Brush

old bio:

Brush’s parents turned her out more quickly than most, even for Wind dragons. Where neighbors clutched the tails of their departing children, extracting promises of visits and letters, Brush’s parents handed her a knapsack and said, “Off with you,” before she could be justifiably labeled as an adult.

Brush’s natural friendliness was stunted by this, the first defining moment in her life. When her parents tossed her to the wind as if she were no more valuable than a handful of petals, her pride stung, her trust broke. As an adult, she wouldn’t remember that fearful instant when her world shattered around her, but the emotion would stay with her. A wariness in her eyes, a distrust in the shifting of her body, the tendency to run, run, run away.

The whole rolling expanse of Sornieth became her home. She spelunked in the Cairnstone Rest and sketched pictures of the amethysts and geodes. In the Southern Icefield, she pushed as far as she could into the Fortress of Ends before being turned back by a powerful Ice clan who didn’t seem to appreciate her drawings of the things locked in prisons of ice. The denizens of the Ashfall Waste welcomed her creativity and invited her deeper into their sweating forges.

As she travelled, Brush discovered the sweet certainties of passion. She found it in the bones of creatures long dead, their eye sockets empty and staring. She found it in tales passed down from generation to generation, diffused among local clans. She found it in art, flowing strokes of ink, the rat-a-tat-tat of a tapping pencil.

With daily flights over miles and miles of land, soreness became a constant companion, and then an enemy to be fought through. Though a line of muscles tightened the ridge of her back, her week-long flights starved her of energy. Her stomach flattened against her ribcage, lifeless. Her bones were twigs, easily snapped with a poor landing (which were growing more and more frequent). When she spread her wings to fly, an aching would settle down on her, as heavy as an untold secret, as all-consuming as fire. Brush was aging. Her body was tired. And for the first time in her life, running from her problem only made it worse.

After all those years of burning her life away, Brush gathered up what was left: she had her dignity, she had her love of decay, and she had her sketchpad. She’d travel over Sornieth, just one more time. The land of Plague suited her. Subjects for her paintings stretched alongside bubbling wounds in the land’s pockmarked surface: bones, skeletons with mile-high rib cages, skulls that had so many teeth it seemed impossible. She’d find something worthy of her attention, and then a soft place to sit. With a flourish meant only for her own eyes, she’d whip out a quill and cut an image into parchment with harsh lines and shadows.

Her favorite subjects were the bodies of fallen Emperors. Although their bone structure was intricately impossible and their skeletons were almost poetic reminders of mortality, she found herself drawn more to the life that flourished around the corpse. Sparrowmice built nests in the skeleton’s spine and dug burrows under its talons. Browsing on the mushrooms cultivated by the humidity trapped within the Emperor’s ribcage, Mossy Cerdae shied and spooked at Brush’s slightest twitch. Infestation Hounds lay quietly by the concealing wall of the Emperor’s legs and waited for sufficient prey to pass by, unsuspecting. Where an Emperor fell, life erupted. Death made way for growth. It was the embodiment of the Plaguebringer’s mission.

Indeed, it seemed that many things in the Scarred Wasteland wanted to kill Brush and make way for growth. Violence dominated her life: a clan furious at the encroachment of their territory, monsters looking for an easy meal, or someone looking to simply vent their anger on a stranger. With luck more than skill, she managed to fight off or escape her attackers, but every encounter weakened her and reminded her of the exhaustion that tore at her body. Unable to escape anymore and aware of her growing frailty, Brush realized that she needed a clan to protect her.
The thought was always accompanied by a jaw-clenching bolt of terror. She hadn’t been close to another dragon in years. She’d barely talked to anyone in years. Her mind conjured up images of horror: rows and rows of sneering dragons, beings with shifting faces, who simply laughed once, just once, before disappearing into the night--or was it Brush that was leaving?
But without a group in the Scarred Wasteland, death was an inevitability. She had no choice.

She found a local clan that seemed in desperate need of artists. When she arrived, the leader, a Widlclaw named Tinku, beamed gleefully and said the sweetest words she could expect, “Welcome! Just paint whatever you want, for now. The clan only needs some art!”

Protection. No obligations. Freedom. It was everything Brush could want.
She kept herself apart from the other denizens of the clan; if they approached her, she smiled and chatted, but she never tried to ingratiate herself into the clan’s inner workings. The edges were her friends. It was safe there. She sketched, painted, and drew, safe within the clan’s territory, all too happy to give her drawings away to clan members in exchange for new drawing supplies. Brush was safe, physically and socially.

And then they hired Canvas.

He was shyer than she, impossible as it seemed. Day after day, they worked side-by-side. There was no reason to; Canvas seemed to simply gravitate towards Brush, no matter where she went. He carried a steadying assurance in his silence, something that said, “You don’t have to talk, if you don’t want to.”
But around Canvas, Brush found that she did want to talk. Her fears of rejection, abandonment, loss… they fell away when Canvas watched her with adoring eyes. He’d stop painting just to listen to her stories. In the moments they were together, Brush was the rarest thing in the Scarred Wasteland: a flower, blossoming into a full-throated flute of petals and softness.

So when Jill landed at the edge of the clan and Canvas pulled her towards the ship, she let him. She could’ve broken free. She could’ve refused. But she let him lead her onward. She trusted him.
That act, that simple leap of faith, began the slow process of healing her. Friends abounded in the clan she had ignored for so long, friends that were glowing and receptive to her gifts of artwork, the images of life and love blooming in unusual places.

Brush was done running, and her whole being thanked her for it.




;- Bio lore by AwkwardAngel