Sekhma Fresco
| Sekhma Fresco | |
|---|---|
| SEK-ma FRESS-koh | |
| Created by | Jessie Vernham |
| Information | |
| Gender | Female |
| Occupation | Novice |
| Affiliation | The Grey Tower |
| Nationality | Sharan |
| Attributes | |
| Talents | |
| OP Strength | 4.5 |
| Affinities | Air, Water, Fire, Spirit, Earth |
Sekhma Fresco is a Sharan Novice of the Grey Tower.
Description
The most striking thing about Sekhma is her odd mode of dress. Given the mysterious nature of her homeland, it is unclear whether this is cultural, or just a personal peculiarity. Sekhma wears a veil, which consists of a long silk scarf wrapped once around her forehead above her eyes, then again over her nose and the lower part of her face, pinned over her ear and allowed to hang in a long strip. Since signing her name to the novice book, she has exclusively worn a white veil and has forgone the elaborate, decorative pins in favour of more utilitarian ones. Unlike many veil-wearing cultures, she does not cover her hair - which is dark, tightly curled and extremely voluminous. Sekhma is tall and slender, like many Sharans, and has skin the colour of dark roasted kav beans. Her eyes are similarly dark, and are framed by long, thick lashes. The features of her face are very well rounded - there is not a single hard angle to be found, from the wide curve of her nose to her high apple shaped cheekbones. She has very full lips, and her mouth is unusually wide for her face. Sekhma has a certain arrogant nonchalance that is immediately visible in the way she moves and walks. She gains a sense of superiority both from the fact that she is from Shara, and contradictorily the fact that she successfully escaped Shara. The stereotypes about Sharans say that they are all liars, and this is certainly true of Sekhma. She lies both for profit and for pleasure, as it were; One wonders how she will cope with the three oaths if she is ever raised to Aes Sedai. Sekhma enjoys practical jokes, or at least she likes planning them - she can dish it out, but she cannot take it.
Biography
I come from Shibouya, which you Westerners call Shara. You'll never go there, so I'll take time to describe it to you. It's a very large nation, larger than the Westlands and the Aiel Desert combined. It reaches to the borders of the blight in the north, and into the Sea of Storms to the south. To the east is a great ocean - the Morenal. I grew up in the Kalishani, just south of Nimaz along the River Wait. My town, Vo, was well known for its dyes - most of the people there were dyers. My parents weren't - they were lion tamers. That's a lie. They were actually minstrels. We don't exactly have what you call Gleemen in Kigali, but we do have minstrels who travel occasionally to perform, and my parents were of that trade. There was a school of music in Vo, which is why we were lived there.
There's a particular kind of town in Shara that you don't have here in the Westlands - the villages of the Ayyad. There was one near my home town, though of course I never visited it. Occasionally we would see their women, with their identifying facial tattoos, in the markets of Vo but otherwise we had no contact with them. They were always a source of some fascination to me - I'm a bit curious, you see, so I always wanted to know what went on inside.
I travelled a lot in co'Dansin - from the Greatforests of the south, all along the Great Rift and up to the Cliffs of Dawn. I became a minstrel, like my parents, and in the minstrel community you are not allowed to perform for nobility unless you have completed a collection of stolen mosaic tiles, one from each of the seventeen great chapterhouses. That might be a lie. But I really did travel.
When I was in Hoosk, one of the trading towns of the north, I was able to convince a gleewoman to take me on as an apprentice. She was part of a peddler's caravan, and luckily for me they were smugglers, because they were able to smuggle me out of town and into the Aiel Waste. I know what you're thinking - why would I want to do that?
There's a very simple answer. Channellers in Shara live only in those strict, secretive Ayyad villages I mentioned before - they're bred like horses, and as far as I know channelling breeds true. There are never any channellers in the general population, because they have been bred out. Which makes my existence something of an anomaly - perhaps my father was really a trader from the other side of the Waste, or perhaps channellers in the general population aren't as rare as I have been taught. Sharans are terrible liars, after all.
Curious I might have been, but I didn't particularly want to spend the rest of my life in one of those cattle pens. It did not seem to me that the few tricks I possessed - namely that seem to have an uncanny ability to never get caught in the rain - should relegate me to the Ayyad village. So, I fled - which, I might add, hardly anyone ever does successfully, and came here. And that's about all I have to say about Shara.
Career History
- Novice
