When I was ten years of age my mother Marianna, the wisdom of a small town a few days walk from Cairhein, had a dream after which we set out across the Jangai Pass. Up till then I had a wonderful childhood, it was just my ma and I , but we were happy. I remember traveling up and down the River Gaelin. I used to play along the shore when we would stop to rest, on our way to a neighboring town. Mother was always going somewhere to help someone, and I always went with her. She taught me how to read and write. She would also tell me stories of other places and even drew a map for me. I used to study it, dreaming of the day when I would actually see the ocean, the mountains, and all the other wondrous places on that map. When she said we were to cross over the Kinslayers Dagger into the Waste, I was excited thinking I could start marking off places that I had visited. Little did I know then.
When we arrived we were met by a group of Aiel. My mother had taken ill on the journey and died a week after we had arrived. I was beside myself with grief. The Wise One Avied, whom we had gone to meet, took me in under her roof to raise as her own. Avied along with her husband Rhark and sister-wife Chada raised me to know the ways of the Aiel. The life was much harder than the one I had left. It took a long time for the Waste to feel like home, everything was so different from what I had known. I even took a new name, Katalo, to signify my new life.
Never having known my birth father, Rhark fascinated me. I would follow him like a lost dog, trying to do everything I saw him do. Finally he decided I would not be deterred and began to teach me the dance, I took to fighting like a bird to flight. The Maidens decided that if I was to learn I should not be trained by a man and so took me under their wing. I trained hard and joined the Far Daries Mai the same season as Jolin, Chada's youngest daughter. After which, Jolin and I became first-sisters. It took me six years but I finally felt I was part of a family again.
Then, about three seasons ago, Avied told me the story of why my mother brought me to the Three Fold Land. She said that my mother and her had met many times in their dreams and had become friends. She told me of the decision to bring me to the Waste. Somehow, my mother knew she was to die and wanted me to be raised by someone who would be able to teach me to survive and, if necessary, recognize the signs of the One Power.
Avied said she started to see the signs three years ago, when I joined the Far Dareis Mai. She started having me do breathing and calming exercises, claiming they were to help me in battle. She also began dropping hints that soon I would leave the Waste; I fought this idea with a vengeance. I had already lost one family; I had no intention of losing another. Avied, as a last resort, had to insult me into going by reminding me of the toh I had to my mother and that the time to repay had come.
I was told I would have to go the White Tower to learn to use the One Power, for though I was Aiel at heart I was still a wetlander by birth. My mother was hoping that I would not develop the ability, but feared I would. This is why she brought me to the Waste. She believed that the warrior spirit would carry me through the training. I can only hope she was correct.
And so at the age 19 Katalo comes to the Tower to begin her life anew. She is rather tall and has inherited a rather shapely figure from her birth mother. She has cool blue eyes and dark reddish-brown hair that has been growing out from the close cropped cut of the Maidens.