Lief

STATS
Name: Lief
Age: 24
Gender: Female
Description: Lief is a sturdy woman with broad shoulders, an ample chest, wide hips and square features. She has curly, light brown hair that soften her face somewhat and rich green eyes. Her complexion is pale, her nose is straight, her ears stand out a bit and her lips are thin. She likes to dress in earthy colours.
Personality: Lief is a no-nonsense kind of woman. She has some natural leadership qualities and keeps calm in times of crisis. She's a natural nurse and midwife and has helped more than a few people through sickness and operations. To wind down, Lief likes to play darts at the pub. 
Family: Lief grew up in a nunnery after she was orphaned as a young child.
Skills: Nurse, Dispatching.
Pets: --

~~°~~°~~°~~

STORY
Lief looked around the small house she'd been given. The community of Dawn Cove was young still, but growing with each passing month. A lot of the caverns that travelled around Gremyne appreciated the small reprieve from the road it offered. And it was safe. The water serpents that had come from various places in the galaxy, or Nexus, made certain no-one with ill intentions came close. No-one knew how they did it but apparently they had their ways. 
A growing community meant that they had a lot of jobs that needed to be filled. So far they'd relied on their own knowledge of herbs and had used their own stock of herbs. One of the caravan youngsters who had impressed a nekrat was somewhat of a herb-specialist and apothecary. But they'd needed someone with some basic knowledge on wounds and broken bones. So the guild of healers had sent her here. Maybe someday, when the settlement grew larger still, they'd send an actual doctor. 
A knock on the door interrupted Lief's thoughts.
"Excuse me." a young man said, "You've been asked to join Deriaki and Gejuisu for dinner at the bay. They'd like you to meet their nekrats and get acquainted with them.
Lief dropped her luggage and turned to leave. She was a nurse trained on humans, but the scholar in her wanted to know about these remarkable creatures. Did they have muscles and veins like humans? How did they move? How did they work? She was eager to find out.
"Lead the way." the told the young man who she noticed might be around her age.
"Certainly." he smiled and led her to the beach.
At places it was rocky, but there were patches of smaller pebbles and sand. In the water she could see a brown and black-green nekrat playing. The two came closer once they'd seen her though.
"She looks nice." the black-green well called Chunyon said in her mind.
"We should ask her if she wants to first." the brown rock female pushed.
"Ask me what?" Lief said.
"Oh, she hears us already. She'd do very well." Chunyon told his mate.
Lief didn't even know where she was getting all this information from. Somehow she felt their connection and could hear their conversation which seemed to have been meant to be private.
"If you want, you could travel to Lantessama and impress a young nekrat of your own."
"Why?" Lief asked.
"Why not?" Adelynha shot back, "We like the company." 
"You can swim, right?" Chunyon added in for good measure.
"Yes." Lief nodded.
"That's settled then." 

~~°~~°~~°~~

HATCHING
Mazorun's clutch was small at 4 eggs but all of her offspring would be healthy and large judging by the size of the eggs. For this clutch two people from Dawn Cove had been chosen to try and impress and four mer-people had been found by word of mouth. The mer-people were the first to arrive, benefiting from the currents and their easy sea-access from the northern sea-level living areas. Lief and Shunki arrived a little later from the roads as they'd been stationed more central to the island. They would leave with Hanari and Nyaka right after the hatching and if they bonded would raise the kittens in the Dawn Cove settlement. 
Another half an hour later had the first egg hatch. The clear blue hatchling female swam fast and skimmed the sand to fleck off any leftover shell before she hurried to the black merwoman.
Two other eggs hatched in rapid succession. A purple an red male appeared in the clear waters before their movements stirred up the sand and obscured the view. 
While the purple well bonded to one of the other mer-people, the red fountain swam toward the shore and made googly eyes at Shunki: 
"Do you think they'll like me?" he asked, hinting at Shunki's girlfriend and her bond who had already left Lantessama.
"Why wouldn't they, Lizaro? You look amazing."
The last egg seemed to have waited and only hatched after the sediment had settled. When it finally popped, a bright green female flipped her tail out of the water. She too headed for the shore, leaving the two waiting mers to wait for a future clutch, choosing to go to the human nurse instead.
"I'd like to learn more." she told Lief, "You can call me Beroul."
"Just ask me what you want to know and I'll try to give you an answer." the woman replied.
As the new pairs headed out to eat and make arrangements for their future, the sun shone brightly in the sky, a good omen for what was to come.

~~°~~°~~°~~

ADULT
Patiently Lief explained to Bernoul how a human was put together. The nekrat was quick on the uptake, sucking up knowledge like a sponge. There was absolutely no end to her curiosity and a day without something new to learn was a day wasted. Luckily Bernoul was not too picky about what she learned. She was just as happy learning a new fairytale as she was getting more medical knowledge. 
But today they were discussing an old favourite: 
"I've seen it happen time and time again, but I just don't understand it." Bernoul said.
"What's so difficult to understand? Babies are born not hatched."
"But how do people get enough babies then? One every few years seems so few"
"If you leave us to our own devices we will overrun the planet." Lief giggled, "Actually, how do dragons keep their population in check, even when nekrat clutches aren't that big?"
"If we get too populous we travel." Bernoul said.
"I guess we do the same." Lief said as she'd learned at Lantessama that humans were found all over the galaxy even if the people of Gremyne seemed to have lost the technology to do so.
"Maybe one day we should try this and compare notes."
"One day maybe." Lief agreed, "But maybe when I find the right person."

~~°~~°~~°~~
Intro - Mate

~~°~~°~~°~~
All images found with google
Nekrat impressed at Lantessama Isle