums of cross-breeding, most are born Asrai, confined to Syrel where no light exists and limited to venturing above the surface only at night. though the mutation manifests only in their female offspring.
XXXNixies are the minority whose paternal blood runs strong enough to overwhelm the preeminent curse in their veins so that they are born Shapeshifters. Their name is derived of the Mer word, "nighe," meaning, to wash or cleanse and to be made pure again. They are essentially cured of the debilitation and will never birth an Asrai. For this, they are highly prized in Syrel, as only one in every two hundred mermaids are born Nix, if that. They resemble half-humans and half-fish like their brothers and sisters, though they possess the capacity of the former to alter their form and the weakness of the latter that ultimately becomes their strength: the ability to turn to water.
ABILITIES
XXXThe Nixie are water personified, moving with a grace and stealth impressive even for creatures of the ocean. Unlike Asrai, they may choose when and if they should become water, and are able to manipulate the shape in which they take should they so choose. Consider it to be liquid floating in space, unfettered by the rules of gravity that demands that water must always fall. However, although they are able to resemble a structure in this form, they can neither grasp a solid form nor be grasped by it.
XXXThey are shapeshifting water spirits able to possess the forms of humans and animals, although any shape not inherent to their own can only be worn for a limited time. However, the more often they wear a certain disguise, the longer they may maintain their form, as if it were a muscle. Their gift for transfiguration allows them only to imitate the bodies of other beings, but never their minds. Therefore, although a Nix could wear the appearance of a falcon and even the shape of their vocal cords to allow them to sound like one, they could not fly if they did not already know how. Contrary to some myths, Nixie cannot alter clothes, and their capacity to shapeshift is strictly limited to their own biological matter. Water reveals their true forms, and forces them to return to their Mer or liquid identities.
XXXThe Nixie possess a number of true or original forms that may be alternated without being subject to time limits, though only two may be used underwater. One is liquid and the second their true human face. Their legs turn immediately to tails when in contact with liquid and vice versa, but their upper bodies remain the same unless consciously manipulated.
XXXLike all Merfolk, Nixes have the ability to breathe underwater and protect others from drowning with a kiss. However, being Water Fae, they weaken the longer they are away from it. Although Laira's melodies do not have the hypnotic quality inherent to Naiads and Asrai, she does still have a mesmerising voice, albeit not a typically magical one. They have an exceptional ability to sense the state of the ocean and of those with which they have a special bond, their ability growing stronger with the connection, be it by blood or choice. Because of this, Laira experiences her twin brother's pain and joy as if it were her own and is as aware of his whereabouts as she is of the placement of her hand with her eyes closed. Due to the extreme water pressures and near freezing temperatures in Syrel, Laira possesses superior physical strength and extreme tolerance for the cold.
XXXThe Syreli in particular have superior night vision and though Nixie will not turn to foam, they are still sensitive to heat sunlight. They are more vulnerable to heat stroke, dehydration, sunburn and other afflictions of the sun. A Nixie exposed to sunlight and dry land for an extended period of time will ultimately die.
Nobody touches artwork. They just look from afar and move on."
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XXXheight; 5'6"
XXXeye colour; kaleidoscopic
XXXThey named Laira stars for her eyes, a kaleidoscopic manifestation of light and darkness. Her pale blue gaze is dispersed by shades of emerald green and sterling grey, the irises flecked with a dusting of burnt ash. Amber encircles her pupils, bleeding into a deep mahogany. Laira has a condition mortals call sectoral heterochromia, where numerous colours are present in a single iris. Her blue-green-grey-brown gaze is framed by dark lashes that reiterate the deep auburn shade of her hair.
XXXWavy locks cascade far down her back, ending just above her tailbone. Her body is one of wiry strength, clavicles carving elegant lines across her body. She is slim by virtue of being a Mer, though her limbs and stomach are etched with muscles that reveal a lifestyle unusual for a coddled Nixie. Her hands are calloused, and scars shatter the smooth expanse of skin, the lines peppering her arms and knuckles where swords and brute force have broken skin.
FAE APPEARANCE
XXXHer Fae appearance is identical to her human, save for the skin that bleeds into golden scales inches beneath her belly button. Her tail is thicker and stronger than the rest of her body, the thin, translucent stretch of her fins reaching almost twice the length of her upper body. Like all Mer, she wears no clothes over her body, though the sight of them nude and true is one few land dwellers are privy to.
XXXThe Mer often decorate their hair with seashells, pearls and jewels foraged from shipwrecks, and Laira wears an heirloom atop her head, a thin diadem cut of Snowspindle, a metal immune to corrosion and said to enable its wearer to find their way home. Flowers carved of crystal are entangled with strings of freshwater pearls, with a single shard of Rheingold - most of which Odin and his Valkyrie stole to repay the creators of Valhalla - resting atop her third eye.
XXXIn her liquid form, her figure and outline is as she pleases. She may merge with the water surrounding her, or resemble the shape of a girl. Nixie can only be differentiated from mundane water by their subtle incandescence. Direct sunlight reveals kaleidoscopic hues, a rainbow within the surface of water, though it may often to ignored as merely a trick of the light.
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XXXimpersonations; the shapeshifter has an understanding of Fae and human psyche that does not often transcend to her social interactions. Lies pour through her as easily as water through a river and situations unravel with a clarity reserved for impersonations. She has a gift for accents.
XXXcombat; centuries spent training with The Tempest and an ancient 20,000 year old dragon, as well as her time spent with the humans, has equipped her with the abilities necessary to be a formidable opponent. She uses her shapeshifting abilities to her advantage, slipping quickly between forms to confuse, altering her height or wearing a familiar face. She is proficient in a number of weapons, though her favourite are the Haladie she carries in each hand and a chain whip with serrated metal links.
XXXambidextrous; their father once crushed her right hand so she would be forced to train with her left when she revealed herself to be inequitable in skill. "Hands may be severed," Dárgh'kaelos had said. "Amputation must never be a justification for defeat."
WEAKNESSES
XXXflying; although theoretically and biologically capable of flying, Laira has neither the desire nor the gall to do so. She has been petrified of heights for as long as she can recall. She has never boarded a plane and would likely take poorly to being lifted into the air by anyone or by any means.
XXXheat; most scathing hot days are spent indoors or underwater, assuming the water does not boil. She has no burning desire to resemble a slab of grilled mackerel, and keeps a healthy distance away from any flame. Although not more vulnerable to fire than any ordinary human, she has the heat tolerance of one who has lived in near freezing temperatures all her life.
XXXCaelius'levyath; their relationship is one of balance. Though has mastered the art of veiling her thoughts and feelings from him, it remains difficult to hide anything from her brother. However, secrets are things both possess in abundance. He has always provided the love and comfort those around them crave, and she the criticisms and bitter truth. They hate her, but they love him, and that has always been the way it would and should be.
XXXDestroyer of nature; despite notions of Fae being one with nature, Laira has always possessed a remarkable ability to kill any plant in her possession. She has killed succulents, cactuses and the most indestructible of plants, to her fellow Seelie, Dalia's discontent. Still, she possesses a fondness for flowers, even if her love for them is unrequited.
FEARS
XXXheights; although not a particular threat to Nixies, Laira is nonetheless uneasy when confronted with great heights. She has never learned to fly because of this, and perhaps her fear is not of height itself, but of being free. It is a peculiar thought, considering freedom is all she has ever wanted, but she's grown complacent over the last 273 years, and perhaps it's easier to blame her imprisonment for her unhappiness.
XXXbeing stuck; being trapped as something or someone she has turned into is her greatest fear, especially when that form is water: unable to touch or be touched. Since she was a child, she has challenged herself to shapeshift as fast as possible to avoid that period in between forms. She fears being trapped in the in-between, neither one form nor the coming. She has seen the dangers of shapeshifting, as evidenced by her brother, and she can only hope that it will never be repeated.
XXXloss of control; she has fought all her life - even during her imprisonment - to be free, and being stripped of will seems the worst that could happen to her. Fae who are able to manipulate bodies or minds, like Mesmers, are the only beings she fears.
a conundrum that she couldn’t even begin to solve."
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XXXstars; never had one of the Æthiriel been more aptly named than when they named the girl with kaleidoscopic eyes, laerah, stars. She is an inferno trapped in the shell of a sea, soft hair and soft scales antithetical to the syllables that slip from her tongue like poison. "What burns bright, burns out," her father had warned her, but she could no more stifle the fire in her chest than she could heal the Asrai of their condition. Always they had wished she and Caelius been born opposite genders, that he had been the Nixie and she the Dragon. She was aggressive, glib and intrepid, qualities suited to a warrior but not to a girl born to birth others.
XXXabyss; with her snipped responses, laced with an ample dose of sarcasm, Laira has never been an easy nut to crack. She is the oblivion with its unknowns, her secrets pooling at the edges of an overflowing cup. Any who venture too close to the edges of the atmosphere may find themselves tossed back, shoved aside by the force of a gravity reluctant to reveal anything of Laíra'alethya. She weaves figurative and literal masks over her face, carrying secrets like rare gems in a hidden chest. She is glad to have them hate her, to carry the blame for the sequence of events she has never been able to forgive herself for. Perhaps it derives from a distaste for others or a mistrust for a world that could hurt her brother as it did, but she could never distance herself enough.
XXXmeteor; if Laira may only have one wish, it is to be free. To be free of everything they have demanded she become since she was a year old and the sun did not dissolve her, and to be free of Syrel. She has never been feminine like Milli, the only other Nixie in their family, and she certainly never would be. She is more comfortable with a sword in her hand than she is with a compliment on her tongue. Her words are blades, her hands wield blades, and her mind is a blade, with its serrated edges and sharp clarity. She has always understood logic better than she has emotions. Ironic, perhaps, considering they are by all accounts, magic. Yet she is as loyal as she is uncontrollable.
XXXsupernova; the rage is like the sky, spread over everything. A need to wreck, to scream, to fight and bleed, pulses in her chest, underlying every act. She wakes up feeling angry at the world and goes to bed angrier than she was when she awoke, only to sink into dreams that leave crescent marks in her palms. She wears misanthropy and cynicism like flesh and skin on bones, each act of kindness from others dissected until she finds the worms writhing beneath. She would raze everything in her path if not for her brother, the only being she construes to be good and pure. The Unseelie court is unkind to those like him, and for that she has never defected to it, but she will never belong as her brother does. She does not wish to, she tells herself. She does not wish to.
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XXXLily of valley ✦ Fake dying plants; because anyone who knows her knows no plant under her care could be so green ✦ Strawberry milk, bubble tea, liquid food ✦ Bottled ships ✦ Sparring ✦ Dandelions ✦ Shipwrecks; as bad as that sounds ✦ Snow ✦ Pretty clothes ✦ Long baths ✦ Freshwater ✦ Chewing ice ✦ Running ✦ Treasure hunts ✦ Chess ✦ Memory games ✦ Reading ✦ Movies ✦ Night skies, sunrises, sunsets ✦ Astronomy ✦ Singing ✦ Quiet cafe nooks ✦ Sitting on rocks ✦ Pirate movies ✦ Ducks ✦ Magic tricks ✦ Collecting stamps ✦ Unusual objects
DISLIKES
XXXElevators ✖︎ Pollution ✖︎ Summer ✖︎ Sand in her clothes ✖︎ People who don't knock ✖︎ Coffee ✖︎ Spicy food ✖︎ Plastic bags ✖︎ Technology ✖︎ Aeroplanes ✖︎ Birds; except ducks ✖︎ Cooking ✖︎ Touch screens ✖︎ Small change ✖︎ Crowds ✖︎ Physical contact ✖︎ Physical proximity ✖︎ Parties; except the part where they dress up ✖︎ Bonfires ✖︎ Modern transportation ✖︎ Human money; she doesn't like the smell ✖︎ Children
Bright, yet so surprisingly depressing."
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XXX1699; she was the second but the last of her eight sisters to be a Nixie, a common occurrence in Syrel where multiple births are relatively mundane. She was born 6 minutes before her twin brother, Caelius'levyath, and held before the sun when she was one year old. Little can adequately articulate the ecstasy felt by the community when they found she did not dissolve into foam. From that day forward, she was kept secluded, marked as a Celessí, healed of the Devil's curse that made the women of Syrel Asrai and able to birth only Nixie. Meanwhile, her brother was sorted into the ranks of The Tempest, a brotherhood sworn to protect Syrel and the Nixie to whom they are sworn. The Mer grow faster than the average human and he began his training at the age of 12, or rather, his sister did.
XXXAs children, they'd been even more indistinguishable than they are now, their prepubescent bodies nearly identical. Both had long, dark hair, the same pout and oval face, making it nearly impossible to tell them apart save for the difference in their tails and eyes, two factors easily obscured in the darkness of Syrel, even with the presence of bioluminescence casting an eerie glow over the settlement. The Mer saw well enough to see clearly edges, shapes and details, but the lack of light and the green-blue-violet illumination rendered colour harder to distinguish.
XXXWhilst Laira's education involved typically feminine activities like diplomacy, embroidery, gathering, court politics, arts and music, Caelius' involved hunting, combat, strategy, weaponry, scouting and mastering his abilities. Each preferred the other's agenda and would often swap identities. Laira enjoyed it most when The Tempest trained on solid ground, as it was the only time when she had the chance to see a world that was not simply cold, wet and dark. She'd been able to practice wearing Caelius' form, yet even that grew tiring after some time. When talk of an engagement with a Merman she could barely tolerate, much less procreate with, arose, she knew she could not spend the rest of her life in Syrel. She would always be a glorified breeding mare with countless governesses lurking over her, making sure she never so much as received a scratch from a blunt shell.
XXX1718; she'd planned for months, and when she'd paid the Sorceress with Syreli pearls to construct a mental dam between her and her family, her twin, so that they would not know where to find her, she knew there would be no turning back, at least without dire consequences. She had planned to tell Caelius, truly she had, but he was so wholly devoted to Syrel and disinterested in the world beyond the sea, she had known he would reason her out of it. She would have listened because their immutable bond compelled her to and because she loved him more than anyone. Laira would come back for him.
XXXShe met the shapeshifter when she'd believed him to be nothing more than a drowning cat. Cats could tell no one of the scales that began below her navel and she'd dived in to save him. Shock, rage and embarrassment had devoured her when she found herself holding a naked man to her chest instead. The Fates would have it that they would repeatedly encounter one another, until eventually he grew on her like a virus or a curse and they became unusual travelling companions.
XXX1733; the barrier was a two-way street, and as Caelius could not feel her, neither could she him. She did not discover he'd been missing until two years after his kidnapping. Needless to say, she had never in her life experienced such panic. The guilt had nearly crippled her but more than that, it was the worry that gnawed at her, especially when she found the sorceress who cast the spell on her and asked that it be undone. She was immediately bombarded by a myriad of emotions, muddled and confused as it often was when he took Draconic form. She felt him slipping with every moment, but a veiling spell disguised his emotion, almost as if whoever held him knew his family could feel his pain, but willed that they would be unable to do anything about it.
XXX1742; after disguising herself as countless members of the human and Fae community and employing every resource in her power, she found him in the Amon mansion, a dark place infested with Liches. Sneaking in was not as difficult as one might expect, likely because only fools would. What was hard was defeating Barabbus Amon and freeing Caelius of the curse that forced him to remain in his Draconic form. She was no match for the ancient Lich though she'd managed to very briefly render him unconscious with a guerilla attack, though without destroying his Phylactery, he awoke soon enough. In the time he was unconscious, she interrogated Lilith Amon on the location of his brother, having inadvertently distracted Barabbus from killing her.
XXXIn the end, it was Caelius who destroyed his Phylactery and Laira who managed to coerce him to return to his human form. Along with the help of Lilith, they'd razed the mansion to the ground and Barabbus with it, disguising the claw marks that showed who it was who killed him. She had taken the blame for his death, and the Syreli had begged for clemency, as she knew they would. She was a Nixie, and they had to few to lose. Self-defence or otherwise, the manslaughter of an Unseelie and the destruction of their property could not go unpunished. It was deduced that she could not leave Syrel for the next two-hundred years, and thereafter only under the supervision of another. Her crimes isolated her from the rest of the ocean, who saw her recklessness as one which brought shame upon their kind.
XXXTheir father was the only to be not ashamed on her, considering the death of a Lich to be no cause for mourning. Laira had always resembled him most in her personality and their relationship flourished in her isolation. Despite near everyone's discontent, he taught her to fight and groomed her to chase in his footsteps. His only wish: that she'd been born his son.