Chaeme
An exile of the Summer Court and a wayward dryad being punished for her love affair with an heir of one of the 100 Houses of Summer.
Appearance
Chaeme was blessed (like all fae) with pretty looks and a graceful figure. Taller than most cedar dryads, she is a little on the thin side but maintains an athletic form and is still much stronger than one night expect a woman of her size to be.
Her doe-like,wide-set eyes are the same pale amaranth pink of her cedar's heartwood. They give her a waifish, somber appearance, especially when paired with her gentle, natural frown.Chaeme keeps her straight black hair very long. She maintains it daily to ensure it is always orderly, clean, and shiny, and will often braid it to keep it safe from snagging branches.
Her skin was once a deep, rich emerald like her tree's regal boughs, but since its destruction has become pale. Her sickly green complexion is alarming by dryad standards and a sign of her tree's wellbeing. With each passing month she grows closer to a washed-out beige that would indicate the passing of her wood and the beginning of her mortality.
Setting her apart from more than just other dryads are her facial scars. Deliberately carved with an iron blade to scar, they are the stripes of an exile of the Summer Court. Then placement on the left side indicates that she is a social exile cast out by her peers and not the Queen. This is no less damning to her appearance or reputation.
Her doe-like,wide-set eyes are the same pale amaranth pink of her cedar's heartwood. They give her a waifish, somber appearance, especially when paired with her gentle, natural frown.Chaeme keeps her straight black hair very long. She maintains it daily to ensure it is always orderly, clean, and shiny, and will often braid it to keep it safe from snagging branches.
Her skin was once a deep, rich emerald like her tree's regal boughs, but since its destruction has become pale. Her sickly green complexion is alarming by dryad standards and a sign of her tree's wellbeing. With each passing month she grows closer to a washed-out beige that would indicate the passing of her wood and the beginning of her mortality.
Setting her apart from more than just other dryads are her facial scars. Deliberately carved with an iron blade to scar, they are the stripes of an exile of the Summer Court. Then placement on the left side indicates that she is a social exile cast out by her peers and not the Queen. This is no less damning to her appearance or reputation.
Celestial Alignment
Sunshine cultivates all plant life, and this dryad is no different. Solar aligned, Chaeme is her strongest when the sun is shining. As a conifer, however, her season of strength falls in winter.
Elemental Alignment
Like all dryads, Chaeme is aligned to earth, specifically flora. No natural plant growth can harm her and she can convince the underbrush to part or thicken with a word.
Political Alignment
Chaeme has had little interaction with the Courts and their politics. Though she maintains herself as wyldfae, she often follows seelie ideals.
Skills and Abilities
Tree Jumper
Chaeme, like all dryads, can "jump" into her tree and other trees of that species, melding her body with that of the tree. She can jump into most conifers, but is most comfortable and can spend the most time inside of cedars. Jumping into the heartwood of her tree requires neither magick nor energy to maintain; she could remain inside her tree indefinitely.
Tree-Bound
More than simply an arboreal creature, a dryad's body and life are bound to her tree. In normal circumstances, she would be bound to a perimeter around where her tree grew. For Chaeme, she is now beholden to following the final pieces that remain of her tree, which has been diminished to a single block of cedar heartwood that can fit in the palm.
Because of its reduced size, she has also suffered a significant depletion of her magick. Her reservoir is smaller and she cannot channel the same as she could have when her tree was intact.
Chaeme, like all dryads, can "jump" into her tree and other trees of that species, melding her body with that of the tree. She can jump into most conifers, but is most comfortable and can spend the most time inside of cedars. Jumping into the heartwood of her tree requires neither magick nor energy to maintain; she could remain inside her tree indefinitely.
Tree-Bound
More than simply an arboreal creature, a dryad's body and life are bound to her tree. In normal circumstances, she would be bound to a perimeter around where her tree grew. For Chaeme, she is now beholden to following the final pieces that remain of her tree, which has been diminished to a single block of cedar heartwood that can fit in the palm.
Because of its reduced size, she has also suffered a significant depletion of her magick. Her reservoir is smaller and she cannot channel the same as she could have when her tree was intact.
Personality
Once bright and playful, Chaeme has been reduced to a quiet, forlorn figure. She doesn’t sing or dance. She doesn’t play in the forest with her friends and family. She no longer tends the glade where her tree grows. Her days are now spent whittling away the time until she finds a new purpose.
What remains, however, is the same kind, gentle fae. Chaeme doesn’t have a mean bone in her body, even when she wishes she does. She is rather unlike most other dryads and nymphs in that she is a loyal confidante not prone to gossip or bullying. She had the years and wisdom under her belt to make her seem more mature than her peers, but still naive, childish, and uneducated to other fae species.
What remains, however, is the same kind, gentle fae. Chaeme doesn’t have a mean bone in her body, even when she wishes she does. She is rather unlike most other dryads and nymphs in that she is a loyal confidante not prone to gossip or bullying. She had the years and wisdom under her belt to make her seem more mature than her peers, but still naive, childish, and uneducated to other fae species.
Biography & Lore
Once, beneath the wide boughs of an ancient cedar tree, a travelling bard found shelter from the rain. There, he met the lady of that tree -- a dryad who peered out of her bark at the beautiful man, unlike anything else she had ever seen in her remote corner of the wide, wild forests of the Falwood. He was not small and mean like pixies, but tall and kind. His voice was not the same lilting whistles of birds or her sisters, but deep and full. He was much smarter than the squirrels who made their nests in her branches, and his arms held her in an embrace as tight as her own tree.
Be it infatuation or love, the two met many times for years, singing and dancing and laughing. The dryad smiled even when she and her lover were apart. She held him close and warm when winter came and deciduous sisters slept; it was only her and him in the great wide forest.
Eventually, her bard came less and less. The dryad didn’t mind, knowing his love of art and music carried him many places -- knowing that he would always come back to her. And one day, a sapling sprouted in the shade of her tree. Her bard did not come for months, but she cultivated the sapling with a growing excitement each day he was away. By the time he returned it was not just the young tree that had grown, and she greeted her lover with the promise of their future.
He was not there when their daughter was born, but the dryad didn’t mind. Their cedar sapling was beautiful like her father, and seeing his eyes in hers gave her mother joy in his absence. Her bard did not visit often in the following years, but the dryad had her living reminder that he loved her with her every day.
Until he stopped coming. The dryad watched the sunrise for his arrival, waiting for the day her lover returned to bring his songs and smiles. Each cycle of the seasons brought new clouds of doubt into the dryad’s mind. Had he forgotten them? Had he tired of them? Would he ever return, or would she forever be bound to this remote glade where she would only ever see him again in her daughter’s dark brown eyes?
A decade passed before a shadow fell across her glade once again. People with brown eyes like her bard’s came, but not him. They did not bring laughter and song, but iron and fire. They dug up her daughter’s young tree and cut down the dryad's great cedar. They carved out a block of her heartwood, carved marks of shame on her cheek. They burnt what was left of her home and magick and took her far away from her glade, her child, her happiness.
The dryad was left in a strange place with dryads she didn’t know -- dryads with marks like hers. She didn’t belong, but with only a sliver of herself and her tree remaining, she didn’t belong anywhere anymore.
Be it infatuation or love, the two met many times for years, singing and dancing and laughing. The dryad smiled even when she and her lover were apart. She held him close and warm when winter came and deciduous sisters slept; it was only her and him in the great wide forest.
Eventually, her bard came less and less. The dryad didn’t mind, knowing his love of art and music carried him many places -- knowing that he would always come back to her. And one day, a sapling sprouted in the shade of her tree. Her bard did not come for months, but she cultivated the sapling with a growing excitement each day he was away. By the time he returned it was not just the young tree that had grown, and she greeted her lover with the promise of their future.
He was not there when their daughter was born, but the dryad didn’t mind. Their cedar sapling was beautiful like her father, and seeing his eyes in hers gave her mother joy in his absence. Her bard did not visit often in the following years, but the dryad had her living reminder that he loved her with her every day.
Until he stopped coming. The dryad watched the sunrise for his arrival, waiting for the day her lover returned to bring his songs and smiles. Each cycle of the seasons brought new clouds of doubt into the dryad’s mind. Had he forgotten them? Had he tired of them? Would he ever return, or would she forever be bound to this remote glade where she would only ever see him again in her daughter’s dark brown eyes?
A decade passed before a shadow fell across her glade once again. People with brown eyes like her bard’s came, but not him. They did not bring laughter and song, but iron and fire. They dug up her daughter’s young tree and cut down the dryad's great cedar. They carved out a block of her heartwood, carved marks of shame on her cheek. They burnt what was left of her home and magick and took her far away from her glade, her child, her happiness.
The dryad was left in a strange place with dryads she didn’t know -- dryads with marks like hers. She didn’t belong, but with only a sliver of herself and her tree remaining, she didn’t belong anywhere anymore.
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