Briar
Briar is a sky dragon / mountain dragon mix living in the Mother's City. She is responsible for re-establishing the Library and opening its doors to the public, and she resides in a loft on the upper floor.
Appearance
Briar has the long neck and body typical of a sky dragon, but her tail is shorter than average. Her antlers are asymmetrical, with the right being curvier than the left. She has two small underdeveloped wings that are not capable of flight; she can still fly with magic. Her main body scales are gray-brown, speckled with darker brown and cream. The scales on her underbelly, hind legs, inner ears, nose bridge, and eye ridges are light blue-green, and her mane, tail tip, and wing membranes are darker blue-green. Her whiskers and antlers are dark brown. She has brown eyes. She typically wears round spectacles perched on the base of her snout.
Personality
Briar tends to be on the quieter, more thoughtful side. She is intensely curious, and cares deeply about plant life and the natural world. She tends to wander, and has trouble holding conversations and connecting with others, but has an excellent sense of direction and a strong memory for geography.
History
Briar hatched from her egg on Autumn 17, y3117, in the Mother's City. She was the only offspring of her mother’s Ivy and Dahlia. She grew up in the City, with frequent trips to the surrounding Commonlands area.
In y3124, when she was seven years old, her grandfather Colchis - Ivy's father - passed away. Briar and her mothers moved to Arotropis for a few seasons, living in Ivy's childhood home along with her brother Hawthorne, Briar's uncle. During this time, she heard many stories about her family and her ancestors, especially her grandmother Hyacinth, who had died three hundred years before Briar hatched; she also learned about Hyacinth's childhood friend The Library Dragon and his companion Freckles, whom Ivy and Hawthorne had met a few times but did not know much about. She developed an interest in history and cartography, and spent many long days wandering Arotropis and committing its twists and turns to memory.
In y3127, Briar and her mothers returned to their old home in the City, and she continued her interest in exploration, expanding her mental map into her district and eventually the entirety of the Mother’s City. She became very familiar with the pathways and the buildings, though she strayed away from busier areas as she did not feel comfortable around large groups of creatures. She started transcribing her maps onto scraps of paper, starting a small collection in a corner of her mothers’ home. Her mothers did not have concerns about her getting lost, though they did occasionally track her down to scoop her up and bring her home if she was still wandering in the middle of the night.
When Briar was fourteen years old, in y3131, she stumbled across a dilapidated building in the southern end of the Usiku district. She had recollection of having passed the building before, and recalled it having been decrepit and covered in cobwebs; though it had seemed unremarkable before, it now felt as though it beckoned to her. One of the large wooden doors was open slightly, and she felt a warm breeze drifting from the interior. Unable to ignore her curiosity, she approached the building, using her magic to set alight a worn candle just inside the door. She was met with a sprawling, maze-like building, with walls made of ceiling-to-floor bookshelves piled high with books, scrolls, and papers. It had clearly been untouched for quite some time and yet felt light, airy, and clean. She lost several hours going deeper and deeper into the building, which seemed to contain far more hallways than could possibly fit within the exterior that she had seen, and yet never felt ominous or foreboding.
When she returned to her home early the next morning, she told Ivy about the building she had discovered, which Ivy thought sounded a lot like the stories she had heard of her own mother Hyacinth’s friend the Library Dragon, and the Library that he had founded. Ivy had never been to the Library, but knew that the Library Dragon and his companion Freckles had died over a century prior, and she imagined that it had been empty since then. Briar spent many of the following days, into the next several seasons, wandering the halls of the Library, though her attempts to map it proved fruitless, as the walls and floors rearranged themselves around her. She learnt of the building’s history and prior occupants through a series of detailed journals left behind by the Library Dragon himself, and she began to feel a fondness for her grandmother’s once-friend whom she knew she could never meet.
The longer she spent within the Library’s walls, the warmer it felt to her, and she began to spend more time there than she did at home. She began a catalogue of the Library’s complete collection, a project which would take decades to complete. She knew from the journals that the Library had never been fully open to the public, and indeed that only Freckles and the Library Dragon himself had been physically able to enter the building; she did not know why she was now able to enter, but she found kinship reading the words of the Library’s former caretaker. She could feel the spirit of the building, though it seemed much fainter than how it had been described, and she sensed the spirits of the building’s two previous occupants. Though the Library was quiet, she often did not feel alone; Briar swore she saw the swish of a blue-scaled tail around the corner at times, or the soft fluttering of wings above her head.
[ library opened to public, community center built outside ]
Relationships
Briar loves her mother’s dearly, but Ivy's eager, overenthusiastic personality often clashes with Briar's own reserved nature.
When Briar was growing up, Dahlia was the one who most encouraged her to pursue her own passions and interests.