Baroness Vanilla

a minor character in stowaway, the pretend great-aunt (now grandma maybe??) of Cloud and Periwinkle.
== appearance: ==
You flutter through the hallway, light as a feather. Maybe something good happened. Maybe you just got a test back from school that you totally nailed. Maybe for once it was you who caught the polar bear on the hunt. Maybe your mother gifted you some royal jewelry, maybe the queen, Her Majesty Queen Crystal herself noticed you. Maybe you snuck over to a tower and finally got a glimpse of the outside world, something that, if you were born after the crime of the IceWing kingdom started, was mystical and dangerous.
The smell hits you before anything else. A terrible, heavy scent of perfume, raspy and ancient, something terrible and vague. Something close to home and familirity, but just beyond, the drk side of what you percieve as light. It seems like perhaps rosy, maybe like lavender, but it's oh-so strong and bitter, husky and with the aroma of wood or rotten food. Not earthy, just... bad.
You wrinkle your nose in disgust, pattering along the smooth, clear ice floors. Being a peppy, easily curious child, you scurry faster, wondering what the source to the stench could be. 
You round the corner and there she is. She’s tall and imposing, and as long as you are tiny bit smaller than her, she appears huge. She seems top heavy, with her legs frail but her chest and the top of her neck like tree trunks. Her neck is folded back so it looks like she’s always frowning when she peers down at you. 
Her eyes glare in violet. Not bright warm violet, like a NightWing’s underbelly, not deep bluish, like a SeaWing. A shade sickly, hot and pale and watered down with a sharp highlight across the color. They hold their intensity, even behind cracked, slightly yellowish, glasses with beige frames the color of dirt.
She holds up a gnarled talon, pale blue veins scribbling just under the surface of the skin, wrapping a serrated pale blue nail around the glasses perched on triangular ears. Her chin is practically touching her neck the way she looks at you, her jaw tightened and eyes narrowed. Every slight movement screams disgust, as though you re but a pesky termite and not a child. She taps her fingers to the sides of her glasses and dips them down, sneering even more as she gets a better look at you. Her teeth are yellowed and cracked, small and sharp and jutting out at the wrong angles.
You stop, skidding in your tracks. Who is this dragon and why does she hate a happy royal dragonet like you?
With her spindly, knobby frame, you find it hard to believe she ran to the exact hallway you were in. No, she was stationed there, blending into the walls. Her entire scales are pale enough to bleed into the shadows behind her, practically melting into the palace that very may well be as old as herself.
The scales show this age- perhaps once they were a muted pink, bursting with fun and happiness. Now they’re brown, dull, dreary, sad and crisscrossed with scares, wrinkles, scales that must have had some weird surgical treatment to not be wrinkled, and spider veins. Her underbelly is even more brown toned, a bit darker than the rest of her aged pink. You catch a silver necklace dripping off the base of her neck, hanging over thick collarbones, with porcelain pink roses in a cluster at the front.
She moves slightly, all her movements rigid and stiff, and the light catches on her cream-colored horns, slightly grey. They're long and almost flat, straight back with a folded down mane behind them. Her tail mirrors this, the spikes closed to be almost shaped like a spade. A very, very sharp one. It sets you on edge, the way it hovers and shakes just above the ground as though the dragoness can't keep it up. Her tail is long and winding and crooked, although she prefers to wrap it around her bony heels splayed far apart as she attempts to balance herself. 
"What are you doing, dragonet?" she asks you, the skin on her neck shaking. Her voice is thick, commanding. A heavy French accent rests on her tongue and is pulled from the back of her throat, although it is raspy despite its richness.
== personality: ==
"I was just g-going to my quarters," you splutter, suddenly forgetting how to act royal.
Her frown deepens, her eyes boring holes in your head. "You're out past curfew."
"No I'm not-" you protest, feeling yourself shiver under her gaze.
The bell rings- a silvery sweet sound of the brittle thin metal bell ringing once, twice, three times. For the first time since you first saw her, the ends of her mouth turn up, and she smiles with satisfaction at your embarrassment. "You were saying?"
"I was going to go to my quarters. If you hadn't held me up I'd be there by now," you dare insist, the flicker of rebellion in your eyes. "I have important matters to handle." You puff out your chest, hoping to seem more royal, more imposing.
"I hold my dragons, especially dragonets, up very highly. If one does not meet my, the baroness's, expectations, there is trouble."
She seems to think so highly of herself, the smug flash of a smile filling the room and trying to swallow you whole. You wriggle free of her violet gaze. "It is ridiculous to expect me to make it to my quarters before the curfew bell with you standing in the way. You're wasting even more time- just let me go, alright?"
"Since it seems this palace itself is crumbling and tumbling apart, I see myself worthy of keeping this tribe's future in line. If Crystal neglects her subjects, I won't- and I have made it my personal mission to train each and every dragonet in this blasted castle to be perfect, proper, and ready to lead the nation."
"What does that have to do with anything?" you growl at the rambling dragon.
"It means that little dragonets like you should learn proper time management and to get to your quarters before the bell is about to ring." She digs her front arms into the ice, her claws flexing eagerly. "And it means," she hisses, leaning in forward, "that you respect your elders and your royals. Say one more rebellious thing and I'll have you chained to the front palace gates to be discovered by pirates and rogues- or god forbid, palace peasants.
"They aren't real," you grumble, a hot flush rushing through your cold scales. "There's no peasants in the palace, the guards are good at their jobs and got rid of them. And how dare you speak of the queen like that?"
"Dear, you and I both know that the queen could be a lot better. There's problems with this kingdom- problems that I could fix. And you could fix them to, if you attempted to behave." She extends a gnarled talon and grips you by the horn.
Panic rushes through you, her touch cold and clammy, but tight. You try and wriggle away, fireworks of pain shooting through your skull. "Ugh-- let me go!"
"Where on earth would a petty dragonet like you have to go?" she demands, her voice growing louder. "I am royalty and very, very proud of it. And it is my duty to stop troublesome dragons such as yourself from making this bad palace worse!"
You've never seen royalty so angry. You know you've seen this dragon, the baroness, before, always giving everybody the side eye and observing with a fuming rage. But it seems she's blowing up at you, her eyes squinting and lips curling with fury.
"Please!" you cry, pushing away from her.
"I know you, and everything about you. I know your parents, your siblings, your friends and teachers and passions. I know everything there is to know about the dragons of this palace- but you should know that you can't get on my bad side." A grin spreads across her tight face. "I've told many lies, child. But when I say that making me dislike you is very, very, wrong, I am telling the complete and total truth."
== bio: ==
"Mother," you ask tentatively, not looking up from your meal. The metallic clang of the curved silverware on the plate of polar bear is the only noise in your family's small community room, and you can't help but feel as if you've breached some code by breaking the hungry silence. Your family is seated on the balcony just outside the organic-looking tilted tower that your father has reign over, and you wish you could gather u your wings, take your objects, and fly off into the landscape you see, over the mountains shielding the palace like prison bars.
But you are barred away from leaving.
"Yes?" Your mother puts down her fork with an uncomfortable clatter, gulping down the final bite of her meat.
"Do you know a baroness?" You force yourself the say the words, knowing that if you hesitate any longer you'll never get to ask again.
"There are many baronesses," your father replies stoically. He was the one married into the royal family, not of true royal blood himself, but he knows every single dragon in the palace, it seems. Being a consort was a social crime in and of itself- everybody knew that.
"Can you describe them to me? I think I met one." You then shovel a bite of greyling into your mouth. If you're eating, you can't talk.
Your father sighs. "There is Permafrost, I believe. Gorgeous dragoness, must be a model for the painters. Spruce, she is rather more sensible than her sisters, although from her exercise one would think she wants to challenge the queen. And then Vanilla." He grimaced, listing off their names. Between peers of the same age, gossip and critiques and biting commentary was shared freely, but from the older generations to the young, it was awkward. “Vanilla... she doesn’t belong.” Your mother cats father a knowing glance; they have discussed these three dragonesses time and time again, but to share what they know with you is difficult. Generation divides are strong- but the baronesses hatred seems to be stronger.
"I think I met Vanilla," you quietly murmur, the instant the fish has downed your throat. "She blocked me as I was returning from school. Yelled at me, and criticized the queen."
"Oh, moons." Mother seems to wilt, rubbing her temples with her freshly manicured nails. "I've caught wind of that dragoness. I don't like what she's doing, not one bit." She seems to come to her royal senses, however, and eyes you suspiciously. "What did she say to you?"
"Thought I was unruly. Said the dragonets of the kingdom ought to grow up proper, since our queen isn't." You put down the fork, a sigh escaping your mouth. Father wipes his glasses with a fish skin cloth anxiously.
“You know, she doesn’t have the best reputation.” Mother scoffs it out, like that sentence alone means so much. You are still a child, self centered and seeing things on the surface. You scoff right back, unsure what a poor reputation means but wanting to side with your family.
Gesturing to the bracelets firmly grasped around her wrist, mother explains, “The dragoness was born like most of us. But she was always a troublemaker, always a rebel from a young age. I think she liked the queen though- Crystal’s old mother. Oh, the old queen was her favorite. But in school, she acted up, made up stories, made the other dragonets fearful. Nobody knew quite what to do with her, but alas, she inherited the position of nobility when she came of age and nobody stopped her.
“She owned a lot of land, back in the day--" Your mother pauses, eyeing your father with a look that could only mean, How much do we tell them? "Back when dragons still had property outside the palace, she owned a bit. It's what nobility does," she finally stated carefully.
"At school we were told that nobles are s'possed to be warriors. Soldiers, who run land."
"Not anymore. Things are different, child."
"Then why is she in the palace? Why is she allowed to live here when nobody else is?" You feel your voice rising anxiously.
"She used to run projects for the queen. She managed the palace and guarded the treasury. She was set to have an important job, actually, being of aid to the queen from inside the palace. But then--"
"What?" You lean forward, intrigued. You've never heard such... talk about a dragon as old as the baroness. You know little about the complexity of her situation- you know the complexity of the royal rankings, of the different jobs of nobles, of all the ranks of royalty, and so on, but you don't understand the real layers, everything else. The things you weren't taught in school.
"She stole a jewel. We don't know what she did with it- sold it to the enemies, perhaps."
You shiver. The enemies- you've always lived in socialized, normalized fear of them. The idea of the tribes being in harmony is a distant memory. You just know it's us-against-them.
== relationships: ==
sucks up to the queen
is disliked by everyone, tries to categorize everyone
cloud especially despises her
Category:Characters
Category:IceWings
Category:Females
Category:Status (Royalty)
Category:Work in Progress
Category:Content (Nibby the Bird)
Category:Deceased
Category:Occupation (Government)