Acantha

Flowers, I remember fields Of flowers, soft beneath my heels- Eurydice, Hadestown
A tragic heroine, one that could have flourished. Broken with paranoia and fear. Themes of warfare and the consequences of it are discussed here. I would suggest not reading the page you are sensitive to the topics listed.
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FAY 	FAY
 	
Artist 	-
background 	background
Creator 	🔥
Code 	-
Attribute 	Regret
Element 	Ruby / Aquamarine
Color 	Crimson
Aesthetics 	Dark red lipstick / Roses / Opera / Blood / Dried flowers / Femme fatale / Diva / Phantom of the Opera / Ballgowns / Freya
Song 	Flowers - Hadestown
character 	character
Nicknames 	Acantha
Age 	15 (dy) / 28 (hy)
Gender 	Female
Orientation	Lipstick lesbian
Occupation 	Opera singer
Tribe 	SkyWing
Goal 	Rebuild her life
Residence 	type here
Relatives 	Peregrine
Likes 	Singing / Theater / Acting / Girls / Dramatics / Being onstage / Enigmas
Dislikes 	Sudden loud noises / The sound of popping / Watching innocents be hurt / Hurting people / Sudden flashes of light
Quote 	I hate that I thought I was allowed to play the reaper, allowed to choose which lives to take.
:appearance
Acantha is beautiful in every way, an exquisitely crafted doll.
She is lean and thin, with enough muscles that she does not appear spindly. Her bulk- or really, the lack thereof- is a trick, built to seem small and easily knocked over. But Acantha is no reed, blown over in the wind. Acantha is the epitome of femininity, petite and lithe, but not slender enough to appear malnourished and unhealthy.
Jewel-toned sanguine and crimson streak Acantha, a dramatic diva. Her main scales are a deep carmine, rich as garnets and rubies, accented with a darker burgundy. Her underbelly is just slightly lighter than her main scales, not as deep, but darker than red. Her wings are even lighter than that- almost cardinal red.
Her horns and spine are by far the lightest colors on her form. Almost orange in their shade, they are duller, far from fully saturated. Her horns are only shades off from her spine, the color almost but not quite matching. None of her colors are pure red, always offset, a little darker, a little grayer, a little more orange than pure red.
Her eyes shift color in the light- sometimes they are the same shade as her scales, other times they could be called black, while sometimes the light will hit to become a perfect, clear, pure red. Pools of sanguine gems.
Dark maroon tracks trail down Acantha's face, following the lines that tear tracks might have gone. They extend from the edges of her eyes, finishing in a sharp point just above her chin. They give her a gothic look, as if she was a relic.
She is elegant in every way, her posture impeccable, with fluid movements that offer no hint of hesitation, as if she was a dancer. Her body and movements are all lovely, and one would expect her to smile. But Acantha rarely does, usually holding a somber or pensive expression, vaguely melancholic. 
Perfection incarnate- except for a long scar that stretches over her right eye. It droops her eyelid slightly, and suddenly that's all people see. Her perfect figure and shining scales are forgotten. A slight imperfection, a drooped eyelid. Acantha can still see, but it hinders her beauty.
So she dons a mask; one that covers her left eyes, tapering off before her mouth. Dark red, a few shades off from her scales, darker so that you can't miss it or mistake it for her scales. A black streak extends from the eye hole of the mask as well, mirroring the line on her left. Pale red and white roses are carved into the wood, surrounding her eyes.
A tattoo stretches over her upper left leg. Three roses- one for each member of her family. Her mother, her father, and her little brother. Black ink against her red scales.
Acantha may be beautiful, but she is not at all beautiful in a childlike way.
:personality
Feminine, cold, tragic. They all describe Acantha. But they do not understand her.
Acantha is deeply melancholic at heart, solemn and serious. She does not laugh much, she does not joke much. The most joy one sees out of her is the stage smile she cracks at the crowd on one of her good days, on a particularly rousing standing ovation. But that, too is a mask.
Filled with regret and grief for who she once was and what she has done in her lifetime, Acantha has been forced to follow through with things no dragon should ever do. And it is the greatest regret of her life.
Some people interpret her silence as haughty pride. She is- proud, that is. She is proud of her accomplishments in the music industry. But her silence is not her thinking that she is too good for someone, her silence is fear that someone else will despise her too. Her greatest fear is that someone will understand that she has done terrible, terrible things and dismisses her as irredeemable when she tries so hard every day to convince herself that she is, she can be redeemed. So she keeps people at an arm's length.
Deeply nervous, extremely shy, and paranoid. The things Acantha has witnessed left her constantly nervous it would happen again. Cynical is one word for it. Or pessimistic. But it is not the belief that things will go wrong, it is the fear that something has already gone wrong, that it will damage her again. She sees monsters in the shadows, ones that disappear in the bright lights of the stage.
And that is why she has always loved to perform. Despite being cripplingly anxious and quiet, she is someone else onstage. All her demons are washed away with every high note, and it leaves her clean. She feels young again, just a little dragonet performing for her parents, hoping for their approval.
Deeply melodramatic, Acantha tends to overexaggerate things, her theatrical tendencies often showing themselves at any small hiccup. It's typically all a jest, and she offers a mischievous smile after a few monologued lines.
Her sense of humor is quiet and often brushed over, usually, some dramatic exclamation followed with a small grin. She doesn't tend to make blatant jokes, only mumbled, witty remarks that only those who listen closely hear.
:history
Fay was once a child, as all were. She was happy and young and ate sweets and sang off-key to her heart's content. And her parents loved her, and she loved them. There was no dragonet as widely adored as she. The Little Princess, her parents called her. The most obedient and the most joyful.
As she grew older, her parents' presence faded. They were called away from home for work, for business, leaving less time for Fay. But she never minded. She would playact alone at home. A lone voyager. A lost princess. Anything she wanted. Acting was her passion, even at such a young age.
Her early years passed in a haze, full of spun sugar and jewelry and everything she ever wanted. But her first clear memory was from her seventh birthday. Lucky number seven, her parents had smiled and said for days leading up for it. Finally an adult.
But luck has never been on Fay's side.
She woke up to her ashen-faced mother and father, looking at her as if they didn't recognize her anymore. It was her father that broke the news to her. 
"Fay... they've conscripted you to the army."
And she laughed, her giggle like bells. How funny! Her father was playing another joke! He did love his practical jokes. Another one for her birthday!
But the soldiers at the door were so, painfully real. And so were the tears her mother shed when she was torn away. They didn't fight. You don't fight the SkyWing militia. It's not done. They are ruthless. They are cruel. And now Fay was to be one of them.
She was to fight, to die, to devote her life to fighting a war for someone she'd never met. Fay had always wanted to travel the war and see dragons of all colors. But not like this. Not once ever had she thought she'd see the other dragons on a battlefield.
She would later learn that they had been conscripting up and down the mountain, every able-bodied adult was snatched away to war. After all, what is a village to a kingdom? Any child turning seven would be taken as well, taken to die on some foreign land with no other SkyWings to honor them with a proper burial in the heat of war.
One would think Fay a delicate flower, a little rosebud. People so often forget the rosebuds have thorns too.
In the first day of training, Fay was beaten to the ground again and again and again. No other child dared to help her up, for fear of a lashing- or worse- from their commander. The weak would die in training, and only the strong went to war. Her vocal lessons and perfect nails wouldn't help her here. Meanwhile, the hardened farmer's children, the workers, they flourished. They grew from strong to stronger, into perfect little soldiers.
Fay grew differently. She was always too feminine, they said. Too dainty. She would never survive the first week. 
But she did. And she survived the week after that. And the next, and on and on. Fay would never grow into a buzz-cut soldier. But she still trained and toiled and put as much effort as all of them did- sometimes even more. Fay grew into her situation, and she became one of the soldiers the SkyWing militia had seen. She was constantly underestimated, constantly brushed off for caring about her scales or looking too pretty. But she was also constantly better than the others.
It wasn't her strategy, nor her cunning. Fay was almost clumsy strategic-wise, able to be outsmarted. What she had was brute strength. She was a bull with a spear, quick enough with her lighter female frame, yet strong as any of her male counterparts.
Fay never really faced the weight of the world. It was only after the war she realized the weight of what she had been doing.
She'd treated the army like another play with staged deaths--only these were real. It was all another game to her, one where she was good and the dragons she fought were bad. But with Burn's loss, Fay was left staggering and confused, realizing that in war there are only shades of gray.
:abilities
Vocal: Acantha sings alto in opera, despite training as a mezzo-soprano. Blessed with a large range and a powerful belt, her vocal range goes from G3 to G6. Acantha can belt/mix up to an A5.
:trivia
* right handed
* fond of cinnamon 
* loves flowing silks 
* favorite color is dark purple
Category:Characters
Category:Work in Progress
Category:Content (ForestFire28)
Category:Females
Category:SkyWings
Category:Occupation (Performer)
Category:Mature Content