Chinese Zodiac

Fire Sheep

Sheep simply want a bit of peace. They enjoy carrying on with life in their own quiet, individual way, content to be in the middle of it all rather than to be leading it. Sheep are quiet and calm people. They enjoy cultural things and focus much of their energy on artistic hobbies. Sheep are easygoing and relaxed, happy to be going with the flow.

Sheep are nurturers. They enjoy taking care of other people. Like their animal counterpart, Sheep people are pretty calm individuals. Their personalities are quiet, reserved and soothing. They like to be in the company of others but do not wish to be in the middle of everything. They like standing in the back, watching contently from the sidelines, as others dazzle the company. Sheep will generally do better than they are aware because they are so good at keeping the peace and accomplishing the tasks at hand.

Fire Sheep are not as likely to get their feelings hurt nor are they as likely to desire the approval of others as typical Sheep are. They are capable of taking care of themselves, standing up for themselves and putting themselves first. They are vivacious and charismatic, preferring theater to any of the other arts. Fire Sheep generally enjoy a tight circle of friends and family and enjoy the social limelight.

Greek Zodiac

Libra

People born under the sign of Libra are peaceful, fair, and they hate being alone. Partnership is very important for them, as their mirror and someone giving them the ability to be the mirror themselves. These individuals are fascinated by balance and symmetry, they are in a constant chase for justice and equality, realizing through life that the only thing that should be truly important to themselves in their own inner core of personality. This is someone ready to do nearly anything to avoid conflict, keeping the peace whenever possible

The sign of Libra is an Air sign, set between Gemini and Aquarius, giving these individuals constant mental stimuli, strong intellect and a keen mind. They will be inspired by good books, insurmountable discussions and people who have a lot to say. Each Libra representative has to be careful when talking to other people, for when they are forced to decide about something that is coming their way, or to choose sides, they suddenly realize that they might be in the wrong place and surrounded by wrong people. No partner should make them forget that they have their own opinion.

Planet ruling the sign of Libra is Venus, making these people great lovers but also fond of expensive, material things. Their lives need to be enriched by music, art, and beautiful places they get a chance to visit.

East Meets West

Libran Sheep: Libran Sheep are cultured and artistic. They are intellectual and sophisticated and finish what they start.

She's female. Young adult. Somewhat deficient, nutritionally speaking, in a broad range of areas, but it's not enough to affect her now (although in 10-15 years it'll accumulate into a series of problems, assuming she maintains her current level of deficiency).

Aside from that she's... got no major problems! Her body seems well-cared for. There are healed-over injuries (a couple finger fractures, calcified, and a crooked left pinky toe), probably from childhood, and a couple missing teeth.

Slavina attachment score: 8/10. Thanks largely to mind-meld.

1. What aspect(s) of herself (skills, attributes, physical features, personality, whatever) is Nora most confident about or proud of?

Pride is not really a thing Nora experiences except in brief bursts of success when it comes to applying her knowledge to solve a problem for the first time. (Even so, it's more a feeling of victory than anything else, that mingled joy and relief and everything "clicking".) What she has confidence in is her ability to learn and eventually discover some kind of solution to any given problem. (Notably, problems of a person-related nature, such as emotional or political problems, are not on her radar.)

2. What aspect(s) of herself is she most insecure or ashamed about?

In a word, her vulnerability. As many people are. She is a person with needs and limits, and while she has no trouble admitting those things and addressing them on her own, it is not something she likes other people being privy to.

3. What is she most afraid of?

Being trapped in an enclosed space with no light, no Brian, and no way out. Similarly, the thought of suffocation in various forms inspires a certain unease in her. Being swallowed, buried, constricted, drowning...

4. What does she find most comforting, reassuring, and/or uplifting in times of stress?

There is little in Nora's life that resembles comfort or reassurance, and above all she wouldn't understand what "uplifting" meant. However, talking with Brian is what helps keep her on the level (which is a comfort of a sort). So long as she can talk to Brian, she can work out any problem.

5. one thing (person, goal, object, etc) Nora really really wants

She really really wants to learn more about how Aaren's voices work.
She really really wants to know why her faelight is behaving oddly.
She really really wants to know why her body isn't responding the way it should.
She really really wants to know everything she possibly can about the samples she collected.
She really really wants to know what's up with the welded spirits.

(There's a theme here: understanding how things work. That's the only thing she ever really desires.)

6. one thing (ditto) Nora would be devastated to lose

To state the obvious: Brian. That's about it. That's really all she has that's irreplaceable.

(It hasn't yet occured to her that she could lose her mental faculties. That's not something she's witnessed happen to anyone else. If that notion ever makes its way onto her radar, one way or another, she would absolutely 100% be devastated to lose that.)

7. Nora's fondest memory

One time, she and Gran spent a week working together devising a treatment for one of their customers who had the infamous Bronze Disease. They spent a lot of time studying, bouncing ideas and observations off each other, and testing the effects of different things on the samples they'd collected. They were very much in sync throughout that week, Nora learned a lot and surprised her Gran frequently with good ideas, and it was just generally a happy time.

8. Nora's worst memory

One time, Nora had an epiphany while Gran was yanking her by the hair into the basement that Gran was punishing her for things that were completely out of Nora's control. She got really angry and fought and scratched and kicked and bit, doing a lot of damage and even drawing blood. Gran, hurt and shocked, let her go. Nora immediately ran out into the bog, but didn't get far before she realized that she had no resources to survive and nowhere to go anyway. Eventually she returned, and when she did Gran gave her the worst beating she'd ever had in her life and locked her in the basement for a full week and a half, only showing up to feed her once a day.

That was also when she got her first period, which was frightening because, given how sick she felt and how much pain she was already in due to the beating, she thought that she was dying. She begged Gran to take a look, but Gran ignored her.

After it was over, Gran cleaned her up and didn't really say more than two words at a time to her for another couple of weeks.

9. Who does she love and/or hate (if anyone)? What were those relationships like, and were those people still in her life as of when we left Tir na Tearmann?

The only people in her life are Gran and Brian.

Her relationship with her Gran was complex, as relationships pretty much always are. It was Gran who taught her everything, who helped her cultivate her curiosity and taught her, above all, how to learn and how to draw connections and how to apply her knowledge in the pursuit of her curiosity. It was also Gran who took care of her when she was at her most vulnerable, healed her when she got injured or ill without a second thought. However, Gran was also volatile and was absolutely unafraid to use her power over Nora to get what she wanted, which made her quite terrifying.

Her relationship with Brian is similarly complex. Brian offers her incredibly valuable counsel, and offers her new perspectives on certain problesm. However, he also is privy to her innermost workings, and will bring them to the forefront whenever the mood strikes him.

Throughout Nora's whole life there certainly were hundreds of customers, none of which really left an impact on her. Certainly she remembers them all quite vividly (as she remembers most things), but they crossed into and out of her life with little ceremony.

There's also her mom, but, despite the fact that Nora has more memories of her than any given customer, she's another non-entity. Most of Nora's memories of her mom involve Gran and her mom fighting or being angry at each other. There are a few where her mom was affectionate towards Nora, but those don't really mean much to Nora.

10. Nora's top three pet peeves

People who chew noisily or with their mouth open.
Snoring.
Any kind of faint physical contact, like a brush of the fingers. (Though physical contact in general makes Nora uncomfortable.)

11. A brief 1-3 sentance description of who Nora is from Nora's perspective

Uh...

I guess, in what context? Like... if some random person straight-up asked her, "Who are you?" she would have a brief 1-3 sentence answer. ("I'm Nora. I'm the witch of the bog. I can figure out what ails you and I can make something to fix it and I can also get answers to your questions from the dead.") But if you're asking for how Nora thinks of herself to herself, that's either going to be more than 1-3 sentences or not going to be words at all.

12. Bonus: What's going on with Brian?

It's... complicated. I'm gonna approach this from a purely meta, authorial standpoint.

You could call Brian a placebo. His physical presence is key to Nora "interacting" with him, but other than that there's nothing special about him as far as shrunken heads go. And he is very much a balm to Nora -- she's able to stay rational and level-headed, for the most part, when he's around, even when she's not talking directly to him.

You could call Brian a focus. It's through him that Nora has a context through which she's able to interface with herself and the world, to apply herself to any given problem. It's in that sense that he acts as a tool.

You could call Brian a dissasociated identity. Certainly it doesn't resemble the "typical" case of Disassociated Identity Disorder, wherein there are multiple people within an individual which surface occasionally, sending the other people to the back seat, but there's still two distinct people involved here -- as in Nora and Brian -- and they are intrinsically tied to Nora. There is no Brian without Nora, but there's definitely a Nora without Brian.

You could call Brian an ancestor spirit. He did exist at one point as a live person, as Gran's father, and certainly has shared memories and experiences with Nora which she may not have learned otherwise.

Really, Brian is kind of all of those things. It's a complicated, contradictory, floaty sort of thing.

But, perhaps most importantly, he's very much a person to Nora, who exists in his own paradigm which is both separate from hers and a part of hers. So I urge you to put that consideration above everything else when you're figuring out how Slavina contextualizes Brian.