Description: Two worlds met and Zyanya was born. She is diminutive, and would be easy to overlook elsewhere but here the details of her appearance are a beacon which declare her origins. Her hair is heavy and unerring as good intentions in its fall to the small of her back. The shade is that of spring loam, dark and dreaming, tempting the plunge of assessing fingers. Her eyes beneath feathery brows are darker still, darker than cliche: the limpid pools, the poet's ink, the starry night, bright against the gold of her skin. But here Arvum begins to intrude: in proud cheekbones, a high brow, the regal nose, and a mouth both wide and full. Her jaw is well-defined, her chin too strong for true delicacy. When she speaks Arvani, it is gently accented and carefully pronounced; her lack of thoughtless fluency is easily discerned.

Personality: She is a poet with a poet's vagaries. When piqued by interest and pricked by curiosity, she is the running brook carrying thoughts like sun-sparks on water. When not, Zyanya is the willow: soft with grace, deeply rooted, songs turned inward. There is patience here and a dignity born of decades of training.

Background: Zyanya is the happily ever after of her parents' love story, the proof of life continuing on when the last page of the tale is turned. The only daughter of Zixin Lir and Maren Thrax, she was raised on their fairy tale: the castaway princess deposited on distant foreign shores, the warrior-poet who fell in love with her, and the ten years of their courtship. Ten years in which Zixin spent oceans of ink on paper to woo Maren. Ten years of poetry and song, and a fervent but respectful distance. Ten years concluded with a marriage.

In Zyanya was the realization of her parents' ideals: a sword-like spirit and a harp-like soul, nurtured with love, with honour, and with duty. She took to poetry as Zixin did and song as her mother does, though for Zyanya her joy came in creating music, where in Maren it moved her to dance. Her studies encompassed these arts and more. She took to them gladly and strove to be an exemplary daughter in all things, through childhood into adulthood.

Her mother made certain that her daughter was also raised knowing of Arvum and of her family there. She was taught the language, the social forms (as they were in Maren's time). Several times a year on the birthdays of Maren's brothers, they released floating lanterns on the ocean to honor those distant relatives. Though she never lived there, Arvum, the Mourning Isles, and Arx all lived in Zyanya's imagination as they were described to her.

By adulthood she had established herself as a poet to match her father, an entertainer to match her mother. But here her peers settled easily into the predetermined channels of their lives, Zyanya found it difficult. Some claimed it was Mangata's tidal influence, a relic of her parents' love story. Others whispered it was the foreign influence of Maren herself. The result was a young poet who felt the need to move. She petitioned for and was granted a pass to travel through Weijin, composing and entertaining as she went. From Weijin, she traveled to the rest of the Undying Empire, her reputation growing as she went-- the novelty of her arrival and passage through each town, each city, was an efficient bait to audiences for whom life was certain and regular, day by day by day. And where novelty drew listeners, skill kept them enraptured. She had no end of admirers, patrons and lovers, the story of some being added to her growing library of poetry and songs.

But celebrity was not the purpose of Zyanya's wanderings. To her immense grief, the answer presented itself with her father's death. She was summoned back to Weijin by Maren to find the great and vital warrior turned teacher already passed. Arriving too late to say good-bye sent her into a dark spiral, an adult woman clinging to her mother as if a child again. When Maren spoke of her desire to return to her homeland, to see her family once more before she too returned to the Wheel, Zyanya knew that this was what she had sought all along-- not an answer, but a clarity of choice, to see the land of half of her heritage.

To decide whether Arvum was her true home.

Relationship Summary

Family:

Maren - Storm-tossed, she dons the white-capped waves as dancers do their garlands; the flower of the sea plucked and pressed close to a singular heart.

Zixin - He knew as trees do to drive deep into stone, ready for the storm; to always, always lift his heart to the sky, ready for its gifts.