The Fey Bard

[*UQT]

First Name: Belle "Belle, Ella, or 'DINNER'! I come really fast for that last one."
Last Name: Asen Cantor

Appearance: Supernatural. Her pure white hair seems to catch every random updraft and swirl around her. She radiates incredible warmth and empathy to the point she seems to glow... Or is she just glowing? As the daughter of a wealthy Sembian merchant she was given training in dance, and how to behave as a lady.  Though not a beauty in the classic sense, her large eyes, angular features, and up-turned nose give her a delicate, spritely look.

Race: Human Fey-blooded
Age: 26
Height: 5'6"
Weight: 100lbs

Eyes: Larger than normal, hyper expressive. Belle has no poker face, no ability to lie without wearing it all over her features. They are amber/brown. In some lights her eyes flash warm yellows and reds, in others they look near-black and bottomless. 

Hair: Her pure white hair has an unnatural shimmer. It is impossibly fine and soft, like the fur on a rex rabbit, or fine spider's silk, moving around her delicately as if it were alive. 


Personality Profile: Bright, warm, unreasonably loving and forgiving. At first glance may seems a little flighty and ditzy, but she is exceptionally well read on a variety of topics and may suddenly shift to intense scholarly discussion. She is optimistic to a fault, placing a sunny spin on most things. 

General Health: Good, sickly as a child
Deity: Sune
Initial Alignment: Neutral Good
Profession: Bardess
Base Class & Proposed Development: Bard Fey-blooded, mostly mind-affecting spells
Habits/Hobbies: Reading, Writing, Poetry, Dance, Acting, Singing, and Paper folding
Weapon of Choice: Rapier

Background: Sickly as a child she spent near 16 years in a sick bed under the care of various physicians who could not identify what was wrong with her. The best diagnosis they could give her was a "disease of the blood". Kept locked away in her room for her protection, through a fight of chronic anemia her hair faded from ash brown to pure white. 

She was fed bone jelly, spinach, and liver near constantly. She turns green at the smell of it now. Her two brothers used to sneak her other things and sweets to eat and gather on her bed to listen to her singing and stories. The occasional fight with paper dragons erupted. 

Her condition suddenly and drastically improved at 16. Her parents were used to protecting her but they engaged her in dance and other trappings of pretend-nobility at that time, encouraging her aspirations toward music and theater. Eventually she began to ask we her instructors always came to them, and why her brothers had courted many matches but no suitors had been introduced to her. 

Her parents could not get past her sickly childhood and told her that her brothers would always protect her at the manor. She was expected to stay and live out her days therein. She tried several times to reason with them, but eventually collected a modest sum of gold and took off into the night. Her oldest brother, Allen, eventually caught up with her. After a long talk he gifted her some special armor and modest supplies. She still writes home to her family. At present, she is disowned by her parents, who do not write back to her.  Both brothers actively write her.

Goals: Since leaving Sembia she has realized through a few near death experiences what her childhood illness was. Fey traits have manifested in her from a nymph ancestor, of deep empathy (at one point grief could kill her), charm, and some other odd enchantments she doesn't speak of unless she trusts a person. She has spent months training her mind and emotions so that a friend's grief can no longer make her physically ill. Her current goals are to be able to completely dispell her persistent fey traits so that people may see and know her as she is without fear of her fey charm taking hold. She feels at times that her true self is invisible and, given the choice, people will choose the nymph over her. She's had little evidence to the contrary, as even people who have known and professed to adore her, chose to remain under that influence.

[*UQT]

For some it is a choice. For me and these large eyes? Not so much. I can't help but be truthful, lies write themselves all over my face, but sometimes it is necessary to lie to protect what is right. What do I do then?

I'm too in my head about this... Lannia is showing me how to cook and I am a million miles away. I think of James... I think of his child growing in my belly and of his mother... Of the mage Nilimirith and my brothers... Of corruption, disrespect, and looming darkness.  Until mere months ago my world was a room full of bookshelves and a four posted canopy bed. It's so large now. It's almost swallowed me a few times.

I watch James hands move, and I fall into his smile. I am given to thinking it is only for me.  We need salt... A good excuse. No need for him to get geared up to walk a block to the market. I insist because I must get away. I walk toward the market, and when I am sure he is not following I find an isolated corner and I cry. I won't let him see it. I won't make him suffer. He's suffered enough, but I feel the suffering around me and it all but consumes me.





I must limit myself. Salt does not take long to fetch. A cloth for my face, a dab of makeup for the puffiness. Buy the salt... Return with it.

A bare step inside and I look into that smile again. Gods, I love that smile. I love the beautiful heart and flashing blue eyes. I will take every moment of the present. I drop the salt, and fall into his arms... Dinner is going to be burnt or cold, and I don't care.

That's how you lie when you can't... You just don't say anything.

[*UQT]

A large group at the fire outside the city is not abnormal. James has played for larger groups, but the tone as she approached was grave. Eyes shifted to her, and the tone got... Colder.  

James approached her and asked that they go for a walk away from the crowd. A priestess looked at her cooly and muttered, "Celestial Goddess, give me strength to hold my tongue tonight."

Clearly she doesn't know I speak Celestial...

Around the fire were mutters and curses about her.  She reacted to nothing. She followed James away, but she would be lying if she said her blood was not blooding, or that it wasn't easier to breathe now away from the group. James took her home and began to explain.

They found out she was Nymph-blooded and that she was exuding a charm spell of sorts.  People liked her.  All kinds of people.  Now they knew why.  She wasn't doing it on purpose.  That was why she always huddled so close to James and why she never hugged anyone.  She didn't want to charm or deceive them.  They didn't care though.  Finding out was enough to make them believe she was intentionally enthralling everyone she met. 

She kept from grinding her teeth.  She had helped them all in one way or another.  She had never asked them for anything.  She and James had bought and were renovating their house only with money that they earned honestly.  But somehow it was all a lie to these people and a manipulation.  If it had been intentional, why had she never once asked for anything? 

She had, in fact, bent herself to breaking for every one of them.  She had placed herself in danger time and again and asked nothing in return.  The charm came with an added gift of empathy.  She felt the emotions of those around her.  How could she not help?  Just like she'd felt their hate just now... She had done nothing truly wrong, but she had little remaining hope in the supposed righteous of their home. No longer a creature of faith and honesty, her blanched soul wept for all the love she had put out and how little had been returned... One can only give until it breaks them. 



And now they were in the city of doors... She felt the sickness of her youth returning.  Weather it was the city or the half dragon child she carried, she was getting more and more ill.  She would have asked James to return home to their estate on Toril but what home would they return to where she would not be lynched simply for being?

[*UQT]

So... Much... Suffering. 

It was everywhere. She could feel it on everyone.  There was no escape.  No escape ever.  She had to isolate herself from time to time to turn down the emotional noise enough to feel her own emotions which were...

She looked down into her shaking hands.  She was naturally pale, but she was getting worse.  She was feeling weaker, less able to rise from bed.  It was exactly the illness of her youth all over again.  If it continued to progress, she would be bedridden soon and barely able to make it to a window.  Once again it would be bone jelly, spinach, and liver.  Books an poetry without any real life of her own.  

She laid in bed after he left and she wept.  She was bombarded by the emotions of others outside, and yet unable to get close enough to help for fear of her nymph charm.  Inside was no life at all.  Inside was life behind the glass. She pulled out her poetry book and read a few of her favorites;

Pain and Pleasure

All of life's pains and pleasures come together and there is no reason why. 

My brothers gathered seconds ago under this grand, four posted canopy, 
animating paper dragons who, in a breath, crystalized with our joy,
and they hang in the air like a promise. 

Hope is the mistery we cling to, believing balance favors good. 
In this bitter moment I search for the meaning and some greater purpose, 
but the rude interruption of sharp pain binds me, sinking in and holding, 
and my paper dragons just stare.

It is natural to seek a purpose for each cold, wretched span of time. 
To try to explain away why some seem chosen to soak in loneliness, 
and to justify all that lacks in our fleeting chaotic existence.
But it just is, it always was.

The truth is life is wonderful and warm. Life is cold and unrelenting.
It offers no promise and no apology. We are here to live it. 
So I am sat bleeding for their curiosity; A puzzle unsolved, 
but the answers never come. 

Because life's pains and pleasures come together and there is no reason why.

Just Beyond the Glass

Light's brilliant song streams in golden rays,

A luminous path is made to my favorite perch.

Beyond two grand, locked panes is a story,

A local blacksmith is unloading his wares.

With him a doting and handsome young boy,

His nubby arms struggle to be proven.

One day they will carry the crates...

One day they will be as strong...

It's time again for the bleeding to begin,

Bled to show I've no blood to spare.

Brown locks gone white so long ago,

I can't remember... Were they really brown?

Then more bone jelly, spinach, and liver...

I hate bone jelly, spinach, and liver...

But eat I must to hope for one more day,

And whatever one day buys me.

I steal one last glance at the story,

A young prince upon his father's shoulders.

The blacksmith is sure, steady, a good man,

And he will shape his son in his image.

They seem warm, simple, and happy...

They seem alive, in love, and free...

I catch myself smiling at the beauty of it,

Even as cold tears track over my cheeks.

I freeze this perfect and brief infinity,

Storing it away like so many others.

Life is there... It's all right there...

Just beyond the glass...

She was in so much pain. . . As she got sicker it was harder to shut down her empathy.  The sadness of those around her was bringing back the illness.  She was almost sure of it.  The sickness made her more susceptible.  It was a vicious circle.

And the thought of being closed off again in this room made it shrink around her.  For the briefest moment. . . She wished for death. 

And death heard her. 

She felt herself slipping away, and it shocked her.  She thought she would end up bedridden for the pregnancy.  There had been so many close calls as a child.  She never thought...

"JAMES!" She cried and lifted to her feet scrambling toward the door, "The baby, please! The baby!"

She made it a bare few steps and toppled over by the table. 

Gods... No... The baby... 

And she, as well as the life she carried within her, were called to rest.  Even in her last moments, her very last tears weren't for her.  They were for the child that would never be and the man that would mourn them.  So dies every empath, never fully able to cry just for themselves and all the wrong that mere existence does them.