#oh my god and the fact Kalina was there at that wedding—there at the period of time where Ankarna was alive and still a known god and not

[distressed-bird]

Kalina is the most interesting character to me because of all she has going on…

she is Cassandra’s familiar, she is simultaneously a pet and a friend and a servant and a family to a goddexx that is simultaneously her owner and friend and creator and parent and her god and reason to be—Kalina’s relationship to Cassandra is hard to put a name or label on (since what does being a familiar even mean?) but the bottomline is that this cat loves her deity enough to put everything and everyone on the line for her…

And adding in that she is a child of divorce. So to speak. I am extremely normal and haven’t been driven mad by the detail that baby itty bitty kitty Kalina was at Cassandra’s wedding to Ankarna and is remembered to have been toddling after her as she walked down the aisle…

Kalina will be the death of me /lh

[thepringlesofblood]

#oh my god and the fact Kalina was there at that wedding—there at the period of time where Ankarna was alive and still a known god and not#presumed dead… this makes the Sylvairean Heresy even WORSE of a life event for Kalina and Cassandra…#the existence of baby kalina implies that Cassandra *raised* Kalina… and the fact they were married means that Kalina wouldn’t have been#raised by only Cassandra but *also* Ankarna.#you are Kalina and one of your parents just was killed by your uncle—their domains were too alike—and you can never talk about them again.#you can never speak their name—share in their memory—the only place they exist is quietly in your memories that must go unspoken due to#Oblivata Mori. And there’s nothing you can do about it…#And then the followers and clerics of your remaining parent start trying to kill her—being mislead by the followers of your goddexx’ sister#Cassandra is the only family Kalina has left—and Kalina’s sentience leds me to think she agreed to become a Curse#kalina let herself be unmade and changed to keep Cassandra alive… and even as the shell of herself—a familiar once but now a living plague—#is so deeply loyal and only interested in what is to the benefit of her *everything*… even if they are currently a Walking Corpse.#Kalina dislike Kristen so much because Kristen is just not being a good cleric and is in the precarious spot of being Cassandra’s only#follower… but ultimately won’t harm or attack Kristen—killing herself first—because Kristen is the only one keeping Cassandra uncorrupted.#yeah im crazy about the relationship and history between a cat familiar and her witch goddess and the layers of their relationship (tags via @distressed-bird)

girlie you can NOT keep this gold in the tags - I am climbing the walls thinking of Kalina's POV now that we have all this other information about her past!

plus, if she was a kitten at the wedding... familiars don't really age, right? they're magical - you can call them up at any age you want.

so, possibilities, some of which can coexist.

kalina was a real kitty cat before she was a familiar somehow

cassandra was young enough or of a different mindset when they got married, so her familiar manifested as a kitten more than a cat

not my theory, I saw it in another post that I will link if I find it again - what if Ankarna's wedding gift to Cassandra was the spell 'Find Familiar'? or some version of it? what if they gave her an adorable, impressionable little kitty to raise into a powerful familiar who could walk by her side? and because of everything that happened to Cassandra after that, that kitten became Kalina.

brennan wanted to convey the passage of a great deal of time b/w the wedding and now, to give context to what Cassandra and Kalina must be feeling, so showing Kalina, arguably the most interesting and effective villain in dimension 20 history, as a teeny tiny kitten was a way to convey that.

VERY cool stuff, I am so ready to hear more!!!!

Kalina is the most interesting character to me because of all she has going on…

she is Cassandra’s familiar, she is simultaneously a pet and a friend and a servant and a family to a goddexx that is simultaneously her owner and friend and creator and parent and her god and reason to be—Kalina’s relationship to Cassandra is hard to put a name or label on (since what does being a familiar even mean?) but the bottomline is that this cat loves her deity enough to put everything and everyone on the line for her…

And adding in that she is a child of divorce. So to speak. I am extremely normal and haven’t been driven mad by the detail that baby itty bitty kitty Kalina was at Cassandra’s wedding to Ankarna and is remembered to have been toddling after her as she walked down the aisle…

Kalina will be the death of me /lh