Alita Sicath, Character Sketch

Alita Sicath was born to Nadia Sicath and Alessandro Sicath in a small Gypsy camp at the edge of the sea. Her little brother, Atra was born two years later and was a constant shadow to Alita, who had always, even at that young age, preferred solitude to the company of others but she allowed her little brother to sit near her as she stared at the forest in the deep concentration that only young children seem to have,
When Alita was eight she began to watch young men fighting with wooden sticks that were roughly shaped as swords with her unwavering eyes that, after long days in the baking sun, seemed strange and judging.
When she sat patiently, watching they play war her brother would sit next to her, watching with his head cocked to one side and sometimes calling out encouragements where Alita stayed eerily silent and still.
She did not say her first word until later that day, and when she did it was in a perfectly formed and well spoken sentence, as if she had been practicing the phrase for her entire short life.
“I want to learn how to fight.” Was what Alita had uttered, rather abruptly in a moment of utter silence around the great fire that the Gypsies sat around, preparing themselves to tell stories that they had saved up for the night.
Not a soul brayed laughter. The Sicath family was one of the oldest in their camp and their daughter, who rarely smiled and almost never laughed, was not a child that you patted on the head and told to be quiet because the grown ups were talking. This was the first time Alita spoke and the words were deadly serious.
After some questioning and probing the camp learned that little Alita wanted to learn how to defend herself with a sword so she could live away from the camp and become a part of civilization which, to her family, seemed strange and unsettling. Despite his significant doubts, Alessandro agreed to teach Alita how to defend herself.
Alita learned very quickly and devoted herself to the art of fighting and, often proved the entire camp wrong, by using moves that, if it had been a real sword in her hand, would have killed her opponent in the most painful fashion.
As the years progressed Alita became better and better until she could best any of the fighters there. When she beat her father, who was one of the best fighters in the camp, he took her into town and got her a sword that he had ordered to be made especially for Alita.
After she was equipped with her weapon, Alita lapsed back into her quiet, mild nature but no one, not even the blatantly ignorant, mistook her silence for stupidity. Four hours at a time she would sit silent and still, watching the sun shine off the waves of the great churning ocean.
To the suspicious in the camp it seemed Alita was casting spells on the world but to those very few who knew her well, they presumed that she was waiting for the time when the world was ready for her.
The world let Alita know it was ready for her in a most disturbing way. Nadia had killed Alessandro after he had learned that Atra was not his son but another man of the camp. Alita had come home to find her father’s dead body.
The silence that Alita had lived in was suddenly broken and her emotions, so carefully hidden came bursting forth. Alita, lost in a haze of rage and hatred had turned to her mother and slaughtered her without a thought. She would have done the same to Atra but the camp had heard Alita’s anguished howl and had hurried to her family’s wagon.
Alita left the camp that night, taking nothing but her sword with her. The silence that she had so carefully cultivated herself to live under had been destroyed by the image of her father’s mangled body and she found herself winning back her sanity by the skin of her teeth.
Now out into the civilized world, Alita, known simply as Sicath now, carved a name for herself in the cultured world of art and fine wines. She guarded her past jealously, making up lies that she pieced together to form a false history that she paraded around as if it was her battle flag.
Soon the news of her skill with the sword spread through the kingdom like wild fire and she was called to King Leon to serve as part of his personal guards. While she accepted his offer, no one was fooled into thinking this was what she thought she was made to do.
Eventually she killed the man who employed her and turned fugitive, running for her life to a new home where they could not find her.
The large portside city where she made her home was called Tetaro and survived well off its fish and pearl trade. Sicath, as she was now known, melted in with the crowd on the shadier part of town and was lost to the guards.
She survived there, living easily in a small apartment that she seldom left, for two years of anonymity, until a young man by the name Ashe. He was not fooled by the bitter silence that she had once again started to build around herself. He also knew who she was and what she had done in her recent past, though he was not aware of her matricide.
After Ashe told her of his knowledge in her assassination of King Leon she tried to kill him, only to find herself bested. This, of course, brushed against her ego and she insisted he teach her all he knew.
Ashe was persuaded, after much arguing and haggling, and became her tutor, and though he was only a year older than Sicath his skills were far better. Sicath learned many tricks, both dirty and fair, under Ashe, and inevitably the two fell in love with one another, but for their safety they decided it be better they were not together for too long at a time.
After a year of meeting secretly and quickly, Sicath was called back into the open by the promise of a job. When she arrived at the meeting place she was propositioned by a man who needed someone to vanish. He had heard of Sicath and wanted to employ her. Sicath, she who killed her mother at fourteen, accepted her first assignment at sixteen.
Over the next two years she became apart of a small group of assassins that called themselves ripples in the dark. One could not apply to this group. When one was good enough at killing silently, one got a ring that had a small, flat and black stone in the center, rippled with white.
Sicath’s lover, Ashe, was also part of this deadly group, this is what led to his death.
Sicath was contacted through a friend by the name of Aurora Unlokes who told her of an employer that would pay a great sum of money to have a few people killed. Sicath accepted and made her way across many miles to a tavern that Aurora owned.
An hour or two after she checked in Ashe followed and the two of them attempted to kill one another. Sicath won and killed Ashe, leaving her own sword and taking his, despite the fact that her father had had that sword made for her.
Sicath never looked back.
At the present time Sicath’s whereabouts are unknown and, until she wishes other wise will remain as such, though there are many who wish to see Sicath dead and rotting.

Due to her upbringing and severe emotional scars, Sicath has never been able to get close to many people. She mistrusts and judges easily, and is not quick to forgive, perhaps because she does not expect to be forgiven herself.
Despite all this and more, Sicath has faith in such things as destiny and fate, sometimes making reference to ‘plans not yet seen’ and the like. She does not believe in any sort of god or divine intervention, choosing instead to believe that stretched ahead of her is miles and miles of paths, waiting for her to tread upon them and make her own choices.
Sicath does has a nifty trick that allows her to lock away her emotions until they are needed again and, in her skewed opinion that is not often. Without emotions she is able to kill anyone as easily as one would kill an ant.
While Sicath is cold, distant and cruel she does not enjoy killing or hurting others, but does it as one would do a hob, this does not make her any less dangerous but it does lead one to believe that there is a loving soul under the wounds she has inflicted upon herself and others have inflicted upon her.
This side of Sicath, small and easily silenced by her ruthlessly trained mind shows it self when the late king Leon’s young brother took the throne and started the slave trade once again. Sicath, born a Gypsy, believed all people should be free to do whatever they wished and made it her life’s pursuit to bring down the tyrant king and put a good man on the throne.
Patriot, murderer, death dealer, Sicath walks under all these banners but still she has not a care what others think of her, calling their opinions unjustified righteousness. Whatever the crowds think of Sicath, there is one thing about her that they will all agree on; to her, mercy is a meaningless word.

Sicath deals with strangers as another would deal with a business college. She is formal, efficient and to the point. Many people find this quite disturbing about her but their opinions mean little or nothing to her.
Surprisingly, Sicath does have friends, though they are far and few between. And though they are her friends, if it was needed she would kill them herself or let them die. At first the people who consider themselves her friends are shocked and dismayed by this but then, after realizing she will not repent they accept it as a part of life.
After killing her mother, Sicath’s only family was her younger brother, whom she despises as if he was a parasite. She blames him for her father’s death and, if she were to meet him, would not hesitate to run him through with her lovers sword.
As she is with strangers, Sicath is calm and formal with her victims, telling them it would be useless to fight and that they will die. She does not go on about the sorrows of her life, and does not try to justify their death to them, Sicath is not much of a talker, and so, after telling them what to expect she kills them.
Sicath, unlike her family and most the Gypsies from her camp who all shared a dusky reddish skin, is fair to the point of looking sickly, the reasons for her unhealthy looking pallor is because of all the time she spends hiding from guards and in the dark, when it is easiest to disappear down narrow alleys.
Matching the appropriate evil look, Sicath has large silver eyes that seem to reflect little and take in all, if one was to look closely one would see the pupil is not round, as an average human but a narrow cat like sliver, which hints of her unknown heritage.
Sicath wears her curly dark hair held back by a simple blue ribbon that keeps it out of her eyes, unless she is working, then she puts it in a tight braid that reaches her tail bone.
She is tall and wiry, with a narrow face and hips and long hands and fingers, each tipped with a slightly curved black claw that she keeps long and sharpened to a dangerous point, these nails, or talons as she calls them, are her back up weapon and she is careful to keep each edge keen and edged with scorpion poison.
Sicath has a strange, dangerous kind of beauty, perhaps likely to be compared to a black widow spider in her web or a wild cat crouched to pounce, and it is not below her to use her pretty face to her advantage when on an assignment.

While Sicath looks quite humanoid, there are hints to another heritage buried deep in the history of humans. She is aware she’s not human but she guards that part of herself as aggressively as she guards her real past.
The hints of her unorthodox species are the curved nails, the cat like pupils and the silence she moves in, sometimes making no sound even in the middle of a forest where twigs and brush are like to call attention to a single misstep. These, along with a few others are pointing to the direction cat like or, perhaps, wolf like.
Though Sicath is unaware she is a distant descendant of an old rave of people who were more like felines than humans, sometimes growing thick fur or even ears and tails.
Luckily, fur, ears and tail on Sicath are all normal or, in the case of the tail, nonexistent. And though she does not have these unusual traits she has the upper hand in the cutthroat world where she has made her home.
Sicath’s story, Ripples in the Dark: The Red Dove, circles around Sicath and her life after killing her mother and meeting Ashe, it actually starts right before she checks into the tavern of Aurora Unlokes and kills Ashe.
The story is mainly action or adventure with romance and mystery thrown in for good measure. She is the main character and goes through a series of obstacles until she comes to the capital where King Leon’s younger brother, King Tule, lives and rules. Here she finds a small group of people who are planning on taking the throne from Tule. Sicath joins their small number but also lets herself be seen by men who have been trained to hunt her down.
The story, which I am currently writing, ends when a great battle is joined, though I am not yet able to tell if the story will end happily or sadly.

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Current Mood: Relaxed
Current Music: In The Long Run, The Eagles