Profile of Vela

Although she is of a smaller stature, Vela carries her lithe form on long, slender legs with paws that lead her in a confident stride. She’s almost fox like in appearance, her muzzle short and narrow and her ears sharp triangles. Her fur is the color of oatmeal and burnt sugar with flecks of alabaster highlights.

Her eyes are warm brown; cedar wood in darkness and almost liquid gold in the light and round as though she were an owl. At her back, there is a dark patch that thins and extends along her spine. Should you find yourself beside her, you’ll find she smells a mix of a fresh aromatic spice with eucalyptus and rosemary, a hint of spearmint, lemon, and wet earth.

Vela was an unusually quiet little girl. Where most children can be heard from merely their play, she was silent. Developmentally, she was perfectly fine, she simply preferred the comfort of silence and the sounds of the natural world that filled the space. As a child, some would say her likeness was to that of a spirit, her presence going unnoticed until one turned around only to find her standing behind them.

Even today, in the stillness of her existence, she spends much of her time observing and analyzing the environment and happenings around her. The intensity with which she studies her world (especially when it comes to the way in which the world operates) can be slightly off-putting. Her focus is nearly impenetrable as she delves into at least six senses to absorb information.

Although her intelligence is astounding at such a young age, Vela is socially inept…or at least, that’s the case when she is compared to the ‘norm'. She is likely to seem self-centered or apathetic due to her independent thought and has been known to completely abandon conversations, walking away in the middle of them. In her mind, she was finished with the conversation even if the other party was not.

Being so small among the wolves she is familiar with, it is unnerving to imagine how vast the world they live in might truly be and how she might find her place in it. However, instead of wasting crucial thought on fears of not being enough, she re-centers that energy into what she can control. Vela discovers her passion for science, particularly in Physics and the way we move through whatever atmosphere we find ourselves in.

Vela has grown into a woman empowered by her own knowledge and the ways in which her presence could easily command others if she so wished to do so. She will quickly notice that unlike most who carry their weight, threaten with their teeth and claws, she has learned by observing the other successful women in her life that the best way to cut down her enemies is with her words and intellectual prowess. There is no need to be the strongest or largest when you can demand respect and earn your stature by way of manipulating minds.

Our story begins with a hired blade known as Bastien, who was hired by a soldier and vocal hater of Highlanders, Alastor Huxley. The particular assignment was to track down and kill the Highlander whore who’d given birth to his bastard. Upon arriving and seeing the circumstances they lived in, which resonated too keenly against his own, Bastian paid the woman for her silence and took a young girl called Tauriel ('Daughter of the Forest') under his care. The mercenary man renamed her her Vela Grier ('The Sails', 'Vigilant') to keep her identity a secret. Unbeknownst to both Bastien and Vela, Alastor later revisited the area and found that the prostitute he'd spent coin to kill was still alive. Needless to say, Alastor ended up taking care of it himself.

Bastien moved them to Tir Na Nog where most of Vela’s care was overseen by a nanny he hired. He could occasionally be gone for long stretches of time if work took him to the Mainlands, but when he was around, he was present, attentive, and doting. He would bring back anything Vela requested (books that were definitely stolen, tools for her to tinker with, etc.). Bastien has always feared Alastor hunting them down and because of this is extra precautious, forbidding Vela from venturing beyond the Highlands. He was known to have brought her to Maiden's Braid once or twice when she was small, since that is where he grew up.

Bastien fought in the battle of Fae Forest and again at the College of Eòlas . This would be the time period he’d be around most, keeping close to home with the increased soldier presence. Directly following the final battle, he brought a woman named Lorelei home after her brother was killed so that she could grieve and recover. Vela would have had interactions with her too at this time. After the war, with the creation of the Saoran schools.

Bastien encouraged Vela her to enroll with plans to regularly check up on her at campus. The Abhainn (River) Campus attracted her considerably with her curiosity venturing in the direction of science and innovation. She began to dabble in other concentrations at the other campuses, continuing to brush up on Philosophy, History, and Gaelic Cultural Studies. At this time in her life, Vela can be found more often than not on campus at Abhainn with her nose in a book or actively running tests for various hypotheses.