[hider Joy]
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[center][h2]Joy[/h2][/center]
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31  [b]|[/b]  ♀  [b]|[/b]  Honorhall, Riften  [b]|[/b]  Nord/Imperial  
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[i]Barmaid, Bard, Aspiring Novelist[/i]
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Willpower (Major) Personality (Minor)[/sub][/center]

[center][b][sub]══════ A P P E A R A N C E ══════[/sub][/b][/center]

[indent]Joy is of average height, and her figure is soft and unthreatening, she has a fondness for food but keeps herself in an enviably svelte shape that has caught the eyes of more than a few men and women. During winter, she has the pale appearance typical of a Nord, her hair falls like fire to her collarbones, in soft curls -- one section happens to be far more unruly and so she often tucks it behind a hairband. Joy does not care too much for over grooming herself, she is not a vain individual, and yet she still radiates an undone kind of beauty, her smile is especially disarming in its sincerity.

If she is fair in winter, her Imperial heritage shows in the summer, the sun drawing out a more olive tone to her skin. Her hair, too, takes on a far more golden lustre in the sunlight. 

Perhaps the most standout of her features are her eyes. They carry the colour of a brittle blue sky, and are warm with happiness. She communicates well with expression, not averse to raising a brow to be coquettish, or pulling her full lips downwards into a faux frown to coax a laugh from someone else. When Joy smiles, it is clearly a mischievous one that reflects her mind at work.

Under her clothing, she bares the scars of her trade. An accident with a pan of boiling sugar has left a particularly nasty burn across her ribs, trickling to her hips. It makes her nervous and insecure, to have such a wound; at the same time, it is her secret. She sees it as a stream, and looks at it as her reminder of the current of life. As well as the sugar stream, her hands are peppered with knife cuts - scars from years ago, and always some more recent marks. She is not quite as bothered by these, as she sometimes is about her larger burn.
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[center][b][sub]═══════ P E R S O N A L I T Y ══════[/sub][/b][/center]

[indent]Joy is at her very essence, a hopeless romantic. She has searched endlessly for requited love, whether that is familial, found in platonic friendship, or romantic love. It is the only thing she has ever felt that her life was truly lacking. [i]A home[/i]. She is poetic in her speech, and even more so in her thought. Observant of the world around her, she sees beauty in everything, even if her life has shown her nothing but ugliness. 

She is naturally charismatic, with a curiosity about everyone and everything. She is the kind of woman who carries you away with her, and makes you feel as if you are the only one who matters to her. It is a byproduct of her living a life where people come and go as freely as they need to. She expects only short relationships from those she encounters. They move on, and she stays behind - in the moments she shares with others, she wants to see the world through their eyes.

The hardships she has faced have never broken her spirit, and instead they have only ever made her more adamant to find happiness in dark spaces, and she always does. She brushes off negativity, and has an easy way of approaching almost anyone, finding it easy to make a good impression. Her empathic nature lends itself well to finding trust in others.

A practicing bard and performer of sorts, she adores music and brings a flair of musicality to most of the things that she does - writing songs about her experiences in love, life, and even penning songs about the tales of deeds of those she has met. 

Like anyone else, Joy is not without the ability to feel deep sadness. She grieves for the life she never had, and the mystery of her parentage will always haunt her on some level. Her own insecure questions that she carries in her heart for her mother and father sting her from time to time, but she hides this well. It would take someone who knew similar pain to find that within Joy.

Joy is a caretaker to those around her, giving herself almost selflessly to the needs of others. She is more bold and daring than her lack of skills should allow her to be, she speaks for those in need, and is not afraid to speak her mind loud and proud when it comes to matters of morality and justice. [/indent]

[center][b][sub]═══════ H I S T O R Y ══════[/sub][/b][/center]
[indent]

My name is Joy, [i]just Joy.[/i] 

Nobody knows where or when I was born, only where I was found. I was discovered abandoned in Riften, under the shawls of the first snow of Frostfall. It was the blurred vision of a blushing drunk, and his curiosity that followed that led to my being rescued from a sure death, and soon after that encounter, I was sent to Honorhall Orphanage.

It was a bleak childhood. The Matron of the Orphanage was crueler behind closed doors and I spent most of my time dreaming about my future. I always felt so deeply unsettled, and I was never satisfied with the nonchalance and disregard of who I really was, of who left me, of who my parents were. 

My fellow orphans and I would play together with the few toys we had, often we’d fashion dolls and the like from the sticks and stones in the yard and we would play out our lives in those hours of free time. I have never been able to cast a spell, but I like to believe that the other orphans and I created magic by the fireplace from pure imagination. 

I watched over the years as one by one they were each adopted and I never saw them again. We had always promised to be friends forever, but once their ‘forever’ was with a family that loved and chose them… My forever with them was extinguished. 

At 14, with no hopes of adoption at my age, I was simply sold to a Dunmer Madam named Minasi. I rode with her in the back of a cart from Riften to Windhelm, I was frightened, my life, as miserable as it had been, was changing. I always believed that it was better the misfortune that you know, than the one that you did not. She barely spoke a word, only prodded and poked at me on the ride.

I was soon put to work in her brothel, The Blushing Hawk. I was bought as her maid, since she was frailer in her age now and ailed with a rattling cough. The other women she employed were too busy with duties of a different kind to be of any other use to her. Minasi worked me hard, and over time I learned that this was simply her pride, and her need to run a safe place for the people who stepped in.  

She was certainly refined, and the unmistakable matriarch of her establishment, but I could see in the smouldering embers of her eyes that she was wounded in many ways more than her ill health. I theorised that perhaps once upon a time, she had been just a girl here too, how she may have loved and lost, as many of us did. Her temper was coarse, in a way that I could only liken to a saber-cat with a thorn wedged in her paw. She was eager to react to any touch. Her flame had gone out. 

After a year or two of that, the last of her kitchen staff left and I was then put to work in there. I’d never even picked up a knife or peeled a potato, but I learned quickly. Before long, I’d moved on from simple stews, to pies, to some rather exquisite desserts. When I wasn’t cooking, I was plucking the strings of a lute that had been left behind by a patron. The very same one I have now. I taught myself to play music, putting myself through the rigorous torture of freezing the tips of my fingers in the snow just so that I could play as cleanly as possible. What else could I do, but give something my all? It was how I showed the dedication to my craft. I still do it to this day. After this, Minasi saw something valuable in me and at the late age of 19 she started teaching me how to read and write.

I struggled with it at first and she would slap the backs of my hands if my penmanship was anything less than perfect. I think for close to a year the skin was red raw -- but I learned. That’s my gift you see, persistence, and the voracious hunger to learn crafts. As she continued to lose her vitality, I became the one holding the establishment together. She was approaching the winter of her life, and I, my spring. I kept the girls and the patrons fed, I sang and played music while they waited, I kept the place clean, mended the sheets, curtains, and clothing. 

It had been a slow evening when I came to her in her bed, I could see that the colour from her eyes had drained completely, and there was no longer any light behind them. She was the cruel mother I had never wanted, a far cry from the kind woman in my dreams who nurtured and took care of me, held me, and fed me with warmth. But, however I looked at it, Minasi had raised me, and everything I had, I had her to thank for. There was no love between us, my coming into her life was a transaction, how could there be love? 

Minasi had told me once that we lived our lives like a stream, travelling in more or less one direction until we were broken off into something that led us to a new current, a new path...

That change came soon enough after Minasi had passed. Disruption and bloodshed in the city brought tension, strangers, and whispers until finally the sky opened -- blooming like a flower raining fire. The shadows of wings darkened the streets, and the Blushing Hawk was just an obstacle in the path of someone else's terrible conflict. In that instant our lives changed forever, and we were forced to take what we could and flee, or perish. We had that choice, so many of the ones we knew were not given it. They were bones and dust on the ground.

That day, the flow of my life was altered and I was torn from those I had chosen as my family, from the world that I had known for most of my adult life. It wasn’t until the sun came back, that I learned that throughout those definitive years, I had been blind. 

All I had seen day after day was The Blushing Hawk. It was so much so, that the only thing that had mattered in my world was that rickety brothel, in the backstreets of grey Windhelm. With only it’s ashes now swept into the air, I was forced to open my eyes and I observed that most people had nothing to do with my world at all. I couldn’t stop thinking about the life I could have led, had fate not carried me on that cart with Minasi from Riften to the doors of the Hawk.

Sometimes the only way to carry ourselves through such tragedy is by believing that our dreams may come true, and our prayers are answered. My only hope now is that one day, in some quiet place, there will be a house on a hill with a candle in the window for me. 

Calling me home at last.[/indent]

[SUB][b]▼   S K I L L S[/b][/sub]
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    ► [b]Speechcraft - Music and Empathy[/b] - [abbr=She has the gift of the gab, and a charisma naturally oozes from her. She is authentically herself, and tries to be a friend to all.]Expert[/abbr]
    ► [b]Provisioning - Culinary arts[/b] - [abbr=Give her ingredients and she’ll make you one of the best meals of your life, a dish that will leave you satisfied, happier, and warm to your very soul.]Expert[/abbr]
    ► [b]Tailoring[/b] - [abbr=Mending hands, she’ll fix holes in your clothing, repurpose drapes into a dress and vice versa.]Adept[/abbr]

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[SUB][b]▼  R E L A T I O N S  &  A F F I L I A T I O N S[/b][/sub]
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    ► [b]Honorhall Orphanage[/b]
    ► [b]The now-destroyed Blushing Hawk[/b]
    ► [b]A number of adventurous men she once called lovers, who are occasionally the subject of her songs.[/b]
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[SUB][b]▼   E Q U I P M E N T[/b][/sub]
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    ► [b]Stylish linen rucksack.[/b]
    ► [b]Coin Purse - 47 septims currently.[/b]
    ► [b]Lyre, Lute, Ankle Chimes.[/b]
    ► [b]A brooch in the shape of wings with a blue stone in the centre - the only clue she has to her parentage. She keeps this hidden.[/b]
    ► [b]Sewing and knitting needles, threads.[/b]
    ► [b]A set of 6 chef’s knives, and the tools to keep them sharp and well maintained.[/b]
    ► [b]Tasting spoons seem to litter her pockets.[/b]
    ► [b]Pinches and pouches of salt in various grind sizes, as well as sugars and other herbs - always somewhere on her person to sprinkle into a dish without searching too far.[/b]
    ► [b]Parchments, notebooks, quills, and ink pots -- a supply of everything she needs to continue writing her songs, and more recently, a novel that she is working on drawn from the stories of those she meets..[/b]
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[SUB][b]▼   C L O T H I N G  &  A R M O U R[/b][/sub]
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    ► [b]Casual[/b]:[i]Never one for vanity, Joy dresses in simple outfits - usually in shades of light hues, figure hugging feminine clothing that do not necessarily have grandiose embellishments, but little touches here and there in pretty stitching. Practical clothing, that allows her to move freely. She will often be wearing her apron as she gets to work in the kitchens, or to her other barmaid duties.[/i]
    ► [b]Formal[/b]:[i]When performing, she dresses slightly more luxuriously - as much as can be allowed. She’ll wear deeper hues, revealing cuts, and often opt to go barefoot, banded chimes adorn her ankles and she will show a lucrative amount of skin to display them.[/i]
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