T’jano’s Perlious Weathered Seaglass Green Mrrth
The ocean, whose tides respond, like women's menses, to the pull of the moon,
the ocean which corresponds to the amniotic fluid in which human life begins,
the ocean on whose surface vessels (personified as female) can ride but in whose
depth sailors meet their death and monsters conceal themselves… it is unstable
and threatening as the earth is not; it spawns new life daily, yet swallows up lives;
it is changeable like the moon, unregulated, yet indestructible and eternal.
- Irish Proverb
Fats, our friend – rapscallion, lover, fool, sailor, fighter, fox – may Mrrth bring you many days of fun and turns of trouble. We trust you will enjoy her, in all her sharp-edged glory, and bring her to life for the rest of us to play with. It is hoped Mrrth opens up new trails and pathways for RP and adventure, taking you out to edges – into the unknown – off the map to where there be Dragon.
A Life by Sylvia Plath
Touch it: it won't shrink like an eyeball,
This egg-shaped bailiwick, clear as a tear.
Here's yesterday, last year —-
Palm-spear and lily distinct as flora in the vast
Windless threadwork of a tapestry.
Flick the glass with your fingernail:
It will ping like a Chinese chime in the slightest air stir
Though nobody in there looks up or bothers to answer.
The inhabitants are light as cork,
Every one of them permanently busy.
At their feet, the sea waves bow in single file.
Never trespassing in bad temper:
Stalling in midair,
Short-reined, pawing like parade ground horses.
Overhead, the clouds sit tasseled and fancy…
…The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea.
Sire and Dam: BackTimed
Hatching Date: March 27th, 2008 (Back timed with the advent of Threadfall)
Theme of Clutch: The Four Seasons
Theme of Dragonets: Weather / Elements / Elemental Things
Sonnet XXXIV (You are the daughter of the sea)
You are the daughter of the sea,
oregano's first cousin.
Swimmer, your body is pure as the water;
cook, your blood is quick as the soil.
Everything you do is full of flowers, rich with the earth.
Your eyes go out toward the water, and the waves rise;
your hands go out to the earth and the seeds swell;
you know the deep essence of water and the earth,
conjoined in you like a formula for clay.
Naiad: cut your body into turquoise pieces,
they will bloom resurrected in the kitchen.
This is how you become everything that lives.
And so at last, you sleep, in the circle of my arms
that push back the shadows so that you can rest -
vegetables, seaweed, herbs: the foam of your dreams.
-Neruda, Pablo
Clutch Message:
Finding an area of sand undisturbed by the previous queen, Othileth scoops the top layer aside with careful foreclaws, digging a trench and turning her back to it as soon as she's done. Arcing back in a pose that suggests both poise and discomfort, another egg lands lightly into the furrow there, vividly verdant and adding its own warmth to the hot sands surrounding as the queen turns and subsequently covers it.
Egg:
Sizzling Ista Spring Egg
Covered from tip to base in varying shades of jungle's green and warm, sun-baked browns, this egg gives the viewer the sense of being in a tepid, steamy, tropical forest: the filter of sunlight, the drip of old rain, and VTOLs buzzing as iridescent flashes within the sultry forest. Its colors are almost salacious – spicy and scandalous – sliding about the shell in seductive swirls of fern and branch, with creepy-crawlers skulking in black along the base.
Hatch Message:
Sizzling Ista Spring Egg blends so well into the world of southern that it is difficult to tell when it isn’t there anymore. What was jungle’s green, sun-fired and steamy, with the dancing flash of insects’ wings and spice is suddenly replaced with the lighter hues of sea-glass green and sargassum lit only with the brilliant flashing of the hatching dragonet’s hunger-maddened gaze.
Impression Poses:
Perilous Weathered Seaglass Green Dragonet is anything but trite. She eschews safe harbor, dismisses the mundane, and with a cock of her head chooses instead the one that waited for /her/. She knows he did. He must have. As if Tejano were a lighthouse, this little green is brash enough to dash herself against any rocks to reach him. He can be Hope. She will Glory. No, wait, that's been done. She will be Salvation. Or Faith. Or something sweeter and far more difficult to hold on to. Desire. Yes. She will be Desire. He will be T'jano. The Sea green pauses only when she's muzzle to belly with that not-so-young man and then stops there, lifting up her head.
Perilous Weathered Seaglass Green Dragonet exhales, easing out all her frustration and hunger before breathing in /him/. Hers. She melts against him, whuffling softly, and then leans back to look him in the eye and trove all Tej's treasures. Mine.
Impression Message:
Stasis in darkness. Then the substanceless blue pour of tor and distances. Rukbat's lioness, how one we grow, pivot of heels and knees! — The furrow splits and passes, sister to the green arc of the neck I cannot catch, black-eye berries cast dark hooks — black sweet blood mouthfuls, shadows. Something else hauls me through air — thighs, hair; flakes from my heels. White Godiva, I unpeel — dead hands, dead stringencies. And now I foam to wheat, a glitter of seas. The child's cry melts in the wall. And I am the arrow, the dew that flies, suicidal, at one with the drive into the red eye, the cauldron of morning. « T'jano. » She does not give you her name for you already know it in your blood and in your bones, a purr that burns and freezes you even as it warps you in the all encompassing depths of her warmth and love: mmm.mmmrrrr. Mrrth.
Dragonet Description:
A nymph, in form, fey and fine, it is the goddess Calypso’s fickle wrath that makes this bantam dragonet as dangerous and inconstant as the sea. Her whippy frame liquefies thalassic storms with the weathered luminescence of seaglass, leaving her hide that lovely, charming hue of green within green: frosted glass at the edges, polished smooth at her belly and flanks and broken into shards of warning that ‘ridge the agile curve of her neck and back. Seaweed tangles her muzzle with browner greens and sargassum likewise nets three of four legs in knots and snarls of tangled tar-dark shadows. Lighter and clearer, wingsails gleam with the palest silvery green, hued like the sea before the storm: threatening, menacing, and ominous. The lash of her perilous tail is as erratic and unreadable as the flash of raw power lighting every ragged edge of her shattered, fractal gaze.
XVII (Thinking, Tangling Shadows…) by Pablo Neruda
Thinking, tangling shadows in the deep solitude.
You are far away too, oh farther than anyone.
Thinking, freeing birds, dissolving images,
burying lamps.
Belfry of fogs, how far away, up there!
Stifling laments, milling shadowy hopes,
taciturn miller,
night falls on you face downward, far from the city.
Your presence is foreign, as strange to me as a thing.
I think, I explore great tracts of my life before you.
My life before anyone, my harsh life.
The shout facing the sea, among the rocks,
running free, mad, in the sea-spray.
The sad rage, the shout, the solitude of the sea.
Headlong, violent, stretched towards the sky.
You, woman, what were you there, what ray, what vane
of that immense fan? You were as far as you are now.
Fire in the forest! Burn in blue crosses.
Burn, burn, flame up, sparkle in trees of light.
It collapses, crackling. Fire. Fire.
And my soul dances, seared with curls of fire.
Who calls? What silence peopled with echoes?
Hour of nostalgia, hour of happiness, hour of solitude.
Hour that is mine from among them all!
Megaphone in which the wind passes singing.
Such a passion of weeping tied to my body.
Shaking of all the roots,
attack of all the waves!
My soul wandered, happy, sad, unending.
Thinking, burying lamps in the deep solitude.
Who are you, who are you?
« I am Mrrth! »
Egg Inspiration:
Taini and Nomi, obviously inspired by jungles: hot, wet, seductive, steamy, Jungles.
Name Inspiration:
Mrrth. Okay, like you we liked Myrth, Myrrth and Merth, all of which were taken, so someone (I'nigo? N'tan?) suggested Mrrth and we liked the Mmm. rrrr. Happy purry sound of that. Plus it work with 'mirth', that joyous happiness so easily associated with Tejano. Myrrh is, in the language of flowers, the scent for sex and lust and desire which again, could be Tejano. And finally there's the 'mer' part for 'la mer', the sea, the perilous, inconstant, dangerous sea in which Mrrth sets her thalassic, seaweedy roots.
Personality:
Steeleye Span - The Fox Lyrics
you can hound me now you've found me,
but i'm far more cunning than you.
i'm a shy fox, i'm a sly fox,
and i'll teach you a lesson or two.
i'll run you through the hawthorn hedge,
and tear your dogs to shreds
i'll lead you from the open fields,
into the flower beds.
i'll lead you from the open fields,
into the nearest town.
and take you to my hunting ground.
run, run, i won't give in,
run, run, i'll never give in.
run, run, run, i won't give in,
run, run, run, i'll never give in.
you can hound me now you've found me,
but i'm far more cunning than you.
i'm a brown fox, i'm a town fox,
and i'll teach you a lesson or two.
i'll introduce electric fence,
to every horse and hound.
and watch the horses suffering,
upon the stoney ground.
i'll lead you from the open fields,
into the nearest town.
and take you to my hunting ground.
run, run, i won't give in,
run, run, i'll never give in.
run, run, run, i won't give in,
run, run, run, i'll never give in.
Mrrth is your hawthorn hedge, your stony ground, your electrified fence: she is everything that hinders those that hound you, hiding you from your troubles and causing no end of problems for any that get too close. As weathered and smooth as she is, in form, her nature sometimes bristles with the sharp and broken edges of glass. Dangerous and temperamental, she is too high-spirited for her own good with an inconstant nature that borders on madness. Just a little. Just occasionally. Thankfully this little tempest’s squalls are short-lived and quickly forgotten, but it might take some getting used to and will require more patience than perhaps T'jano has, at first, for a good understanding between Rider and Weyrling. It will come of course, with care and attention, and most of all time. The stormy start can only strengthen what you two will build together in the turns to come. Just as becoming a sailor pared Tejano down physically, Mrrth might pare him down a bit emotionally, tempering his own fiery nature with her own… of course you two might just light one another up, too, twin sparks of trouble, feeding on one another's fire: fearless, reckless, dynamic and incorrigible… but oh so much /fun/.
Mrrth is obviously themed on the sea – both addictive and dangerous – and rooted in the nature of storms and waterspouts. She is too powerful to be kind, too dominant to be sweet, and to potent to be gentle. She is no tradewind or fair, airy breeze to fill the sails and go for a leisurely sail into adventure. No, Mrrth is the wildwind, the whirlwind, the start of the hurricane and the dark steely color of the sky that makes sailor’s look up in despair.
Mrrth is, in part, based on the goddess Calypso from Pirates of the Caribbean. Too feral and mad to be truly beautiful, but captivates people none-the-less with her seductive charm and powerful charisma. She finds things amusing, anything – everything – humor in the darkest of times, because if she's not laughing at it it would tear her apart. She /feels/ things, or thinks she does, some might say too deeply. She's a child of water, but seems very attuned to shifts in the earth and weather as well: anticipates earthquakes, knows when lightning will strike, correctly predicts the first and last frost of the year. Mrrth is very aware of the world and its seasons and always seems to be listening to things others claim they do not hear. This only enhances the perception, of some, that she's a little… off. Odd. Unpredictable and capricious. What others see as impulsive and erratic, you know as a reaction to something that is happening, somewhere, that Mrrth's sensitivities have picked up off the radar. For instance she seems to know when Thread is falling, wherever it is falling, and that need not be anywhere near Fort.
With a mind of her own that she often chooses not to share with others, Mrrth is stubborn, mulishly stubborn. When she's had enough, she's had enough. She picks her own time and place, according to her own rhythms; she'll just station herself and simply refuses to budge come hell or high water. Where Alysiuth is doggedly stubborn and will keep going till he drops, Mrrth will sit on her arse in the middle of drills and just refuse to do anymore of them. She is Tired. That is Enough. Only when its her idea to move, will she move again, when her sense of time is satisfied. Perhaps, too, she'll balk when feeling overburdened by too much pack, firestone or people, she simply won't fly.
"I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free, and ending just where it began." -William Hazlitt
Ah, Liberty. It's what Mrrth seeks and what constantly seems to evade her. If she had her way, she'd be tied not by bounds of duty and place, color and limitations of the body. She'd wholly follow her own desires, wherever they might take her, as restless as the wind until, finally, she comes to alight upon some rocky cliff above the sea, delighting in how it pounds with senseless fury against the rocks, eyes ever to the horizon. She will never be afraid of a solitary existence, especially since she's never really alone - there's you, T'jano, to share both the wild flights of passion and the lingering calms. Liberty, however, always seems to elude her. She's rooted to what she is in as much as to who she is, which are things that are rather at odds. She is a dragon, after all, with a place within Weyr and the larger pattern of life on Pern. She is as tied as Calypso to her island, looking out into the vast beyond from her shore but unable to fully slip her ties.
This dragon, feminine and feckless, is certainly not blind when it comes to the charms of companionship with the other sex. For the most part, she enjoys her solitude, but as occasions grant, she'll cleave to a particular male, bending all her intensity into making him yield and align with her desires. Of course, it'll only be strong-minded souls that capture her attention in the first place, which will make this game of sexuality and power all the more difficult - and thus, all the more interesting. Love? Love, at least in the classic understanding of unconditional giving of oneself, of sharing and equality, does not enter into it. For love, she has you. This is something entirely else, though she may use the term in these machinations of binding and keeping, holding near and refusing to let go. Mrrth, craving liberty herself, will be blind to a similar impulse emanating from others when it incriminates her. These relations should be wholly based on her own terms. And woe to the one who garners her wrath; she embodies the Shakespearean adage, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
Physicality
"The sea — this truth must be confessed — has no generosity. No display of manly qualities — courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness — has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power. -Joseph Conrad
Mrrth is all seaglass and thalassic themes. She is the pale and luminous color of seaglass, light and airy, darkened only by the flotsam and jetsam of tide-thrown seaweed around three of her four legs and the tangle of browner sargassum that shades her muzzle, as if she'd been rooting around along the tide-line. Her darker bits might fade, with time, leaving her lightly green all over with hardly much variance in hue. Though she is many shards of seaglass, not just one, so always has that shifting from pale green to deeper waters, giving her a lovely variable color all over. Those gorgeous wings of hers are stormy grey but electrified, like that moment at sea before the storm hits, when all the world gleams with clarity and oddly-filtered light. Her sails are so pale the ichor can turn them green as well, more virulent than the rest of her and a sort of barometer to her mood.
Like seaglass, Mrrth is both polished and sharp. She is ever so smooth along her chest and flanks, but there are hard angles to spars and head and her spine is rough-cut and erratic. Her legs are shapely and as slender as the rest of her, for she is small but not really delicate. Whippy. Wiry. Lean. Not a girlish fairy or nymph in flowing gowns and glitter, no. Mrrth is a more dangerous Naiad: bloodthirsty, sultry, and sharp, she'd just as soon tempt men into her sea and drown them as she would offer them aid.
There's nothing really unusual about her except the intensity of her color when she gets riled, and the slightly odd way she has of moving around. Liquid elegance, once she grows up some. A sort of gently sultry motion to her bantam frame that seems at odds with the stillness of her head and wings. Like Xanth, she can hold herself absolutely still but there's too much presence to her for her to just disappear entirely: the flash of those shard-sharp eyes, the cant to the head, the brooding stormy ominous knowledge of /something/ she knows that you do not. Its a bit disconcerting and gets reflecting in the hues of her wing and the oddly slow whirling of her draconic gaze.
Flight:
Tower Of Light by Pablo Neruda
O tower of light, sad beauty
that magnified necklaces and statues in the sea,
calcareous eye, insignia of the vast waters, cry
of the mourning petrel, tooth of the sea, wife
of the Oceanian wind, O separate rose
from the long stem of the trampled bush
that the depths, converted into archipelago,
O natural star, green diadem,
alone in your lonesome dynasty,
still unattainable, elusive, desolate
like one drop, like one grape, like the sea.
When she's old enough to rise, Mrrth will confound in this as she does with everything else. Erratic, her cycle, based on some combination of the moons, the tides, and Mrrth's on delight in messing with your love life. She doesn't care who you are sleeping with, just as long as she can share in the sensations. She likes when you're focused like that, as one generally is when the bedding is good, its easier to figure you out – there's a purpose, there’s a goal, it feels good /and/ its fun. And funny. Not that she thinks you need her flights to spice up your love life, she just Green and life's like that. Flights are /fun/. And Mrrth's very good at them: fast, agile, elusive, right up until the moment she is caught, utterly and completely unattainable. Her faith in this is unshakable.
"The sea is mother-death and she is a mighty female, the one who wins, the one who sucks us all up." -Anne Sexton
Threadfall:
It's the Enemy. Its an adventure. Fearless, reckless, and dangerous, to Thread and her wingmates, Mrrth is invaluable in the fight but difficult to manage as part of the team. She's too headstrong and too focused on the Enemy to give much thought to those around her. She'll fly after it till she drops and will have little sympathy for any complaints you might have about it. This is what she /does/. She is /dragon/. She needs to hunt Thread down and kill it. The hardest part might be keeping her in firestone, because Mrrth will need to learn that its better to meet Thread with fire on her breath than without it. Otherwise she's not much interested in flaming things or watching them burn unless she is doing it to amuse you or is /really/ bored. When Mrrth gets bored, watch out!
Mind Voice:
"The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect." -Unknown
We're thinking Mrrth might well sound like Calypso in Pirates III. All gravely and odd, a touch of the bayou, and hint of the goddess: too much power caught up in too small of a space. She is raw and definitely unrefined, making up her own slang and forms of language that aren't always polite to repeat in mixed company. She and Aadi would get along splendidly. Hee hee.
Mind Scent:
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself. -Henry David Thoreau
Brine and seaweed, ocean wind, and the tangy sting of salt over a deeply-buried hint of tar. Mrrth is all the scents of the sea, and none, though she also has a touch of algae, slightly musty and vegetal. Her mind scent is definitely not as dark and thick as Xanth's, but she has a scent that spans the ages and speaks of things in the shadows. Mrrth might well be the thing people are afraid of at the bottom of the sea, or when weed grabs your leg in the middle of the lake? That's her, just having fun. Her touch in your head can be a bit like that, unexpected and weedy, chaps the lips too (and other body parts), musses up the hair, lightens the sails and it is hard to imagine it wasn't always there. When she's proddy the myrrh comes out, as it must, but we're certain you can figure out what to do with /that/.
Weyr Relationships:
She is the sea, but so much more than that when paired with Alysiuth for he is the winds that govern the sea, whip it into a frenzy or leave it stranded in stillness. Alysiuth is the Odysseus to Mrrth's Calypso; if ever a male interested her, it's him. They share the sea in common, and he, as a wanderer, will stimulate the same impulse in Mrrth to go where the wind may take her, while at the same time, he'll frustrate her given their very similarities. Of course you might be more interested in Thera and her lovely brown Hadamarth. They might find some common ground, Hadamarth and Mrrth, in the joy of simply being: Zen and the art of firestone maintenance?
"Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars… and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers - for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are." -Osho
Mrrth is more like the chaos that might be created when Hadamarth fans his wings, theoretical Trouble to his simple actions, but even the sea comes to rest, sometimes, and in those quiet contemplative moments she will seek out the gentle giant that is Hadamarth.
Mrrth, of all dragons, will understand Jianth's mad explosiveness and treat it with sympathy - though she'll also know how and when to stay out of the way. And she likes the spitting feistiness of Taini's Birgith, and the little queen when she's in full on warrior mode. Though Mrrth is no match for any of the queens in size, pint-sized snipe that she is, she'll match them all for fortitude and won't back down from any of them… unless she wants to, of course.
Dragon Inspiration:
Calypso, from Greek mythology as well as from her more recent manifestations, namely Pirates of the Caribbean. Nomi's love of seaglass. And your obsession with the word 'thalassic'.
Eleni would bring your attention to a lovely, melancholy song by Susanne Vega. Though it lacks her feral, untamed power, perhaps this speaks to some of the more solitary aspects of her nature. Those thin, long notes of longing are perhaps how the wind sings through her speech as she longs after the horizon. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNa94FmZfX4
** In Summary: **
Mrrth will find her own way through it all, as we know only you can T'jano. Play up what you like in her, disregard what doesn't fit, and hopefully we'll get to share in her adventures as she grows up as a beloved part of our crazy Fort Weyr.
"The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it… Beware of me, it says, but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands." -Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Hold Mrrth tight, T'jano, for we hope she offers you both delight and perils, and keeps the roleplay interesting for years to come.
Clutchmates:
Imogen and gold Hestiath
Iona and gold Orlaith
Izara and brown Vsuviath
Kyana and green Jianth
O'diah and blue Alysiuth
Taini and gold Birgith
Thera(Esther)and brown Hadamarth
W'ren and bronze Gnaedath
Credits:
I can't remember who came up with Mrrth in the end, but I'nigo and Eleni gave lots of feedback on the idea of Tej-dragon and Eleni helped out with the inspiration heaps. Taini did the sizzling egg. Nomi did the rest, including puppeting here on Hatching Day, though Esther had Misty Moisty Morning for you. Heh. As always, SearchCo in its entirety did all the Stuff that makes a Search happen, even if this one took forever, and for that I blame none save myself. Sorry about that. There's lots of fun still to be had, at Fort, in any time. Play play play!
