Grebe Bewick

Grebe Bewick is the royal dragon breeder and rearer for the kingdom of Violincia. She is native to a country south of Val'lharia.

Personality
Grebe, while sarcastic, cynical and on multiple occasions a self-confessed 'asshole', does like talking to people, and will normally give time to whoever is willing and patient enough to crack through her stubborness. She is a little boisterous, and likes testing to see how far she can go with someone before they snap at her. Even so, she has a more tender side when looking after 'her' dragons, and is extremely protective over them.

This overwhleming aspect of her personality is due to abandonment issues and lack of trust towards the majority of the people she meets. Beneath her defensive, sarcastic nature, she is kind and will care for and protect anyone who earns her respect.

When a person gains her trust, she allows herself to be more open towards them, and her guarded, cynical nature drops to reveal an almost maternal, protective aspect that is similar to how she treats the dragons she raises.

Not a native to Val'lharia, Grebe will use every opportunity to cuss people out in her own language, although she has a fondness for curse words in every language, the more scandalous the better. For this reason, she will occasionally find herself in trouble for speaking out of term.

Grebe doesn't like relying on other people, as she finds that way it's more likely they'll betray her, so she often takes up a heavier workload than she's used to, occasionally causing injury or illness. She's very stubborn and has a short temper, but it is easily and quickly rectified if she is left alone to calm down.

Appearance
Grebe has coppery red hair that she inherited from her mother, and amber eyes that she inherited from her father. Red hair, although common in her home country, is rarely seen in Val'lharia, so despite some early ridicule when she first arrived in the kingdom, she has made it part of her identity and she is proud of it. She is 162cm (5"3), short even where she comes from, and is slim due to her fast metabolism and the fact that she is near constantly working both outside and inside. Despite the amount of work she does outside, she neither burns or tans, and the only colour she has on her pale skin are the large amount of freckles, the burns and the blush she gets when she's intoxicated.

Her hair is naturally frizzy (although she prefers to call it curly), which is only excentuated by being around heat all

day. She almost constantly has multiple burns on her body, though luckilyshe only has a few lasting scars on her

fingers and small one on her neck. She has a tattoo on her back from one of her drunken exploits of a dragon that she is strangely attached to (in more ways than the obvious), and she's got a secret desire to get another one soon.

Biography
Grebe is the middle child to overseas merchants, who dealt in exotic animals, mainly birds and considerably more unusual beasts, hence her bird-like name. As soon as she was able to walk she was taken to different lands, picking up traditions and helping her family earn more money by dancing, bartering and using her inherited trickery from her father to fool people into paying more for her family's wares than they should have.

At the age of ten, she was left in the kingdom of Violincia after her father, a man with a problem of both drinking and gambling, gambled her off and lost. She was quickly abandoned in a country where she knew little of the language, little of the customs, and even less of how cold the climate would be in comparison to her old country. Thus began her mistrust of people, and the defensive front she constructed to put people off and keep them away.

 Through being property (and now fostered daughter) of the former palace horse keeper, she was able to find a vocation in breeding, rearing and raising the various creatures (notably the dragons) in Violincia due to her nature and knack of getting along with and taking care of animals.

Her foster father, the man who won her and affectively took her in as his own after his own children had grown up and left him, taught her how to speak, read and write the language of Val'lharia, and she took to it like 'a duck to water', somehow paying special attention to the curse words of the language and using them liberally whenever she got the chance to. Her foster father also taught her how to play the lute, and she was able to play it and sing along to folk songs from her country for money at the small inn that the servants frequented. Before her fifteenth birthday, there was talk about having the girl married off, but she convinced her foster father to let her choose if and when to get married when she was older, and had a future secured for herself.

When Grebe was fifteen, her foster father died, leaving her an orphan and in charge of the stables, looking after the animals she had cared for and bonded with soon after arriving at the kingdom. It was soon after this that Grebe further retreated into herself and more frequently put up her defensive front, as she felt the only person who ever truly cared about her had died. She found solace in the company of her dragons and in alcohol, and quickly built up a tolerance to the stuff the older she grew.

Now, at the age of eighteen she almost exclusively looks after the dragons (although she does have a particular soft spot of the palace hounds) and spends her time playing her lute, drinking, singing to her dragons, winding people up and exploring the vast palace gardens.

Father
A gambling merchant. Grebe remembers little of him, only that he was short tempered and cruel to her and her siblings. He gambled her off when she was ten, and she hasn't heard or saw from him since, and neither does she want to.

Mother
A 'flamed haired' former prostitute. She died soon after giving birth to Grebe's younger sister when Grebe was eight after contracting an infection. A kind woman who told Grebe and her older brother stories about their home country. Thought of to be a witch due to her knowledge of medicine and worship of the pagan religion of their country.

Siblings
Grebe has an elder brother called Lonan and a younger sister called Merle. She remembers very little about her younger sister, only that she had her father's auburn hair, and she recalls her elder brother wanting to leave to become a soldier as soon as he was able. She often wishes she could see her siblings again.

Foster father
An old man by the time Grebe knew him, her foster father (known as Orion) was a former soldier and before that, son of a merchant himself. He taught Grebe all he knew in regards to looking after the dragons and the other animals, as well as teaching her how to read and write the language of the Royal Lands. Grebe regarded him as one of the only people who ever truly cared about her, and lost trust in a lot of things after he died.

Relationships
None as of current.

Trivia
Although she has a high tolerance to alcohol, when she finally becomes drunk she is notorious for doing things she later regrets, including but not limited to body modification, reckless stunts, 'romantic encounters' and letting slip information about herself that she would otherwise refuse to tell anyone. However, she doesn't let that discourage her and will very happily drink anyone under the table.

Grebe is very good at playing the lute and singing, and when she feels generous she is often found at the local public house singing, dancing and playing for the pubgoers.

She's left handed and has really unnecessarily curly handwriting, and has a fondness for writing letters, even if she doesn't often have anyone to send them to.