Lily

The lily is another flower that is well-loved even outside of the Gladekeeper’s reach. Popular in gift bouquets or lair decor, it is perhaps inevitable that it is this flower that is associated with home and safety. A lily symbol might indicate an area of rest or relief such as a clearing amongst the forest suitable for making camp, sleeping quarters within a lair or worksite, or a hotel or inn.

While any lily symbol is a sign of relief for Nature dragons in its assurance of safety amongst the perpetual danger of the Labyrinth, many clans do implement variations on the symbol to further specify the symbol’s meaning. Though five petals is the default, fewer or greater petal numbers have their own meanings, and the lily is also frequently paired with other telegrams.

Common lily variations:

• Three petals: This indicates a safe area without amenities, such as a clearing for camping, a shallow river crossing, or safe public hunting grounds
• Six petals: Although the five-petaled lily can also be used the same way, a six-petaled lily is a sure sign of a rest area; the six-petaled lily insinuates access to shelter, usually in the form of sleeping quarters
• Begonia: A lily (usually five or six-petaled) paired with the begonia symbol is employed by inn owners to advertise the presence of amenities, such as a staffed kitchen, bar, or bathhouse
• Magnolia: The lily symbol paired with magnolia diverges slightly from both symbols’ individual meanings - this pairing denotes the presence of an organized clan. If encircled or otherwise grouped with additional symbols, this is the SFTS equivalent of a clan’s seal or crest.

Who, who are you really? She spends all her time in the clan's library, of which she owns 2/3 of the entire collection. A complete bookworm, FEMM will spend days alone in the library, often forgetting even to leave for food or drink, and so she gets lectured by her mother for not taking better care of herself. Despite growing up in the lush paradise of the Viridan Labyrinth, she finds life dull and boring here, and uses books as an escape since she can not travel by herself. She is very unsociable and does not enjoy the company of children. FEMM has talents in both flower pressing and book restoration, practicing both as hobbies and also as jobs. She makes a living restoring books for others, and uses the money she makes from it to buy more books for her own collection. She presses flowers to make both gifts for others, and also to make bookmarks for herself. She uses them to mark interesting anecdotes or important chapters in her favorite stories. She has hundreds of them. FEMM has few friends, and fewer more outside of the clan. She has a budding relationship starting with a warm and patient Skydancer from another clan, but as she has never fallen in love before, she doesn't understand the feelings she holds for Seraphine. Only time will tell how their relationship will develop and blossom.

Maren Wavesinger Familiar Maren Wavesingers maintain a strong connection with the elements, and may guide currents to the advantage of their schools. 2900 Pressed Morning Glory Organics Artists are always taking three dimensional objects and creating two dimensional representations. 22 Basic Book Collection Apparel A completely normal thing to carry around with you at all times. 500 Accent: Sophie's Garden Pearlcatcher Female Only Accents are equippable items that can be worn like a coat of paint on top of the skin of your dragon. The look of the accent will not be passed onto offspring and may be unequipped at any time. (Designed by Snastle.) Itemid #17730

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FEMM, for the longest time, was the only child in the clan. Born in the beginning of a tragic and sorrowful war, the adults were often too busy to care for her, save for her mother, Storm. FEMM does not know what the war was about and only knows fuzzy details about it, at best, since talking about it is discouraged by their clan leaders. What happened in the past best stays in the past, Champagne says. FEMM wishes she could say the same of her own.

FEMM was born from a fling between her mother and a Pearlcatcher from another clan, which ended up being the entire reason she lived. She left her father's clan very shortly after being born, and never got to know her father, which caused her much distress growing up. Having only her mother for support (the rest of the clan being too busy fighting a war to help Storm care for her), she grew up feeling very lonely and confused about herself.

She began to use her pearl as a coping mechanism, going so far to even chew it and throw it at others when upset or angry. It caused her pearl to become permanently deformed, the surface rough and uneven to the touch. She hates the pearl, but is dependent on it to function. However, its state has caused her to receive much flak with other Pearlcatchers, causing her great insecurity and to even become dysphoric.

It is traditional in the clan for children to choose their own names. FEMM got hers from a book--even at a young age, she quickly became proficient in reading and writing, and found the word 'feminine' to be pretty, and wanted to name herself after it. However, when asked why she always capitalized her whole name when writing, she would reply to the adults, "You're supposed to cap'itize your name, right?" They found it so cute, no one corrected her. It stuck.

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"My daughter is so intelligent! I wish she would be more social though. She spends so much time all alone, a mother can't help but worry."

"I know she seemed cold when you first met her, but she doesn't mean it. She's just awkward. She's actually a very sweet dragon!"

"Yes, I know FEMM keeps some books on seances in the library. Just ask her to show you them. She could probably pick them off the shelf without looking."

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Delicately…

FEMM used the wood block to carefully double-check the stack of pages on her workbench were straightened perfectly. It wouldn’t do to have the papers misaligned before she secured them in the jig, after all… She had already paid a lot of money from her personal savings to get this book cover custom made, so there was no way she was going to risk potentially ruining it if the pages didn’t align correctly.

Satisfied with the alignment, she took the crank of the jig in hand, carefully twisting it to shut the clamp around the pages--

”FEMM!“

She squawked in surprise. Her hand flew up off the crank, knocking the pages out of their neat pile and spilling half of them onto the floor. Furious, she slammed her fist on the workbench and turned around, eyeing Storm with a murderous glare. At least Storm had the self awareness to look sheepish. “MOTHER!” She made a sweeping motion with her other hand at the mess all over the floor. “I’M CLEARLY BUSY! What is so important that you feel the need to SHOUT?”

Clearly disapproving of her daughter’s tone, Storm clucked her tongue. FEMM narrowed her eyes in response as her mother chided her. “It wasn’t THAT loud, and besides, you ignore me when I call for you half the time.”

“That doesn’t mean you need to scream while barging in--”

“Oh I was not screaming, you’re being over-dramatic--”

“Yes you were! And you know--”

“FEMM, that is enough--”

“AND YOU KNOW not to interrupt me when my sign is up!”

“Your SIGN? You mean THIS one?” Storm bit back, exasperated, as she pulled FEMM’s ‘Working Do Not Disturb’ sign from the shelf next to the door. “The one you forgot to hang up?”

Now it was FEMM’s turn to look sheepish as her mother waved the sign like a banner in the air. “I made this sign for you and you don’t even use it!” She huffed as she angrily slammed the sign back down on the shelf.

“I DO use it--”

“ENOUGH! FEMM I’m not here to argue with you, for god’s--” Storm heaved a heavy sigh as she collapsed dramatically on the floor, her noodly body writhing melodramatically on the wood. FEMM let out a more haughty sigh at the sad sight on the floor. Storm, lying on her back, began to lament. “Can I please--” Storm closed her eyes and shook her closed fists in the air, drawing an eye roll from her daughter “--please, just have a normal conversation with my daughter? Just one?”

The dramatic act didn’t impress FEMM, who simply glared at her in response.

Peeking one eye open, she noticed her daughter staring back at her. Her ears drooping, she rolled over onto her belly, eyeing her daughter with a tired look. “Listen, FEMM. Can I please just talk to you for a second? Without the yelling?”

FEMM stared back with apprehension, crossing her arms across her chest. A beat of silence rested between them before FEMM replied tersely, “...yes.”

Swinging her arms in an exaggerated fashion, Storm bowed her head--or at least as well as she could, lying on the floor as she was. “Yes, your highness. Thank you for your grace.”

“Oh my god PLEASE.” FEMM pinched the base of her horn in frustration. “Just say it already!”

Storm, ignoring her daughter’s temper, continued. “I do have a bit of unfortunate news. I know you had your date with Seraphine coming up…” Storm’s voice petered out a bit as she spoke, feeling her daughter’s ire already starting to fall on her. “Well, I know she was supposed to stay the night here. But, well, the inter-flight meeting that we’re hosting had to be bumped back a bit, and, well…” Storm let the sentence trail off, not quite sure how to finish reporting the bad news to her daughter.

FEMM’s sour expression fell to one of disbelief. “What? But--she’s already--we were going to--Champagne said--” FEMM floundered her arms up in the air as she tried to find her words, stumbling over herself in the process.

“I know, I, I’m sorry.” Storm sat up, crossing her own arms as she looked at her daughter, distraught at having to be the bearer of bad news. She suddenly remembered why she had been so nervous to come and tell FEMM in the first place. “It’s not up to me, you know that… With the storms coming in from the west, it was either push up the gathering by a few weeks, or push it back by several months…”

FEMM hung her head dejectedly as her mother continued. “It was Champagne’s call, ultimately. I don’t even think he remembered that Seraphine was coming that week.” She added the last part in a vain effort to perhaps make her daughter less upset, but the deepening slump in her shoulders told her that it wasn’t helping.

Looking cross, FEMM held herself for a moment, staring at the ground petulantly. “So couldn’t Serpahine stay somewhere else, and I could visit her, or something?” Even as she protested, she knew the answer was unlikely to be a positive one. Still, she felt the need to push back, even if just a bit.

“With the Plague representatives coming this time around?” Storm responded critically. “If things go sour--like they always do--you know that having strangers here could aggravate them only more.”

“Seraphine isn’t a stranger!”

“To you and me, no, but to those reps, yes,” she hissed in reply. “And that alone is enough to warrant a ban on Seraphine’s visit during the assembly.”

FEMM dug her claws into her elbows. She started and stopped a sentence a few times, trying to think of an alternate option, but knew her mother was right. And attendance for clan members was required.

Storm, picking herself up fully off the ground, flapped her wings and ungracefully lifted herself to fly the short distance separating her and her daughter. She gently took her daughter’s large head in her hands, rubbing at her cheeks as she noticed tears start to form in her eyes. “Why don’t you message Serpahine? See if she can come a week later?” The Arcane flight was not a short flight away, they both knew. That sort of travel took plenty of planning ahead. “I’m sure Nightsky will understand.”

FEMM sighed again, this time feeling defeated. She reached up and touched her mothers hands with her own, her touch lingering for a moment before gently pulling them off her cheeks. Strom’s fingers trailed to her shoulder, a reassuring grip as FEMM picked the pages of her book, placing them in a haphazard pile on the woodblock before grabbing fresh parchment, pulling her pens close as she set to write an apology letter.

Angling herself so that she wasn’t writing too close to her book pages, she sighed, again, as she mentally prepared herself and tried to think of what to say. Storm let her hands fall off her daughter’s shoulder, opting instead to drape her lithe body over FEMM’s. She squeezed lightly as she did so, her arms wrapped around her daughter’s neck.

FEMM moved to write, but was surprised when a few tear drops ran down her snout and onto the page. She sniffled as she fought back the tears she hadn’t realized had begun flowing, her mother’s grip around her neck getting tighter. “Sorry,” was all Storm could say.

Steeling herself again, FEMM began writing, her hand shaking slightly.

Dear Seraphine, I am…”

“Why don’t we go get dinner at Familia’s tonight? We can get your favorite. My treat.” She wrapped herself a little tighter around her daughter. She missed moments like these, even if she would never say it aloud.

FEMM sighed a bit, reaching her left hand up and squeezing her mother’s body. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t miss this. Her mother used to hold her like that so much when she was younger… But she was too proud to admit that. “You’re sure?” She looked at her mother, tilting her head to rest on the side of her muzzle. “They’re kind of expensive…”

“It’s fine,” she responded, nuzzling FEMM in return. “We haven’t gone out together in a while anyways.”

“Right, when was the last time we went out?” FEMM absentmindedly rolled up the parchment she had been writing on, not paying mind to the slightly-wet ink that smeared her fingers as she did so. “You’ve been so busy with work lately…” She reached for the magical scroll hung above her desk, the one that could teleport messages instantly to Seraphine’s own scroll case in her Arcane home.

[...]

It was during breakfast the next day that FEMM heard a deafening crash, like thunder, overhead.

FEMM choked on her breakfast as she looked up at the sound. The sky, bright and sunny, rippled as the barriers that protected her clan strained under the force of an attacker she couldn’t see. Many of the dragons around her began standing around and shifting in panic, their view limited by the thick forest surrounding them on all sides.

FEMM grabbed her bowl of berries, intending to rush to the underground dens, when she heard Champagne yelling from not-so-far away. “What is going on? Why are you here?”

Another crash like thunder came as whatever was above thrashed against the barrier again, and FEMM was gone. Half-hyperventilating, FEMM dropped her bowl as she started galloping for the nearest burrow, seeking safety from whatever was attacking. From the corners of her vision, she saw multiple dragons taking flight--whether to retaliate or flee, she wasn’t sure. Her only focus was safety.

“Wait!”

FEMM skidded to a stop, recognizing Nightsky’s voice. Her pearl, seated in her saddlebags, slammed against her side, causing her to wince as she looked frantically at the Guardian, who had apparently been the one arguing with Champagne. “FEMM! Are you alright? What happened?”

“W-what?” The strangeness of the situation only increasing, FEMM looked back up into the sky again. At this angle, she saw the outline of a familiar jade Imperial hovering outside the barriers, the culprit who had been knocking on their proverbial door. Tsunami hovered just inside the barrier, the imposing Guardian’s fists already glowing green as he prepared an elemental strike. Flitting between the two was what looked to be Amethyst’s outline. “I-is that Sh-Shiryu?”

“NOW, Nightsky, before they start a bloodbath up there!” Champagne demanded, pointing his fingers quite rudely into the larger dragon’s face, before taking off himself towards the two giants flying above them.

Nightsky called out to FEMM once more. “Look for Seraphine! I think she’s searching for you in the library.” Without waiting for a reply, she followed Champagne into the sky.

“Uh, uh--” FEMM couldn’t stop stammering, turning in a circle once, twice, trying to orient herself and shake off her confusion. She shook her head and dug her nails into her palms to ground herself, before turning towards the library, where Serpahine supposedly was.

There were no more crashing noises in the short sprint to the library. Inside, FEMM was surprised to see her normally-composed girlfriend breathing hard herself, checking behind the moving bookshelf that led to emergency shelter.

“Seraphine!” The Skydancer nearly jumped out of her skin, smacking her head against the frame of the bookshelf as she whipped her head around to face her. “I--what--what IS this??” FEMM asked, making a vague hand motion towards the sky, and then to Seraphine.

“Oh thank the gods you’re ok,” Seraphine cried, rushing over to FEMM. She took her girlfriend’s head in her hands, clearly inspecting her for damage. “What happened? Are you ok? Why didn’t you respond to me last night?”

At that last question, FEMM’s gaze naturally drifted over to the scroll case hung above her work desk. FEMM hadn’t returned to the library since leaving for dinner with her mother last night, so she was surprised to see the cover to the case had popped open. Well over a dozen tightly-rolled letters had spilled onto the desk below.

“When I got your letter, I tried desperately to reach you, but you didn’t respond,” she explained, a frantic sadness in ehr eyes. “I--we--I rushed out as fast as I could, but Nightsky, she saw me and stopped me, and then Shiryu overheard, and then--”

“I--Stop, stop!” FEMM shook Seraphine’s hands off, rubbing her own cheeks where Seraphine’s hands had been. Her skin was burning from the overstimulation and aggravation that was building up inside of her from this disaster. “I don’t understand this reaction!” FEMM slapped the floor with her front paws twice, before reaching into her saddle bag and grabbing her pearl, grinding and slamming it against the floor. Seraphine recoiled a bit at the aggressive stimming behaviour, not used to having this kind of reaction aimed at her.

“I-I just… FEMM, your letter scared me!” Seraphine moved her hands in a calming motion, trying to calm her agitated girlfriend. “You need to tell me what’s going on. What happened? I just--we just want to help, FEMM.”

“I don’t--I don’t need your help!” FEMM slammed her pearl with extra force on the word ‘help.’ “Nothing is wrong! Why are you overreacting to my letter?”

“Overreacting?” Seraphine was almost yelling now. The sleep-deprivation and panic were melting away to frustration and anger as she practically shoved the letter in FEMM’s face. “Then what is THIS, FEMM?”

FEMM, baffled by the uncharacteristic outbursts from her girlfriend, looked at the letter she had sent to Seraphine just last night.

The letter, with its ink slightly smeared, tear stains at the bottom and all, and a thumb print trailing through the ink on the side, simply read:

“Dear Seraphine,

I am afraid”

FEMM stared at the letter, then her girlfriend, then the letter again, her furrowed glare melting into an uncomfortable, terrified smile, of all things.

“Do you think this is funny?” Seraphine shoved the letter in her face again, nearly on the verge of tears now. “I was so worried for you! I--I--” Seraphine couldn’t even finish her sentence. The entire night’s flight over, she had had her head filled with the worst of visions for what could have harmed FEMM, or what ill fate could have befallen her!

“No! No! Not funny!” Despite her protests, FEMM laughed nervously, her rational mind shutting down in the face of confrontation. “I just... Appear to have forgotten to finish writing the letter. Is all.” She let out another nervous chuckle, regretting it immediately as Seraphine’s eyes turned furious at the response.

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