Username:
Nakalla.
Name:
Conundrum (Conu)
Gender:
Female
Personality:
Conundrum is very optimistic, strong in her ways, and stubborn. She loves to live life to the fullest and her courage and curiosity know no bounds. She's popular with her mounatin climbing friend she's doing Everest with, eventually, and her dream is to travel around the world before the highest climb on the planet and do the other great peaks of the world. She's a tomboy, not liking frilly things, but loving to get down and dirty. She's a guy magnet, pulling male Jellybeans in with her British accent and her headstrong personality. Watch out, though. She's a heartbreaker.
Conundrum also loves her music and always as her neon green nano on hand to pull up a couple motivating playlists.
Story OR Art:
Conundrum was born into the big city, into a British accent, with a rich family that was "pish posh" this and "posh pish" that. She was the middle child, always either being pushed around, getting in trouble for bossing around her younger four siblings, or just being forgotten. Her not so fortunate uncle, an old Jellybean Dragon her family not very affectionately called "Uncle Hag", though his name was Pete, came over every weekend when the others were doing lessons with their private tutors, which Conundrum, who was unnamed at the time, never got, to play with her. He would bring over climbing gear, and he would hook her up and let her climb the large bonzai trees (though bonzais are very small trees so whether they were big or not is a matter of opinion) that grew in the front yard of the estate. The young Jellybean loved doing this. At first it was like bungeeing up the tree, and soon not even using the bungees, though she was still hooked up. When her uncle decided that she was fine without bungees, as she was bored with one tree at a time, she began to learn to jump between the trees. She broke a paw or a tailbone every once in a while, but eventually she became so adept that she moved on to dart between the great vanilla-scented Ponderosa Pines in the forest beside the mansion like a sugarglider, stretching out her front and back legs in the look of pure Dragon bliss. Her uncle, not being as agile as his very flexible niece, looked up at her and smiled, proud with what he had taught this young woman, who was full of potential, in his mind.
On her twelfth birthday, the young dragon woke up to find a small Camelback pack full of Gu's and Clif bars, and a brand new coat, sitting on her nightstand. Inside the largest pocket, packed in with the two liter bladder of water, which was full, was a note.
"Meet 'Hag' at the front of the estate at six-o-clock sharp. Eat a good breakfast."
She had no idea what was going on, but as it was five fifty, she rushed downstairs to snatch two pancakes, an egg, a donut, and a cup off coffee out of her early riser mother's paws. She stuffed the whole of the healthy, and very large, breakfast into her mouth before her mother could speak a single world other than "My coffee!" before she rushed out the door at five fifty five to wait for her uncle.
So she waited. Five fifty five, her watch said.
she sat there for a moment. Then she checked her watch again.
Five fifty five, it said in defiance.
She waited longer.
Five fifty six, it said.
Longer...
Five fifty six.
The young jellybean dragon, who was not accustomed to waiting, felt her eyes begin to droop.
Suddenly her usual six-o-clock alarm rang and she was jerked awake.
Wait.. she stopped. She had no six-o-clock alarm! She looked around and heard a strange beeping coming from a thick bush cut in the shape of a creme brulee not far from where she was. She walked over to it, slowly, and Uncle Pete burst out of the bushes, bowling her over and scaring the Jellybean out of her.
He smiled, and said it was time to hitch a ride to the front range, because they were going to climb Beirdstadt!
As they prepared to jump into the bed of a pickup that his Uncle had confirmed was going to the trailhead, the young dragon looked up into his uncle's eyes with sheer joy as she heard him say, "If you climb this, and climb this good, and I decide what is good, then I think I have quite the reward for you."
Not even fifteen minutes later when the fourteen thousand feet peak loomed over them, the little Jellybean Dragon suddenly felt very small. They were climbing that?!? she shyed away slightly, but her uncle gave her a good rap on the head, saying "Handle yourself, young one". Then they set off, big and little, the smaller one living off of her uncle's words.
It was a hard climb, the hardest she's ever done, and having short little teenager legs didn't help much either. The last part was especially hard, a mountain of boulders that seemed to be a hundred feet tall. Her uncle rested a lot, but she had no intention of quitting. Not when she had made it this far. When she stood on the peak and made her contribution to the box on the summit, which was a coin that had her family's name inscribed on it, she felt like she had done something relevant. As in, she felt like someone actually cared that she succeeded. Her uncle came up the rock face after a while, heaving his breath in long wheezes. He smiled at his little girl, though she wasn't his little girl, and pulled out a blue and grey scarf that he threw around her neck like a cattle rope. "Consider it a gift from me." she smiled and looked down at the lakes many, many feet below that were created by runoff from the summit.
"Do you know what peak you're doing next?" her uncle startled her, almost enough to make her fall of the edge.
"No... and what do you mean just me?"
Her uncle chuckled. "Oh, I am well past my time to do this one. It's your name, now, too."
She blinked in anticipation.
"My little Conundrum... we better get you some climbing gear. You're doing it next week."
When she returned home to a 'warm' welcome from her family with birthday present for her fifteenth, she knew that no present could amount to a name, a scarf, and the best view in the state. It may not be something of value to her family, but it was of value to her.
In the next year Conundrum did the peak by her name, Elbert, the tallest peak in Colorado, Grays and Toris peaks, and Capitol peak, the hardest peak in Colorado to scale. Her uncle passed quietly in his sleep that year, but she wasn't sad. She knew he was happier now, knowing that soon she was going to do Mount Everest with some of the most esteemed human climbers known to this day.
Theme Song:
Free Fallin'-- Tom Petty.
Motto:
"Don't take a break or give up, it'll only end up slowing you down."
Note: All the peaks mentioned, save for Capitol and Everest, I've climbed. Gu is an energy goo thing. Clif bars are these reeaaallly good really well known energy bars they sell for sure in Colorado. A camelback is a pack that mountain climbers use. it has a collapsible plastic bladder (bag) inside that can hold water that comes out a tube. Think of it as a hands free water bottle.