she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful

She is sort of girl who captures attention when she walks into a room, though whether it’s because of her looks or simply the way her mother taught her to hold herself ('act like you own the place') is uncertain. She is lean and muscled from a life of hunting and surviving in Halo. Her hair, long and black and lightly curled, is often in a braid over her right shoulder. Long hair gets in the way, but she cannot bring herself to cut it - a vanity she allows herself. Her skin is lightly scarred and dirty, marked with faded white lines and some pink gashes here and there. None of her visible scars are anything more than the product of life. Her largest scar is not generally visible, hidden beneath clothes and the braid that unconsciously covers it. If anyone does see it, it is a large and imperfect circle the size of an ursur tusk, the skin still a deep pink and forever mangled.

Tattoos

• A tattoo peeks out from beneath her clothing on her left shoulder, the wings of at least one black bird visible. There are three in total, flying up her back, aimed as if they might fly off her shoulder and disappear one day.
• A small dove on her right wrist.

Clothing
Weaver tends to wear practical clothing, cut low when she can get away with it though that's rare in the cold of Halo. Pants are her usual style, though she enjoys the occasional dress when she's trying to gain attention. Usually she can be found wearing a black cloak, the collar made of raven feathers that her brother has shed over the years.

She wears a belt of knives, slung at an angle around her waist, and she seems like the kind of girl who has more of them hidden in boots and probably her undergarments, just in case. A long, elaborate scythe hangs across her back, the blade protruding from what looks vaguely like a raven’s head.

they all stood like her

Weaver is a wild, but reliable thing. As the oldest left in her family, she has learned to provide, using the skills given to her before her family had been taken from her, bit by bit. She is a hunter and a capable fighter. When she isn’t being a responsible adult, Weaver finds herself in a bar or occasionally with a boy. Normally though she is prone to shameless flirting with no real intentions.

Raised with two brothers, Weaver is tough and unafraid. She is truthful to a fault, willing to hurt you rather than lie to your face, though she will lie if the situation calls for it. Her mother’s influence is not lost on her, and Weaver wields her sexuality as easily as she wields her scythe. Everything is a weapon and an asset.

With only Korbin left in her family, she is overly protective of her little brother and those she cares about, unwilling to lose others though she will rarely admit to caring so fiercely.

history, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived

Weaver has eked out an existence, as most Halovians have, for the course of her life. Trapped in a wasteland of a tundra, Weaver has done her best to survive. She was born into a family of no particular note, though sometimes she wonders whether that was in fact true of her mother or not. The timeline didn’t match up, yet her mother (Straia) had always struck Weaver as someone who would have fought against the Old Gods all those many years ago. It was impossible, but then again, so were so many other things but they happened anyway. Her mother never would have answered though, and so Weaver never asked.

Weaver had two brothers. Half-brothers, technically, as Weaver was the product of her mother’s old flame and true love, a man that could not be bothered to stick around but showed up only when the wind blew him their way. John, bless his heart, cared for Weaver like his own anyway. Of the entire family, only John remained an Accepted. His name alone ought to give away the plainness of him. A steady, trustworthy, reliable man. Weaver suspected that Straia settled down with him simply to balance out her wild, fire-like nature, to make sure there would be someone steadfast in their lives.

Weaver and her older brother, Erebor, both manifested their magic young (long before they understood the consequences of having it). Straia did her best to teach them, though Weaver learned very little given her short time with her mother. Erebor learned more, though much of it he’d had to learn on his own. His power was over the earth, not fire (a thing that suited her stoic, mountain of a brother). But Straia and Weaver both controlled fire (a thing that suited them both, each in their own way). Only Korbin, her younger brother, was touched by the Gods. One morning they’d found a raven in his room instead of a child, and that was that.

It was not a good life, but it was life, and she was content. Erebor and John taught her to fight, to hunt, to stay alive.

All that knowledge doesn’t guarantee safety though. Not in Halo. Not in Caido. John died of sickness, passing away in the middle of the night covered in sweat and vomit. Straia disappeared, to where, Weaver doesn’t know. She couldn’t leave Halo, and yet, she was gone. Lost to the snow or to an Ursur. Weaver hopes it was something more exotic than a common snow storm or Ursur though. She hopes her mother died waging war with a giant or a dragon, living that impossible life as only Straia knew how.

Erebor died at the hands of an ursur, technically, though it stills feels as if he’d died at her hands instead. They were out hunting when the weather turned, going from the normal snow of their everyday life to a blizzard in an instant. The world turned white and opaque, and it was all they could do to fight their way home. They were brave and young, but not fools, and they knew their limits. They’d been close to the Citadel, close to home, when the ursur came out of the white. They hadn’t seen it, hadn’t heard it. With warning, she knows they would have been okay. With warning, Erebor could have simply crushed it with a boulder.

It came at her first. Weaver scrambled for one of the knives in her belt, numb fingers fumbling and tangling in the folds of her thick black cloak. The ursur was faster, piercing a hole in her chest with one if its massive tusks. She managed to free a knife, stabbing wildly, blindly, at its face until the creature backed a step off. Weaver collapsed.

She remembers very little, but she remembers the blood that poured from her; she remembers the sticky, warm feel of it as it soaked through her gloves, hands pressed to the hole in her chest. She remembers Erebor’s battle cry, remembers how it ripped the earth beneath her, remembers seeing him launch himself at the ursur…

And then, nothing. Someone heard her brother though. Someone found her, brought her to a healer. Days passed in a haze, forgotten, lost days. Korbin’s face was there, but never Erebor’s. She slept through his funeral, not that there had been a body left to mourn anyway. They didn’t wait, they said, because the truth was they didn’t expect her to live. She has no idea why she lived, how she lived, but she lived.

She lived and Erebor did not.

She drank more, taught Korbin to hunt even though he was no hunter. They survived, though they did not live. Time passed with just the two of them now, and the wrongness of it hung between them.

And then, the Outlanders came. The one called Neron named himself Warden of a wasteland he didn’t know how to survive (at least, this is what she assumes, having never bothered to go meet him). The portals opened. The world grew larger, and life changed…