teagan.

TEAGAN, HAND OF THE SHIPWRIGHT — the sea is all she's ever really known and loved. you'd not necessarily think so, considering that she grew up in manchester, but her father always took her to the sea, whenever there was a moment, on a solemn, lonely stretch of coast between liverpool and blackpool. there she learned to withstand the cold of the water no matter the season, even when her teeth would chatter so hard she thought they'd break, and her eyes stung with the salt of the sea and her tears from how it hurt, until she no longer felt it. that was the first time she'd seen her father glow with pride. — she learned not to ask certain questions; where is my mother, why do you do this, why does the water sing and listen to me, what am i. not because he wouldn't answer, but because the answers were never satisfactory. not even in the context of the books, the exercises, the rigours. she was his daughter, his apprentice, a child of the Hours, and eventually, one day, sometime, she would take his place. — there wasn't much time for friends, but she held her own well enough to earn grudging respect on the playground, in the classroom. bright, sharp, but disinterested in anyone and everything that did not somehow pertain to the sea. that was her real home, not the cramped basement flat her father rented, nor the streets she roamed in the early evenings with her one or two acquaintances. you have to know your way around people, father said, though he barely gave her the time. she managed. — playing loyal, devoted daughter was easy. her father practically laid it out for her, told her everything he wanted her to be, and she fit the mould like she was born for it, because she was. maybe it's when the Hour gets under your skin when you're young, filling your lungs with a desire for more, drowning you under the weight of its impossible, expansive being. she did not wait for her father's schedules and timings, and instead made her own. he was gutted by her own hand, at the precious age of 21. left like an offering, praising the impenetrable depths. — from then on she found her own apprentice, not entirely through her own means and decisions, but she is content enough with what the cartographer of scars has given her. — teagan is wilful, unpredictable and ferocious, when she wants to be. she lives by absolutes, black and white thinking that only makes sense to her, despite how dearly she loves shades of grey. she will act in malice and self-interest without batting an eyelid, and likes to precariously toe the line of going too far and putting herself (& her apprentice) at risk. she has the ability to resist extreme temperatures, and to induce very real and intense sensations of fear in others, which can escalate into auditory and visual hallucinations, as well as feeling as though your lungs are filling with water. wouldn't recommend getting on her bad side.