Once it was said that Vanessa would grow up to be beautiful, and she's on the road to recovering that possibility, but she's not quite there yet. She is a slender girl with a very pale complexion, sun-starved but also very sun-vulnerable, so she stays indoors and out of the Alveary's desert sun as much as possible, preferring the gentler dawns and dusks. Her eyes are muddy brown, usually half-lidded in such a way that turns them a darker brown or black. Her face is oval-shaped, her nose long and mouth small, and her expression is tired except when quirked with wry humor. Her hair is short with a hint of curl, a rusty red-brown in shade. She dresses very simply and mostly in whites or pale greys.

Despite being quick, witty, clever, Vanessa suffers from great self-doubt after year after year of being told she was troubled and unwell -- even crazy. She is recovering and steadily, existing now as she does in a place where she is both supported and perfectly able to look around and see what's real, but trauma still lingers and leaves its scars.

For years she forced herself into mannerisms and behaviors she did not truly believe because it was expected of her. Now, such things no longer are, but it's hard to get out of such old and ingrained habits. She absolutely wants to get better and her young bond's mind is the perfect anchor to reassure her that everything is real -- from her brother, to dragons, to the Nexus on the whole -- but it can still be so hard to believe sometimes just because of the stubbornness of the human mind.

Because she is still acclimating to the Nexus and the Alveary in particular, she mostly stays inside where she can mostly only encounter other humans (or at least near-humans). Seeing too many dragons all at once still overwhelms her, especially the very large ones.

• Allen Ethridge (father, estranged)
• Tracy Ethridge (mother, estranged)
• Louis Ethridge (older brother)
• Samaeth (brother's bond)

When Vanessa was very young, only a handful of years old, she was the only witness to her brother's kidnapping. What she saw was the sudden appearance of a woman on dragon-back, who scooped her brother up and vanished with him. Of course, no one believed her story afterwards. The world she was born and raised on did not have dragons, or any other fantastical creatures at all. She was too young to be accused of lying, so the adults around her assumed her description of the event was due to trauma. What she called a "dragon" could only be some kind of metaphor, a child's mind coming up with an explanation for things it had no words for.

Vanessa was a good, honest girl. She knew lying was bad and so she stuck to her story, insisting on its truth. When she was very small, this was tolerated, her doctors doing their very best to counsel and comfort and get the real story out of her. When her story never changed, however, despite her growing older and wiser and more skilled in vocabulary, her life became more... strained.

Her parents just wanted to know what had happened to Louis. They spent so much time, effort, and money on trying to find the truth that Vanessa's stubborn insistence on "the dragon" began to wear on them. They were never deliberately cruel, but their grief and failure to believe or understand left them growing more and more distant. They asked her not to say anything at all if she couldn't tell them the truth. So, even though the truth was all she had, she fell silent and grew ever more reserved and distant.

It was years upon years before her brother returned. He had been kidnapped, and it had been by a woman on dragon-back. He had been taken by a Seeker of the Twisted Fate, to bond at one of their clutches of genetic amalgamations, and bond he had. Half captive and half servant, it was ages before he and his dragon were no longer considered of value and allowed to leave -- and seeking his family was, naturally, the first thing he did.

It was Vanessa he found and approached first, under the cover of night, and although it was a... process, he learned of what had transpired over the time they'd been separated. He learned of the neglect his sister had suffered, could see it on her face, hear it in every hushed word. She did not fear him, nor the great black Samaeth lurking in the dark behind him, but he could see that she... doubted, despite all her years of insistence.

Maybe she'd imagined it all along, she feared. Maybe she imagined him now.

He took her away, to the worlds of the Nexus. Louis had a new home, a kind one, that had given him shelter after he and Samaeth had fled the Fate at last. When he brought Vanessa to the Alveary, they accepted her just as readily.

From there, Louis began the hunt for open clutches. If Vanessa doubted her mind, then perhaps... just perhaps... a dragon of her own could help reassure her and heal it.