Faregan

This bizarre skydancer inserted herself into the clan’s amorphous hierarchy when they moved to the moor on the boundary of her swamp. Ask anyone in the clan about Faregan, and you’ll probably receive a very long sigh and a personal anecdote surrounding her obsession with obtaining some shiny trinket that they owned. Ask Faregan about that trinket, and she’ll drag you into her swamp-- where she still resides despite having a dry place to sleep with the clan --to show you all the beautiful trinkets she has strung up from low-hanging branches. The items dangle in clumps around fraying rope, appearing like vines in the shadow of the swamp canopy. She has a story for each item; each one has its own personality and backstory, much like a child’s toy.

She is a novelty, widely acknowledged by the clan for her curious personality and mannerisms, although not much is known about her history. She is conversational in the friendly sense (although that doesn’t make it a normal conversation), but any questions about where she came from will be skillfully deflected or answered with outright madness. The origin story she tells her clanmates has varied from “the stork” dropping her off in the swamp to being birthed there by a confused coatl and transforming into a skydancer due to a magic rock.

Her actual history is a bit nuanced and odd, and she doesn’t particularly enjoy revisiting it. Faregan prefers to just talk about her collection or her swamp or this or that, but never herself. Despite her often appearing socially inept, she is still a skydancer and, thus, acutely aware of how others feel about her, and she is aware enough to know she is seen as weird. She uses this to her advantage to deflect questions surrounding things she doesn’t particularly want to talk about, going on some inane ramble about something completely unrelated to put others off.

In reality, she was born of a skydancer and coatl couple. Her father, the coatl, wished to see his children hatch in his ancestral land, while her mother, the skydancer, would have rather reared her hatchlings in the clan. Eventually, days into her pregnancy, she caved and the two began to travel to the Emberglow Hearth, but they were forced to land where the Windswept Plateau, Sea of a Thousand Currents and Ashfall Waste meet. The nest was hastily made, and the hatchlings all turned out to be water-aligned. All were magically inclined and a handful for their parents. Faregan in particular, though, seemed to have a certain control over the water element. Instead of exploring this, though, once the hatchlings were able, their parents took them home to the Cloudsong.

Faregan’s parents were distant, and her brothers were close, but not to her. She longed for the water and sea, feeling an instinctual pull toward the Tidelord’s domain. Upon reaching adulthood, her brothers left for the Starfall Isles, seeking knowledge and love, and Faregan was left alone. Her mother, a tough plague dragon, was never adept at emotion, and her father broke up with her mother shortly after their clutch came back to the Cloudsong. Faregan, feeling lost in the open sky, signed up to become a scout with her clan.

Due to the size of her home clan, the process of becoming a scout was harrowing and militaristic. She felt herself crumbling. She had no loyalty to the clan, no real connection with her family; she only knew a strong longing for the sea and the idea that she couldn’t make it alone. She wasn’t her heart-hearted mother who had seen the horrors of the Scarred Wasteland and survived, after all.

Upon graduation, her first patrol was to the boundary with the Sea of a Thousand Currents, a place she hardly remembered and had not seen since she had hatched. The others in her party were upset upon arriving at the border, complaining about how useless it was to patrol the edge of the Windswept Plateau and an ocean, but Faregan was fascinated. She excused herself to explore and found a clump of trees surviving at the edge of the water.

Upon entering, she knew.

The brackish water was cool, soothing her scales as she dipped into the deepest parts of the swamp. She played in the trees, marveled over moss, and, eventually, settled into a warm, shallow puddle at the base of two trees.

The scouting party never looked for her. It wasn’t as though she had been an excellent student, and it wasn’t abnormal for scouts of such a large clan to use it as an excuse to leave. Faregan was left alone, and she was truthfully happier for it. She took to collecting things that made her happy-- shells, moss, rocks --and asking passers-by for their watches. She gained a bit of a reputation among nomadic clans, but she didn’t mind. She was happy, albeit lonely.

Her time alone allowed her to play with her magic more, although without any formal education, her magic was simply uncontrollable bursts of the most instinctual things she knew to do. In time, she became adept at water manipulation and even learned how to spit acid. Neither were skills she particularly needed, but she was her only company for most of her days.

Then, a new clan moved in. Faregan visited like she always did for those passing through, but then they stayed, and, now, she is simply a part of them, happy with the company and the trinkets she can collect; however, she fears they day they may leave, disappearing further into the Plateau.