Character sketch: Jetta Aja

She is undoubtedly a talented healer, but her means are not the kind that receive recognition among the D’ymarians. The Power does not flow through her as readily as it does with some others, so she is mostly unable to manipulate the external world, but instead it provides her with an intuition about certain herbs and their uses. Had the amplitude of her Power been increased, she would certainly have become a Forest Elemental sorceress, but instead she must resign herself to the D’ymarian form of chemistry: mixing herbs and fungi to produce small potions and salves for healing purposes. Certainly in a world without magic, Jetta would be exalted as a great doctor, able to draw from the humblest toadstool the properties of miraculous healing, but here in the D’ymarian camp she is naught but a low-level healer.

At 22 years old, Jetta still lives with her mother and father on the outskirts of her village. Her father has signed on the ranks of the Warriors, despite that he is somewhat advanced in age; her mother is a high-level healer who taught Jetta all she knows. Together they are a dauntless team, like an expert doctor and a tender nurse, and they have gained a cherished reputation among everyone who ever experienced a bump on the head in their village. Now they are sent to the front lines to do what they can against the Braechan horde.

Certainly in her service as a nurse, Jetta accrued many gentleman admirers. Her appearance was no impediment either; she is wide-eyed and doll-faced, her pale oval face nestled in a bed of curly auburn hair. Her lips are soft and pink and always in a noncommittal expression. Her body is skinny and delicate, bordering on bony, with almost disproportionately long doe-like legs. She is like a sprite, youthful and mythical, her tiny tender hands nimbly sewing up wounds and mixing aromatic brews. Mostly it is her eyes, though, that are hypnotic: round, and a faint leafy green, always alert, always ready to scamper, like a rabbit. And when the midafternoon sun hits her just right, illuminating her high forehead and her soft cheekbones, she becomes startlingly elegant, like a forest princess.

Men and boys alike would fall for the quiet urgency of her gaze, venturing deep into the woods to rap on the door of their isolated home, bringing flowers or poetry; but at the first sign of their approach, Jetta would fade into the study of obscure fungi until her solitude was complete once again. These infatuations could never survive longer than a few weeks, perhaps a month, before their frustrated designs would draw them back to the more accessible girls living in the village proper.

Now in the ranks of the determined D’ymarian army, Jetta finds herself amidst more people than ever before in her life. She retreats deeper and deeper into herself, taking much longer than necessary to scavenge for her components, growing gloomy as the days pass. Little does she know how much worse things will get once her journey to the front line is concluded and her mission as war-healer is begun.