Profile
”Sorry. I got distracted.”
NAME: Lark Bardot
AGE: 23
BIRTHDAY: Selen 14th
GENDER: female, she/her
HEIGHT: 5’0 / 154 cm
HERITAGE: human
TITLE: daydreaming painter
HOMESTEAD: Cashew 25
PERSONALITY:
+peaceful, hard-working, observant+
=soft-spoken, dreamy, perfectionist=
-airheaded, blunt, stubborn-
- A young woman who always has her head in the clouds, Lark is a gifted painter who seems to spend more time with her paintings of people rather than the subjects themselves.
- Observant in the ways that she can pick up details about the world around her and commit them to memory, this trait serves her well in recalling names, faces, and places – especially for her artwork.
- While naturally soft-spoken, she can be very blunt and straight-forward with her words and what she says due to her withdrawn nature and desire to return to her thoughts if she finds the conversation stressful due to her hearing. If you say you're offended, however, she's quick to apologize and often feels bad for potentially making people feel hurt or ignored.
- Has a soft heart under the perceived disinterest in people. She often cares a lot about what people might think of her and how she acts…but it’s hard to interact with people if she can’t guess or know what they might say.
- Raised up to work hard and be diligent, she has a strong streak of stubbornness and perfectionism; a dangerous combination that has Lark sitting at her easel for hours on end until she deems her work worthy of being completed.
HISTORY:
TL;DR: A young woman with a talent for painting, Lark left her hometown with the hopes of being able to expand her worldview and improve her painting skills through traveling, which she has always longed to do. Having been given a flier for Gale’s End from her father in a letter, she decided to make the journey to the town to begin her travels.
THE BEGINNING 🐑
Tucked between the mountains in a small valley, a bustling village filled with farmers, merchants, and artisans alike made way for the people there to live without the desire to travel for more. This is where Lark was born to two well-to-do shepherds.
The couple was delighted to welcome their first and only child, but were shocked to discover the trademark long, winding thunderstruck scars covering the upper part of their daughter's face and right ear. Still, they decided to take it in stride and handle it as she grew.
Her childhood was simple, filled with soft wool, tall grass, a warm sun – and bountiful quiet. But, as Lark grew older, her quiet demeanor and lack of response to most noise around her caused much concern for her parents, leading to many doctor visits and a simple diagnosis; Lark was hard of hearing, the loss teetering between moderate and mild between ears.
Blaming the loss on those same thunderstruck marks her parents had worked hard to teach her to hide, they decided to double down and teach their daughter to sign, lipread, and write at a younger age than most in order to give her the most “normal” shot at life possible. The diagnosis didn't change her parents’ loving opinion of her— it did, however, affect her ability to make - and keep - friends in the valley when she was old enough to attend school. Not quite bullied, but not quite outright accepted either, Lark led a very quiet, isolated social life. But outside of it, she spent her time with her father, the soft sheep, and the peaceful, perfect space she created inside her head.
THE MIDDLE ☁️
Lark's personality developed into one of a hard-working, soft-spoken child with a stubborn streak and a quiet desire for more than just sheep and rolling hills. Her relationship with her father grew closer as she aged, the pair spending plenty of time outside playing and her father's stories of make-believe filling the air. The social isolation within the village wasn’t so bad, she thought, as long as she had her family and her safe space up in the clouds, away from the rest of the world.
Although her mother worried about Lark's habit of spending more time alone and dreaming than with the villagers around her, this didn't prevent father and daughter from creating complex fairy tales among the sheep. Princesses, knights, dragons, and more…and her daydreams grew larger than life, alongside her desire for a more exciting life.
Can I ever go beyond the valley one day?
“Of course, you could do anything you wish to set your mind to.”
...an everyday encouragement by her father – even if her mind was often up in the sky with the clouds when she was given the chores of minding the family sheep. This daydreaming habit led to a desire for travel, for learning more, and was joined with the discovery of being able to create her own world and people using something her father brought home as a birthday gift at fifteen years old - paint. Her father was a painter before settling down with her mother, so he taught Lark all the basics there was to know.
With a father who encouraged creativity and was just as imaginative as her, her world bloomed just a little beyond the valley. Her skills grew, and soon, Lark was creating paintings for patrons of the village to save up some cash to travel just like she - and her father - always dreamed of her doing. And so life went on, filled with dreams, the smell of paint, and smudged colors trapped in the wool of her clothes.
~~
THE STORM ⚡️
Of course, while the valley's location made for a relatively safe and secure haven from the Storm, there's always the off chance for it to strike hard– and heavy. Lark, her family, and the village were no strangers to the havoc the Storm could wreak, losing sheep and rebuilding bits and pieces of their home every year.
At 23 years old, the worst Storm Lark and the village had ever witnessed in recent years tore through and took parts of their homes and people with it. One of these people included Lark's father, who had gone out to round up the lambs and never returned in time to shelter. This Storm took more than the villagers were ever prepared to lose, and Lark’s dreams were whisked away just as fast as the Storm’s winds.
Devastated and depressed, Lark threw herself entirely into her painting career and became a perfectionist; this was all she had left of her father, and she could not let it be ruined by any mistakes made. She threw all possibilities of travel to the wind because how could she travel the world with the one person she wanted to share it with now gone?
Day after day spent in the hills painting til her fingers were dry and raw from paint and herding the sheep, Lark's mother no longer could stand to see her daughter fighting her grief, and so shared with her a letter her father wrote for her that was intended to be given for her 24th birthday– a pouch full of coin he himself had saved to help her fund her travels, and a flier advertising Gale's End. So with her grief and the sudden chance and reassurance from her long-gone father that she could still chase her dream, Lark packed up her easels, the money she and her father had saved over the years, and set off. While Gale's End wasn't quite the world, it was an excellent start to the travels she always dreamed of.
~~
LIKES: fruit, the color blue, sweaters, baked goods, seashells, birds, the outdoors, naps
DISLIKES: sour or spicy food, fish, bugs, small spaces, dull pencils, getting up early, hot weather, confrontation
