Name: Ciaran
Gender: Female
Age: 20
Sexual Preference: Male
Rank: Journeyman

Appearance: Long and lean. Height 5'8"; weight 115, hair auburn, straight, cut to her shoulders with straight bangs; eyes blue; skin golden tan; frame thin, long muscle. Ciaran moves lightly, like a dancer, as if any moment she could break into a run. Her thigh and calf muscles alternate smooth and striated when they flex, and are considerably more developed than her arm muscles, as befits a distance runner. Her features are regular, with almond-shaped eyes, a small nose with a dusting of freckles, full lips, and a long neck; but she is too thin to be conventionally pretty. Her cheekbones are prominent and so are the tendons in neck and shoulder. It has been said that her shining red-brown hair is her one true beauty; if only it wasn't always tied back with that horribly clashing orange headband!

Personality: To all appearances, Ciaran is a friendly, charming young woman with good social manners overlain by an appreciation for humor. It's easy for her to see the light side of life, and she is rarely worried about the future or the past, preferring to live fully in the moment. She's an attentive listener and a keen observer, which her friends appreciate. Sometimes, though, her lightheartedness is an irritant; she can be impatient with people who seek attention and sympathy with misery, and even if their sorrow is genuine, Ciaran is not always understanding. The one thing Ciaran takes seriously is her running, even if she jokes outwardly about it. She will make light of an injury or a hard run, keeping the difficult memories to herself as cherished learning experiences.

History: Ciaran was born and raised in Keroon. Her mother is a former Harper whose skill was higher in dancing than in music; her father a forester of skybroom wood. Four boys and two girls were born first, all following their father into the prosperous forestry trade - skybroom was rare and expensive, and those families possessed of the secrets of working the hard, unyielding wood guarded them carefully and passed them down by generation.

From the beginning, Ciaran was different. She was longer and thinner than her powerfully-built siblings, yet possessed of immense stamina. It was as if she'd inherited her mother's grace and long line of form, built into her father's endurance. Her mother, with the insight and openmindedness granted her by her turns of Harper training, saw something unusual in her youngest child and set out to encourage the girl to her own pursuits. So Ciaran grew up indulged by her mother, but reined in by her father's stern work ethic, so she was not wholly spoiled. Still, she was a free-spirited child who never appeared to stick very long to any one project and was only halfhearted about her lessons, despite her teachers' despairing reassurance to her parents that she was, indeed, very smart; she just didn't take teaching seriously.

Because of her fickleness, Ciaran's sudden announcement at the age of fourteen that she intended to enter the Runner craft was greeted warily. Her parents needn't have worried. It seemed at last that their flighty daughter had found her niche. She ran for hours on end, always alone, sometimes along the runner traces that crossed the great Keroon plains, sometimes cross country through the hardpacked red earth, trying out different surfaces, shoes, and weather conditions. She took to hanging around the Runner station and absorbing every scrap of information or idle talk the passing Runners mentioned. From them, she learned about running safely in all kinds of weather and trace conditions; which runs were easy and which hard, the longest laps, the shortest ones, the steepest and most rocky ones. She even found a mentor in a Runner near retirement who carved lasts for her feet and taught her to sew leather to make her own shoes.

More than anything, though, Ciaran ran. She ran as much for the sheer joy of doing something her body seemed made for as she did to learn how to run properly. She loved the solitude of the trace and the great sky above her, of watching the countryside float by as she ran without another soul around. After a full Turn of running, she was tested and granted an apprenticeship. She made her first full Cross at seventeen, and a few sevendays shy of her twentieth Turnday, she was raised to Journeyman and assigned to the Tregad Hold Runner Station at the eastern edge of the Tillek Peninsula. The holds in the far west were growing larger as a new Weyr grew up to protect them, and were in desperate need of express runners to carry messages across the vast grasslands and hill country that separated the holds.

Family: Mother: Ranielle. Father: Cigran. Brothers: Nargi, Ian, Garin, and Ligar. Sister: Rani and Lena.

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Dragon: N/A

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Pets: None

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Other: My intent in creating Ciaran is to write about other parts of Pern that aren't directly associated with the Weyr. If approved, she'll be a sort of explorer for me, going new places, meeting new people (and maybe even Weyrfolk, in a context outside dragonriding).

Utterly lovely! Accepted =) I'll try to give you lots of freedom with this character as well, and maybe some plot fodder one day. =3