deborah truly will realize she doesn't want to do comedy without ava anymore right? like she doesn't need her, technically she could do it without ava but. does she really want to? she keeps looking at ava to see her reaction even with thousands of ppl in front of her, and she keeps getting nervous and anxious until ava shows up and then- then everything is better

Ava

hashing out Ava’s lore, may do a written short story thing for it at some point? But for now this is pretty much an overall look at her backstory and life, pretty long but hopefully at least kind of interesting if you read it?

So, Ava was originally a guardian. She woke up amongst the trees of a snowy forest in the Icewarden’s domain with no memory of who she was, blood on her claws, and a strange pulling urge to get up and continue to search for her charge. She staggers to a stand and notes she has no injuries, the blood surely isn’t hers, but no matter how hard she thinks she literally can’t remember ANYTHING, not even a name for herself. The only thing she knows is that she wants to journey to find her charge, as if that will make everything okay. She thanks her thick hide and the inherent ice magic she can feel at her core, no doubt having hardened her against the cold and the main reason she was still alive.

Not knowing what else to do becides follow her instinct to journey in search of her charge, she sets off with no aim. Throughout the journey she realizes she knows how to fight, she knows hot to shoot a bow, she knows how to hold herself dangerously, she knows how to talk to people. Things she’s bad at include fitting in, and caring about others. She just feels apathetic in a way she thinks must be weird, by this point she’s traveled through a few civilizations by this point, have met a few dragons, have helped a few pepole. But she comes to realize she doesn’t ever really /care/ about any of them, and never misses the people she’s met and bonded with. Eventually she comes across a small kingdom along the shores of the sea of a thousand currents, half in and out of the water. Something in her just KNOWS this is where she’s supposed to be, so she wanders in.

As she’s learned she doesn’t fit in at all, especially as she’s let in and she realizes everyone is finely dressed, and a majority of them are pearlcatchers. With her large size she especially stands out, but she gulps and ignores it. She’s wandering through the small city, she can feel something tugging at her heartstrings in a way, leading her. She can hear comments here and there from the locals, whom she’s realized are pretty much all pearldancers. Most of the things they say are along the lines of ‘wow whats a guardian doing here’, 'look at how brutish she looks’, in a stereotypical snide tone. She frowns at the atmosphere, she’d met pearlcatchers but never ones so haughty.

Eventually she sighs, her instincts are pulling her everywhere at once, and she wonders if she’s so close to her charge she can’t detect their direction anymore because they could be anywhere, but looking around helps nothing, she doesn’t feel a bond with any of the strangers her eyes dance over. Hiding behind a market stall is a pearlcatcher dressed in silks, eyeing the strange traveler in the town.

Ava sighs and enters a bar, deciding to try and chill, relax with a few drinks then go back at it again. Possibly because of her size, most drinks did little to her, and would more likely just loosen her up than actually make her anywhere close to tipsy. She sits down and orders a few drinks, surprisingly there are a few different types of dragons in the bar, a ridgeback even sat off to the side drinking a rather large tankard of ale. Slowly she relaxes, starts talking, loudly proclaiming jokes and trying to converse with everyone. The pearlcatcher from before has entered the bar and is seemingly hiding off in a corner, as if afraid to reveal herself. However, eventually Ava flits over to the only stranger she hasn’t talked to, not yet actually LOOKING at the pearlcatcher, too caught up with carrying through a joke. Ava turns to holler at someone, and her front paw steps on a bottle and slides out from under her, sending her slipping onto her belly on the floor, chin knocking against the floor, sharp scales leaving a sizable nick in the wood.

At this the pearlcatcher just loses it and starts laughing loudly, and Ava glances up bashfulyl and then their eyes meet and … SOMETHING, happens. It’s like something clicks in place in her mind, leaving her breathless and staring dumbly at this stranger. The pearlcatcher clears her voice awkwardly, “Maria.” she states simply, holding a paw out to Ava. Ava stumbles to her claws and offers her own paw forward, large claws nearly dwarfing Maria’s own nimble, delicate grasp. “…Ava.” She just manages to say before suddenly a guard is bustling up to them angrily, jabbing a spear at Ava and causing her to back up. “Princess Maria, has this ruffian hurt you?” The pearlcatcher snarls accusingly, glaring at Ava as she splutters. Princess??? She looks to Maria and sure enough she’s waving the guard off saying something about how 'its fine really we were just talking’ and then Maria is suddenly inviting her to the castle and offering her a job as her guard and she just barely remembers to ask before she’s sent off to a room in the ROYAL castle as the day comes to an end.

“Wait, did you feel it to?” She askes as Maria goes to close her room door, having given her a tour. Maria blinks wide eyes and her ears seem to redden. “I didn’t think YOU felt it.” she admits in shock, and then they are having a whole conversation about how guardian’s and charges/wards work and Maria says she’d already fallen for Ava’s laughter and that this development didn’t much change anything, and would Ava like to go on a non business date sometimes perhaps?

Ava and Maria live together for three years happily, bonding and learning about each other and falling more and more in love, Ava’s connection to her so strong she can feel the others pain and tell where she’s at even if she can’t see her. Maria doesn’t seem to share that side of the bond’s magic, simply just feeling an instinctual connection to the other dragon in a way. The first year Ava quickly learns things aren’t as easy as she’d hoped they’d be. Maria’s mother is the queen and is very strict on her daughter, on top of hating any species bar pearlcatchers and in turn hating Ava and her relationship w/ Maria, though she’s always nice and can be to Ava’s face. Ava grows to hate her quickly, picking up on the cruel comments to Maria and snide references to her over time. She learns that Maria wants nothing more than to leave the kingdom and to travel and become a KNIGHT, of all things. She wants to help others and do something beyond the kingdom, admiring Ava’s fighting skills and envying her. Ava asks her why she can’t and Maria sighs and says she wouldn’t get it. She has a responsibilty to her kingdom and is the sole heir. She must stay and inherit the throne. Together though, they make it through all obstacles over the years. Maria struggles to form emotional bonds and can get very distant at times, and Ava can be clingy and overly emotional but Ava is happy to put this aside for her.

It all breaks on their fourth year together. Maria has slowly started to grow more and more distant, hardly talking to Ava and even avoiding the guardian some days. Ava becomes distraught and worried, and when the Queen announces that her daughter is to be wed to a neighboring royal she realizes whats been happening. She goes to Maria the next chance she gets and tells her it’s okay, soothes her fears, says they can run away together. Maria cries and pleads for that to be so, and so Ava gets to work preparing to run away one night, meanwhile the neighboring royal is sent over to get to know Maria.

Finally Ava has prepared their escape and confronts Maria, but Maria takes a step back and tells her she’s not going. Ava feels her throat knot up, the room seems to spin. Maria says she’s fallen for the royal, Ava tries to argue but Maria raises a hand and suddenly guards come in, to Ava’s surprise two of the guards are guardians bigger than her, and these two grab both of her wings, holding her in their rough grasp. Ava roars and struggles as she dragged out, Maria not even so much as glancing to her as she screams and cries and begs.

As the guards throw her out of the kingdom doors she turns to fight her way back in but suddenly crumples to the ground, gasping for breath. She feels as if her heart was just rended, she can feel something in her TEARING, its burning and aching and it feels like something is being forcibly ripped from her. Through the pain she just barely comes to the conclusion that Maria had their bond severed by some magical means, but then her vision swims and she blacks out.

She wakes up and her body hurts, her chest feels heavy and she feels numb. It’s night and she’s still outside of the now locked kingdom doors. Numbly, she turns and starts doing the only thing she knows to do, wander. Time seems to pass both at a slowed pace and all in a blur. She gets into fights that she barely remembers, has scars she doesn’t know the cause of, does anything to keep her self from thinking of her charge and the emptiness in her where the bond was. She can feel herself growing more and more numbed by the day, feeling as if she is slowly wasting away. In a fit of self destruction she wanders into the shadowbinder’s territory of the Ghostlight ruins, having wandered through the scarred wastelands to the start of it.

She blunders through it, attacking monsters with no hesitation or discrimination, not bothering to dodge attacks and using pure brute force. However, by some cruel twist of fate instead of dying she wanders upon a traveling caravan. A strange skydancer introduces her self as the leader of the clan, her name is Vetrius and it is the cartico clan, they were traveling to find a home in the shadowbinder’s territory after beast clans had wiped out their clan in the wastelands. Ava blinks numbly at the Skydancer who seems to smile understandingly at her, most likely picking up on the guardian’s emotions with the empathetic psychic abilities all skydancer’s possessed. Vetrius says that they could use a guardian to help protect the caravan, and if she’d like she can join their clan once they settle. Ava finds herself agreeing, perhaps some part of her still wants to survive, despite the festering pain in her.

Ava travels with the clans, slowly becoming a part of it, though her emotions remain closed off and she doesn’t connect to any of them personally, she slowly finds herself growing accustomed to defending the clan, helping them through the ruins, and when they find a buried and crumbling fortress amongst the ruins, she helps them settle and stays afterwards. However, now that her clan has settled and are no longer traveling, she no longer has a purpose, no longer has anything to try and fill the hole inside of her. She starts to fester again, wallowing. She starts wandering out into the ruins to fight monsters again, using the excuse that she just wants to keep the surrounding territory of the fortress clear and safe.

One on such outting she comes across a tattered scroll, old and decaying but still laced with powerful magics and discernable as a skydancer scroll. She holds it in her claws and ponders this discovery. Usually such scrolls costed hoards of treasure, and the powerful magic in the could only be used once, to change one’s breed. She could become a skydancer, she could forget the ache in her chest, she could save herself. She takes it back home and puts in a box to be ignored.

At least for a time, eventually the part of her that still wants to survive leads her to find herself staring at the rolled up paper once more one late night. Slowly, she unrolls it and looks at it, and is blinded by a flash of light. When she wakes up, she feels different. She’s smaller, more lithe, everything is so DIFFERENT and strange and it takes her months to learn her new body. Months to slowly heal from the ache still in her, an ache that comes from losing someone you loved. Months to get use to her new skydancer abilities.

Now she hunts the outskirts of the clans, keeping herself sane with a purpose, thankful that she no longer has such a powerful drive to fulfill a bond that no longer exists, the need for a purpose, a thing to guard, sated now by a simple life.

I think eventually she’ll meet someone who makes her actually CARE about life again, to thrive instead of just survive, but idk yet