JOURNEYWOMAN HEALER TEKVA

Persona: Tekva
Writing Status: NPC/Owned
Age: 26
Gender: Female
Rank: Journeywoman Healer (Midwife)
Residence: Ierne Island Weyr

Physical Description: Tekva is tall and very sturdy-looking, with straight brown hair that reaches her waist and which is most often wound up in braids and ribbons. Her face is plain, but pleasant enough, with dark brown eyes, a straight nose that is on the large side, and a straight, wide mouth. She never wears trousers or anything leather, so she is most often seen in very long peasant skirts and blouses with plenty of gathers and ruffles. She has a large collection of enormous pendants on long strands of thick dyed string with which she is constantly fiddling, and she is a devoted fan of dangly earrings.

Personality: Tekva is a strange mixture of complete flightiness and complete control of a situation. She takes her occupation extremely seriously--perhaps a bit too seriously--she often tells people that midwifery has saved her (from what, nobody seems to know). Most healers consider her beliefs and practices of midwifery somewhat ridiculous, but she holds her own. She is excellent in unpredictable situations and she is very empathic, especially with women. She is romantically attracted to women, which she never tells anyone for fear of making her patients uncomfortable--this is one of the major strains in her life.

Life Story: Tekva was relatively content as a child. Her father was not often at home, but he was supportive and loving when he was, and her mother, also a midwife, took Tekva to almost every birthing and instilled in her the love of both the mother and the child. Both parents were supportive of her decision to enter her mother's craft.

When Tekva began to study to be a healer/midwife, she realised that her mother's views on childbirth were considered among healers to be at best, archaic, and at worst, life-threatening for both mother and baby. She spent all of her apprentice and early journeyman years trying to unlearn the methods she had learned from her mother and to be accepted among the healers that she respected so much. But she realised, after both mother and baby died under the hands of one of her very capable teachers, that her mother's way of practicing midwifery was valuable, and she began incorporating it into her own methods again.

When Tekva became a Senior Journeywoman, she was assigned to Igen Weyr. On arrival, she realised that working under the Igen Master Healer would be a constant clash of personalities and a constant battle to hold to what she believed about the process of birth. After months of misery, she begged to be assigned elsewhere, but the Igen Healer was determined to "knock some sense" into her and did not intend to let her leave until he had pounded all of her mother's unconventional practices out of Tekva. She stayed at that Weyr unhappily until, in the midst of what seemed a routine but difficult labour, one of her mothers died of a heart attack. After this, the Master was all too happy to transfer Tekva, and he sent her to Ierne Island Weyr.

Tekva's assistant is Chesna, who was Searched at Thread's End Weyr when she was thirteen, and when she stood three times and didn't Impress, she was assigned to help out in the infirmary rather than in the Lower Caverns. She enjoyed it so much, and she was of such a help, that she entered the Healer craft under the Master's tutelage. She immediately began to gravitate toward midwifery and eagerly attended any birth that she could. She stayed at Thread's End for two years, and when the new Weyr opened, she moved there, hoping to go far and escape the place where her failure to Impress still haunted her.

Pet's Name : Bian
Pet's Type : Firelizard
Pet's Colour : Bronze

Pet's Description : An average size bronze, he has been trained since Hatching by the Journeywoman to assist her in her duties as a Healer. He's remarkably well behaved and focused for a firelizard, which is a good thing considering whom the senior Master Healer is at Ierne Island Weyr. Tekva's primary focus -- midwifery -- suits the energetic firelizard perfectly. He's yet to miss welcoming a birth with the typical firelizard croon.

Last updated 4-Jan-04.