Drown

Drown had a different name, once, that accompanied another life.

She was born into a clan that dwelled deep within the Quarantine Zone and often lured or poached dragons from the Earthshaker's lands in order to grow their numbers or test out new contagious strains and mutagens. It was rare that she saw Pearlcatchers so far West as Zone #128, aside from those in her family. Her mother, a zealous scientist for the Plaguebringer, was part of a lineage of Plague-born Pearlcatchers with a robust immunity, and it meant that many of her relatives, including her mother and many of her siblings, were practically guaranteed the job.

Drown had been born with a bit of a cough and a nervous disposition, so she found herself instead working as a medic for those who catch the diseases and survive. She would tell them that, now, they bore marks of honor. They wore the badge of their immunity on their scales.

Eventually, though, her cough started to worsen, making the thick air of her home difficult to breathe. Several of her closest friends, patients who had gone on to require long-term care, convinced her to travel to the coast, in the hopes that the air there would be easier on her ailing lungs.

She made the difficult trek across the Abiding Boneyard alone, both aided and spurred on by the fact that she was beginning to breathe easier in the arid lands far from the thick plague-ridden air, but arrived at the coast just in time to be swept up in the unprecedented winds of the great hurricane.

She had dreams of Emperors, and great holes in the ground; Dragons barely able to move because of the great trees growing out of them, and a grand ship shaped like a crescent moon. She would later be told that they fished her body out of the previously-prophetic pools around the Spiral Keep.

When she awoke, she felt as if her lungs were entirely full of water. There were two women standing above her--a Skydancer with many blue eyes that blinked at her in unison, and an intricately-adorned Imperial who smelled of caramel and wood smoke.

When she asked what had happened, the Imperial simply told her, "You drowned. I dried you out. You have both life and death inside of you still, and there were enough casualties in the hurricane."

"I'm... I *drowned*?"

"Yes, and I'm Maracuja," The Imperial replied with a glint in her fiery eyes.

* * *

Drown has stayed quite close with Pyre and Mara, her initial saviors. She can stay entirely too still, and her thick voice always sounds as if she's speaking to you underwater. Some astute dragons have begun to whisper that she sometimes seems to not even breathe.

Unsettling or not, Drown has become an important member of the clan, acting as the primary peacekeeper with tribes and hunting parties from the Scarred Wasteland that wander near the docks or find Mistmaw Clan hunting parties venturing towards them.