Cora Calle
| Cora Calle | |
|---|---|
| Cora Cal | |
| Created by | Cora Calle (player) |
| Information | |
| Gender | Female |
| Occupation | Aes Sedai of the Blue Ajah |
| Affiliation | The Grey Tower |
| Nationality | Amadician |
Cora Calle is an Amadician Blue Oathsworn Aes Sedai of the Grey Tower.
Description
She is short and dark, with shoulder length dark curly hair and dark brown eyes. She tends to keep herself to herself as much as possible, unless drawn out into a debate on a subject she cares about. Lying, for instance, indoctrination.
She has a bit of a chip on her shoulder about that, as her parents brought her up to believe that all channelers de facto served the Dark One. Suspecting herself to be one, meant she had to leave home ....quietly, without a fuss, as was her way- just slipping away one night without a word, knowing what the reaction would be if her parents caught her, and wishing to spare all of them that. Not the first young woman to run away from strict yet loving parents she felt could never understand her, by any means.
However, her upbringing could not be left so easily as she had hoped, and she fights internally with both rage against the beliefs that her parents so easily swallowed, blanket accusations that surely hold no meaning in her case.....and the suspicion , so far repressed yet working like a worm in her heart...that maybe she is so bad, so dark, so vile, everything they said, just because of what she begins to supect she can do. That soemhow, if she can channel, it is as wrong as she has been brought up to believe, and she is to blame for it. If it is so, then who cares what happens to her now? And if it is not, then how much else she had been brought up to believe is also untrue? Is there really no right or wrong at all, truly no real morality, once the fake fanaticism that has deluded her parents is cast from her life?
These are the issues that occupy her. Not all felt consiously, as yet, but this is what moves her, quiet as she seems unless one pushes the right buttons to open her up on the subject. She is not unintelligent, but emotionally, the natural rebellion of her agegroup against the preceeding generation, is on the verge of becoming a deeper form of aversion and adversarialism to the mores of the society she was born into.
Biography
Cora was born in a small village in Amadacia. Her uncle was a Soldier with the Children of the Light, and her parents simple farmers, but as devout as her uncle, believing it their duty to play their own part by producing food for the Children....and producing their own children for the cause of the Light. Already, two of her older brothers (she has four, two younger and two older than herself, and one little sister Mari, the baby of the family, five years younger than her) had left to follow their uncle.
She never expected to do much with her life beyond repeating the pattern of her parents, though she found herself sometimes wishing for it...for something she could not explain to herself...life seemed so slow, like something was missing. She felt different from the rest, but could not understand the feeling that this was not the life meant for her. She was close enough to her mother to share those troubled feelings at first, until she realised it was seen by her family at best as an awkward phase she was goign through, and at worst, as a source of unnecessary worry for her mother.
Then came the day that changed everything, though it would be weeks before she realised it. Out taking Mari over to visit her aunt, across the other side of the village, the pair were crossing the road when a shout alerted her to trouble. Something..she never did find out what.....had spooked a cart horse, which was careering down the lane towards them both. Mari screamed, and tripped over her feet in her haste to escape, pulling her down also. No time, she thought. No time both to scoop Mari up and pull her to safety, and evade the oncoming horse and cart of grain behind it herself.
I wanted more than this from life, Cora thought, as she threw her sister to safety just as the horse and cart reached them. And stopped. THe horse neighed once, and then stood looking bemused. The cart behind it, which momentum would surely have propelled straight over her anyway, slew around to the side of the horse, as if to overrun her, and then somehow fortuitously chose that second for the axle to snap under the strain, so that the whole ground to a halt, tipped at a crazy angle over her.
Shaking and struggling to catch her breath, she crawled away from the listing cart, over to where Mari sat at the roadside staring at her in shock. She put an arm round her sister, and made to help her to her feet.
"I could not help but see what happened..."
A male voice, behind her. She turned to find an old man, one the villagers soemtimes went to for simple cures, looking at her concernedly.
He looked over them both.
"Hmm.....no harm taken in your sister's case, I think, though she is a little shaken. Take her straight home and make sure she has a hot drink and quiet. Your mother will know what to do...Oh, give your mother this for her for the drink, if she will...He dug into a pouch at his belt, and produced a twisted bunch of dried herbs...It is good for calming such frights."
THe man fixed his quite piercing eyes now onto Cora's pretty dark ones. "As to you....Hmm...Yes...I will see you later, perhaps. We shall see. Do remember me to your mother though.....And remind her that if she ever has need of me, she knows where I live."
He nodded down the road, towards a small house at the end. She thanked the man, a little stunned herself, as she did not ever recall him adressing her directly before, always her mother..it was almost like he saw her as an adult suddenly, or nearly one....Not that her mother usually had too much time for him, however. In occasional need she would go to him.....most of the village did....But she did so with a reluctance that spoke of an inner uncertainty...Of course, herbs were just herbs, and had to come from somehwere, and better that than anything ..........else........but still......
She stared after him thoughtfully as he left, then pulled Mari to her and began the walk back home.
A week later, she opened her eyes to find the man standing over her bed.
He smiled, and turned to a figure next to him. As the fog cleared from her mind and her eyes, she could see it was her mother.
"There......she will be fine now. Did I not tell you she would?" His smile turned reassuringly on her mother.
"I ..thankyou....yes.." Her mother's face looked tearstained.
"May I have a moment alone with my patient, please?"
For a second her mother looked as if she would refuse, a sharp look at the man as if she suspected his motives .....Then she nodded, and left the room.
"Did I not say we might meet again? You have been in a fever these past two days...It was well that your mother did remember me, my herbs could at least alleviate it a little."
She stared at him, and ran a finger through curled hair now matted across her pillow. Confusion filled her mind, the last two days? She remembered last night, going to bed feeling a little tired, hot....she had not slept well, she thought, from what she could remember, vague fragments of dreams that made no sense.... but....two days?
The man smiled at her again....a little sadly, it seemed. Sadly? Why? wasn't she better now?
"But..."
Cora did not know where to start, what to ask him.
"You need rest," the man said. "I will be around if you need me again. " He swallowed, and looked around the room, almost nervously. Why? More strangeness, she thought. What is going on?
"Just....Think about this, please. There are...places....where things are not as they are here. Not everywhere do people think as your parents do, as the others around you do.....If things get....too difficult...please remember this...."
Uncomprehending, she nodded politely all the same, suddenly finding herself not wanting to know what he was talking about after all, and hoped her mother would come back into the room soon. Relieved, she heard the door open.
Time passed, and Cora tried to forget the whole thing, and the man's words. Still, occasionally she found herself remembering how she had felt when the horse and cart bore down upon her. That desperate sense of not wanting to die yet, wishing she had a way to change events, change her life...The feeling suddenly filling her just before the horse stopped....No. At this point she woudl shake her head and carry on her life, push the thoughts away again. Foolish and dangerous, to be different here. To want to be different!
Time passed, and things ......happened. Fortunate things, at the time. Like running from the house to see one of her younger brothers about to fall out of the old apple tree, and soemhow he fell sideways as if blown through the air, and landed on the only patch of grass nearby below, when his apparent trajectory should have carried on hard stone and an old rake soemeone had carelessly left out there. Like her mother falling sick, and yet somehow recovering before the old man and his herbs could be sent for.
And it seemed like she was becoming prone to whatever illness she had first caught, for it kept returning to her, if only briefly.
Eventually, she tried to talk to her mother about what she was beginning to suspect. The.....coincidences. The disasters just turned away from the family. How to admit that she thought that maybe, just maybe, she had something to do with it?
Her mother sighed.
"Oh, Cora, still trying to be something you aren't? Still dreaming dangerous dreams, unconcerned for the effects on your soul? If only you could be content with your life.....Then it wouldn't......I mean, I am not saying it is you, of course it's not, my dear......Just...can't you try to be a little more like everyone else? For your sister's sake, if not for mine."
Angrily, Cora buried her response, swallowed her tears, and walked away, feeling the distance between herself and her mother widening behind her like a physical rent in all she had held close.
Alone in her room that night, she realised she had to leave. Her mother would never listen to her. How could she? She was a good, kind woman, but...and this was a shocking realisiation...not perfect. And could not bring herself to consider that her own child could be something she had always taught the family was to be reviled.
And if Cora stayed, tried to do as her mother wanted and forget what she suspected she was.... she knew it would not only be herself that suffered if her situation ever became public knowledge, but the whole family.
Cora cried herself to sleep. Then woke at midnight, packed her things silently and left.
Not everywhere do people think as your parents do, as the others around you do
He must have known, somehow. How, she did not know, but he must, or at least have suspected, she thought, as she knocked on his door that night.
He listened, and dug out a map. And extra clothes, food...and the name of one she could contact at the next stop on her journey, one who would not turn her in, but would help her on her way.
And so she journeyed, coming at last to the Tower.
Career History
- Novice
- Accepted
- Aes Sedai of the Blue Ajah
- Sitter of the Blue Ajah
