Sina Tatterdemalion
Borderland Unseelie Fae
Trickster
I cried when the moon was murmuring to the birds:
"Let peewit call and curlew cry where they will,
I long for your merry and tender and pitiful words,
For the roads are unending, and there is no place to my mind."
The honey-pale moon lay low on the sleepy hill,
And I fell asleep upon lonely Echtge of streams.
No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;
The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.
~William Butler Yeats, "The Withering of the Boughs"
Sina Tatterdemalion, once Sina Shadowcatcher, a discontented Unseelie Borderlander. Born and raised in the Unseelie Courts, once a member of the dreaded Hosts, yet, cursed with a discontented spirit, all that is lost, and only the despised Sina Tatterdemalion remains.
"What do you make so fair and bright?'
"I make the cloak of Sorrow:
O lovely to see in all men's sight
Shall be the cloak of Sorrow,
In all men's sight.'
~William Butler Yeats, "The Cloak, the Boat, and the Shoes"
Born thirty-some years ago, Sina Shadowcatcher was simply another chaos-causing Unseelie Fae, and later a trickster and scout for the Host. However, Sina's life as an Unseelie slowly became less and less satisfactory, until at last, one day, she simply deserted the Unseelie and took up with the Wild Faerie, in hopes that their more carefree way of living would prove to be a better life. Or, rather, a more likeable one.
Perhaps the tale has shed its colorful drama to reveal a misery and a dreary cruelty we all lived too close to.
~Patricia McKillip, Winter Rose
Unfortunately, the freedom that Sina had dreamed of having amongst the fiana sidhe did not suit her; or rather, it was not what she had expected it to be. Being a somewhat chaotic Fae, as are many of the Unseelie, she found that her background caused suspicion, and soon she was nearly an outcast among them.
I drifted, I felt, in the tangled wood, where light did not reveal the truth, and every path led into shadow.
~Patricia McKillip, Winter Rose
And so Sina returned to the Unseelie, only to learn that nothing would be the same. Stripped of her family name and place in the Host, she is hunted and despised by both Unseelie and Wild Faerie, never able to rest, never able to find peace. And she hides in the woods of her childhood, hoping that, one day, it will all finally end...
How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?
~Joseph Conrad
Sina is small, standing a mere four and a half feet tall. Her hair is shoulder-length and black, soft and almost feathery, giving her an eatheral look, with her pale skin and dark blue eyes. Her clothing varies, but is usually plain, and often tattered from rough life. She has a perpetually wary manner, rather distrustful, too. Seeking nothing but a brief respite from her life, she wanders...
