Periderm

There is nothing, Periderm has decided, more exciting than throwing yourself down a nice, creepy cave.

Born with the bright sunlight dancing around her and ruins scattered across the land, Periderm easily found her passion for historical secrets and knowledge lost to time. She loved combing through the accumulations of years long gone, and her scholarly family embraced her interests quickly.

She began with aiding in fieldwork, happily scurrying down narrow tunnels and caverns. She contently scavenged for items and artifacts, but found spelunking to be her true calling. The prehistoric layers of the slanting walls were a beautiful puzzle, the unfathomed depths a challenge that she rose to answer.

Her unquenchable desire to see more, to see the hollow monuments left by rivers and the movements of the earth. Her family resisted her desire to travel; wasn't there enough history in the Sunbeam Ruins? She managed to convince them that she'd only go as far as the Tangled Woods, and departed soon afterward.

But the Shadowbinder's land was lackluster, and the only caves were shallow and swampy. The glowing foliage was fairly interesting, but Periderm left the desire to spread her wings and get away from the suffocating roof of thick, dark leaves.

She spent a while in the Dragonhome, where the catacombs of intricate caverns and treasure satisfied her adventure's heart for a year. Periderm crawled up and down the ravines and traversed caves miles deep in search of archaic items. But once again, the wanderlust returned, and she shifted her sights once again.

The Icefields would be perfect, she thought. No ghastly monsters that would come with the Sea of a Thousand Currents, no blistering heat like the Ashfall Waste. She wanted to avoid catching on fire, which she thought was very reasonable.

She met up with an odd little clan and joined for a bit. A sweet pearlcatcher, who later left the clan, won her heart for a short time. It was a brief affair, but left her with a child, Rochrys, who became a sort of second sun in her life. Bright, beautiful, and sometimes a bit gaudy.

Periderm adored the moulin, the eerie crumbling relic it was, but the clan quickly fell apart. A lot went down in those few weeks, sides chosen, emotional breakdowns and a coup d'é·tat, but Periderm was mostly either a couple miles deep in a cave or doting over her son, so she managed to avoid most of the damage.

Now, she's settled into her new home on the eastern coast of the Dragonhome. It's a gorgeous stretch of land, littered with the caves and tunnels that she is happy to return to. Plus, it helps that the new nocturne in the area, a beautiful grey and gold lady named Sariel, is gorgeous as well, and finds spelunking just as interesting as Periderm.

After all the years of wandering and searching, Periderm thinks she may have found her true home, exploring this wondrous land with her son Rochrys and Sariel.



^{by Zhampy}