Ayla

Birth Clan - Prufrock Element - Arcane (Earth Fused) Gender - Female Orientation - Too Busy To Consider

((MASON MASON MASON))

"SNAZZY QUOTE" Mason Stone-cutter, stone-carver, brick-layer and admirer of architecture STATS STR ██████████ DEX ██████████ CON ██████████ INT ██████████ WIS ██████████ CHA ██████████

Quercus - Ayla's brother, he decided to remain on the Island of Prufrock when Ayla decided to seek out Oakrest. Ayla worries about her brother often, though she knows that he is in good hands with Avery by his side. Ayla writes regular letters home, and is sure to include something for Quercus specifically every time. She hopes to encourage him to travel should his condition allow it.

Butternut - Stonetouched cleric of Oakrest, Butternut has taken on the duties of attempting to help Ayla with her possession. The two meet regularly to discuss any changes and problems that the young wildclaw is experiencing. Butternut does not say so, but she often senses the spirit nearby and hopes to be rid of it for Ayla's sake.

Ink - Ayla's grandmother in Oakrest, she is fascinated and perturbed by Ayla's condition. Though Ink is often busy in the tunnels beneath the clan, she tries to make sure she takes time to spend with her granddaughter, who is her only descendant who has returned to Oakrest.

Paige - Ayla's grandmother in Oakrest, she is very supportive, even if she's not really sure what the best way forward is. Paige enjoys tea with Ayla on a regular basis, and the two often discuss books and theater. Paige is delighted to have a younger relative to spoil, though she would never say so out loud.

Ayla is a member of the M'keti family. Through her heritage, she is also descended of a moon spirit, though this does not seem to have any affect on her.

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The spirits and dragons dwelling on the island of Prufrock in the Starfall Isles had reached an uneasy truce. The thin veil separating the island from the spirit realm had been shored up and patched, and while many spirit ambassadors manifested physical forms and dwelt among the island's dragons, passage through the veil was limited and strictly supervised in the hopes of keeping the boundary between the realms stable.

It had been a long time since the last attack on the clan by malevolent spirits, and that, combined with several days of unseasonably balmy weather in the winter months, contributed to an atmosphere of relief and festivity. During this period of calm, two couples decided to make nests on the grounds near the island's heart, each nest resulting in two eggs. The nesting grounds were situated among gardens whose flowers had been tricked into blooming early by the warm weather, and the watchful parents enjoyed strolling through the blossoms as they awaited the birth of their offspring. The first pair, clan founder and head librarian Emrys and his mate, the warrior Elyta, had raised many hatchlings together, though all had since left the clan to seek their charge, to enter the service of the deities, or to find more materials for their research. They had recently adopted several stray hatchlings, however, which had rekindled their desire to have hatchlings of their own. The second pair, bestiary compiler Tome and carpenter Johnna, kept watch over their first nest, both nervous at the thought of being parents but eagerly anticipating meeting their offspring and seeing which parent they took after, what personalities they developed.

The winter winds returned on the day the eggs hatched, specks of snow whipping about the dragons huddled around the nesting grounds. Emrys was attending to the library's magical wards, and Jo was in her workshop finishing a commission, but Tome and Elyta stood watch, shivering in the unexpected chill. Tome's father-in-law, the genealogist Etsu, kept vigil with them, awaiting the newest additions to his family tree.

Wards and warning systems had been placed throughout the island, but somehow a malevolent earth spirit slipped through and made its way to the nesting grounds, intent on disrupting the lineages of the clan's founder Emrys and its leader Eztli, Etsu's older brother. The spirit, shaped like a shadowy, spotted beast of prey, crept up on the nests just as a crack appeared in one of Tome and Jo's eggs. Tome, raised in Oakrest by mothers who had trained him to combat such beings, was quick to spot the threat, though thanks to a battle with a similar spirit when he was younger, he had lost the use of his left leg and was no longer able to fight. He shouted a warning to Elyta - the guardian was in charge of the clan's martial defense and had fended off far greater foes - but the spirit hadn't manifested a physical form, and she lacked the ability to see it. She blindly struck out, aided by Tome's directions, frantic to keep the peril away from the hatching eggs. Etsu looked on helplessly, as the scholar could neither see the spirit nor fight it. He tried to stand in between the spirit and the nests, but he had no way of knowing from which direction the spirit would come.

As the crack broadened and a small snout stuck out, the spirit slipped between Elyta's outstretched claws and darted into the newly hatched wildclaw, eager to escape the relentless onslaught of blows and set on possessing the young, impressionable dragon. Tome watched in dismay as the spirit merged with his daughter; he limped over, resolved to do everything in his power to drive it out, but he was stopped by the sudden appearance of his elder siblings, the exorcists Bound and Verso. They had been on the mainland in Lantern Port, purchasing beeswax candles from a traveling merchant for use in their rituals, when they detected a breach in the wards. The siblings flew back to the island, arriving just in time to see the spirit fly into their niece. Cracks had meanwhile appeared in the shells of the three other eggs, and the dragons hastily moved the emerging hatchlings into vacant nests while the exorcists sealed off the area surrounding the newborn wildclaw as they attempted to drive the spirit out of her. Much to their horror, they soon realized that the spirit had merged so tightly with her that the only methods they knew to employ to separate them would result in her death.

Emrys had arrived by that time, the wards having alerted him that something was amiss, and he helped the exorcists place runes on the wildclaw to seal away the spirit and to protect the hatchling's psyche from it - since they couldn't separate the two, they did what they could to segregate the spirit within the wildclaw's form and ward her against its influences. They also placed protective runes on the other hatchlings - the wildclaw's coatl brother, and the two sons of Emrys and Elyta. A day that should have been happy and joyous had been ruined, though the parents did what they could to turn their sorrow into hope as they gave the hatchlings their runes and their names. The wildclaw Ayla and her brother Quercus were both named after the oak tree - an emblem of strength as well as the symbol of Tome's childhood home and his mate Jo's favorite wood. The guardian Avery and the tundra Evin were likewise given names that meant "wise counselor" and "young warrior" in the hopes that they would grow strongly and live up to their names.

The protective runes and promising names appeared to do little to help, however. Ayla was never sure if her thoughts were her own rather than the spirit's, and she seemed to possess both a spiritual sight and a physical strength that exceeded that of most dragons. She studied under her exorcist aunt and uncle, learning about spirits in the hopes of recognizing the spirit's influence on her, and she kept a diary to try to decipher which parts of her were really her. Her sibling and her nestmates had not been attacked directly, but they still suffered the effects of the spirit's assault. Her brother Quercus was plagued by seizures, while the guardian Avery was dismayed when his tundra brother grew bigger than he; the clan's physician diagnosed him with dwarfism, and while it was possible that both of their conditions could have been inherited, the parents were far more eager to blame the spirit, whose foul aura had surrounded the nesting grounds as the hatchlings broke free of their eggs. Evin was the only one who appeared unscathed, though this affected him in its own way - the others could bond over the ways the attack had marked them, and the adults showered them with attention, but he was expected to be the strong one, the "normal" one, as he was the only one without a condition or special needs.

Though Ayla was skilled at fighting, her more astute relatives worried that facing threats would cause her to unconsciously draw on the spirit's abilities, weakening the boundaries between them, so they did their best to redirect her interests to other pursuits. She spent time with several of the clan's craftsdragons, learning their trades, and she discovered that she excelled best at anything that had to do with materials that came from the earth. She learned to carve stone and work wood, how to grow a plant from a seed and nurture it, and how and where to hunt and forage - though she was usually the first to spot prey and wondered if this, too, was the spirit's influence rather than her own innate talent.

As Ayla grew and matured, she became disheartened by her birth clan's attitude toward spirits. The attack on the clan's nesting grounds had been quite a blow and had caused her, her nestmates, and their parents no small amount of suffering; why hadn't the resident spirits been banished and the veil sealed more permanently to better protect the clan's dragons? Her aunt and uncle explained to her that such drastic measures weren't an option - the veil could never be entirely sealed, only warded, and it was safer in many ways to negotiate with the spirits rather than banish them...if they even could banish the powerful entities who lived alongside the island's dragons. Those who chose to dwell on the island would simply have to deal with the consequences of living in close proximity to the fragile veil between the realms.

Unsatisfied by their answers, she instead pestered them for stories of their birth clan of Oakrest - a place where threats were fought rather than placated. She also began to dream that perhaps her grandmothers could do what her father, aunt, and uncle could not: drive out the spirit inside her. Finally she took her leave of her relatives and journeyed north to Dragonhome, hoping to find and free herself by digging into her family's roots.

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Bio (except as credited), oak leaves, acorns, & layout by ixris / 26035 - all edits by later users
Horizontal dividers by Mibella / 47497