Karuna Marinin by aizie-chan

My original character Karuna Marinin from a commission by . She does lovely work ^^. *cheer*

Karuna Marinin is from a story I've kinda set by the side for a long time. She's an Aiborae/Ovalisk.

You can see her in other iterations here
[link]
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What I have of her story is only this -
A lone, slight female figure trudges through the desert. The harsh winds dry her lips and curl at her long, twinkling sky-blue hair. Her kind do not usually travel alone but she is on a journey.

On her back she carries an oddly-shaped pack twice her size. She tries to smile through the wind and sand. She shields her large, sapphire eyes with a gloved hand. Her gloves were once a bright and foggy silver but the desert has saturated them with brown, especially along the seams.

The gloves join with a deep green, single-piece tunic. The tunic’s high collar presses at her neck and its sleeves dive inside her gloves. It ripples and sketches flat against her body in the wind, revealing the gentle outline of her chest. Her matching pants writhe on her legs as her crusted boots sink through the edge of a dune.

Her feet stumble and she nearly staggers backward with the weight of her pack. She tries to get back to her feet but she can’t. They shake and tremble and won’t support her weight.

It’s been three days since she left the Colony and two days since she last slept. She buries her head in her pack to breathe but still she gets a mouthful of dust. She hacks, slides off her pack, and searches within it. She carefully removes a long, sky-blue blanket and clings to it. She wraps it around herself and tucks the end inside her tunic. She tries breathing through the cloth. She doesn’t cough as much and the acrid taste of dirt is muted.

Digging through the pack again, she pushes her food supplies aside and makes enough room for her to climb inside. It’s tight and stuffy but she’s incapable of sweating so it’s more comfortable than the conditions outside. She trembles a little at the tightness and reseals the pack.

Darkness wraps around her. She can almost hear a whisper in the dark but she logically dismisses it as the wind. The air inside is moist from a set of aurora mushrooms in a bundle at her foot. She carefully tips the pack flat against the ground so she doesn’t crush them. Her mouth opens slightly at their smell and her nostrils flare. But she reminds herself there aren’t many. She has to conserve them.

She makes herself as comfortable as possible against the yielding ground of the small dune as curtains of sand scrape against the outside of the pack. She thinks of home, of the Clutch and the Colony, and slips off to sleep with the memory gently beckoning her.

Chapter 1: The Colony

Her name is, and had been for as long as she could remember, Karuna Marinin. It was the name ‘Oma’ Sera had given her shortly after she found her.

Oma was out picking flowers for Nena and Arya that day. Nena wanted pink carnations to match her hair and Arya wanted heather which was purple, yet would remind her of Nena’s hair. They all agreed anemone, which grew on the north fringe of the Ouroboros Valley, would be perfect. Thoreau Colony was the only one that far to the north.
They loved rolling in circles in the snow during wintertime.

Oma had just finished filling her basket when she noticed something colorful on the rocky crags above her. She stretched her wide eyes open even further. Her pupils dilated. She could discern an outline of hair. Oma set her basket down and wound her way up the flat, terraced etchings of rock.

She clawed at the stone, pulled herself between a broken cleavage in the hillside. She strained to get up on the ledge. She dug in with her fingernails. The rock was slick. Oma took a deep breath and heaved herself forward with all her effort and left a fingernail from each hand behind. The memory of pain long ago filled her as she looked down at her fingers as the nails quickly regrew. She dug into the rock once more and hoisted herself up onto the plateau.

Looking out, she saw a single golden aster, its stalks stretched out expectantly, growing out from a crack in the bare rock and a hatchling sitting on the terrace above it. She turned her head slightly to the right as she gazed at the young one. She could tell the girl was a hatchling by the luster of her skin and smell of it, though she showed none of the other outward signs. Sure, she seemed so small and young, but she also seemed far too calm.

Oma edged closer. The hatchling’s hair swelled around her head like a thick, sky-blue dome and flowed in rolling waves down her back and settled on the rock behind her. Her legs curled close to her and her arms snaked along the sides of them and reached down to trace the ground. Her feet were arched and she seemed ready to strike at the aster like Oma had seen countless hatchlings throw themselves at flowers. But the grip of her arms held her back.

She sat there, staring at the flower with a calm look. Oma watched her lips fight their way between a wince and a smile. She moved closer.

“Little one? Are you alright?”