Minya is beautiful. She knows it and the Scarab patrons know it. There is a natural beauty to this girl, nature and genetics have been kind to her, but, her living is made upon how attractive she is in the eyes of her beholders and so the girl aspires to be as alluring as she can.

Beneath showlights, her hair gleams long and a lustrous pink. It is hard, for those who watch her to think of it as anything but a broad ribbon of pink silk. It moves like a veil, it cascades like a waterfall from the very gods. Her hair is a garment, it is a partner she dances with and it swirls and drifts and pours like water across the stage. You see, Minya is a showgirl. In her black lashes is diamond glitter, it sparkles beneath the light. Such miniscule diamonds catch the light, they shatter into a thousand colours that not even rainbows can rival their every colour. The myriad colours accentuate the brilliant silver of her eyes - silver that reflects the red and gold of the wicked flames she breathes and dances with.

Her skin... Her skin is steel, it may be the only part of her that reveals who this girl truly is. Some might imagine it to be cold, for many that know her, whisper of what a cold, snide creature she is. Yet if she lefts you get close, if she lets you touch the steel of her skin, you will find it not metal at all, but soft and warm. Oh to touch her skin is to feel how soft, how equally silken (like her hair) it is. But she runs fire along it, she sets herself ablaze each night but not one inch of her skin is scolded or burned. All of Minya is a show.

She dances for her admirers upon slender limbs - a gift of her exotic heritage. Her mother was a slave, plucked from the Solterran desert and brought to Denocte, she caught the eye of her noble master and... well, Minya took more to her mother's genetics than her father's. She bears the gentle curves of the desert, she bears a face as delicately dished as the sun. Her antlers gleam as ruby red as the setting sun and as she moves (like a dream, like an enchantment) the trinkets and ornaments that hang from them chime like water over sand, like stars shattering into dust.

If you look closely, if you study the glory of her, you might see where light falls upon Minya's white Scarab tattoo. It is made of silver ink, positioned high, high inside her left hindleg. It is a mercurial thing and only when light catches it does it gleam whiter than white, like moonlight pure and startling.

Negative: cold, cruel, snide, abrasive, defensive, conniving, insecure, broken, hurting, ambitious, resentful...
Positive: Not that she will ever let you know but: kind, careful, sensitive, loving, loyal

You might find Minya abrasive, snide, cruel, cold, beautiful outside but oh so ugly inside... But look closer, dare to know the girl and you will see behind the sharp silver shards of her eyes. She wants to hurt you, she wants to fight all away. She does not want to be touched, she does not want anyone to know her. Upon her tongue are lies, each one carefully created to enchant and beguile and make you think of her one way. She will make you look where she wants, she will make you think what she wants you to believe.

But get to know this girl, be the one to touch her skin and find it warmer than ice, softer than metal, and you will know her lies are more than you could ever have imagined. Her lies are more than the gems that glitter along her lashes. her heart is more broken, more wounded than the many mirrors she has shattered with her self-hatred. But how can a girl so beautiful, so utterly adored by her many, many fans, ever see herself as ugly? Ah, that is the burden of self-hatred, that is the cruel twist of history that saw the girl a pauper first, dusty, dirty, hungry. But then it raised her into glory. She was a nobles daughter and she was dressed and commanded as such. She charmed, she enchanted, she was told she would have a husband and so she made herself into the perfect bride, but, the future was mocking her. It stole the perfect smile from her lips and sent her back into slavery. it made her hunger again, it made her fight for her freedom. It made her watch those she loved die upon swords and spears and she has vowed never to pick up a weapon again. The girl has clawed her way out of slavery, she has dragged herself back into the finest garments. Oh she is brave, oh she is violent in her pursuit of happiness. But does Minya know what happiness is? How can she when she looks into a mirror and sees only a poor slave girl with a broken heart and the hateful eyes of those who know her burning holes into her skin where her flames cannot reach.

She is precise, she is careful in her appearance. She had to be perfect for her father, she had to be the perfect noble's daughter and that is what she aspires to be, for that is when she was fed. That is when her father smiled, that is when everyone respected her. She longs for acceptance, she needs to be regarded as perfect, as valuable as so utterly desirable... Only the mirror knows the girl that weeps within her, only the mirror knows the girl who fears poverty again, only the mirror knows the warmth that her fire offers her skin, her soul, her heart. Only the mirror knows that beneath the shards of her eyes is a girl bleeding, a girl aching, in love and yet so utterly unlovable (she knows, no, she thinks).

But Minya is not unlovable, if you dare to bear the wounds she will inflict, how she will hiss like a viper and scratch like a cat to stop you from getting close to touching her, to knowing how broken she is, well, then, maybe, maybe you will know the girl she truly is. If her poison has not killed you first.

It is a cruel twist of history that saw the girl a pauper first, born in the dust and poverty of slavery where her hair was more brown with dirt than pink with lustre. Poverty saw her ribs as angular and jutted as the flying buttresses of the temples she passed to collect water for her master. The metal bucket she carried (that played along her ribs like a harp), was silver and bright, it caught the moonlight and his shadows within its pale. Young Minya did not think twice then, when she gathered her bucket one day, slung it about her slim body and set off for the river, that hiding within the bucket were two small droplets of something so very different to water. She did not see it mix with the water as she filled the bucket from the pump, nor feel its extra weight as she carried it back, past the temples and the gargoyles that watched her with mouths open wide in their silent screams of warning.

She watched the flames of the fire she lit beneath her pale of water. The young slave girl delighted in their dance and brought her skin close to feel how hot they were, how they threatened to scold her skin and laugh their merry laughs. Minya smile with them and swept her dusty, tangled hair back from where it crept toward the flames. She warmed the water and then carried it dutifully to her young master's bed. She awoke him, as any good servant should and watched as he drank of the water. He was handsome and he was kind and her cheeks grew red as he complimented the warm water (for it was midwinter and though she could not feel her feet, his gratitude was warmth enough).

Yet the day did not proceed as it should. For only a few later, the master's young son was ailing in his bed. He was thrashing and shouting that he was on fire, that flames were burning his insides. Poison. The household began to whisper, poison, poison, poison. They tested all the young boy had eaten and drunk that morn. And the slave that drank from Minya's pail also fell down unwell. Both the young master and the slave died that night. Minya was imprisoned in the dark chamber of her master's underground cell. She wept as she listened to the rats. She wept as she grew so cold she could not feel her lips. She wept as the guard came and told her she would die the next morning for her murderous deed.

But Minya did not weep when the pulled her from the icy floor and dragged her up the stairs. She did not cry as they scrubbed her clean of every piece of dirt upon her torso. She did not cry as they pulled every tangle out of her pink, pink hair. She did not cry as they dressed her in finery and stood her before her master. She did not cry as he told her of the true murderer, a rival house and their murderous intent when Minya's master denied his son to marry their daughter. She did not cry as he told her that she was his daughter. She did not cry when he showed no compassion for her mother, forced to drink the water Minya had drawn from the bucket.

No, Minya did not cry. She burned with hatred instead.

The child grew, she was made beautiful. She was lessoned in the games of nobles. She was taught to dance, to enchant, to capture the eyes of boys. She was told she was a substitute, but she would have to do. She was made into a noble's daughter and her body gre to swallow her ribs, her skin became soft and it gleamed bright and lustrous. Oh Minya grew beautiful, she was adorned in charms and lavish dresses.

All eyes turned politely away when her step mother hit her. All lips grew thin and refused to speak when her step-mother treated her so cruelly. But tongues did not stop lashing when Minya rose to spite her step-mother. her father chastised her with a lazy disregard that was more painful than the night she spent along within his pitch black cell. So Minya continued to challenge her step-mother. She dressed more lavishly than the mistress. She charmed all the men her step-mother tried to push away (because they were too good for a slave girl). In silence she bore the beatings her new mother gave her and never once wept for her own dead mother.

They had a balance, Minya and her step mother. They found a rhythm of insults and beatings. But the balance was always tenuous, it was always going to fall in the favour of one. And Minya's step mother was a clever woman. she waited until war broke out. She waited until death came knocking upon their house and took her husband away. He died upon the battlefield, a spear in his side. they say he died with a smile on his lips, ready to meet his son again. Minya's stepmother waited a further week and then, in the darkest part of the night, she ordered mercenaries to pluck Minya from her bed, steal her away and sell her to the higest bidder in Solterra. For Solterra was the only place worthy of a wretch like Minya.

But Minya's skin was no longer soft. It was steel and her hair was silk. Neither were to ever be dirty again. So Minya fought. She battled and raged and bit and kicked at her kidnappers. She made their lives hell with snide comments, she spat in their faces and then, then, when they deprived her of food until her ribs began to show, then she waited for a spark and burned their tents into the ground. Out of the fire she stepped and onto the long and barren road back to Denocte.

One day the flames whispered to her again and she saw a girl with gems and fire. She licked the flames, she pulled them along her skin but she did not burn. Minya was not made for burning either. She joined their troupe, she learned their craft, the tamed the fire and let it adorn her like vestments. She charmed onlookers with her skill, she enchanted children with her command of fire. She drew for herself a band of followers and soon gems and jewellery and paintings and all manner of gifts began to flood her way. Men dressed her in the most lavish clothes, girls hated her for her enchanting skill. Minya became perfect and it was this perfection she took into the White Scarab. It was this perfection she had tattooed upon her leg. It was this perfection she wore that could never hide the girl beneath the jewels and dresses. For beneath them all is a girl still weeping for her mother, for each bruise upon her skin, for all the ways she is unlovable, for the kind master she killed and then her mother, all because she did not look into the bucket and see the metal reflect back a girl with two black, poisonous dots for eyes.

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