Vessa - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Vessa

Nickname

"Little Ember"

Race (Grade)

Pink Demonkin (F)

Class

Child

Height

4'8"

Birthday

Yearend 18, 1297

Age

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Birthsign

The Janus Owlbear

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Bloodline Ability

🐢 The World Turtle

Shellwright

Vessa can call a living, breathing turtle into being out of thin air, and she decides everything about it: its size, its shell, what it is made of, and anything else she can imagine. A turtle small enough to sit on a thumbnail, a turtle of polished glass, a turtle broad enough to ferry the whole family across a lake. There is no limit to this ability. She has mostly used it to make sure there is always a turtle nearby, and lately that usually means one broad, unhurried turtle that walks at her side through the streets as calmly as a hound, which, as far as she is concerned, is exactly what the ability is for.

Stone Voice

Stone speaks to Vessa as plainly as if it had a mouth, and she talks back. Walls, floors, cliffs, and old foundations tell her what they have seen and who has passed over them, and she reports all of it to whoever is nearest. She can also meld with stone, sinking into it and becoming part of it until she decides to step back out. She was once very difficult to find at bedtime because of this; she now mostly uses it when she wants somewhere quiet to think.

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Physical Description

Vessa, Little Ember

Appearance

Nearly ten, Vessa has grown tall and slender for her age, with vivid rose-toned skin, pointed ears, and grey-green eyes that settle on things and stay there. Her long pink hair falls in loose waves to her waist, with the front braided back from her face so it stays out of the way when she kneels to look at something, and her horns have grown into thick ridged curls that spiral back along the sides of her head like a ram's. She looks, very deliberately, like her mother. She asked Nokko to make it so years ago, and she remains quietly and completely satisfied with the result. She still wears black with gold detailing whenever she can: most often a long black gown embroidered with gold vines, with wide bell sleeves, a braided gold cord belt fastened with a round medallion, and polished black buckled shoes. She walks with a calm, straight-backed composure that makes her seem older than she is, and more often than not there is a turtle walking beside her.

Unique Characteristics

Her horns still give off a faint heat haze when she is very happy or deeply focused, which makes the air above her head shimmer in a way that continues to startle adults who are not watching for it. She can still find a turtle in any body of water within reasonable range and has never once failed to produce one. She still presses her palm to old walls and goes very still to listen, but she has learned discretion: what the stone tells her now goes quietly to Papa afterward rather than being announced to the room. Her speech has become precise and measured, and her expression is serious by default, which leads people who do not know her to mistake her for shy or aloof. She is neither; she simply does not smile unless she means it. She still collects words she considers excellent. "Veterinarian" has long since been mastered, and she has moved on to "herpetologist," which she has decided is the proper title for someone who looks after turtles.

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Personality & Temperament

Positive Traits

Calm and composed well beyond her years
Patient and gentle with every creature she meets
Observant; notices what others walk right past
Fiercely loyal to her family, especially Lio
Takes her studies and responsibilities seriously
Honest, even when a softer answer would be easier

Challenging Traits

Still cannot walk past a turtle without stopping
Can come across as aloof to people who don't know her
Keeps her worries to herself instead of sharing them
Immovable once she has decided something is right
Corrects adults on turtle facts, often unprompted

The wall remembers something unkind happened here. I'll tell Papa later. Not in front of everyone.

He isn't slow. He's thorough. There is a difference, and he would like you to know it.

Mama and I match. I asked for it on purpose, and I would ask again.

Likes

Turtles, still and always, above every other creature
Books on animal care, which she actually finishes
Walking old stone streets with a turtle at her side
Lio, who is still her big sister and very important
Quiet evenings with Papa once the babies are asleep

Dislikes

Being talked down to as if she were still small
Anyone who is careless or cruel with animals
Loud, sudden noises; she still goes very still
Being told a turtle is "too big" to approach
Being rushed, which she considers poor planning

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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 Lucerion 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 who teaches you songs about flowers and dances with you in the garden is, by 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.

Nearly Ten

The small girl who once chased every turtle into water over her head has grown into someone noticeably quieter and more deliberate. The household filled up around her: Sunniva, then the twins Lucien and Lumen, then Ori and Zoran, with Zohara on the way. Somewhere in all of that, Vessa stopped being one of the little ones. She did not wait to be asked. She learned how to hold a baby properly, how to rock one back to sleep, and how to keep a toddler away from the stairs, and she does all of it with the same unhurried seriousness she brings to turtles. She still follows Lio everywhere Lio will allow, but these days she is just as often the one being followed.

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Goals & Aspirations

To Know Every Turtle

Vessa's relationship with turtles predates her ability to explain it, survived two years of captivity entirely intact, and has only deepened since. What began as chasing has become study. She keeps a notebook of every turtle she has met: where she found it, its size, the pattern of its shell, and her honest assessment of its temperament. She does not want to keep them. She wants to find them, observe them properly, and put them back exactly where they were. None have ever bitten her. She considers this a relationship of mutual respect and has no intention of ending it.

To Become a Veterinarian

The plan has not changed; only the seriousness has grown. Vessa still intends to care for animals that cannot tell you where it hurts, because she is good at watching carefully and noticing what is wrong. The difference now is that she is working at it. She reads whatever she can find on animal care, asks precise questions of anyone who treats sick or injured creatures, and practices bandaging on her own summoned turtles, who tolerate it with admirable patience. She still intends to specialize in turtles. She simply understands now how much there is to learn first, and she has decided that is a reason to start early rather than a reason to wait.

To Be Someone They Can Rely On

Vessa no longer wonders whether she gets to stay. She knows Papa is Papa, Mama is Mama, Lio is her sister, and the house will be there when she comes back from wherever the turtles are. What she wants now is to be worth relying on: to be the one who notices when a baby is about to cry, who brings Lucerion things from the garden without being asked, who sits with Lio in the evenings because Lio likes the company. The habit began, long ago, as a way of making sure she was kept. It continues now because these people are hers, and looking after them is simply what she does.

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Current Status & Relationships

Residence

Silmarithil

Role

Child

Parents

Family

ATTENTION!

Vessa is a calm, perceptive girl who is rarely seen without a turtle, sometimes one she has summoned herself. She hears what old stone remembers and now reports it quietly to her father instead of to the room, so anything said near a stone wall may well reach Lucerion later. She is settled, secure, and doing well. 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, and she is more likely now to keep a worry to herself than to say it out loud. Consistency, patience, and a steady supply of turtles are what keep her well.