Kin Bio for Clarai Barosi - WT CCed

[Winter Mist]

    Winter Mist/Lara Luvitt

     

 

    Character Name: Clarai Barosi

    Email address:

    Group: Kin

    Race: Andoran (Randland)

    Age: 185

    Height: 5' 4"

    Weight: 150 lbs

    Eye Colour: Browny-green

    Hair Colour: darkish brown

    Special Features (Missing Limbs, Scars and such): a slight scar on her left brow, a burn scar on her left arm.

    Weapon of Choice (Channellers automatically have the One Power as Primary): One Power

    Secondary Weapon: Staff

 

    History:

 

    Things had often been hard on Clarai Barosi. Born to well to do merchants, she always thought she would follow in her father's footsteps as a merchant, but the Wheel had obviously got another path for her. Her family loved her dearly, both her and her sister both, but they didn't really like to do much and were destined to stay in the same place in the small village for all of their lives. Clarai had always set her sites a little higher than the rest of her family, and secretly craved adventure and romance from the stories. Many a time her mother and father had found her playing in the small garden of their rude house at Aes Sedai. She was Clarai Barosi, Aes Sedai of the Blue Ajah and an exceptional fighter and beautiful woman. The five year old Clarai had high aspirations and her pretty round face with its browny-green eyes shone with excitement whilst her mother and father gently told her not to be so silly. "You'll never be Aes Sedai, you know." Her mother, Jaysia, had told her. Clarai pouted, sticking her lower lip out fretfully. She thought she would, and that was all that mattered. In secret, Clarai pretended to be an Aes Sedai, not playing with the other children around her and learning her letters and numbers so she could at least pretend the notes she saw around the house were some secret plot, as children do.

 

    The years passed and Clarai continued to learn her letters and numbers, and continued to play at being of the White Tower. At age nine, her neighbours would laugh and point at her, and the young Clarai would go inside and shut herself in her room and cry. She wouldn't let her mother comfort her, or any of her sisters go anywhere near her, she simply cried. Feeling deprived of sympathy and encouragement of what she wanted to do in life, Clarai left the family home. Life at age nine living on the streets of her home city of Andor was not pretty and Clarai saw all kinds of sites that she didn't realise would happen. She huddled up in the doorway of a tavern and watched someone get mugged at knifepoint, which made her shiver and huddle closer to the doorway. Clarai edged backwards, not realising she was moving backwards through the doorway and suddenly felt a pressure on her shoulder. A rough hand lay there, and she turned her head around quickly to see what was happening. "What are you doing here?" A voice that sounded slightly amused echoed above her in a deep voice. "Oh, give over, Bari" A light voice called out from inside. "She's just a young'un!" The voice belonging to the woman seemed to be getting closer, but the pressure from the rough hand remained on her shoulder. Biting back shreds of fear, Clarai straightened and piped up in her clear voice. "What do you want?" That was all she had chance to say, as she was dragged inside the tavern, just as a man fell across the doorway where she had huddled. Gasping, she pointed at the man. "What did he do?" "Nothing," the gruff voice replied. "Just in the wrong place at the wrong time." Clarai shivered. "But he hadn't done anything wrong!" She exclaimed. She huddled against the woman who had now arrived at the doorway and felt the woman stroke her hair gently. "What are you doing here?" She asked her. Clarai replied that she had run away, because no one believed she would be Aes Sedai one day. The woman told her that if it was going to happen, it would do, and to just bear in mind that she might not. It was a lesson that Clarai took to heart whilst she was being walked home by the serving girl. She was scolded by her mother and her father who was home briefly, and Clarai decided to hold her wishes close to her heart for the time being, until time told her whether she could be an Aes Sedai.

 

    Shortly after her fifteenth birthday, Clarai's father came home with a horrible fever. Her mother was incredibly worried and would not leave his side. Clarai managed to sneak a quick look at her father when her mother had decided to go and change some cloths she was using to bathe his forehead. Clarai laid her hand on her father's head and felt how hot he was, and Clarai felt despair that she might lose her beloved papa. Tears welling up, she threw her head back and wept, not knowing how she felt, but suddenly her father had thrown his arms back. The quick motion knocked Clarai from where her hands lay on his head and she fell backwards, catching her head on a chair, quite close to her left eye and she lay on her back, stunned. Her mother came in to see what the problem was and saw Clarai lying on her back and her husband, Nayl, sweating and sat up in bed.

 

    "What on earth happened?" Jaysia said, looking from her daughter to her husband and back. "Nayl? Are you okay? I was just about to fetch someone to look at you." "It was strange…" Nayl said, looking at where Clarai lay on the floor nursing a cut by her eye. Clarai shrugged as her mother looked at her father. "Surely not," Jaysia said, trailing off. Needless to say, Clarai's belief in herself had been real – she could channel, and within a few weeks she was off to the White Tower with her father. Upon presenting themselves to the White Tower, Clarai found herself installed in the novice quarters and wearing novice white.

 

    She progressed quickly through her novice lessons, learning quickly, although she was never quite able to manage the same level of healing that she had done with her father. She found herself leaning towards the philosophies and beliefs that the Blue Ajah held very intriguing and Clarai wanted to know more about them. Clarai still didn't mix much with the rest of the novices though she was close to a few. They were very close, her and her friends, but she wasn't overly popular as she preferred to study her lessons and get on with things.

 

     

 

    To this day Clarai does not know precisely what started her downward spiral.  She remembers falling hard for a man, but when she realised it would forever be denied to her, it changed her.  To that point she had been an exceptional student, but as her life had lost its true meaning she paid little attention and more often than not ended up in the Mistress of Novices' office for her increasing vagueness.  She simply stopped.  Eventually it was deemed she was ready to take the test for the ring, but when the morning dawned, Clarai could not pass through those silvery arches.  Three times she was put forward, and three times she refused it.  She refused not from fear, but from a lost sense of self.  And so, with enough coin to support her, she was put out of the Tower and told never to return.

 

     

 

    She could not return to her hometown.  Baerlon was a closed book to her now.  Nor would she head north in case she saw him.    There was only one direction to head in.  Clarai headed south.  Through Andor and Ghealdan she journeyed and, considering her choices, Clarai decided to head to the relative anonymity and security of Ebou Dar.  Using some of the coin, she rented a small room above a bakery and would rise early each morning to help the baker preparing the day's bread.  Not a day passed where she did not dwell on what had happened and, if the baker noticed, he did not press the young woman he employed for more information.

 

     

 

    Taking a batch of loaves from the oven early one morning, before the rest of the world had awoken, Clarai caught her arm on the oven surround.  It seared into her left arm, leaving a mark over a hand span long, and made her cry out in pain.  She sank to her knees clutching her arm, the bread spilling out all over the floor and bringing the baker running.  When he saw what had happened, he immediately sent for a Wise Woman to attend the wound.

 

     

 

    In the privacy of Clarai's room, the slim red-belted woman regarded her calmly even as she laid a cooling salve over Clarai's wound.  Gently she stretched some bandages over it and laid her hands on top lightly.  Clarai felt as though she had been dipped into icy water; she shivered from head to toe and gasped, remembering some of the things she had been taught and rousing briefly from her apathy.

 

     

 

    "You healed me!"

 

     

 

    The red-belted woman's eyes darted around nervously.  "Hush, child.  Do not take the bandages off for a few days and keep it covered until the salve has had a chance to work."  Nevertheless, the Wise Woman's eyes darted to Clarai's hand to see if a Great Serpent ring resided there.  Swallowing, she tried a gambit.  "Runaway?" she asked.

 

     

 

Clarai lowered her eyes and could not meet the other woman's gaze.  "Of a sort, you could say.  I was not ready.  I couldn't…" she faltered and raised her hand to her lips, feeling tears constrict her throat and blossom at the corners of her eyes "I couldn't take the test."  She had not realised just how much finding someone she loved and having to give him up because it would have been doomed had changed her life.  "I couldn't…" she trailed off, giving way to the sobs that convulsed her body.  The Wise Woman put a compassionate arm around her shoulders and held her close.  "I have some friends I'd like you to meet."

 

     

 

Three days later, Clarai knocked tentatively on the front door to the ordinary looking house on Dock Street and was welcomed inside to a room of disparate women united by one common feature.  They all wore the red belts of Wise Women and were short and tall, beautiful and plain, or just ordinary.  They were real people.  The one that had tended her wound, Mirelle, stood by the fireplace with a warm smile on her face.  "Welcome, Clarai, to the Knitting Circle, and to our Kinship of Sisters.  Welcome to the Kin."

 

Clarai remained in Ebou Dar and learned everything she was taught by the other members of the Kin and she eventually gained the red belt of a Wise Woman herself.  She is now a member of the Knitting Circle in Altara and is fourth eldest.

[Tigara]

CCed!