chichipaloma

[I would've written more in the appearance section, but the box is glitched. Sorry! I'll continue it here...

Wearing scholastic apparel, as though belonging to a library and high-brow circles as opposed to dingy taverns and inn stalls, Bridget's frame and clothing insists on an elegance her manner of speaking won't convince anyone of. There, the lisp; there, the tut of the tongue characteristic of outlanders; there, the reddening she insists will someday turn into a pleasant bronze. The scent of hay on the palms, the dried muck on her boots, the callousing on her fingertips; the symptom of feeding the horses, pulling the bale of water from the well and pouring out the baths, and the skins resilience to punctures earned while learning to thread silk to silk for the sake of her always-rotating clients. Wiry strands of white hair not only further reveal her elven heritage, but demonstrate a distinct lack of elven vanity; their dehydrated, stiff coils and meager stench acting as contrast to the pretty jewelry on her earrings and knuckles. Her skittish gaze often catches and locks on the gazes of onlookers, only to glance away and fail to mention it- an act borne of politeness, not introversion.]

You’ve just arrived in a swampy, dim town. As you look around, your gaze is met with shacks and cabins. It smells of rotted wood and wet moss. You duck and step into a tattered tent, illuminated by a series of candles suspended in the air. At the back of the tent, an old hag raises her head, “What brings you to this dingy town? she begins, then pauses to study your face—”Ah, it’s you. I’ve been expecting you. Sit,” she gestures at a cushion, “Tell me your story.”

Bridget's footsteps are slow, and not all the way intentional. A lithe palm ending on the paling, reddish skin of her fingertips, the irritation of her often gnawed-at anxiety forever fixed to her by way of that discoloration, curls its digits around the the tent's support beam as the voice calls for her. Peeking into the tent with icy blue eyes unbefitting of the Aaunic accent fettering her voice in a rural chasey often only found in bucktooth infantrymen and hoe-dragging countrymen, Bridget lowers herself to a sit before the hag with a tepid, albeit arid: "You'd have me?" It isn't an incredulous tone. It borders playful, as inviting of the crone's cooing as she had been of her presence. She sweeps a scholastic braid over her shoulder with nails dirty from maidwork, the ribbons the house employing her afforded her so she could look the part tied elegantly up at each knot of hair. Her silver brows quickly climb her forehead as her chin tucks back, though she takes the chance to pinch her lower lip between her teeth and reach into her satchel- eyes not yet leaving the hag, smile pouring through them with a sly and inquisitive narrow: "I'm writin' my autobiography, if you're so inclined..." Bridget's manicured fingernails refract the hag's wrinkles back at her as they settle on the top of a book's hardcover, pushing the tome forwards past the ground they sat on unceremoniously for her to pry open and gleam some insight into her life.

=======

Bridget is a reservoir. Men, in their short lifespans and, when low enough rung in fortune, unable to read or write rely on word of mouth to nurture their histories and enrich their cultures. It is why her very first memory is the almost mantric recital of Aaunic hymns and Cannonist rhetoric; such that it could become second memory, and act as time capsule for as much local clergy as families with atrophying minds and memory. Taking in as an infant, this was not always her role; as a babe, her nascent features went unnoticed, as her ears had been snipped by a kidnapper who has gone and will continue to go unnamed. Her white hair, attributed to a rare blight God inflicts on his children: albinism; an excuse that only briefly lasted, given her resilience to sunlight and insistence in bathing in it, through mud and hay. The signs only became clear during her adolescence, where her sharp features moribundly revealed to them not only her interloping as a human in their hamlet, knowledge thus sheltered by her foster family, but of their mortality. It was impossible to form an advantageous, land-merging plot between her and and neighboring hamlets; her infertility as an Elf and the inherent feeling of otherness the descendants often brewed between them yielded her no suitors. 

So it was, her focus was threaded onto the razor thin line of academic study- of history, of astronomy, of herbs and farming- of what the hamlet would need when its elders pass without finding the right pupil to pass their knowledge unto. She would be made to bear that burden, were they to be unsuccessful. Their aspirations were short-lived. When the time came to rise to the occasion as a final pupil in petty statesmanship failed, Birdget was nowhere to be found to tutor him in the happenings of the realm and how to stay up to date with them. With what money she could muster for herself, she paid a caravan of tradesmen to ferry her to the nearest metropolis. It was where opportunity lay, and where she needed to go if she wanted to start over. The people of Haulen'or seem all too similar to her, by the way her books have described them and gossip insists. After a brief stint in the great city of Aaun to recoup and rediscover herself, she intends to venture there and uncover the nature of her heritage; pure, and sunk in a pool of distant gold.