Sadie Thorn

## Sadie Kolitu Thorn

### Relatives

Annabella Devereaux (cousin), Morgan Thorn (father - mia), Liluye Coldwind (mother - deceased)

## Character Story:

Kolitu is the shortened version of her given name - she never uses the entire name and only shares it with those she is closest to.

Her mother was known as Liluye Coldwind of the Mashgalénde people (Mescalero Apache) who lived near the New Mexican border of the Texas Panhandle Her father was Morgan Thorn, a part-native texas bounty hunter - they met while he was pursuing a wanted outlaw that tried to hide out near where her people lived.

Morgan was well known in the region, so when he was injured pursuing the outlaw, natives took him to the village medicine woman for healing. Liluye was her apprentice, she helped care for the people and it was her job to also care for the horses and dogs.  After Morgan’s wounds were treated, she cared for his recovery, and in the process she came to care about him as well.  After she helped him recover and learned the story of why he was pursuing this outlaw, she decided to help him find the criminal he was after.

They became really close during this time and ended up wanting to stay together. The village was accepting of Morgan and they were married there. Kolitu was born soon after. She was born with her mother's dark hair and her father's eyes, a pretty girl with a slight but sturdy frame.

While they were happy there, their life among the people was only a few short years before a disaster struck that destroyed most of the village. The people had settled into one place for an unusually long time because of new sicknesses that were incapacitating far too many of the tribe, and wildfires broke out in the area.  Only a handful escaped the fires and malaria.

Those who were left went to settle with a neighboring village that was not so accepting of Morgan, so Morgan and Liluye took their daughter and settled in New Mexico, near where Morgan’s family came from. They traveled southwest, not far from the reservation lands. Kolitu grew up there in their modest home near the Rio Grande river, west of the Mescalero lands near the Lincoln National Forest.  The spot they picked to settle was down the river from the little town of Sourbend.

Kolitu was a quiet but inquisitive child who was very close with her mother.  Liluye knew about fabrics and wools and dyes, and had learned from her mother who was a weaver - so she gave up practicing medicine as she didn't have a tribe to care for, and made and sold blankets and ponchos at the town up the river to help support them. Kolitu always liked to go with her mother to take her woven goods to the general store, the town was an exciting place to visit and the shopkeeper was a kind soul who always gave the girl a bit of hard sugar candy.  Morgan continued his bounty hunting, and while he was a good husband and father, he was away a lot in pursuit of criminals. Whenever he was home, he spent a lot of time with her, teaching her about his life and how to track and shoot and survive.

Her favorite thing to do growing up was to take small discarded wools and bits of weaves from her mother's work and mix them with stones or wood or bits of feathers to create little toy animals. Her mother helped her learn how to find ways to make different kinds and she would spend hours scouring the trees and sands looking for things that could make her next toy animal. At night her mother would use the little animals as characters to tell her stories and tales of the spirits of the people. She taught her to listen to all the animals and learn how to help them.

While there were some other people in the region, they were fairly isolated, so she didn't really have any friends growing up, preferring the company of the dogs or horses.  She never grew very fond of music, instead preferring the music of voices, human or animal to instruments, but she loved the drums and would dance for hours to a drumbeat.

She always told her mother that her favorite time was when the air was cold, because the sky became her favorite color, the pale silver blue of clean wind.  Living close to the river, she loved to swim and hunt, and her favorite meal was a fresh fire roasted pheasant with wild onion, and her mother's hot cornbread.  Poultry has been her favorite food all her life, especially fresh pheasant, but she’s learned to like many things once odd to her.

Liluye wanted a bigger family, but she had always had complicated pregnancies.  The next two attempts at children failed, but she finally managed to get pregnant again when Kolitu was 9. Again there were complications and both Liluye and the baby died in childbirth despite the best efforts of the Sourbend doctor. The doctor was concerned about the child having no-one to look after her, but Kolitu insisted her father would be back soon. Morgan was away on a bounty hunt, so the doctor settled for keeping an eye on her, but this hunt Morgan never returned from. Kolitu was left alone in the cabin to fend for herself for a long time. Always reasonably self-sufficient, she kept to herself with just the dogs and horses for company for some time. The doctor was still concerned and as time passed, and Morgan failed to appear, he finally tracked down some of Morgan’s family and sent a telegram to Morgan's cousin Margaret. It took some time for them to arrange to respond.

Five months later, Margaret's husband Louis arrived in Sourbend and the doctor brought him to the house. He was there to collect Kolitu and take her home to live on their ranch with his wife who was Morgan's cousin, and his daughter Annabella.  Kolitu didn't want to leave but the adults said it was for the best and she had to do as she was told, so she took her animal toys, her mother's blanket, some clothes and one of the dogs.  The doctor said he would take care of the rest of the things and send along the money to help the family, so Louis took her to her new home.

Margaret was a lovely, caring woman who immediately took to Kolitu, seeing to it she had proper clothes and insisted on taking her to the local church and school with her daughter Annabella. She worried that people would treat her differently, so she told her she could have a proper Christian name for those places and that they would call her Sadie, because she always wanted another daughter named Sadie after her best friend growing up.  Kolitu quietly agreed because she didn’t know what else to do, surrendering to her new life.

As time passed, she and Annabella, who was the same age, became the best of friends - closer than most sisters, and they spent all their time together, playing and telling each other secrets and stories. Kolitu eventually became happy at the ranch - she was treated like one of the family.  The ranch raised cattle and had quite a few horses, so she was also thrilled to get to spend time with them.  Her childhood fantasies of being a bounty hunter gave way to dreams of being like her mother, what the people here called a ‘vet’, and a horse trainer and maybe having her own ranch someday.

It was a strange world for her, but she was very adaptable.  She went to church with her family as they wished, but she never felt very attached to it.  Spiritual and a bit superstitious by nature, she didn't care for the overly scripted religious practices.  She didn't believe in the preacher’s descriptions of heaven, instead holding on to her beliefs that the spirits of the departed were close and on hand to help those they loved. She had more belief in the spirits of the living and the land and the guidance of the Great Spirit than what she saw as the colonials replacement god.

Positive but practical, she learned to look at things carefully to try to understand them before voicing opinions or getting involved, but when she does voice her opinion, it is usually unadorned with flattery or extra words.  She continues to try to craft things, but doesn't think she will ever be as skillful as her mother.  The blanket her mother made her is still one of her most treasured possessions. She tries not to live in the past, but the biggest regret of her life is never finding out what happened to her father.  Morgan Thorn was never found or heard from and she has been wondering where he went and what happened to him for the last 10 years.

When Annabella met her now husband Mathias, at the church, Kolitu was very happy for her.  Louis was very happy that his daughter's beau was from an old French family on his father's side, and was pleased with the match.  They married and decided to move out to Lemoyne, and Annabella asked Sadie to go with them.