Anonymous asked: Krei 5
I have like four asks for this ask meme I expected no one to do? So I’m grouping them by character, here is Krei, everyone’s favorite Tree Lesbian.
5: List 3 fears; one “surface level” fear, one “repressed” fear, and one “deep dark” fear.
Um….
Surface level is that, ironically, Krei is afraid of fire. She’s a plant worker and briatan, tree-folk, meaning that she has a bit of a hereditary stress about fire. She herself isn’t flammable, no more so than your average human, but her instincts are kind of…jumpy about it. So was her mother, but given that Torei died in a fire, Krei has some serious nerves about the stuff. Both of them keep it pretty well on lock (sort of necessary working with a firesmith like Brenneth) and let other people light the campfire.
Repressed is a hard one to answer, because honestly Krei is pretty comfortable with herself. Her people live a long time–Torei was almost 600 at the time of her death (some 50 years prior to the start of the novel), and would have lived longer if she hadn’t died defending a village against a grief-stricken firesmith–and are often very powerful, which comes with a societal expectation that they get their shit together. That being said…I don’t know if this is going to make sense, but Krei is afraid that one day she’ll turn around and decide that her mother wasn’t enough family for her. Torei died when Krei was about 100, which is young to lose a parent for a briata (also Torei had Krei older than most briatan have children), but moreover most families are medium-to-large in Alleirat. Even if you assume a monogamous couple, as opposed to a poly constellation or an open relationship, you might have two parents, some children who might be biological or adopted (abandoning children is strictly verboten and a willing family is usually findable), and the amiasa or amdri (or both) of either or both parents, as well as grandparents and aunts and uncles and close family friends. The word ‘family’ is pretty lax in Alleirat. Krei’s family for most of her life was herself and her mother, with occasional but rare visits to Torei’s clan in the north forests. Torei meant the world to Krei, and this fear that Torei might not have been enough family kind of haunts her. There’s a word in Alleirai for ‘the amiasa of your parent’ and it means ‘more-than-uncle/aunt,’ and in theory Krei could use it as an affectionate term with Brenneth. It takes her a long time to come around to the idea that it’s not a betrayal of her two-person family to extend that to another individual.
Krei’s deep dark fear, as cliche as this is going to sound, is failing to keep people safe. Torei was a good mother, mostly kept her daughter from hearing the worst stories of the White Wolf, but Krei worshiped her mother, and the idea that even Torei and her mighty amiasa, the Fireheart herself, couldn’t save the Wolf’s victims instilled a conviction that failure is inevitable very early on. Krei’s about 150 now and she’s mostly gotten over her angsty teenage phase where she harped on it more obsessively (like…her 60′s to 70′s were rough), but it still drives her. She’s a very accomplished warrior, the captain of the latha, the elite guard of her city, but it chews her up every time someone dies on her watch.
28: Is there a certain type of person that disgusts them?
Well, traitors, if I’m being completely honest, which goes great with Crispin. Krei plays nice with Brenneth on the subject of Crispin because it’s clear that Brenneth is upset, and treats him humanely when he’s her prisoner because Krei has a moral backbone like solid oak, but she’s kind of fundamentally appalled by him. Not so much because he’s a killer–Krei has killed people, Alleirat still uses hangings, death isn’t a stranger to her–or even because he tried to take over, but she thinks of him as having betrayed his own kind. She is not wrong about this–Crispin readily admits that he turned on his teachers, his comrades, his countrymen, and his best friend when he became the White Wolf–but it’s more complicated than that. The fact that that loyalty and betrayal aren’t always clearly delineated, and that someone can be forced from one to the other against their will, is kind of a major plot point. Shiko is loyal…to a terrible person. Crispin turned traitor against good people, but because he felt like it was the only way to fulfill a task that had been set before him since childhood. Brenneth is loyal to Crispin past the point of reason. The complexities of loyalty are sort of A Thing here, and Krei’s ride-or-die loyalty hangup (which she shares with her mother) is something of a wrench in the gears.
