Number: #7.
Name: Leuco Draco [lew-CO DRAY-co] {means "white dragon" in Greek}.
Species: Smili.
Personality: Named after something so powerful and terrible, Leuco’s name didn’t have quite the effect on their meek daughter that her parents had so yearned for. The single daughter of her parents after five years of trying, the disappointed shouldered onto her eventually changed her over time. She struggled under the suffocating weight of such a ferocious name, and although she was blessed with a reputation that left her mostly alone, it also drew challengers.
Born quiet and dependent, in the beginning months and even the first few years, she saw nothing wrong with her life. She lived in the shelter of her parents, comfortable and full almost year around. It took her quite a while to notice the unusual stares she was scorched with, or the whispers that blew a torrent behind her back. Her mother and father hated her, and once she understood this, Leuco reflected that they had loathed her all along.
With not a mean bone in her body, Leuco effectively lives to please. She is a very emotional creature and has the idea of sharing her feelings with everybody she meets. This can be rather tedious to some, but she also has the added provision that once she figures out what is causing another to be upset in her, she stops it. Constantly changing to fit the boundaries and constrictions of the company she holds, Leuco has gone through multiple, rapid personality changes.
On a whole, she’s simple-minded and peaceful. Educated but not ranked very high on the sense of ‘street smarts’, Leuco gets along in life by impressing the scholars and entertaining the gangsters. She knows just how to conform to somebody to make them like her, and over all, this means she leaves a wake of friends behind her when she moves place to place.
Secretly and personally, she holds her own honed morals close to her heart, fighting stubbornly to maintain them. The first rule of her mind is never to hurt another, not in any way. The second is to never fall in love. The third is to never reproduce or successfully have offspring of any kind at all. And the fourth, and the most important to her, is to never lose sight of who she truly is even when she has everybody else deluded into another façade.
Quiet and intellectual, Leuco is actually an incredible beast. She is not as dull as she is usually painted, but she doesn’t mind the boring stories told about her adventures. Truthfully, she doesn’t wish to leave much a legend anyway, so staying as low on the radar as she possibly can is a fantastic detraction to her.
Likes: Soft-hearted strangers, honey, flowers, spring, sunshine, bright colors, strength, meadows and fields, lakes, natural beauty, ink tattoos, love in others.
Dislikes: Love in herself, slavery, disappointment, hate, shame, secrets, pain, misery, depression, her parents sometimes, herself sometimes, those who are cruel to her.
Background: Even in the sadistic facts of what her parents did her both mentally and emotionally, an outsider must admire and respect the couple for what they did, in the long run, for their single daughter.
Born in the wrong season on the wrong day on the wrong time, Leuco Draco arrived as something completely backwards. Her parents, a couple who had honestly uncovered love in the sweet gazes of one another, had tried unsuccessfully for years to carry a litter full term. Her mother, a bold, independent female, had stated that this was her last season. If it did not take this time, then she was forever cursed with never carrying on her bloodline.
At first, it seemed like once again their hopes had been shattered. Although both parents were devastated, both moved on with their lives, going about their business in the small plot of territory they owned. As the months crawled through, the mother watched with envious gazes as young females met their new cubs, bouncy, healthy litters of beautiful children. Depression nipped at her heels and she stubbornly ran from the weakening emotion, refusing to give into the sadness that crept and curled around her heart.
When next winter rolled around, it the same severe one they had experienced last year. They hunkered down in their dens, having been collecting material since spring, and settled back to survive through the trying season.
But midway through winter, the female experienced intense pain in the middle of the night, rousing her from her sleepless dreams. She woke her mate up with her calls and they both realized, with fear, that she was getting ready to deliver a litter full of cubs.
Both parents were startled and scared. They had met young and had grown up together, always within their partner, never venturing far. When they had finally declared becoming mates nobody who had known them was surprised at all. Neither had ever produced a cub, let alone witnessed one happening. Both they were worried out of their minds that something was terribly wrong.
In their family pasts, a birth during the early winter spelled bad omens. A birth during such a hard winter, in the middle of the night with wind howling around their small home, was especially terrible. And even if the timing had been more perfect, the parents had no idea what to do. With nothing to support a new pup with, the father scrambled to prepare something, in case the kids actually survived for a few hours. Without a pregnancy showing, the mother was ill prepared also, and brutally lost on what to do.
Through hard work and dedication, they made it through the night. When the morning breached, there was a single cub curled up against its novice mother’s side, purring softly in glee at merely being out in the world. It was a little girl with unusual frosted fur highlighted with a more cream, vanilla color, but the parents were too overjoyed in the beginning to care about the unique coloration of her fur. The small cub was healthy and although there had been no more in the litter, she seemed functional and bright, already crawling around after a few hours.
Pride blooming in their open hearts, the parents decided on the toilsome name of Leuco Draco, an ancient name in their families’ languages that meant something akin to “white dragon”. They figured the newborn needed a name that was strong and sharp-willed to get her through the winter.
In the beginning, no problems littered their path. The miniscule family got through winter without anymore problems, emerging from their dens when the snowfall finally stopped with a tiny daughter playing between them. Over the months neither had thought long on their growing cub’s coloration, and whether this was because they were unwilling to accept how different she was or because they were afraid, they were blind to her silent illness.
It was contained in the looks of their silent neighbors and the rumors that spread across the local community. The production of some odd cub was the malicious rumor, a story of an albino that had been born in the dead of night in the dead of winter. With such an honestly long growth that had never darkened her fur into something else, her parents silently fretted. There was something very unusual in this.
Since childhood, Leuco knew what it felt like to be loathed. None of the other cubs wished to associate with her, let alone play with her. And to be the only surviving pup from her parents made it hard to find playmates at all. Her parents felt like failures, and although they desperately tried in the beginning to hide it from their loved daughter, they couldn’t manage for long. Leuco was sensitive to their true emotions and she caught on quickly, slinking around her family in hopes of being unnoticed and not hated.
This terrible form of parenting and family life eventually drove her from the nest in a age that was generally deemed unacceptable. The fragile age of almost seven years old and she split, escaping from her suffocating parents without leaving them even a fraction of the idea of where she had disappeared to.
In all honesty, the young, albino beast began the adventures of globetrotting.
