Image Credits: Arkane, Rinmaru/Lil' Miss Winter

Name: Tetra Gukova

Gender/Preference: Female, unknown and disinterested

Age/DOB: approx. 14 in 1855 / 13th day, Month of Ice

Faction: Waif; has connections to Meya's criminals as well as a few city officials, and one or two shopkeepers

Family: All deceased, last known relative was father who died in 1852; family was low-ranking with military connections

Height/Build: 4'11" / very slight, not curvy, gangly

Hair: pale blonde, shiny and fine, very straight and often unkempt but usually looks clean; cut to shoulderblades

Eyes: dark blue, quite large

Appearance: ruddy skin tone typical of Tyvian folk, has thick lips and would have been considered a great beauty had she been better fed and more plump. As she is, she has hardly any body fat on her, which causes her to want layered clothing as shown, and she will collect different cast-off outfit parts but they always seem to match well enough. She is 'flat as a board' and while quite feminine doesn't seem inclined to learn how to use her pretty face to influence men. Has a high, squeaky, and slightly broken voice, rarely speaks unless she's in company she feels comfortable with, and has a tittering high-pitched laugh

"They want to find her, but not for reasons she wishes to indulge."

Skills and Occupation: It is unclear what profession this girl would have been entering, but with the death of her father any chance at working for the Tyvian military or police would be gone. It's clear that she knew the ins and outs of said work, however, as she would often watch his duties and pick up after gatherings in his office. Paperwork and accounting interest her a bit, she's intrigued by what all can be conveyed using just a few words in columns, or numbers that betray untoward behavior. She's very good in practical terms, however, with remaining unnoticed and unseen, sitting in on any meeting hardly anyone ever complained nor even acknowledged her. This helped her evade capture by numerous gangs and officials, she was not interested in languishing in an orphanage nor being put to any other work by those who believed they had her best interests in mind. She is capable of surviving on her own indefinitely, squirreling away food and resources, and carefully keeping them stocked by the occasional theft or trade. She knows how to use a knife, but isn't strong enough to heft a pistol, nor a sword, but she can climb and crawl through spaces that larger people would never consider, and can roost in the rafters of a building making careful notes of the comings and goings of those below

Residence: Meya, Tyvia - her father had originally been from farther north, but settled in the larger town, and Tetra has not left this area. However, she isn't known to live where her family used to, since their apartment was forfeit after his death. She has at least two known 'nests', one of which is near the City Hall complex in a structure overlooking that area, basically in between a broom closet and a boiler room, the other is closer to the rugged hills northeast, in a cabin that apparently belonged to her mother's family and was long since forgotten. It's much too cold and in disrepair to live there full time, but she tends to spend the months of Timber, Clans, Songs, Earth, and Harvest there if possible. Weather permitting, she can move between the cabin and the city proper in less than an hour walking

Notable Possessions: Up in the cabin, she has what would be mistaken for an old pile of discarded bones and rat-chewed leather. It ... is exactly that, but not merely table scraps or rotted weasel carcasses. One thing she will do regularly is searching for small trinkets, bone charms, even the occasional rune, hidden in holes in walls, up in attic spaces, deep in the woods or in rubbish bins in town. Her collection is mostly just 'bones that look interesting' but it also includes numerous potent protective charms that seem to sing to her if she's near

Personality: quiet and typically unassuming, blending in with the background and slipping through a city unnoticed. She's fine with this, for the most part. She has few friends and only a small number of allies among the people of Meya, and without a family to back her up, she knows she'd be facing a tremendous struggle to get anywhere in the government. She is not entirely mistrustful, but she will observe first and contact later, if she can back up her initial appraisal of someone or an area with further information. She really does love bullet-listed information, and keeps journals with that information she's collected. It would be highly likely that anyone who discovers that journal would be surprised at the depth with which she understands motives and behaviors. Somewhat clinical in that regard, she is also professional-grade able to keep secrets. Though she has been known to 'accidentally' drop a few sheaves of paper with those details onto just the right desk, and get guilty folk found and prosecuted... She doesn't mind other people taking credit for her work, she'd rather see criminals and dangerous people sent away!

Likes and Dislikes: she enjoys layering clothing and has a knack for fashion even if the clothing is thirty years out of style and in the wrong size for her. They're warm, they're clean at least, and she can keep them that way. Truly enjoys just people-watching, though she doesn't much care for the way others watch her. Her collection of little bones could be expanded into a full museum if she really tried, as she knows where to look for some stunningly large and stone-like fossils - not that the Abbey would ever allow digging for such things, those bones sing to her, too

Fears or Interruptions: being picked up and tossed into a situation she cannot control, Tetra had seen plenty of children go the way of an orphanage and straight into the mines or indentured servitude in the city. So she keeps to herself, but she is always watching and listening for signs that someone is tailing her, particularly the Abbey, and will take a very circuituous route around town to lose them just in case

History: Born to a city guard and his detective wife, the dangers involved in hunting down criminals became obvious when her mother was found dead with a very clear and stern warning from those she had been investigating. This was when Tetra was only four years old, and her father moved from Pradym to Meya with her. He had reasonable success integrating into the local guard, but never really gained much support for promotion. Tetra attended school from the time they arrived at age 5 to about her tenth birthday, shortly after which her father was killed in a fight with pirates (pirates! she still thinks it's how he wanted to go, but doesn't lessen the pain of losing him). She realized very quickly that the home she'd lived in was not owned by her father, but she remembered distant times in the cabin - and made her way there on foot. Using the last of the somewhat stale canned foods there until the winter months, this girl assessed her needs and began scouting places in the city to hole up. The room where she makes her typical home there is actually in the school, possibly the last place that people would look for her knowing that she hadn't shown up for classes in quite some time.

It is in that school where she still lurks and learns, mastering things that those who had been her classmates struggle with. A very smart girl, her silent focus tends to put off anyone that notices her. She's obviously 'doing something' intensely, and won't want to be disturbed, right?

She also continued to haunt the city departments nearby, slipping into open windows and creeping around in the spaces between floors. While someone surely must notice that their lunch room has items go missing regularly, no one has yet caught her sneaking sandwiches or pear soda bottles... Or at least, no one has punished her for it. Her father was well liked by many on the guard, but for his superior officers. At least one retiree would have offered to take her in, but he too died from injuries from the same heated fight on the docks - only it took him a year longer.

Tetra noticed her bones singing more than typically, this Harvest. She was hesitant to leave them in that state, thinking how strongly they called, surely someone else would be able to hear it... Someone did hear. She didn't expect the slender, pale-skinned and handsome black-eyed man that appeared at her doorstep on the morning she was going to set out to the city. It had snowed, his skin was almost the same shade. But behind him, a shadow indeed, a huge dark creature? With scales that glittered in dark gold and deepest violet - colors she had seen in fabrics draped over shrines to the Outsider.

Tetra wasn't a witch, she wasn't a true heretic, she didn't set out offerings to the Outsider during her trips through town. But there he was, floating in front of her stoop, and she could swear that his black eyes were crinkled with a smile. That extended hand was one thing, but it was the curious peering of that... Dragon? behind him? That caused Tetra to gather her wits and snug her pack against her back, and accepted the ride.

It felt to her like the Outsider was still floating, gently bobbing along as though on the surface of a lake, even while the great dragon's body moved in similar ways to a horse's. She learned the dragon's name, Shrine, and that where they were going, they'd also be able to retrieve her. But why? Why take her somewhere only to vanish again?

With a genuine and soft smile, the Outsider indicated, "you'll see," and seemed to vanish as if he had been a dream.

The tall mountain she could see now was no dream. Nor were the other dragons, or those creatures who appeared out of the thick snow-covered woods. So it was also the winter time here? Perhaps. She didn't know where 'here' was - they told her "Icehearth", but there was nothing else to follow it.

"Loosen up, child," someone told her, "it's a party and you are invited!"

"This is a dream," Tetra muttered, still keeping her pack close and her eyes open. It was indeed a party, a celebration, but for what? She would find out when the 'draks' were brought out...

**

The evening was curious and busy, ... mostly busy. All the people there were half-seen, and some were half-people. Defying description, the things she saw that were also people! Had she sketched them out (she did that, but with the cold realization that--) and displayed those sketches anywhere, the Abbey would surely burn her at the stake for such demonic nonsense. Dragons were real, draks were a variation on them apparently, and all of that, she chuckled to herself while sipping a much nicer wine than those thick blood-like Tyvian reds, were going to make her into a true heretic by night's end.

She could feel the sheer chaos of the place, even as it was chilled to the bone with the ice and glaciers surrounding. The revelry, the party, it was for multiple reasons. Thaw was on its way, a new year would begin! She thought of the Fugue Feast, those days between the year, had heard of the parties that rich folk down in the southern Isles would throw in the few days a year that the Abbey had no say in things. Was it like this year-round here, though? Because the locals, if she was reading their body language right, were also a bit. Well. Different. Fierce and wild but smart and canny.

"Like you," a voice said, somehow intruding upon her memories or reverie, "I like you, you are fierce and wild and smart and canny."

The creature tht spoke was not quite eye level with her, small at the moment but would clearly grow big and strong like ... like the other adult draks she could see. She, her voice seemed feminine, was a red-violet color save for the undersides of her many wings! Such a lovely contrast, and... were there the hints of those same golden shades woven through the fur on her neck? Little horn buds were visible too, oh what a marvelous drak this was.

"I'm Tetra, what's your name?" The human asked, and the drak drew herself up a little, thick tail plopped on the floor next to her oversized paws.

"Vyoska," she replied. "You have the scent of other places on you, can I see them?"

How did a hatchling, well a little bit older than fresh-hatched obviously, know about 'other places'? "Well, if we return to my home, you'll see, for now I can show you something that I found one time!"

Tetra patted herself a little and found the rune that she'd last located, why she had carried it with her this far who even knew, but when the drak began sniffing at it, she did notice that one of the "important people" of this Icehearth place was being shadowed very faintly by a familiar shape. Maybe that was why, he could follow her with it? He wasn't substantial.

"Who isss that," Vyoska asked, because she'd noticed Tetra's stare and turned to squint. "Not visible, but not not visible either."

"Oh we will make a good team, won't we Vyoska!"