get it before

♀ Criollo
♀ Sturdy, compact build
♀ Silver grulla
♀ Primitive markings on face, withers, on each leg and a dorsal stripe down the back
♀ Amber eyes
♀ Sock, star and snip
♀ Midnight locks, obscured by strands of ivory and held back by metallic orange threading
♀ Bronze ring through septum
♀ Faint scars along body, barely noticeable
♀ Scent of wood smoke and dry, arid deserts

it goes to waste

♀ Passionate +
♀ Loving +
♀ Understanding +
♀ Protective +
♀ Resilient +
♀ Proud +
♀ Curious +
♀ Headstrong -
♀ Stubborn -
♀ Reserved -
♀ Traumatised -
♀ Distrust in men -

Sayyida has always been quiet and withdrawn, raised in the shadows of her many mothers and sisters, a true and beloved daughter of the Matraan, she has always been silent both in step and voice. Soft-spoken and yet each syllable filled with purpose and passion, strong despite the low tone, with even a whisper enough to shake the undaunted.
Sayyida is headstrong, empowered by the generations of strong women who have backed her, and even in her eons of mourning she remains with her head held high, resilient and capable of enduring most anything. While once this may have meant she could face dangers such as formidable foes on the battlefield or conniving sleuths, it now includes an endless midnight and all consuming darkness, and the loss of thousands that she had to bear witness to. She has hidden her pain and sorrow, undetectable behind glittering amber. It is only when the night falls, in a small sliver of vulnerability, that one can see the true pain that lays dormant in the day, hidden behind her stubbornness and resilience.
While she had once been wholly religious, quick to praise and pray to the Earth Mother, the unsightly deaths of the many gods of Nordlys has left her quiet on the subject. She still prays, from time to time, a routine made from muscle memory and countless nights alongside Pyrrha, worshiping the Father of Sky just as dutifully, and among her tribe, whose love of the Mother could not keep her solely loyal no matter how hard they had tried.
But her sorrows and shortcomings are not all she is, for Sayyida is bold and daring, strong in body and mind, a child of star and sky. She is a crackle of thunder, the tremor of an earthquake, the beauty of moon and stars and the spring in full bloom. She is soft and understanding when she comes to put her trust in others, maternal and instinctive, brilliant and alluring at her peak.
Sayyida is a lover of women, a worshiper of female resilience and strength, born and raised to admire the divinity of the female form and motherhood. While once men would have disgusted her, they are now a curiosity, though she still scrunches her nose from time to time in their presence, she may hold her tongue where once she would have hissed and snarled and challenged any man before her.

lick on my knife

Daughter of Mothers, of femininity and prowess, of warriors and spies, she came to be. Sayyida was born in Nordlys, within the tropics of the Nord Prairie and under a starlit sky, embraced by the love of the Matraan. The primal tribe, whose ancient ways celebrated the flourish of female life, and worshiped the earth of Mother Halla, rejoiced at their newest daughter. While typically quiet, hushed and reserved, they whooped and hollered and paraded the newly born babe through the Prairie, caring little if their rival tribe heard their celebration from the mountains.
It takes a tribe to raise a child, and this was no less true in Sayyida's case. While many of her sisters and mothers busied themselves with the war waged upon the Abbas, whether it was preparations, defense or an offensive attack, little Sayyida was raised by those who were not consumed by bloodshed. They told her stories of Cosmos and Halla, painted and plastered figures ornately made from leaves and sticks upon slate and stone, cautioning her to the deception of Cosmos and his children. For he was dark and dangerous, however mystifying the blue leaves of his corporeal body may have appealed to the filly, and she was warned against his allure.
She was taught to worship Halla, Mother of All, and while there were a great many verses in each song sung to her that appealed to her young mind, used to lull her into vivid dreams and worlds of imagination, there was but one that always struck her deepest.

"The first equine was born,
Shaped by thunder
Forged by storm.
From a thunderclap and lightning strike
Came the first of your kind.
A child of the sky and earth
A paragon of heart, soul and mind."
Sayyida grew into her lanky, scrawny teenagehood, marked by the gift of her first weapon. When asked what she would name that glistening spear, still caked in the blood of a foreign enemy, she whispered, 'Ruinam Deorum,' for it would be the spear to pierce the heart of star and sky, to tear from cloud and vapor, and bring ruin to the life of a god. Her loyalty was unwavering for a time, but that line could never be shaken from her young mind.
'Of the sky and earth,', haunted by those implications for many sleepless nights, wielding Ruinam with the clumsiness of a child and yet the intent of an assassin. She had promised death to a god, to Cosmos and each star in his clouded pelt, and each man who swore himself to the tightfisted deity. For he was wicked, sending beasts to find the Earth Mother whom she worshipped, and Sayyida could not allow harm to come unto her beloved deity.
So she thought, until one fateful night while she stood looking out at the mountains, pondering her place in a world ravaged by war and violence, and saw in the distance a pyre whose flames rose high into the night sky. A lone, petite figure danced around the blazing stack, casting a long shadow away from the brilliant orange flames, twirling beneath a midnight sky. Innate childish curiosity and naivety brought her up into the mountains, to witness the antlered girl dance, performing an ancient ritual that was not Sayyida's to know and learn.
But the children were innocent, and though they knew the concepts of war and the weight brought with it, neither were participants, far too young and undeveloped to be sent to fight against grown men and women with years of experience under their belts. So together they played, meeting on moonlit nights so that the daughter of the desert, Pyrrha, may pass on the knowledge of her people, of her god. At first they were quiet, heavy meetings in which Sayyida only watched, witnessing the spectacle of an Abbas fire, and ended abruptly, when both sobered from their high on great wonder and awe and returned to their tribes in bitter silence. Their silence could not last forever, for eventually their voices became a frequent song in the night, hymns and prayers to Cosmos spoken and repeated by an ever so interested Sayyida, whose amber eyes were alight with the golden pyre's flames.
They bonded, clinging closely to one another at the peak of the war that plagued their tribes, pretending that there was not blood spilled upon the earth that they danced, that there were no bones that rested beneath the sand their hooves would ghost over during those meetings, too jovial and high on the taste of dangerous friendship to care. They stargazed, they sang, they sparred with lanky yet coordinated limbs, and on some nights when the daughter of Abbas would allow it, Sayyida would tell her of Halla and the rituals of the Matraan.
And when they had grown, years flown by to present formidable grown women instead of innocent girls dancing under starlight, they were discovered. Suspicions had grown within the minds and hearts of both parties, but it was the Matraan who acted first. Silent and deadly warriors, they ran upon the women with fatal speed and hushed footsteps, brandishing bloodied weapons and worn armour, prepared to kill the Cosmos worshiper where she stood. And Sayyida, blinded by her love and thirst for knowledge and her heart, whom Pyrrha had grown to become a treasured part of, leaped before the warriors of her tribe and begged mercy. Filthy, vile, she became a shame and embarrassment to her people. No longer a sister in their eyes but an enemy, a betrayer of the Mother—
Her life was spared because she had been their gift, their blessed daughter, whom they could not bring themselves to kill. Instead, she was sent to live as an outcast among the Nemohk, to become a follower of No-One, to live in shame for the rest of her days. And for a while, she stayed far from Pyrrha in fear of what may be done to her beloved friend. But as months slowly became a long, agonizing year, she could not help herself. She knew where she was, for it had spread like the fire of the ritual pyres that there was a new warden of the South.
Pyrrha.
She finds her, racing on the heels of destruction, fighting off Snatchers and shades and the overwhelming darkness in a mad dash to return to her childhood friend. And she sees her upon the horizon, in horror and agony and rage at the death of Nordlys and the loss of her people, of the blood that ran like a river through the vale they had once called home. She cried out her name, taking leaps and bounds and desperately crawling her way into the Warden's sights, into her arms, for one final act of kinship in the ensuing chaos. But just as she reached her, Pyrrha was gone.
What followed was utter ruin, the loss of not just a nation but an entire land, a realm of death and destruction, a long, drawn out decent into absolute darkness. Sayyida fought, all that she could, protesting her demise, unable to accept defeat to the shadows she could not see and to the fires that licked at her ankles and consumed the world she had been born into. Still she watched it fall, with glossy amber eyes and a heart that thundered, knees locked and spine tingling and yet she could not let herself give up. Even as the last of her people fell, bled out into the sands that had raised her, she could not lay down. And for this, she was cruelly rewarded.
Swallowed by the final sweep of absolute black, she was held in purgatory, surrounded by darkness and the stench of rot, suspended in an eternal midnight where time did not exist. She saw her gods die there, torn asunder by the shadows that had done all the same to Nordlys and its people, now turning against its Totems and gods. She still clutched her spear, remembering even now what its original purpose had been when it was placed into her childish hands, unable to bring down swift mercy to the deity of cloud and stars. And her Mother, fair and bejeweled, she could not bear witness to the undoing of her— she wept for eons, for countless millennia that bore no consequence upon her body but dealt a thousand lifetimes of sorrow upon her mind. She choked and sobbed, mourned and grieved each and every loss and listened to the screams and cries of innocent lives burned up in blackened fire, nothing but smoldering ash in an abyss she could not reach.
When the unknown force thought her time was up, she was pushed out from the black, from a starless sky she was spat, and plunged into the dark oceans of Edana.
Within Edana she had rediscovered her people, had reunited with Pyrrha— she had lived in sorrow and mourning but carried hope with her, believing in the chance at a new life. There was momentary bliss, wrenched from her hands by the same wretched darkness that had swallowed Nordlys, so too did it swallow Edana.
By unknown intervention Sayyida returns to her star-filled void, a wretched place whose grasp cannot be shaken. She does not watch her gods die this time, instead she is met with the ache of silence, the pain of not knowing whether anyone else had made it out alive— whether Pyrrha had escaped in hellfire as she had Nordlys, or perished in a foreign land. Sayyida remained, suspended in time and space, until whatever cruel mind behind the void deemed her broken enough. Now, she has been placed worlds away, marked by tragedy, missing something she cannot remember, lost and defenseless in Novus' unknown territories.

and honour the taste

VOID SUMMONER

Magic here once she gets it!

PARVUS — TBD

taking my time

Nothing but her voice makes any noise, not the rustle of fabric nor heavy footsteps, not even a whisper in passing. She is silent, much like her foremothers had been, fatal in her quiet ways.

running in place

RUINAM DEORUM

The Fall of Gods, most often referred to simply as Ruinam, is a cruel bronze spearhead with a dark wooden shaft that runs at least six feet long. It is well worn yet strong, a resilient weapon finely crafted by knowing, experienced hands. Armed with sharp, curved and jagged teeth of rusted bronze meant to prevent an easy exit, it becomes a formidable weapon in the hands of one who knows how to wield it.

ACCESSORIES

♀ Bronze nosering
♀ Bronze thread hair tie
♀ Bronze thread tail wrap