Hollia

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Ruthenia Hollia
Hollia
Full nameHollia Calla Canavere
Age18
Height5'7"
GenderFemale
BirthplaceCandelabra Town, Astra
Personality

To all who know her, Hollia is a nurturing, inspiring presence. She has compassion as deep as the sea and an unwavering faith in all people's ability to change and grow, so deep that it is almost incomprehensible to those who know her. Few understand how anyone could be so naive to cruelty, some envy her for it. This is a trait nurtured by, and suiting her to, her work as a birdkeeper.

Well-loved by her classmates and humble even so, Hollia makes everyone feel like they belong in her company. When she is asked to serve, she gives herself fully to her duty, believing that the world, or society, needs her to perform it. But there is no room for herself in this equation. She is selfless and self-effacing, playing down her own wishes and needs—a habit reinforced by friends such as Ruthenia who take more than they give.

She is particularly vulnerable to death and grief, almost incapable of wrapping her mind around permanent departures. Hopeless circumstances cast her into despair, and never is she able to so much as pretend to be numb to them.

Story

Hollia comes from a lineage of birdkeepers who have run the Candelabra Aviary, a large aviary on the grassy outskirts of Candelabra Town, for five hundred years. Growing up, she knew that inheriting the aviary and birdkeeping duties was the only future she had, and she accepted it with no question, though she would come to feel trapped within this fate.

That future came knocking when she turned eighteen and her parents left to find work in the neighbouring Sonora. Hollia holds the lives of a hundred birds in her hand, and she tends them with the deepest care, feeding them and keeping their living spaces cleaned.

Every year during migration season, she is forced to sedate the birds lest they injure themselves on the netting trying to fly to their ancestral breeding land. It saddens her that they will always be trapped by the aviary's wire netting, denied the sky to which they belong.

When she is not working, she is attending classes at the Central Circle School, one of the wealthiest schools in Astra: her education is paid for by centuries of income from tourists visiting their establishment.

Relationships
RutheniaRuthenia is not the healthiest presence in Hollia's life, that's for certain. Nevertheless, out of pity for the girl, who has always been a magnet for ridicule and ostracism from their haughtier classmates, Hollia is committed to being her friend. Ruthenia doesn't quite know how to reciprocate that care; she doesn't do "care" and "love" and all them soft mushy things. She's aware she's a pity case for Hollia, and doesn't care.
ParentsHollia's parents, absent almost all the time now that they work in Sonora, is a little rueful about the loneliness they left in their wake and her (lack of) prospects for the future. At least she has her maternal grandmother to keep her human company, on days when she doesn't leave the house.
TelisA noblewoman's daughter who has all the connections, Telis is the friend who kickstarts Hollia's ascent into the upper social strata of her class. In the Central Circle School, social hierarchies mirror those of the nation they live in, and it is only here that Hollia may even imagine living a life outside of what was carved out for her.
Facts
  • Hollia's bird symbol is the dove. She's soft and peaceable and everyone loves her.
  • In Astra, it is traditional for only women to be given middle names. Older people think these names sound more elegant.