Raya

From FiranMUX

Overview

RAYA FIRABI

Raya Firabi was always a sweet if somewhat misguided girl -- as Gold Dragon women go, at least. Too young to remember the Exodus and its discomforts, she was born into a fractured family, broken into pieces -- the men at war, the women hidden -- by the Shamibelians. Miraculously, they were reunited, all of them, when the war slowed. Her childhood was peaceful and pleasant, spent on her family's farmland, gifted to them by Elianos himself. She thought nothing of the war each summer, for she was a girl and girls had no business in combat.

Although an untroubled child, she grew into a mischievous young adult, known for little (and often irresponsible) adventures with Lord Banik, to whom she was quite close despite his nobility and her comparatively low middle class status. This friendship ended in marriage, though not in anything so scandalous as a marriage to Banik, despite his inentions; Raya fell in love with a weaponsmith named Kenaki and wed him against her family's wishes. Cast away from the Firabis, she learned to be a responsible woman, wife and mother, proper and exceedingly conscious of her place in the world.

Her loyalty and service (as a cook) to the Firgalik family would eventually see her rising in the world, gifted land and social favor after a particularly bloody civil war. At this point, however, life started to go wrong for Raya. Odd rumors passed this way and that about her daughter, who was taken outside the house only at night; she kept her secrets and developed a sort of quiet paranoia. This was intensified when a group of Shamibelian raiders captured her (along with her children) and took them captive; their rescue was a narrow one, and the entire event drove her back into the city and off her land.

Later, she lost her daughter. She vanished, it was said, or ran away -- no one knew for certain, and it reminded uncomfortably of Raya's brother, Arunos', previous disappearance. Then, many years later (or so it's rumoured), this girl turned up dead, and Raya snapped, or perhaps broke for other reasons, but to be certain, she was not of a healthy mind. Certainly not when she broke into the Shadina estate and kidnapped a noble child. Captured and convicted, she was sentenced to death. Her madness persisted. She begged to be killed; she fled; she was caught again. In the end, she was put to death after the Spring Festival concluded itself.

Raya is survived by her husband, Kenaki, and her son, Sedarius, as well as her Firabi relatives, with whom she never entirely reconciled.