Talien

"A life without fame can be a good life, but fame without a life is no life at all."

-Clive James

**RETIRE INFO:** Retire both

**NAME:** Talien

**GENDER:** Demigirl (DFAB)

**PRONOUNS:** she/her/hers

**ORIENTATION:** Biromantic bisexual

**BIRTHDATE:** Midwinter 2746

**AGE:** 20 as of spring 2767

**LOCATION:** High Reaches Weyr

**OCCUPATION:** Wingrider, journeyman harper

**WING:** Firestorm

**EYES:** Brown

**HAIR:** Brown, shoulder-length

**HEIGHT AND BUILD:** 5' 6", thinner side of average

**PLAY-BY:** Jessica Henwick

**FULL APPEARANCE:** Talien is pretty, though far from gorgeous. Her brown hair is kept to her shoulders, and she wears it down when she can, though she always keeps a simple ribbon on hand to tie it up. She has brown eyes, with nothing special about them. Her facial features are round, and she usually has a pleasant expression on her face. Pleasant enough to not draw negative attention, but not exuberant enough to have people wondering. She prefers clothing in solid colors, nothing fancy, but well-made and in good repair. She dislikes wearing skirts and dresses, but will wear them if necessary.

**PERSONALITY:** Talien's main goal is not to draw attention to herself. She's seen firsthand the effects of being in the spotlight all the time, in her parents and in some of her fellow apprentices at the Harper Hall, and wants no part of it. This isn't to say she's against social interaction. She enjoys having a few close friends as well as a select group of acquaintances. She just doesn't want to be popular or widely known for anything. After all, being a loner attracts a different sort of attention. As does underachieving. She strives to keep a happy medium in everything that she does, to the point of wariness whenever someone remembers her after meeting her just once. Attention is very unwanted.

Of course, having a unique dragon draws unavoidable attention. Just by merit of her Impression, Talien is beginning to accept attention, and all that it brings. It doesn't help that Arellath is an exuberant dragon who loves to introduce Talien to everyone he meets. She's beginning to find more of a balance and realize that maybe having a bit of a reputation isn't the worst thing in the world. It's partly because she can't find it in herself to repress Arellath's joy for her own sake, as much as she wants to.

Talien enjoys being a Harper, including the teaching aspects. Making people happy, teaching them what she knows, enjoying performance, she's all for it. She's beginning to harbor dreams of being an assistant weyrlingmaster some day. Weyrsinger is still too prominent a position for her to truly aspire to, but she's tossed the idea around in her head a bit. When she's overwhelmed by attention, she likes to play some music, and doesn't mind if she draws some interest for it. As long as it's not too much.

**FAMILY:** Talana (master smith) - mother, Lienar (master smith) - father, Ielan (candidate) - younger brother

**SIGNIFICANT OTHER:** N/A

**BIRTHPLACE:** Smithcraft Hall

**HISTORY:** Born as the child of two accomplished Smiths, a power couple of sorts, Talien had scrutiny on her from the beginning. Her parents were loving, but work increasingly swallowed them up. Talien and her brother were raised by the creche, with mixed results. Other children were jealous of their parents' success, and the pair were not-so-subtly pushed toward the Smithcraft by well-meaning creche workers.

Talien took to Harper lessons from an early age, wanting to produce music herself. She saw little appeal in the toil of Smithcraft, no matter how "useful" it might be, but music? That, she loved. As soon as she was old enough, she begged her parents to let her go to the Harper Hall to apprentice there.

Her parents were understanding, if a little disappointed. She didn't quite fit in at the Harper Hall either, at least once she explained her origins. Where she had shone among the children at the Smithcraft Hall, she found herself average among the self-selecting Harper apprentices. It was a hard adjustment for her, but she'd seen the pressures of being above average in her parents, and was glad for it in the end.

She turned out to be well-rounded, not excelling in any one area but being better at a greater number of things than average, and walked the tables around her eighteenth Turning-day. To her surprise, she was Searched for Telgar on a visit back home. She went along with it, wanting to un-disappoint her parents a little bit.

Where Talien had hoped to Impress a nice green or blue, maybe a brown, she instead found herself facing a bouncy purple-and-yellow dragon, who drew nearly all the attention that day. He insisted he was not a garnet and definitely not a gold, and that he was definitely a *he*, despite his coloring. Talien named his color after a rock she'd seen in her childhood. Charoite.

Tired of all the attention she and Arellath got, most of it unwanted on her part, she decided to transfer to High Reaches as soon as she graduated. She'd gotten word that her brother had also been Searched and had ended up as a candidate there. And High Reaches wouldn't care as much about her mutant dragon, right?