Rydia Burgess

Character Info[]

Name: Rydia Burgess

Age: 15

Nationality: Bethal, Ghealdan

Main Timeline[]

Age:

Ajah:

Position:

Appearance[]

Hair: Dark

Eyes: Dark

Skin: Pale

Height: Short

Voice: Silky

Other:

Optional[]

Special Skills: Tracking and trapping

Knowledge Weakness: Rydia can read her letters and sign her name but taxing her brain makes her twitchy

Physical Weakness: Can’t swim and hates the rain

Personality weakness: Lack of mental concentration

Personality[]

Very fun loving and likes physical work as part of an active lifestyle

History[]

The fire was dead. An hour to first light and her scalp felt numb with the cold. The ferret next to her slept huddled in a ball. Rydia got out of bed and with her blanket wrapped around her and started rebuilding the fire.

Once sufficiently warm, Rydia left the hut, passing one of the rare aes sedai inspection parades. Pushing through the aes sedai’s stoic guards was as difficult as trudging through snow. Frosty winds whipped her hair.

In their midst, with her back toward Rydia, awaited the hooded figure of the aes sedai, obscured behind a curtain of falling snow. It was her time to be tested. The snow was so deep at her feet she sunk and could only pull herself out with maximum effort.

When the grave face turned on her, emerging from the falling snow, puffs of white breath drifting from within the hood, Rydia was awed; she turned to ice, paralysed, static, unable to speak or smile. But the aes sedai smiled, and it flowed through her like a warm breeze.

. . .

But one day ago the entire town was hushed and hiding, waiting for the end of winter. Roads were closed, communication blocked; the only news to come through, rumours of two deserters from the Legion of the Wall. Her father, a trapper, came upon them frozen to death, snuggled in deer entrails west from the village. They had tried to save themselves.

The mayor refused to send a party to retrieve them, but Rydia’s father was not inclined to leave the men where they were. He said it was incredible men should desert so far from Jehannah, within a day’s march of food and warm. He requested Rydia’s help to cart the crooked, pitiful bodies to the cemetery.

Although Rydia was accustomed to shovelling and hard work, she was ever so pleased to see their village once they were done. She stood by the graveside (dug for both men) in the icebound cemetery while the last rites were performed. Rydia found herself unable to move, like some small animal caught in mid-stride by an angry fox or badger. A woman was staring at her, like an owl hunting field mice, or wolf cutting a young calf from the herd. Rydia had not known then the woman was a witch of Tar Valon.