#roed

[faith18kh]

Bicycle

[altheathewriter]

Your OC’s Backstory - Week 4: Friends

@yourocsbackstory

Isiere and Roed are from A Constellation of Hearts. It is in the planning stage. You can learn more from the WIP page here.

Who were your OCs friends when they were young? Isiere led a little bit of an isolated life. He lived on a farm, with a remote village nearby. He has brothers and sisters, but they are all much younger than he is (at least 8 years younger), so they aren’t much for being friends. He certainly did have acquaintances in the village, like a group of kids who would sometimes come around the farm to go hunting in the nearby woods, catch frogs, or go fishing, and he would tag along. He did not have trouble getting along with them. They always thought of him as the quiet but wise sort of kid, and would turn to him for the last word on things. Sometimes he wished that they would engage him more, but he was thankful for who and what he did have. But he didn’t have a best friend until he met Roed.

Roed is right hand to Trenn of the knights, and she takes over when Trenn goes missing. She is level-headed and a thoughtful leader and friend, and doesn’t second guess herself. She could tell that Isiere struggled with accepting his new powers, so she spent more time with him, and trained with him until he felt comfortable. While she may be more lenient than Trenn, who expects discipline at all moments, she doesn’t let anyone get away with anything either, especially not Kaen.

Isiere doesn’t just see her as a matriarch or a leader. When things are quiet, he has no problems being quiet with her. They could sit and talk for hours in the libraries about new information they had found. They can count on each other in a fight. Isiere is sure that if he asked her to go fishing or to hunt frogs, she’d at least go along to see what its about.

Rosario Dawson totally fits the face and voice of Roed. Hers is the power of the dimensions, and she draws power not from other dimensions themselves but from the boundaries between dimensions, sort of like the chaotic space between universes full of untapped energy. Some say her power is greater than that of Trenn’s, whose power is that of the universe itself, since it requires the cooperation of gods unfamiliar to this universe and their religious doctrines (sort of a wild card and provides argument for blasphemers who do not want to follow the religion). But even though she is backed by such powerful energy, she doesn’t use it a lot. It takes a lot to harness it and direct it, and requires a lengthy recovery afterward. Her power and unknown gods are represented by an altar without a human-like deity.

....

“Does Kaen know we’re here?”

“If he did know, we would not be here.” I could feel the faintest of smirks turn my lips. I sat myself down, crossing my legs under me, at the edge of the dock. The lake was placid this day, and clear besides. Fish swam by unconcerned with our presence. Either way, I dug into my pack and pulled out some flakes and tossed them in. Gulping mouths gathered to suck down the bait.

Roed gave me a sidelong glance as she sat herself down on the dock’s edge, careful not to dip her boots in the water. She paid attention as I baited the hook of the simple pole I had and tossed in the line. I took a deep breath and fell into silence.

“That’s it?”

“What’s what?”

“That’s all you do?”

“Well, generally you have to be quiet. They’re smarter than you think,” I motioned to the fish, who were pointedly ignoring my line. “They won’t just come up and bite.”

“How long does it take?”

“To what?”

“To get them to bite!”

“It depends. A few minutes. A few hours.”

Roed gave a soundless scoff, her eyes rolling to peer at me from under raised brows. 

“Have you got anything better to do?”

She only responded by pulling the other pole from my pack. I helped her bait the hook and then tossed it out for her, then showed her how to hold the pole so in the event that something did bite, the pole was not whisked from her hand. We fell into silence with her resignation.

The fish swam about, most of them going off to do whatever it was that fish did when not in our presence. Roed silently pointed to the heads of turtles and the eyes of frogs that poked up from the water’s surface from time to time. A small posse of ducks bouyed past us, the much colorful males shining in the sunlight.

It was midday when a heron made its way through the muddy banks to perch upon a log. It became very still, more still than even we were. It was almost as if it did not breathe, and if a person did not see it approach, it could be easily ignored. And then it speared the lake itself, and retrieved its fish, and with a good shaking of its head, moved off to enjoy its lunch.

“Apparently we’re doing this all wrong,” Roed said, lifting her line. The hook was empty, as the fish had nibbled the bait right off it. “We’ve been outsmarted.”

“Maybe Kaen warned them,” I said. I lifted my line to find it the same. “We’ve probably been sitting here for hours with empty hooks.”

“The fish are laughing at us, I’m sure.” She bobbed the empty hook. “Glub glub. No dinner for you, humans.”

We laughed and packed up our things. The fish returned to the surface as we began to leave, as if to mock us as they saw us off to our mounts. Roed pulled herself up first, and gave me a slightly mischievous look. “What?”

“How about we swing by the market and buy some fish? No one has to know.”

“You brought coin?” I blinked. “You knew this would happen.”

“Your lover is a vessel for nature itself,” Roed said, taking up her reigns. She leaned forward over the pommel. “Of course I knew this would happen.”

“And you came anyway?”

“It seems that fishing serves more than one purpose.” She gave a wink. “I’m glad I came. Now, let’s go to the market. I’m starving, and I can’t dine on quiet meditation and ease of solitude alone.”

I chuckled and mentioned for her to lead the way.

[somanyhumanbeings]

Jørgen Roed, Portrait of Ida Gad, born Tvermoes 

[somanyhumanbeings]

Holger Roed, En ung musiker med sin viola (c. 1869)