I've had it canon for quite awhile now (a decade?) that Dove's mother played an Azarathean lap-harp-like instrument.
(She taught Dove a little bit of it, but was worried what would happen if someone heard the clumsy playing of a learning child, since, you know, she didn't want anyone to ever have reason to believe she was harboring a hidden child. So Dove never really learned, though she'd have liked to.)
For some reason, I am only just now, today, at this very moment, realizing that would mean Alerina's fingers were calloused.
(Dove probably asked about it once as a child, why her hands had hard/rough spots, and I'm sure Alerina would have explained it to her...)
But I don't think Dove ever met anyone on Earth with calloused fingers for the first couple years.
Until she meets Joey (Jericho)!
And I also realized tonight, she'd have a moment of shock when she realizes, this is the first time she's ever met anyone else who has "her mother's fingers". Because Joey plays guitar (among other instruments), and would also have calloused fingers!
The reason Dove was able to sneak away from home and meet Srentha so late at night, without her mother waking up at the sound of the door opening, was the simple fact that Alerina (her mother) was exhausted.
She was hiding Trigon's power in her home. (Granted, in Dove, due to her Azarathean blood too, it's weaker and more "diluted" in her than it is in Raven. But this is still no easy task, even for mages as skilled as Alerina's family!)
Alerina was constantly putting up spells to keep the psychics and sensitives from detecting Dove, and suppressing Dove's power, and glamours to hide sights and sounds that would otherwise give Dove away. Especially when Dove turned about 12 and her powers started becoming stronger, she was losing control more often, and by the time Dove was 13 Alerina was genuinely considering Telling Them About Dove, because she was having a hard time largely controlling Dove's powers for her by then; spells that used to last a week would suddenly only last for five hours before Dove's powers wore them down.
(This is a large part of why Dove has absolutely no idea how to actually USE her powers, let alone control them, when she first comes to Earth. Her mother always did most of the work for her, because even though Alerina would often subtly ask after Raven and what they were doing to keep HER in control, she could never get anyone to tell her the specifics. They had other thoughts about Raven and were eager to share those instead, which usually only fueled Alerina's desperation to keep Dove hidden.)
All the spellwork was exhausting. Every single day Alerina cast enough magic for three people, and ironically the amount of spells did draw attention, but Alerina claimed they were to help her focus, help keep her calm after what she'd experienced on Earth, and though she never told them WHO had assaulted her, of course the Azaratheans took her word for it that Earth had been traumatic. Of course they didn't question someone casting magic to keep calm.
So when Dove snuck out of the house at night, her receptive senses monitoring her mother the whole time, Alerina was sleeping too deeply to wake up at Dove's quiet shuffling.
(Hell, she probably did indulge in a spell or two for herself, maybe some intense brew, maybe some Azarathean version of valerian enchanted for enhancements, to help her sleep, because she wasn't lying when she said she'd experienced trauma...)
Dove wouldn't realize this until she's about ten or twelve, exactly HOW MUCH it takes out of her mother to constantly be keeping this secret, even on a purely mental level. Every single aspect of their life had to be monitored, considered: how much food she brought home, how much clothing they used, how much water, where Dove was allowed to play (where there weren't windows she might be seen through), how long Alerina left the house for, how much medicine they used (luckily Dove never seemed to fall ill unless something struck her psychic senses or her emotions triggered her stomach), and of course how loud they were allowed to be, even when playing together.
Alerina would often make their clothes herself out of wholecloth, or request flour from their community stores instead of bread, because it was a lot easier to hide that she was using the resources for TWO people that way. (Dove was stricken when she learned how to interpret her senses enough to realize her mother would sometimes go hungry to make sure she got enough to eat!)
It's part of why Alerina kept a small garden: Besides being a soothing hobby for her, it helped provide food and calming herbs for them.
Dove doesn't really understand until she's older that she doesn't have to feel guilty for her mother's choices, and though she knew how heavy the burden was on her mother as a child and always understood WHY Alerina did all this, because Alerina had never kept it from her, it's not until Dove's an adult that she allows herself to wonder if maybe her mother had been wrong, and it would've been better if they had taken her away after all... (Before then, she feels guilty about questioning her mother. ESPECIALLY with how hard she worked to uphold that decision!)
But it's not until she learns that she CAN live a life where people know, and even LOVE her, where she can learn to control her powers and use them freely, that Dove even considers that maybe her childhood WASN'T what was best for her, necessarily. She never, ever grows to RESENT her mother, but she does wonder.
She does eventually learn to mourn what she missed out on by being housebound the vast majority of her childhood. And she eventually makes peace with it.
She sees it in Raven's memories in DDD, how they treated Raven firsthand. (I took that line out of the comic regarding Raven and the Azaratheans that goes, "They have always hated you, girl. They FEAR you!" and very intentionally, specifically quoted That Line. It's super relevant to Dove's story AND I think Raven tells Dove about it in the epilogue of Soul Sickness... Raven doesn't bring that part up of course, but Dove finds out anyways when she steals her memories in DDD.) So she knows her mother's caution was warranted.
Srentha in their childhood, of course, never understands the nuances of the extremes Dove and Alerina went to. Dove never told him why, or that she's Trigon's daughter too, not until after she finds out he survived in adulthood and he asks enough questions that she feels guilty keeping him in the dark. He could feel all the magic in their house and he knew he couldn't tell anyone about Dove, but to him it was almost a game. Just another secret he wasn't allowed to talk about in a world of secrets.
So what if his only real friend wouldn't tell him how she got her abilities? He didn't know how he had been blessed with his, either! So what if he couldn't tell his tutors why he hadn't slept that night? He got to see his friend, even if he couldn't tell anyone about her!
And honestly, I don't think it ever really occurs to him to question it, anyways. He was always told he questioned things too much, always admonished for being too curious, for not focusing on the IMPORTANT part. (He thinks the hows and whys are pretty important, actually, but he's used to people withholding that information from him. It's par for the course. It's just how Azarath is.)
Ultimately, he wondered sometimes, but that only made the prospect of finding out more about her more exciting! And really, he was too happy to see her to let it frustrate him. If she wouldn't tell him, she wouldn't tell him, and he was okay with that if it meant he got to keep seeing her.
I'm not sure if Dove ever figures out how Alerina, who's so attentive in the day, never noticed she was gone at night... but I know she's aware of how hard it is on her mother by the time she's 13. Alerina does tell her sometime in their last year of life together that she's worried she won't be able to keep Dove safe anymore, and maybe she should Tell Them^tm... She never does, in the end, but it shakes Dove up so much she has a nightmare about that in DDD.
...Thinks a lot about how Alerina had a vision of DDD and basically just went “I’m going to love her so much, that never happens.”
And it happens anyways.
And how Alerina thinking “I’ll do something about it” isn’t very Traditional Azarathean of her. I always thought it was just her being In Denial, but no, she’s actually being kind of BRAVE about that.
So, it’s a Long Story, but essentially the way Dove comes into existence is her grandmother, an Azarathean woman, was exiled for breaking the rules a lot, not following protocols, making waves, generally not being a good obedient little spiritual pacifist.
And Dove was only raised in Azarath because her grandmother was pregnant when she was exiled, but after Dove Was Conceived, she sent her daughter (Dove’s mother) to Azarath as a way of protecting her.
And right from the start, Alerina didn’t tell people what was going on. She didn’t want to be treated like Arella; more desperately, she didn’t want her child to be treated like Raven.
Alerina apparently inherited that sort of rebellion. Even though she’s a lot more quiet and secretive about her rebellion. She never thinks of herself as being rebellious, because HER mother (the one who was so rebellious she was exiled) was outspoken and stubborn and honest to a fault.
Alerina is timid and quiet and fearful. (She’s where Dove gets about half her personality form; it’s deeply exasperated by being raised in isolation, but Magena’s more brazen personality gets lost in the shuffle of genes. .....except maybe when Dove’s dark side comes out actually, which is a line of thought I’ll have to follow later because I want to focus on their relationship to Azarathean teachings right now!)
So, honestly, I had never thought of Alerina as being very rebellious either, but suddenly I’m thinking: She really WAS rebelling in her own quiet way.
When she has this vision, her first response (besides her reaction, which is part of the reason I may never actually share This Scene) is to think, “I won’t let that happen!” That’s pretty far removed from the Classic Azarathean Nonresistance. That’s straight-up active RESISTANCE.
She cast so many spells to hide Dove that she exhausted herself. (She knew that if they found out about Dove, they’d probably want to take her away. She didn’t want that to happen. So she simply decided, I’m going to do something about it.
( (( What Alerina doesn’t know is that Azar knows about Dove, Alerina’s not powerful enough to prevent AZAR from knowing. But Azar decides she’s not the kind of threat Raven is, and elects to ignore it and keep this secret from the rest of the populace, because what good would it do to terrify her people with news of another child of Trigon being among them? So she Knows, but she doesn’t DO anything about it. But I only figured that out in the past, like, three years. )) )
Alerina keeps to herself and doesn’t make the kind of waves her mother made, anyways. In most ways, she’s a wallflower. When she’s “in public”, she’s obedient and pious; when she’s talking to people, she’s reserved and gentle. She was never the type of person to draw attention to herself. (And part of this is by design! The more Alerina blends in, the less they’ll
The spectre of Their Secret (that Alerina was raising an entire child, Trigon’s child, and keeping this a secret from every single Azarathean) affected everything from the clothes they wore to their eating habits to how long Alerina left the house. Every detail of her life was an exercise in Keeping This Massive Secret.
So Alerina may not think of herself as rebellious, but she was CONSTANTLY feeding this secret and defying “common wisdom” to protect Dove.
She’s a lot braver than she ever realizes, and more independent and stubborn and just, super ABERRANT
More than even *I* realized until having these thoughts tonight.
Azarath has a great deal of secrets, but its people don’t usually work so hard to keep their PERSONAL secrets.
👩🏻 + what do you most hope for dove’s future? anything you want for her personally that she may or may not actually want for herself?
“Well...”
For a moment, that single note was all that would escape Alerina’s throat. ‘Future’ was such a strange word, to a mother whose future would end in a few short years, whose daughter’s life was naturally going to end with her, on the day every one of them knew was coming eventually, inevitably.
It was a long-accepted fact, and a long-accepted death. It had been prophesized, after all.
“I think... I want her to be safe. Protected from the things she doesn’t deserve. Not only the fear and hatred of others, but from herself. And, more than anything, I want her to know that she is worth more than what they see, what they say… What they would assume, because they don’t know her like I do. And the Dove I know is a wonder to behold.”
👩 " tell me some about about yours and Doves homeland ? "
{ {{ These questions come with the usual AU-ish disclaimer, as canon!Alerina would panic had anyone known about her child… but with that said, let’s play in this sandbox! }} }
–
Already Alerina’s eyes were alight with enthusiasm. “There is so much to tell! But, oh, where to start?” Her gaze drifted aside in a familiar thoughtful motion, though the following voice was unfamiliarly steady with calm and gentle certainty.
“It’s called Azarath, a name which means the coming of aid. And it’s a name well lived up to. It’s so well protected, so thoroughly made safe for us, that every night you can sleep well, drifting off with the peace of forty generations and a thousand dedicated people all around you. Even for someone like me. And the night skies,” she sighed dreamily, “so much more alive than Earth’s white stars. I think I’ve seen stars of every color. Even the mist glow in the moons’ light! It’s divine. In fact, the touch of Azar’s divinity is everywhere. And there are those who uphold it, who make sure it is quiet and serene and divine, every one of us playing our part to build that peace which we find so important. So unique to us.”
She looked back to her younger visitor with a soft smile, and her head tilted and her shoulders dropped at the comforting thoughts. “Peace is so much more than quietude and isolation, I know that now. It is also safety, and community, and it is an unshakable bond between us and the world we live in-- the world we build. I think, more than anything, that is what Azarath is: its people. Their values, their work, and our leader, who made it possible for us to build, and to thrive within, such a world. For them, I am eternally grateful.”
At first Alerina was silent, her head tilted every so slightly and her gaze slipping sideways in thought. She had always classified memories as either "wonderful reminders", or "memories best avoided." But which of the best memories was her favorite?She remembered the warmest, safest moments when her mother began teaching her spiritual magic. The weeks after she settled into Azarath felt like a wonderfully freeing soul-deep fulfillment, every instinct knowing that this was where she truly belonged. And she always loved when her mother told her stories or taught her of all the things from her previous life, from another world...But her happiest moments with Dove eclipsed them all by far. A mother's love was an all-consuming, selfless love that absorbed not only herself in its embrace, but her daughter as well. And while she had loved her mother endlessly... it was that much deeper of a joy to see her own daughter smiling, her dark eyes lit up with an internal light that only so, so rarely shined through."I think... it was teaching Dove to read," she mused with a warm smile. And then blinked her focus back to the stranger, and nodded as that smile could only grow. "Bedtime stories were always her favorite, and she was so excited, so happy... So glad she could finally read her favorites on her own, when I wasn't there to read them for her."
