Musoka
Tayila Snow
I’ve seen babes die upon falling from their mothers’ wombs.
I’ve seen a beggar spear another for a burnt block of bread soggy from snow melt.
I’ve seen children with large eyes that only got wider as their cheeks turned hollow and those big eyes became sunken pits.
I’ve seen death and ruin, come close to them even, and I will avoid them like the bloody flux.
Call me a craven if you wish, dance with death. For when you lie in a scarlet pool of your own folly, death will have you,
and I will have my cowardice with my unnumbered heartbeats.
Age: 15
House/Affilitation: Stark (@MrDidact)
Appearance:
Light-boned and slight, with large green eyes dark enough to pass for brown, Tayila's hair is thick and brown, with the occasional wave rippling through. She is roughly 165cm, and is daintily-built, with fair skin that is sometimes marked by small scars or nicks. Her dark eyes are always glowing with fierce spirit that could melt a winter night's fallings.
Biography:
Tayila was born to a whore named Ilia Freid. She was a buxom, red-headed, comely woman – as most whores are – who was a tad too comfortable with the ale. Tayila never knew her father, and spent the best part of her life skipping through the markets on chilly days. She would play, spending her days as a carefree and happy girl, even after her mother’s death. Her childhood was marred at times by the grim straits of the populace and threats of wildlings, and she once did dance over a frostbitten corpse in the copse, with the snow stained pink around him. One learns to overlook these things though, even if they stay in the back of your eyelids for days.
The whores in the brothel by a wending road near the heart of the North were thick as thieves, and cared for each other like their own. Tayila lived with them, grew up as they went about their salacious livelihoods, and was raised by them, keeping warm by the brothel hearth. Promiscuity was their way of life and income, and Tayila picked up on their sultry skills. She saw grown men drool and become enamored by them, knights shedding their chainmail with their honour at their flirtatious beckons and smouldering looks, and learnt of all the advantages to be had by playing others as they wished to be played.
Tayila always assumed she would either live the rest of her days nicking from carts in the marketplace or join a mummers’ band – she could tell a tale convincingly enough. Instead, she found herself in the service of House Stark, and groomed into a handmaiden for Lady Alys of said House, come from an old name that held as much honour and valour as it did dark tales and grim history. Tayila had been found one late autumn day scaling an outerwall of Winterfall, and taken down at once. She remembered holding her chin high when she was brought into the presence of the highborn Starks, and at once saying that it was a good day to die, for it was cold, and the sword could not bite more than that. Perhaps they'd thought her funny. Perhaps it was her rags that wheedled warmth from Lady Mira's heart. No matter the case, Tayila found herself a place before a hearth in Winterfell. It was a kitchen hearth, but that night's sleep had been the soundest in a lifetime. Warmed by fire and spiced stew, Tayila knew her fortune must end there.
But it did not. She was taught her letters, to sew, and given a small chamber with a bed that was hers to slumber in after a day of three meals. The other serving wenches in the castle gave her lessons on how to treat nobility, before Tayila began to serve Alys Stark as a handmaiden. Even before that however the two girls had come to know each other, and Tayila has grown accustomed to, if not fond of, the Stark daughter.
Personality:
Wily, cunning, Tayila is as malleable as the ocean, changeable and inconstant when needed. She can play the part of a blushing maiden; she can smile and flutter her eyelashes alluringly if she must. She can giggle and gossip like a heady girl; she can run and tumble until her hair is tangled and her knees are scraped bloody and her breaths are coming short. Tayila is willful, and she will do whatever she needs to survive and thrive in a place that is cruel and heartless and political (winter in the North was two of the first). She is smart, and growing up she has learnt to dismiss her morals when she must be unscrupulous. But she is not without discipline; most of the time she plays along, and stays in her place. Her ears are always hearing and her eyes are always observing, and she is unafraid to show defiance when she wants. But never to particularly influential highborn. She does enough to remain in good graces, but can be dangerous if incited. She will not actively withhold information of her bastardy, but it is not something she mentions in casual conversation to those she meets.
