Niko
Nico1.jpg

Description

Her hair falls in a veritable mane, a mingling of chestnut brown and near black, and is thick enough to have a will of its own. The longest strands reach just past her lower back, and while usually kept in a braid, more than a few locks evade such tyranny. Her eyes are too light by comparison, a pale sage green, and the freckles that pepper her nose and cheeks seem likewise out of place. A straight nose and full lips complete the portrait, with the curve of her chin and cheeks strong without seeming sharp.

She looks close to twenty turns, give or take, with a form that shows just enough of a woman's shape to solidify at least pending adulthood. Her clothing varies, but tends toward styles better suited to men, and is almost always some shade of brown of black. While not bulky, the youth has the slender muscle of one accustomed to hard labor. The crutch that's often strapped to her right arm is dark wood and black leather, and unless she's actually moving with the thing, blends nicely with her clothing. How coincidental.


History

Niko began life as Nikolette, child to a family of miners in Hanista Hold, and her mother's only girl after four boys. Unfortunately, her mother wasn't around for long to enjoy the novelty of having another girl in the house. The woman died in a mining accident when Niko was two, and given five children to raise on his own, Niko's father was more worried about keeping them all alive and fed than making sure she was raised 'properly'. And thus Niko was born, a child that acted no different from her four older brothers, and for ten blissful years, was 'just one of the boys'.

Tragedy struck the day Niko found out that she was most definitively a girl. To be fair, her father wasn't terribly thrilled with the transition either. What was he supposed to do with a daughter? One of the neighboring women took mercy on both father and daughter when it came to assuring Niko that she was not actually dying, but becoming a 'woman'. Tragedy, indeed.

Female or not, Niko went to work in the mines just as her brothers — and her mother — had before her. The girl was twelve when the Wher hatching occurred, and while the other miners' children were bursting at the seams at the chance to have a hatchling of their own, Niko was still caught up in the tragedy that had become her life. Nonetheless, she went through the motions, and like a stunted little phoenix, Nisk was the unlikely result.

Niko was given a runty egg, the last to be taken and the least likely to hatch, but she kept it warm. In fact, in those days before it hatched, that lumpy egg became Niko's one and only confidante. Imagine her surprise when the thing began to crack, and lo and behold, a green wher as runty and ridiculous as its egg had been pulled herself laboriously free. Having expected the egg to be a dud, Niko didn't have any of the pre-prepared offerings for the little hatchling, but Nisk (as she introduced herself after a bewildered moment) was content with the half of a sweet roll that Niko had leftover from dinner, and of course the ritual bit of blood. And so an unnerving little friendship was born.

Nisk should've been culled. Everyone said so, and kept saying so, for the entire year it took to determine that the little wher was never going to reach 'bare minimum', let alone meet expectation. But Niko was adamant that the little green was hers, and her father was still too apologetic for the whole 'you're a girl' thing to risk breaking her heart again.

Life wasn't so bad with Nisk around. While having a runt wher as a best friend did little for her social life, Niko became content. When she wasn't in the mines, she spent her time chiseling away at little bits of rocks and jewels, making figurines and trinkets that she subsequently hid under her bed. Too girly, you see. Even if she was good at it.

While Nisk was too small to be much help as grunt labor, she was helpful in the dark, and when a collapse much like the one that took her mother came down on Niko, it was Nisk who dragged her out of the mines. Niko came out of it alive, but not undamaged. The young woman's right leg had been crushed under the rock, and even after a year of recuperation, it became clear that she would never regain the mobility to traverse the dark. Now she was not only a girl, but a /crippled/ girl. Oh, the travesty.

It wasn't long after the healers dubbed Niko's condition permanent that she left the Hold. With her family still entrenched in the mines, and her best friend conveniently mobile, her move to Xanadu Weyr was relatively smooth. Not only did the Weyr residents care significantly less that she was 'different', no one there knew that she was supposed to have been a boy. Now let's not get too excited here… there are no skirts or hair bows, but she /did/ resign herself to making the figurines and trinkets — branching out from stone to bits of wood and metal — and she's pretty decent at it. As for Nisk? Well, Niko keeps her Weyr nice and dim, and the happy couple live on.


Family

Name Relation Location Position
Gray Castel Father Hannista Hold Miner
Lydia Castel Mother Deceased Miner
Audric (+2) Sibling Hannista Hold Miner
Theos (+4) Sibling Hannista Hold Miner
Jhanos (+5) Sibling Hannista Hold Miner
Verik (+7) Sibling Hannista Hold Miner

Logs

Title OOC Date Cast

Wher

Always Watching Green Wher Nisk

nisk.jpg

Gallery

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