Appearance Ferra is a young African American woman of fairly average height, standing at about 5'5". She is strong and sturdy, with broad shoulders and squarish hands. However, her build overall is also quite average, featuring feminine curves without being especially slim or wide. Equally as average are the rectangular glasses which rest upon the bridge of the distinguished Nubian nose that sits above her full, dark lips. Nothing out of the ordinary for a woman of her age and ethnicity.
However, it is there that the ordinariness of Ferra's features ends.
The eyes behind those standard thick lenses are a bright and notable shade of brown that is almost more akin to a honey-gold. Her dark and frizzy hair contains an unusual amount of reddish brown which stands out against the blacker parts. Yet if anyone were to pick out her most distinctive physical trait, they would certainly point to the pale peachy splashes of colour which are scattered across her otherwise mocha skin. This unusual pigmentation is known as vitiligo, a rare skin condition which Ferra was born with.
She looks and behaves much the same whether in uniform or out of it, even in the way that she wears her hair back in a messy bun or ponytail rather than perming or straightening it like some women might do. Another thing which people might even notice in particular about her appearance is that her skin and her clothes -whether her standard Army fatigues or her civvies- are often smeared with grease from the machines she is prone to working on. Overall she does not look very tidy, but she caries herself with a such dignity and power that one soon forgets the grime.
Personality Much like her looks, Ferra's manner does not adjust in the slightest whether she is on or off duty. She is at all times a strong, hard working woman who doesn't put up with anyone's nonsense or harassment. To say that she has a professional demeanor would be wrong, for even her personality is untidy and rough around the edges. However, she is a stern sort, and although she has a certain level of casualness to her nature, she mainly comes off as someone who knows precisely what they are doing and just how to get it done. Additionally, while far from submissive, she is very respectful of her superiors in her own rough way, and follows her orders with rigor. In that sense, she is more than professional enough for the military.
In fact, there does not seem to be much to her aside from that brusque diligence. Not to say that she is wanting in character, or that she lacks depth. It is simply that her entire life has been such that the best way for her to get by was by being that rough and serious type. She never put up a front or pretended to be something that she was not, but it did cause her to forgo other things which she otherwise might have naturally developed. Such as fully relaxing, or opening up to others.
Now, Ferra can have fun, of course. She can laugh and joke around same as anyone. But with far less frequency, perhaps. She knows how, but has not often indulged herself in it. After all, there are far more important matters to attend than to mess about in nonsense like that, and truthfully she so rarely let anyone get close enough to even cause her to think about letting loose, anyway.
Even so, she is not all hard. There are times, rare though they may be, when she can be quite gentle. When she can be supportive and comforting. Warm, even. This can be seen sometimes in her interactions with her father, or occasionally with children or the broken or downtrodden. And every so often, just once in a rare while, one might even catch a glimmer of it in her eyes as she works on a machine.
Background
Biography
Her birth came as a shock.
Carole Lincoln-Freeman had been sickly and weak during the later stages of the pregnancy. So when it came to pass that her newborn baby came out with motley, maculate skin, there was much concern that there was something perilously wrong with her. However, she instead proved to be a strong and sturdy child, and passed all tests of health with flying colours. Such that her grateful parents named her Ferra with the hope that she would grow up as hale and as hardy as iron.
But her mother only grew more sick and weak until she passed away only three years later. Cancer, they said. She had always been frail. A delicate sort. Her body simply had not been able to fight off such malignancy, and it was presumed that she had already been afflicted during her pregnancy, perhaps even being the cause of her child's melanin deficiency. It was a difficult and painful thing, to be sure.
But Ferra was strong after all.
Although she was yet too young to fully understand, she could clearly see how devastated her father, Isaac, was and that was all that she needed to know. She took to spending her time tending to him, doing her childish best to cheer him up and take care of him when he was at his worst, gradually learning (albeit with guidance from the man himself) to cook and to clean and whatever else needed to be done to help him. And he was a good and loving father who did his best as well to raise and care for her on his own.
Now, Isaac Freeman worked as a mechanic at a Green Book registered auto shop, mainly to service negros or the occasional unbiased white folk. Sometimes he would leave Ferra with a neighbor to look after her, but most days he would take her with him to work. There she spent the majority of her childhood, playing in the back, or doing her homework in the corner once she was old enough to go to school. Most often, however, she would stick close to her father's side, watching and learning as he taught her about engines and radiators, and how to fix them or make sure that they kept working in peak condition. Before long she was doing what she could to help around the shop. It was hard, dirty work.
But Ferra was strong, after all.
She took to it like a fish to water, adopting the tricks of the trade quickly and with great diligence. Acting mainly as a runner when she was younger, but gradually coming to work on the cars themselves by the time she was twelve. Hard work, yes. But she liked it, and it was also good, honest work, that Isaac felt that was incredibly important. Not in aim for any sort of recognition, for he was a humble man, but rather because anything that could help and support his fellow negros was of value to him. He had always been an idealist with a heart for the good of his people.
However, Ferra did not share these aspirations or loyalties in any way. She had no reason to. When she had begun to school with other children, she had found that whether black or white, none treated her as though she were one of them at all. She was ostracized, and even sometimes looked at as though she had some contagious disease, which she expected that they indeed thought. There were so many differences between the different races, but she was different from all of them and children can be very cruel.
But Ferra was strong, after all.
She was never hurt by their words. They never made her feel bad about herself, for how could it be true that she was of lesser value than anyone else when her father needed her so? How could she be diseased when she was always so healthy? It was quite clear to her that nothing that they said of her mattered. All that mattered to her was her father and the auto shop, and so although it saddened Isaac to see it, she closed herself off from others and never made any effort to get close to anyone, choosing instead to focus on her studies and on work.
Despite how distant and uninterested in the rest of the world as she seemed to be, when the United States government declared war on Northern Vietnam in 1958, the young woman did not hesitate to enlist. She hopped on a bus from her home town of Oak Park, Illinois and headed to Chicago to sign up for whatever job she would be the most helpful in. At first they ignored her mechanics background and assigned her as a nurse, as they did most women at that time. However, so often and with such proficiency did she replace burst tires and repair broken down machines around the base that soon she was reassigned to be one of the much needed mech technicians. She was shipped overseas to the harsh, dark jungles of Vietnam, where she would experience the vicious horrors of the war first hand. Horrors that would break many a soldier in the years to come. Guerrilla warfare, jungle perils both natural and manufactured, and countless more traumas that came with it all.
But Ferra is strong, after all.
Lady Selune
TheMushroomLord
