Name: Rhael [this is a past life name that may be subject to change] Cypress
Guardian: Erasin Cypress
Gender: Femme
Personality: A quiet girl, she seems to be haunted by distant dreams of better times and has a pessimistic attitude towards the present. Although she can be friendly and 'normal' seeming - most of the time she comes off as gruff and uninterested in the conversation. She honestly tries to care, but finds herself amusingly apathetic as she is unsure of how to show her honest emotions.
Apperance: Black hair, cropped short on sides, expect for one slightly longer braid towards the front of the left-hand side of her face. Her hair sticks up slightly on the sides, but her longer hair in the back is secured into a braid, which falls to her mid back. She is never seen without a small pipe-fox spirit, given to her in the form of a pipe when she was forced to leave the shrine to go with the doctors and her eventual doom.
Note: "you alone can quench the fire."
Concpet/Past Life
Rhael was originally born into a poor family that had no use of a third female child - and at a young age was passed onto live at a shrine that took in children in return for services rendered, in this case Rhael’s older sister’s wedding. She was payment for her sister’s happy day, and after that, her life spiraled from bad to worse.
She was expected to attend to the ailing head priestess at all times, with little time to herself and the numerous chores that she was expected to complete. She had no identity, no name for herself, nothing that made her stand out like the other students at the shrine. She could not make friends because of her duties, which kept her essentially in the sole company of the head priestess, the only one who showed her kindness.
When she turned fifteen, Rhael found herself standing in front of the sacred flame for the first time. As a coming of age rite in their land, a child must stand before the fire - and what ever visions they see while in the presence of the sacred flame, that is their course in life.
Rhael saw nothing in the fire that night. Nor the night after. It was as if the gods were set to spite her, draining away her ability to see her future, her destiny written clearly in the flickering images of the flames. She locked herself away after the week of trials, where she was deemed an adult, but not a full one - rarely speaking to anyone, unsure how they would treat her newfound and awkward position.
Three nights after she officially came of age, the first building burned. Rhael remembered little of the night, other than the exhilaration of a soldier at a kill. It was like a drug, and yet Rhael did not know what she had taken - let alone what had happened during the blank periods of white in her memory.
Rhael’s dreams turned inward, into herself, into the flames within her - and the periods of blankness within her memory got larger as the buildings continued to burn. She was terrified, and yet there was very little that she could do, her power was not something that any amount of meditation or training could seem to contain - for it only attacked when her consciousness was not in full control, when she was asleep.
She began to fear sleeping, staying awake until she collapsed due to the sheer effort of staying awake for as long as she was.
As these things often happen, Rhael’s powers were noticed her companions at the shrine, who wrote to a well-known doctor, asking if Rhael’s condition was normal. He wrote back and said that it was so new that he wanted to meet the girl, and sent along money for her passage by train to the city where his operations were based off of.
They sent Rhael off in tears, the head priestess giving her a long pipe that she said would protect her at all costs, for it contained the most powerful creature that the combined power of the shrine maidens and priestesses could seal within it’s small form. The head priestess told her, privately, that she alone could quench the fire within herself, or it would destroy her. Rhael resolved that the doctor could help her learn how to control her power, and went without a word.
Rhael boarded the train to the city thinking that she would be able to finally sleep in peace, but she soon fell asleep - dreaming of the dancing flames of the sacred fire - her inability to see in the flames. Fire exploded from her body as the train changed course,
TheSinWithin Community Member 
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