|
■ biography.
past and present collide.
Even before her birth, the Golden Argali people are dwindling in numbers. Considered a priceless rarity amongst their race, they find safety in numbers with others like them. Fear is a great motivator, but constant over-poaching makes them wary, vulnerable. With the remainder of the Golden Argali race female, their only hope is out-breeding and hoping their race lives on in the hope that their lambs are born with shimmering gold horns.
Her father, the current Erais chieftain, refuses to let her explore out of fear that, she too, may be harmed for her beauty just as her late mother had. Restricted to territory allotted to the Erais tribe, she is raised as a princess stuck in a cage: safe but estranged from the world. She learns how to heal, speak differing tongues (which only intrigues her more of the world outside Shyr Thysaer), and self-defense. It only puzzles her. She wants to break free.
As her day of maturation grows closer with each passing year, her father, with hesitation, allows his charge to leave her cage. Rams compete for her hand as potential suitors, but she finds little interest in the fate of a wife living in the shadow of her husband. Not yet, anyway. Alfirin knows that she one day will breed, expected of her kind to give good fortune by reproducing lambs with horns as bright as the sun. For now, she finds herself longing to go further beyond the border of Shyr Thysaer, where the vibrant woodlands meet untold dangers and beautiful unknowns.
One day, when she is bold enough, her hooves will take her someplace fantastical. But for now, fear (and guilt) refrains her from giving in to temptation.
For now.
|