#hm. a.sk to tag!

[nymfaia-archive]

🔮 TERRA HCS.🔮

.・✧ : Terra is quite petite, at a few inches over five foot ( ~160 cm) and barely scraping into 110 pounds. As the game classifies her as just over 18, I can see her still growing into her body, especially once taken from the Empire's hold and given proper meals and nutrients. As the Empire only needed her for her destructive purposes, they kept her just healthy enough to be useful, but not enough that she could turn her abilities on them in return.

By the end of the game, I do think she grew another inch or two and put on a few pounds, especially with the resurgence of her trance ability. However, I still think she's on the petite side... when she's humanoid.

.・✧ : As she is biracial, with her heritage including a magical being, she is decidedly not as conventionally pretty as Celes (or... anyone in the party, honestly). Her father, a guardian spirit with horns, talons, and furred joins, gave his daughter her colors: her mother gifted her slight stature and more traditional features.

In his summon spirit sprite, Maduin has much darker skin and purple hair when compared to his in-game character sprite, where his palette is closer to Terra's. I think his coloration changes based on the magic power he exerts, and on a day-to-day basis, he's still tan but with turquoise hair.

When Terra is in her attempted Esper form, we can see his magic color mirrored there, too: bathed in pink/purple and covered with tufts of similarly hued fur, with her locks forming two make-shift horns at the front of her head.

.・✧ : Going into her trace ability is exhausting, especially as she is learning how to control the magic. She is almost always ferociously hungry after attempts to use it, and sleeps as if she is dead to the world. As she gets better at using it herself, instead of under Empirical control, the energy needed doesn't take as much of a toll.

.・✧ : Her memory of her time spent in Empire captivity is... spotty, at best, whether by the grace of her amnesia or by her mind keeping her history purposefully vague. When she was first found by Locke, he dubbed her Tina, a name that tasted familiar in her mind but not quite a perfect fit. It was not until a member of the Empirical army called her by her true name - Terra - that things began to click into place.

.・✧ : Terra is covered in scars. She doesn't remember the origin of most of them - not that she would want to. She is aware that the vast majority of them came from her time under the slave crown, as the Empire fought to find ways to emulate her magical ability, only curving their experiments and torturous methods when it began to weaken her constitution.

(Locke is a fantastic liar, and has conjured up stories for her to use for the ones that are the most obvious: some mirroring his adventures, some just gently straying from a possible truth, and others downright silly. But she appreciates them, painting a new story, a new life over the one she doesn't wish to remember any further.)

.・✧ : Terra has memories of Celes, bits and pieces and snippets of her voice, memories that cause her to feel closer to the woman than the other way around. Celes remembers Terra as the Empire bid her to, and now sees her through a wash of guilt. The closer Terra becomes, the harder Celes pushes.

.・✧ : Terra is a being made from love that many believe shouldn't have existed: as a result, she is a blindingly bright light in the dark, a streak of naive, stubborn innocence that refuses to be muffled. Her parents love, regardless of boundary or species, was what had birthed her existence: what was life without love? It was the Empire, she knew, and she strives to push away the memories of her youth with new ones, fond and loving and true.