Vessa - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Vessa

Nickname(s)

"Little Ember"

Race (Grade)

Pink Demonkin (F)

Class

(None)

Height

4'2"

Birthday

Yearend 18, 1297

Age

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Birthsign

The Janus Owlbear

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Bloodline Ability

🔮 Unknown

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

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Physical Description

Vessa, Little Ember

Appearance

Vessa is a small pink demonkin with vivid rose-toned skin, long pink hair, and two curved horns that have grown considerably since she was small and now sweep upward with genuine presence. She looks, very deliberately, like her mother. This was the point. She asked Nokko to make it so, and he did, and she has been radiating a particular satisfaction about it ever since that she does not feel the need to explain to anyone because as far as she is concerned it explains itself. She wears black with gold detailing when she can, which she considers serious and appropriate, and she moves through the world with the unhurried self-possession of a child who has found her people and intends to stay. She is almost always either holding something she found interesting or in active pursuit of a turtle, frequently both.

Unique Characteristics

Her horns emit a faint heat haze when she is very happy or very concentrated, which she does not notice but which makes the air above her head shimmer in a way that continues to startle adults who are not watching for it. She has an ability to locate turtles in any body of water within reasonable range that defies easy explanation and has never once failed to produce a turtle. She still presses herself against old walls and goes very still, listening, though she has gotten considerably better at selecting appropriate moments to report what she hears. She speaks clearly now, with full sentences and a vocabulary that has grown considerably since her earliest months with Hotaru. She mispronounces things occasionally and corrects herself without embarrassment, and she still has a particular fondness for words she considers excellent, which she will repeat to herself quietly for the rest of the day. She recently acquired the word "veterinarian" and has been practicing it with the dedication of someone preparing a performance.

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Personality & Temperament

Positive Traits

Warm and affectionate without reservation
Curious about everything at all times
Resilient in ways she does not know to be proud of
Shares freely: food, findings, wall information
Unself-conscious and impossible to embarrass
Gentle with creatures in a way that appears entirely instinctive

Challenging Traits

Cannot be redirected away from a turtle she has spotted
Reports wall information regardless of timing or context
Has not internalized that water depth is relevant to the question of whether she should be in it
Becomes intensely clingy with people she has decided are hers
Has strong opinions about which animals need her specifically and acts on them immediately

The wall said something happened here. A long time ago. It was not good. I told it that things are better now.

Lio! There is a turtle. It is medium-sized and it looks like it has things to say. I am going in.

Mama is pink and now I am pink too. Papa said we match. That is exactly correct.

Likes

Turtles, above all other creatures, always, without exception
Warm bread, which she holds in one hand at all times if possible
Matching her mama, which she considers a significant achievement
Lio, who is her big sister and very important
Sitting with papa in the evenings when things are quiet

Dislikes

Being picked up without warning (she will accept it, but not without comment)
Loud sudden noises; she goes very still
When Lio has to go away for the day
Being told a turtle is "too big" to approach
The dark, but only when she is alone in it

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Background & History

Before

Vessa does not speak about her life before the slavers in the way that older children carry a past forward, because she was four years old when it ended and the details that survived are the details a four-year-old keeps: the smell of something cooking, a sound she liked, the fact that there were other people. She cannot reconstruct a family or a place from those fragments. She has tried, in the indirect way children try things without announcing the attempt, and what she gets is warmth and then absence, which is not nothing but is also not enough to grieve in any structured way. She does not know what she lost. She knows there was something before the bad time, and she has decided, with the practical finality available only to the very young, that the warm things she has now count instead.

The Bad Time

Vessa was among the youngest of Tingle's thirty-two and among those who had the hardest time of it in the final stretch of captivity. A slaver took notice of her, and what followed left marks that do not show as scars or flinches but as a deep unexamined place in her that she keeps closed without knowing she is doing it. She was very young. She has, in the remarkable way that young children sometimes protect themselves, sealed that period away with a thoroughness that is more instinct than decision. She does not discuss it, does not appear to dream about it, and does not exhibit the behaviors that adults looking for trauma tend to look for. What is there is there. What Hotaru has given her is warm enough and steady enough that it is not, for now, finding its way to the surface. The people around her know to watch and to wait and to simply be present so that if it does rise someday, she will not face it alone.

The Orange Boy and the Gold Bar

Vessa's memory of being freed is uncomplicated in the way that six-year-old memories of significant events tend to be uncomplicated: a boy came, he was orange, there was a lot of moving around, and then she was somewhere different and there was bread. She does not have the context to understand what a gold bar is, what thirty-two people represents as a commitment, or what it cost anyone. She knows the orange boy did a good thing because people who do bad things do not give you bread afterward. This is a sound framework and she applies it consistently. She has told Tingle, in her direct way, that he is a good boy. She meant it as a high compliment. It was received as such.

Mr Papa and Lio

Hotaru adopted Vessa with the same unhurried certainty that defines everything he does: he saw a child who needed a family and he had one available, so the transaction was immediate and the paperwork followed the feeling rather than the other way around. Vessa attached to him with the speed of a child who has been waiting a long time without knowing it for something that felt like this. Lio was a separate and equally important development. A big sister teaches you songs about flowers and dances in the garden is, to Vessa's assessment, approximately perfect.

Becoming Pink

Vessa thought about it for a while before she asked. Not because she was uncertain, but because she wanted to be sure she had the right words for it. What she eventually said to Hotaru was that she wanted to look like mama, and that she thought Nokko could probably do that, and that she would like it very much if he would. Hotaru arranged it. Nokko did it. Vessa came out of the process pink from head to horn-tip and stood in front of a mirror for a very long time without saying anything, which for Vessa represents an extraordinary degree of feeling. She now matches Esyrx and her sister in coloring, which she has described to several people as "correct." She has not elaborated on this. She does not feel elaboration is required. She is pink, her mama is pink, and that is the end of the matter as far as she is concerned.

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Goals & Aspirations

To Get More Turtles

This is stated without irony and pursued with consistent effort. Vessa's relationship with turtles predates her ability to explain it, survived two years of captivity entirely intact, and has accelerated since arriving somewhere with access to bodies of water and no one actively preventing her from wading into them. She does not want to keep turtles. She wants to find them, hold them briefly if they allow it, study their faces with the concentrated attention she brings to anything she finds genuinely interesting, and then put them back. The turtles she has encountered so far have responded to her with varying levels of tolerance. None have bitten her. She considers this a relationship of mutual respect and plans to continue it indefinitely.

To Become a Veterinarian

Vessa has decided, with the total clarity available only to people who have not yet learned to talk themselves out of things, that she wants to be a veterinarian. Specifically, she wants to help animals that cannot tell you where it hurts, which she considers both the most important kind of patient and the kind she is best suited for, because she is good at watching carefully and noticing things. She has a particular interest in turtles, which she intends to specialize in, and she has already begun informing the turtles she finds of her intentions. Their response has so far been the same as it always is: patient, deliberate, and not particularly legible. She considers this excellent preparation.

To Stay Here

Vessa understands permanence better than she did. She knows that papa is papa and that is not changing, and that mama is mama, and that Lio is always going to be her sister, and that the house will be there when she comes back from wherever the turtles are. She knows this. She still helps with tasks she is not asked to help with and brings Hotaru things from the garden and sits with Lio in the evenings without being invited, because some habits are worth keeping even after the fear that made them necessary is mostly gone. She does not think about this consciously. She just does it, the same way she always has, because these people are hers and she intends to be worth keeping.

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Current Status & Relationships

Allegiance

City of Goodberry

Role

Daughter / Sister

Family

🐢 Wellbeing Notice

Vessa is a warm, settled, and largely happy child who has adapted to her family with a thoroughness that continues to be remarkable. She speaks clearly now, has a strong sense of where home is, knows exactly who her people are, and has a career plan involving turtles that she is pursuing with consistent dedication. The people around her remain attentive, because children who have been through what she has been through sometimes carry it in ways that surface slowly. She is, for now, genuinely fine. She should be given every opportunity to stay that way, which mostly involves being present, being consistent, and letting her find as many turtles as she wants.