Gender/age: female/13
Physical: extremely thin, almost emaciated because of her anorexia. She is going to be about 5�8 when she grows up, but only if her eating habits don�t stunt her growth. Her skin is medium in tone, and often has a light down of hair on it due to her poor diet. Her hair is pale brown, and almost completely straight, often cut to just her shoulders. Her face is long, and somewhat pretty, with brown eyes. She thinks that she is ugly, though this is untrue: if she were to put weight back on, she might be someones idea of perfection.
Mental: Obsessive about her weight, and the fact that her mother and sister (both deceased) were remarkably pretty. She loves clothing and style, though she has to alter most dresses to fit her bony body. Her mental state is somewhat fragile, and she does need solid friends to show her the way to health.
Skills: As a seamstress, Carrolyne is quite talented. She is also good at weaving and dying cloth, and is good at selecting plants and oils for those dyes. She is still learning other skills.
Her best friend is Diva, though it seems hard for her to keep friends - they would like to get her healthy, and that to Carrolyne means "fat".
The dragons out on the hill had at least made it possible for the clan to settle for longer than a few weeks in one place, but Carrolyne knew they'd be moving along again, to one of their other secluded rest-spots soon. Their goats and few cattle needed better grazing apparently.
"I might as well go out and graze with them," Carol groaned, clutching her bony fingers to her hips. It was not fat that her fingers felt below her dress, but she had convinced herself that the bony protrusions of her gaunt hip bones were indeed covered with chub. Every time she thought about the words her elders would ply her with - you've got to eat more, you're so skinny - you should see one of the medics about your weight - she blew them off with a nod and a false promise.
Instead of griping to herself, or risking getting in trouble for not working more on her chores, Carrolyne decided to head out to the goat pen. She would check to see if there was any chance of getting some shed fur, which always made some good thread even if it was a bit stiff. She loved being out in the sun, but her skin was getting more sensitive to it. Plus, she had that odd kind of "fur" on her skin that stayed there even when she ... well, when she could change in and out of her private shape, it remained.
She guessed that others of the Triptych clan had this ability. And she knew that her parents had been captured and killed by the Faustas people - probably for their Tpowers. If that was why the Faustas house kept chasing the Triptych, they'd be chasing the clan forever... Everyone she knew had some kind of secret. Some of them could telepathically speak to one another, some were able to lift objects with their minds, and some could even spray fire by waving their hands.
Carrolyne could weakly shapeshift. She kept going back to the goats, because that seemed to be her "chosen" shape. It had horns, anyway... But she'd only been able to do it once or twice, and even one time she collapsed and couldn't rise again in her human shape - so she slept in the pens with the other animals that night.
"Pathetic idiot, I can't even control my special powers..." She hissed to herself, as she climbed over the short fencing that had been erected around the goat pens. The goats behaved better when she was around, they rarely tried to escape. She brought out her fur brush and waved it in the air. "Anyone got shed?" She called. "I'm sure you don't want to itch so much..." Several of the elder goats approached her, bumping up against her thin legs and almost toppling her.
"Okay, okay, there's enough to go around I guess. Take your turn next Pilo!" She nudged the big male, who sulked but waited dutifully. Carol swept the stiff brush across the goat's belly and back, up and down the neck, and over the legs once or twice. Then she collected the full brush worth of hair, and went on to the next goat. In the short time she was out doing so, she'd gotten enough to create a small spool of thread all by itself. Thus, her next activity was to begin spinning the hairs into the long preliminary threads.
Eventually, over the next day or so, Carrolyne spun and sewed until her fingers were raw. She barely ate, and she usually slept hard and for the entire early morning. The sun woke her, and she'd only a tiny bit of work to finish her latest dress.
It was a happy dress - the material was a pale yellowish shade, and she'd embroidered many colored flower shapes onto it in patterns. She tied the waist hem again, testing it on her narrow hips and frame, and was finally satisfied. Whe she was done, Carol put it on and danced over to Diva's temporary hut. The black-haired girl was always there, with her nose in some kind of project.
Carrolyne looked around and ticked her tongue, "that's where those scissors got to," she said, and carefully pocketed the small pair of sharp scissors. She knew that Diva had 'borrowed' them, but never could remember her asking what they'd be used for. Many people would find things they had lost in Diva's hut.
"Do you like it? I just finished it up!" Carol said, spinning around in a circle and fluffing out the hem of the dress. "I think I need to take it in a little more - there's always so much material left over."
Diva looked up from her 'work', and grinned. "It looks great!" She said, and before she realized it, or caught herself, she said, "you could fill it out a little more, get some meat on those bones --" Then she clamped her dark fingers over her mouth.
"MEAT?!" Caroline yelled, suddenly quite angry and her head spun. "Meat? You want meat? Here- nobody likes me the way I am, how about this?" She concentrated and in her anger she managed to shapeshift into a half-human half-antelope creature. Her dress, with so much hard work into it, slid to the ground near what appeared to be hooves instead of Carol's bare feet. Diva knew her friend was a shifer - but she'd never seen her do it so abruptly before.
But then, as Carrolyne's horned head turned on Diva to angrily look at her, oddly sounding words came from the muzzle-mouth of her friend - "oh... I don't feel so--" and Carrolyne dropped to the floor in a bony heap - still shaped like an antelope-person.
"Carrolyne!" Diva yelled, and lept to her side. It was all her fault, if she could only learn to control her mouth as well as her darned hands - always saying the wrong thing or stealing something else -- "Carrolyne, please be okay! Wake up!"
Barely aware, Carrolyne looked at Diva with dark horizontally-slitted eyes, and whispered, "don't tell..." But then dropped into unconsciousness.
