Zalena Tesora

Name: Zalena Tesora
Age: 130+
Nationality: Saldaea
Hair: Darkest Black that looks almost blue in the right light
Eyes: Sapphire Blue
Skin: Golden Tan from spending a lot of time outdoors
Height: 5'6"
Voice: Light soprano
Other: She loves embroidered dresses so all of her clothes have them now. She prefers combinations of blues and yellows and floral motifs, though her favorite is a hawk and she'll pay a fortune for an embroiderer who can do it well. She has long hair that falls half way down her back. It is straight to her shoulders and starts to curl naturally from there to the bottom. She normally wears it loose, but pulls it into a loose braid when she is traveling or working hard at something. Tilted almond shaped eyes like most of her people. She likes simple jewelry and wears Saldaean style dresses though slightly altered to show far more bosom than would normally show. She loves her silky slippers but knows the worth of great boots.
Skills: Excellent at riding (and some stunts she learned from her father's men) and hawking.
Knowledge Weakness: She is not overly politically minded and knows as little as she can of it and still call herself a respectable Aes Sedai.
Personality weakness: She tends to be a lightskirt (a true understatement there), her one real vice. She isn't particular if it's men or women, so long as they have nice eyes and know that there are no strings attached. While her number of partners is a bit troublesome, people overlook it because she doesn't bring it into the Tower and she is always able to perform her duties in the manner an Aes Sedai should.
Personality: She loves healing, both with herbs and the One Power. She liked being in the middle of fights where she feels the most useful, but hates all the death that surrounds it. She's a loveable person and people tend to look the other way when it comes to her faults and vices. She's very emotional and is very in tune with those in her care. She's got a temper which she has never truly learned to keep down. In big gatherings she can bite her tongue, but not in her personal life. She's as likely to tell a Sister off for being stupid as she is to laugh in their face. There is no telling whether her mood will lead her to laughter or verbal beatings. But she's also the sort that would show up on your doorstep when you were feeling down with cookies or something pretty to make you feel better, the sort of person that notices you when you go missing for a day or two and says welcome back when you come back from wherever you were (be it sick, on the road, or just in your room working too much). When she leaves the Tower to travel, she always has a small gathering with her friends and upon her return she always tries to set up lunches and teas with people individually to catch up on their lives and what she's missed. In short, she's a good friend and a great person who doesn't have the slightest ambition towards being anything more than that.
== Character History ==
Born the only child to a minor noble, Zalena was spoiled quite a bit. Her mother had barely managed to survive her birth and found it impossible to conceive after. Her father was grateful because he loved his wife far too much to risk her. Zalena had a typical upbringing, learning her poetry, the cittern, and to ride horseback. It was with animals that her first love showed. In the stables she would spend hours with the horses, grooming and taking care of them. She talked people into giving her extra lessons and was soon able to do some of the more basic stunt tricks that her father's men knew. Her father tried to talk her out of it, but her mother always winked behind his back to encourage her. Their fights were pretty normal around the house, but they made certain to never argue about her in front of her. On her 12th birthday she got her first hawk. Her mother believed that the only way to learn true hawking and falconry was to raise one. A kennel for the hawk was created for Zalena and she began raising hers. The two learned the ropes together as one of her father's trainers helped them. Freedom, as she named him, was an excellent bird, especially for her first and there was no turning back. She loved hawking and if she wasn't in her rooms for something specific, she was with Freedom.
And with all such things, tragedy struck when she was 15. Freedom was injured. He simply showed up in the kennel with a wounded wing. Infection had set in already and he died some few days later. She began studying herbs then, to see if there was anything she could have done to prevent it. She talked to all the animal trainers and handlers to see what they knew. She became a bit obsessive about it. She collected books and even asked her father to let her travel to the great libraries of the world to study more. He was planning on saying no when his wife said it might do her good to get out into the world and get her head away from just the animals. He agreed and she quickly found herself in a carriage with a distant cousin, making her way to Tar Valon. Her cousin was visiting her fiancé who was in training with the famous men of the Tower Guard. She planned to petition there to study the Tower's libraries. They got settled into an Inn close to the Tower, but she found her next love, and the one thing that would truly become her vice. Men. A stable boy to be specific, talking quietly about his love of horses and how he cared for them, with soft hands and softer eyes, and a personality anything unlike she had ever seen at home. There was no turning back for her after that.
A week had passed before she finally made her way to the Tower. An Aes Sedai came out and looked at her where she had been waiting since announcing herself. The woman looked at her and asked if she was there to see the Mistress of Novices. She had asked "Is that where I begin studying?" The woman had said yes and taken her there straightway. When asked if she had been tested she began to tell the woman of her education and was summarily shushed and handed a gem to stare at.
She was bustled out the door and was in her rooms before she realized what they meant by making her sign a book and telling her she was a novice now. She was assigned a mentor and it wasn't long before Annais Sedai showed up at her doorstep to try to guide her steps. A nice woman, but Zalena was certain she had scared her off with her insistence that she couldn't channel. That night she sent a letter to her cousin to tell her of the mix up. When morning came though, she learned that it had not been a mistake at all. She was destined to be an Aes Sedai.
In her time as a novice she was more likely to get punished for trying to sneak into the Yards than anything else. She was a fast learned and though she disliked text book learning, showed a real aptitude for picking up weaves quickly. She was well liked by everyone with few exceptions.
As an Accepted she got into more trouble because of boys, but she found that sneaking candies into the hand of certain people tended to get her out into Tar Valon unseen for her after hour rendevous. Caught more than once, she was sent to the Farm for a year to learn discipline. She hated it there, as all the men in the local area had been warned off of her in advance, but it was time that had to be done. One of the woman at that farm knew a great deal about growing herbs and learning of her passion for it, began to show her. Upon her release from the farm there was no doubt which Ajah she was headed for.
She devoted her time to healing then, her studieswere focused on it and all her extra time was spent in the infirmary. When it came time to be raised she hadn't hesitated.
Over the years she found that she was still interested in learning more. Her trip to the libraries of the world had ended at it's first stop so she left the Tower as soon as she could with a cute Tower Guard she had asked to join her and began traveling to the bigger cities and learning from their libraries and their Mothers, Wisdoms, whatever they called their healers. She went from the large cities to the small villages finding home remedies and old wives tales that really worked. She tasted all sort of foul concoctions and over time became rather good at dispensing advice as most Wisdoms and Healers were expected to do.
And she found herself in more than one battle. She was Saldean and besides the horseback riding and hawking, she knew the use of daggers and knives. She was born to a proud, fighting people. When battle called she was in the background. As her Sisters fell, she moved among them in the fighting, healing as she could, bring back those that needed it, and saying a prayer to the Creator when she found those she couldn't. The stink of war never went away but the price she had always found to be worth the cost. Too many healers didn't want to be near a battle, but she was more of a front line girl. Start at the back and by the end, work her way to the front. It was because of this that she began to learn to use her healing ability to wound. Healing a wounded leg was not much different from wounding a healed leg. In desperation she had found that gift and she hid it from all others, a dirty little secret she feared would get out. Still it was useful to know when she was healing in the midst of it all. She might be a healer, but she intended to live to be an old healer.
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