Zalia

The mother of Cookie and mate to the pack leader, Balduf. During Cookie's childhood, she was the main healer for the pack and prided herself in her ability to keep the other pack members healthy and safe when they weren't on the battlefield.

## Appearance

### Physical Appearance

Standing at 5'7'', Zalia has the long white hair that gets passed down to her daughter, along with blue eyes. She has a more slender build that made her better at dodging than actually fighting.

### Clothing

Raised by the main healer of the pack, she did what she could to cling to the traditions of the past, especially with her clothing. But soon after her relationship developed with Balduf, she shifts to more modern clothing options, but still choses to continue wearing traditional jewelry so she didn't feel like she was giving up on her culture.

## Behavior and Personality

As a healer, Zalia had a more caring and protective personality than her mate. Oftentimes some of the other pack members tried to come to her with their concerns as they were scared to confront Balduf on their own, so she did what she could to help them communicate to her mate. The pack loved and valued her as their best healer, and she did what she could to help and protect everyone around her, regardless of if they were related or not. "This pack is my family, so I will do what I can do protect them until my last breath."

## Representation

### Language and Heritage

Zalia's parents never understood why their generation began to shift away from teaching their children their heritage, and continued to teach Zalia about it anyway. While they weren't able to teach her much because of how busy they were with their healer jobs, she picked up bits and pieces of the language, learned all she could about different traditions and ceremonies, and even continued to wear more traditional clothing to try and keep their heritage alive. She had every intention of passing down her knowledge to Cookie, but she got too busy with her own healer responsibilities while also trying to stop Balduf from getting the pack killed with his antics.

> **ⓘ** ***The culture of Cookie's pack is based off of Choctaw, a real life Indigenous tribe. Please keep in mind that in real life Cookie is Choctaw and has done a lot of research into all of the Choctaw bits that she brings into her character's story!***
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## Backstory

Zalia was the daughter of the pack's top two healers, and was raised learning all kinds of things about both healing and the pack's culture. She got used to helping out her parents with their duties, and ended up training under her father to become the next healer of the pack. When her parents died, she took over as the pack's top healer, doing what she could help keep the pack alive and healthy. She wasn't much of a fighter so she wasn't able to protect them in the way that she wished, but she did everything in her power to keep them alive anyway.

What she didn't expect was that she would end up falling in love with the leader of her pack, Balduf Conri. They even ended up having a kid together, which was one of the first signs that something in Balduf was changing, which worried Zalia. She did what she could to protect Cookie from Balduf's intense training, which apparently was the same kind of training his father had given him as a pup, but Zalia couldn't remember since she spent most of her time with her parents and the other healers and didn't spend that much time with the other pups. Regardless, she did what she could to help Cookie get out of training, since it was very clear that she wasn't interested in following in her father's footsteps, but that all ended when she died when one of the neighboring packs decided to attack their pack as a way to confront Balduf and try to put an end to his terrorizing.