About

Born from the First Mother, the Creator of all, and the heir of life. Etharia's very start rests on the benevolence and dreams of Gaia, her desire to cultivate life and create beauty being the reason for the beginning of the country's existence. From the heavens, the First Mother watched as her small little part of the world she created flourished, evolving into lush forests and stalwart sweeps of mountain ranges. Etharia had become her favorite and most beloved project, spending her time making sure each and every living thing had a proper start, only retracting her influence when the country could finally exist on its own. It was at that time, Gaia shifted her attention elsewhere, focusing on the rest of her space of the universe. Centuries had passed before Gaia came back to her Etharia, realizing that her once darling and most cherished creation was struggling. The rapid expansion of industrial practices and technological advances by the country's inhabitants were running Etaria's natural resources dry- and, despite many of her small creations fighting their hardest to spread awareness of such issues that plagued their kind, it seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Worried that Etharia would soon meet its demise at the hands of what she created, the Mother made the ultimate decision to intervene as gently as possible, choosing to deposit a part of herself within Etharia, who hopefully fix it from the inside out. Gaia, an invisible hand, needed a physical body and thus, created from the very soil of Emelle Woods, lie Mei, her heir. From the very beginning, Mei was to be the beholder of Creation, keeper of the ocean tides and all that existed, the First Mother hoping the small part of herself would soon awaken within the young girl as she aged. However, it became apparent that the young girl despised the attention mother nature paid- annoyed at the way the tides seemed to embrace her at a moment's notice, and how the trees seemed to bow as she stepped past. Her very existence was beloved, and she grew to despise it, the calls of nature too much for her to bear.

Shortly after Mei's creation, she was taken in by locals from Alvarna, the village resting on Emelle's outer border, where she spent her early childhood days in the orphanage, before being adopted and moved further north to Ferncombe. Mei had been unperturbed by nature's advances during the early years of her youth, though it seemed that the winds had shifted by the time she hit middle school, where she began to hear muffled calls of her name in the breeze and in the quiet rush of water through the towns aqueducts. Her nights became sleepless, the whimpers and pleas for the voices to cease spurring her parents to seek psychological help for their daughter. When that didn't seem to work, they tried elsewhere, sacred medicines and practices only amplifying the desperate calls. Mei's friends at school watched as their poor friend unfurled, doing their best to defend the poor girl from the snide comments and frightened whispers of their peers. By the time Mei was graduated, the poor girl seemed lifeless, her eyes dark and sunken, muscles wound up and ready to snap at any given moment.

It didn't take too long into the summer after graduation for Mei to snap, another sleepless night pulling her from her bed and into the arms of her mother, who had been there to muffle the poor girl's sobs and screams for peace. The voices were rather insistent that night, and in a last-ditch attempt for silence, she gave in, bursting out the door and into the night. Face stained with tears and bones aching for rest, Mei had allowed the voices to take hold of her, leading her tired body miles from home and back to Emelle, where the voices finally went quiet. It was there that she was then greeted by the voice of Gaia, her true mother, who finally helped Mei put the pieces together. Despite Gaia's hopes, Mei lashed out, wishing to forsake her duties in favor of a normal life- though it was impossible. To this day, Mei does her best to ignore the way that the world seems to kneel at her feet and beg for her attention, though when they get too loud, she tends to fall apart, finding somewhere quiet to ground herself.