General :: Dispondent and cold, highly wisdomed and thoughtful.
Respect :: Hard to earn; given to those who are intelligent and wise, unafraid of a battle, self respecting and proud, females.
Disdain :: Foolishness, wicked behavior, abuse of weaker characters, physically weak individuals, men, wingless individuals, her mother and the rest of those heathens back home.
Desires :: More knowledge, approval of all God figures in Helovia, respect of those around her, ruthlessness within herself.
Shuns :: Idiocy in all forms, compassionate behavior, overtly kind persons, overtly racist/sexist behavior.

Inanna, Queen of Elysia x Unknown, Slave of Elysia
Inanna
Pegasus
Westphalian x Arabian

Unknown
Pegasus
Arabian x Friesian

Full Blooded Siblings
None

Half Siblings
Numerous brothers, dead or enslaved and unknown to her.
Hemera the Daughter of the Sun
Brighid the Daughter of Earth
Selene the Daughter of the Moon
Persephone the Daughter of Hades
Iris the Daughter of the Messenger
Antiope the Daughter of the Night

From Her Womb
Two sons. Dead or enslaved. She cares nothing for them and rarely thinks of their existence but to ponder on ways in which she has failed to be useful. Both were born of her chosen slave males - though she has kept many more slaves than those who lasted long enough to sire her children. Both fathers and foals are dead by her own hooves.

My honest recollection of the political state of Elysia, for future reference of myself and those I will encounter in this strange land. Lest I be requested to avenge the wrongs that plague this land, or feel justified to bring this vengeance myself.

Those Remembered
Ptolema, the Source of Pain, General of Elysia
Althaia, the Copperfly, Healer of Elysia
Elektra, the Stars' Storykeeper, Oracle of Elysia
Kalypso, Blacksmith of Elysia
Megaira, the Shadowmare, Assassin of Elysia

Elysia, the Land of Pegasi
A realm ruled by women with wings, the men are used as slaves and breeding stock; all other species are treated as such, as well. It is common practice for those who can afford slaves to keep at least one for emotional amusement - it is also common practice to kill the former and purchase a new slave every few months, sometimes longer, sometimes less.
It all depends on the quality of the slave.
Many are unjustly cruel to their items. I was never unkind without reason - beyond what was necessary to maintain respect in the eyes of my peers, I was perhaps one of the fairest slave keepers of my kingdom. They were only beaten or killed when they had lost use or wrongly done a task; my lovers were well treated and long lived, as far as lovers go.
I suffered only one insolent wretch, her wingless body tossed from the tower in which I resided for the loose ends of her tongue.
Elysia is a land as beautiful as it is treacherous; your title and status is held so long as you can maintain face in it's tumultuous political systems, led by egotistical, self centered women. Your value is kept in the number of daughters you birth and the beauty of their appearances, and your absolute devotion to the laws of the land.
But it is nestled in a lush valley, framed by mountains. I was raised in the castle over looking it all. The only thing we could not see from our windows were the pens in which the slaves were held; the filthy cages that, later in life, I would look upon from my cold mental prison and cringe.
And it is only evil because of a woman's broken heart; it has fallen so far only because one man could not keep to his word. It has been so for hundreds of years. We knew we could change nothing.
And so we fled.

The Poison Ink
Girls of four years are systematically marked by their mother's slaves. The tattoos given are individual to the mare, and usually beautiful; I have never seen an ugly one, even if they were simple. But their aesthetics serve little purpose; the true aim of their placement is what lies in the ink.
My grandmother of many generations passed contrived the noxious mixture - it bleeds slowly through the veins of the marked, seeping into their heart and brain and contorting it to fit into an image to suit the overly feminist and racist mindset of the kingdom and it's mad queens.
Eventually, if one does not constantly struggle against the vile substance they have been marked with (or are weak to its powers), they will go mad. My sisters, Hemera and Persephone, are prime examples: Hemera stood no chance, her heart was so made of fire, destructive on its own, that the additional darkness captured her almost instantly. Persephone welcomed it; perhaps she was never strong enough to evade the gleaming allure of darkness and the power that came with it.
She had been named for the shadow, after all.
Those marked are slowly made poisonous themselves, causing any who bite them to feel queasy and eventually deathly ill if they continue to taste of our blood; I have not tested this theory on myself, and I'm dread to try. I am afraid to know that it is true.

Cealestis has not had a soft life, despite whatever the tiara placed over her dainty ears or her pristine beauty may allude to.

She remembers her life before the curse of her elegant markings, but not fondly - it is more like one remembers the way skin looked before dimpled by the ugly mark of a scar, the way an old, life-worn woman looks upon the images of her youth and smiles with a hollow sadness. It is a life she mourns, though she will never speak of it, not even to her beloved sisters.

Born to a land of feminism and bitter entrapment, she was a gem among the other gleaming artifacts on a crown forged by a deranged woman, capable of foreseeing the future and always more wise than the sister before her or those that followed after; but unlike the stoicism of a stone, her heart rebelled. Even as the slaves held her still and pressed the poisoned needles into her flesh, accepting her fate as any good girl would, the tears had silently leaked from her eyes. She had seen her elder sister mutilated and maimed in the same fashion, the golden heart pried away by a shadow-spell bound into the beautiful markings that would be emblazoned upon all daughters but the last born to the mad Inanna, queen of Elysia; she knew that she would never be the same.

Still, her heart did not flutter as the deceit etched its way into her brain; she did not even truly notice the change - so subtle, so cunning was the witchery of the ink that slowly seeped through the folds of her heart, that she did not weep as the spirits of her younger siblings were stripped from them, as well.

It is not that she did not care; it is simply that she could no longer understand why it made her ache so deeply, and the logical woman had cast aside the emotion as if it was a dirty rag. An unclean thought, whispered the venom of her tribal etchings, to despise the glory of the ways of Elysia, and so she had stood silent and proud of the deflowering of her innocent kin.

Over time, she slipped into the monster her mother would have her be; she has had many lovers, and their bones are worn proudly on her heart. It was an honor for them to have died in her service, she thinks to herself; at least they had not suffered so heinously as Hemera or Inanna's poor slaves. How piteous their screaming had been, how languorous and slow their eventual demise; she had always ended her men quickly, with a kindness not often shown the weak males and wingless blights of Elysia's smutty underbelly.

Her mother is remembered with a fondness that only a daughter of such a rabid mongrel could feel, the wicked queen of a land so imbued with darkness that she and her siblings fled in the pitch of night despite the lies spun into their flesh. Severed from her kin in the wake of a storm that seemed to rise from the wrath of the scorned bitch Inanna herself, she has spent much time pondering on her feelings about the kingdom she discarded. She does not miss Elysia or its monstrous queen; she never will.

The wind of the damnable storm cast her into a grove of trees, crushing the fine and hollow bones of her right wing near the base of the appendage, and she has spent two years following the path brought to her in a hazy dream, grounded for nearly a year while her wing has regained strength. It is the last vision she will have of the future, at least for a long time, and could she know this, she would cherish the image of her brave sisters standing together in a meadow of thistle flowers; a land called Helovia, she has heard her dreams whisper, and the promise of the word has carried her so far.

She discovered her mane amulet along the way, and considers it a sign from the Moon herself that she has taken the correct path on her journey; to get the amulet from her, you surely will have to kill her first.

TEEEXTS

Credits: Gems by el-l-en, moon by moon-willowstock, poem is an excerpt from 'The Moon and the Yew Tree' by Sylvia Plath, tables by me