Character type: Candidate
Rank: Candidate
Age: 17
Gender: Female
Sexual Preference: Heterosexual
Appearance
Annaca is a beauty, in a very natural, down to earth sort of way. Her fine, delicate features only look enhanced, not marred, by streaks of dirt or firestone dust. Her thick, dark brown hair is lovely when neat, tied back or allowed to fall down past her shoulders, but it really looks wonderful when windswept and tangled, mussed by sweaty, dirty hands pushing it back throughout the day. She’ll wear skirts and dresses when the occasion calls for it, but she obviously looks far more comfortable and in her element in worn trousers and shirts, sleeves rolled up, tall boots dusty and dirty.
She is a young woman meant to be active and elbows-deep in work. She shines when she’s given a challenge, and is positively radiant when she can fix something successfully and tell a person in need of help that she handled it for them. Pretty as she may be, she’s not the sort someone would look at and imagine in a Lady Holder’s finery, nor does she look particularly maternal, ready to raise up and nurture a brood of her own. Put a bow in her hand and send her off on the hunt, or a hammer and let her get to mending. Those hands are calloused, the nails often torn and the knuckles scraped.
Annaca is a pleasing mix of her parents’ features, with her father’s dark eyes and wavy hair, most of her mother’s features, and just a hint of something in her skin tone to remind one of R’fan.
Personality
There is no better motivation than telling Annaca she isn’t capable of something, or is bound to fail, especially if it has anything to do with her gender. She doesn’t have time for that kind of bullshit, and it irks her just enough to light a fire to prove them wrong. She has a healthy amount of self-respect and confidence, the sort of down-to-earth solid strength that doesn’t have much patience for men flapping their jaws about things they know nothing about.
It’s also the sort of strength that sees just as much value in a job well done down in the lower caverns as some glorious triumph on a dragon’s back. She doesn’t need to be flashy; she just needs to know she’s useful, and that she worked hard enough to break a sweat and wear herself out, mentally or physically, it really doesn’t matter.
In some ways she’s a hedonist, deeply tied to sensation and putting her body through its paces. She <i>enjoys</i> the feeling of tired muscles, of the lightheadedness in the aftermath of being winded, and the warmth just under the surface that reminds her of her blood pumping away strongly. She sinks into the feeling of submerging in a warm bath or diving into the ocean to clean herself of honestly earned sweat.
In true islander spirit, Annaca likes to keep things as simple as possible. She tries to take things as they come, working her way through any situation as she’s able, and letting all else fall as it may. She doesn’t worry much about ‘what ifs’ and possible futures when there’s real, true things to be worked on and fixed and taken care of in the here-and-now. She likes to think what she gives back to the world is just as straightforward and honest.
As much as she’s appreciated around the Weyr as someone happy and handy at helping out, she’s not without her faults, one of the primary examples being a tendency to take on too much, which is not as charming a flaw as it first appears. While she means well, and does <i>intend</i> on doing everything she commits herself to, sometimes she forgets that it’s better to leave some things to others who maybe have less on their plates, and can tend to the problems quicker and not leave the other people hanging. And while she contributes in more ways than most, sometimes it seems like she’d be even more useful if she could just focus her energies in <i>one</i> area, not just filling in the gaps as she comes across them.
And as much as she may strive to approach life relaxed and ready, she’s not immune to getting good and angry when things hit her buttons just the right way. The boys she grew up with mouthing off about her being “just a girl” was one of the guaranteed triggers, and she’s already caught hints of the same (but worse, more ingrained, with none of the reluctant affection her age mates had for her) from some of the new incoming transfers, whose Weyrs were more hidebound. She’s planted a few fists in people’s faces over it in the past, though she knows she can’t go around striking dragonriders. Annaca bites her cheek and carries on, all the more determined to work circles around them all, and they’ll see in the end who gave more to the Weyr.
History
Birthplace : Ista Weyr, 8.433.11.15
Annaca was born during a dark, wild night in the midst of a raging storm, the fodder for jokes later that Nareyn’s hard labor had whipped it up in all her anger and impatience to have the baby OUT. That was about the most exciting part of the earliest years of her life, in which she was raised like any other weyrbrat in the creche. It wasn’t a surprise to anyone that, like her mother, Annaca didn’t grow up with any desire to be a girly little lady; in fact, she was an outright tomboy, and spent much of her youth with her hair cropped short, and commonly mistaken for another dirty little weyrboy scampering around, in and out of trouble.
As she came closer to twelve and time to consider adult pursuits and how she’d contribute to the Weyr, Annaca grew increasingly frustrated that her male age mates — the very one she’d been great friends growing up — began making snarky comments about her donning an apron and taking up women’s work. Especially as Annaca had always loved tagging after the Weyr’s handymen and hunters, or clambering over dragons with the other boys, eager to help wash them. She didn’t have anything against traditional women’s work, but she knew she could do anything she set her mind to — certainly anything the boys could, and deeply resented the idea that others thought she couldn’t simply because she was a girl.
Determined and driven, Annaca’s tagging along turned into on-the-job training, such that once she left the creche she had any number of jobs around the Weyr lined up for her, and a fair few offers even from the crafts should she wish to apprentice to them. The trouble was that she couldn’t just pick ONE thing. She’d found that she truly enjoyed almost all the jobs she’d tried her hand at, and more than that she thrived on the feeling of being able to help in so many ways and please so many people, loving the feeling of being sought after and appreciated that way. She went out as a hunter to bring food back to the Weyr. She tinkered and worked on odds and ends that commonly broke down. She learned nursing work in the infirmary, doing a lot of the messy grunt work too menial for the healers. She was down at the beach hauling in nets and gutting fish, prying shells apart. If there was hard, dirty work to be done, she would be involving herself.
To put off the issue of choosing any one thing to commit to, she actually committed herself to Candidacy, and used the time afforded to them to spend even more time than was usual for Candidates to work around the Weyr, helping out wherever she could. It was actually a pretty sweet setup, especially since she wouldn’t even mind if she DID impress — one more way to learn to help the Weyr! — but the arrival of foreigners soured her daily life somewhat as some from hidebound locations looked at her with everything from the more innocent raised eyebrows to sneers and outright remarks about her nonconformity.
Relationships
Family
Father: R’fan, rider of bronze Ronageth.
Mother: Nareyn, rider of green Valduinth.
Half-sister: Zeffaryn