[center][hider=Nenra Corislen]
[img] http://pm1.narvii.com/6502/e286fac54dc66657f3c2e38facde361b7a6cb564_00.jpg [/img]
[sub][i]A slender young bride with pale olive skin, shoulder-length light brown whisps of hair, and striking gold-green eyes. Her clothes are very simple, clearly crafted by hand, and she carries herself confidently. She has a very serious depth in her face, a vaguely haunted look always in her eyes.[/i][/sub]
[h2]Nenra Corislen[/h2]	

[b]Race:[/b]
Gemmenite
[b]Age:[/b]
Eighteen
[b]Element(s):[/b]
Earth
[b]Height:[/b]
5’3”

[b]Bio:[/b]
A quiet, motherly young Gem, Nenra spent her early childhood in part of a large, happy family, working a farm with her eight siblings and few dozen cousins. The town they lived in was mostly comprised of their extended family and two others – trading was a simple affair, the inn was managed by one of the grandmothers, as were the shops, and everyone else stayed in the fields or the farmhouses. Subsistence and self-reliance was the way of life.

That all changed when Nenra was fourteen. One of her younger cousins contracted a mysterious illness – the poor girl’s whole body was covered by a multitude of small white, oozing boils, and she quickly grew weak, feverish and delirious, and expired a mere two weeks later. No one else had seemed to have caught it, and amid the mourning there was a spark of hope that no one else would die.

The day after poor Liilin was buried, four of her other cousins started sprouting boils and coughing. It spread likewise throughout the entire town until all but a handful of the residents were sick. Nenra was diligent about scrubbing herself, washing her hands almost until they bled whenever she had to be around her family, and doing everything in her power to keep the farm running in between taking care of them. One of her younger brothers left the town on the fastest horse to track down an herbalist from a better city – there must have been something to be done.

But there was nothing. When he returned with a doctor, the doctor grimly informed them that it was the weeping pox. Nothing could be done about it except keeping the victims comfortable and well-hydrated – if they were strong, they would survive. If not, they would perish. The doctor left the town, advising they raze it to the ground, for the illness could linger in wood and earth for years after it had faded, waiting to strike again.

By the time the plague left the town, it was absolutely decimated. Her mother and father were dead, many of her aunts and uncles as well. Not an adult in the village had escaped the illness, and those that remained alive were so weakened by it that they were scarcely able to take care of themselves, nevermind the farms and gardens. Of the children and teens, many had perished as well, but those that didn’t soon bounced back to full functionality, if an exceptionally scarred, disfigured functionality.

Word spread along the road that the town was to be avoided like… well, like the plague. Nenra was fine with that. There was a harvest to be brought in – with not a working soul above the age of twenty – and … too many dead to bury. The words the physician had spoken haunted her. “burn this place, or it will be everyone’s grave.”

They couldn’t bury the bodies, so they burned them. The earth elementalists among the group stirred the ash into the earth, tilling the soil and sprouting a forest of massive rosebushes from it. Mother’s roses, as later visitors to the town would identify them as. 

Then they went about their lives, as best they could. Nenra and a few of the other girls wound up as caretakers of the orphaned children, and taking care of the elderly. Everyone with Earth magic quickly became adept at control of it – they had to be, with twenty sets of hands doing the work previously done by a hundred. Farms had to be kept, linen spun and woven, cows milked, goats herded. Life continued on.

They all knew of the drakken, of course. One of their cousins had been taken when they were younger, but they’d imagined word had gotten out about the pox and that the village no longer had young, desirable girls. So it was to shock and horror when the Drakken reaping caravan rolled through their village. They took one look around and decided that this was a stop for supplies only, and raided the storehouses and didn’t bother to pay the few shopkeepers for their trouble.

As they were getting ready to leave one of them noticed Nenra. Though she was hardly a specimen of beauty, she was the most beautiful eligible girl in town (by simple virtue of not having the deep pockmarks and raised scarring from the pox) and eventually, after some discussion, ordered to come along.

She would have resisted, but they threatened violence. She took one look at her scared, heartbroken family, set her jaw, and stepped into the carriage. No more lives would be lost on her watch. Even without her to take care of them, the little ones were getting older and were now able to help in the fields and take care of their own mothers and grandmothers. The younger teens had mastered the element enough that they could continue to bring in the harvest, to till the fields and plant them.

They would survive. Sure as the soil beneath her feet and the sun on her shoulders, they would endure. Whether she would or not, she was not so sure.

[b]Other:[/b]
N/A

[b]Adult Content Preference:[/b]
Fade to black please!
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