Azalia Oswell (née Brown)

42

Female

Mama, Mrs. Oswell, Lia

Shudra, Parent

Her hair is unique among the workers, a trait that she passed on to her biological daughter.

Pear-shaped, but with shorter legs than her biological daughter, and not quite as slim. Slightly stubby fingers, like her legs.

Fair, but very tanned from field work over the years.

Human

Chocolate Brown

Thin eyebrows that are slightly faint and unsculpted; slightly stubby eyelashes

Always worn in a messy bun on the back of her head--if not, braided into a fishtail braid. She has slightly fine, yet thick hair that reaches her waist when it's worn down. It would be wavy from the constant braiding if she ever took it down.

Mahogany streaked with a few small strands of grey.

5' 6"

129 lbs.

ISFJ-A (Defender)

A habit that Meria would pick up from her adoptive mother was her habit of crying openly and without wiping her eyes, considering it no mark of shame.
Whenever Azalia is angry, she tries her best to bite back insults and continue being submissive and polite, but she sometimes has to blow, and when she's angry, she talks with tears in her eyes and a quivering note in her voice, or lectures with authority when dealing with her children.
Azalia is calm when she's happy--not too showy about her excitement, like Meria, but not squeaky and bubbly like Mei, either. She does, however, also bounce on the balls of her feet like her eldest daughter does and can typically be found humming when she's in this mood.
When Azalia is afraid, she sometimes gasps and jumps at loud noises, feeling quite on edge and looking over her shoulder periodically. She sometimes goes into lecture mode in her distress and ends up lecturing her children because she's afraid of what might happen to them if they aren't careful.

Azalia has always known that she's wanted to have children, and she's always felt a sort of kinship with the few Infernuses left. It was mainly her choice, with her husband's reluctant consent, that they take in the orphaned Infernus baby after Sarleck commissioned a raid on the nearby Infernus village. She has a protective nature, and, no matter if she's picking tomatoes for the rest of her life, she wants what's best for her daughters, whether they like it or not, and whether it's safe or not.

She tends to make assumptions based on things she's heard, and that's why she thinks that Aswinn (even after he had dinner at their house for years) is a bad influence. She's also a little bit old-fashioned in her thinking of the Caste system (except for the genocide against Infernuses) and does not think for herself about the rules set in place, partly so as to not cause trouble, and partly because there's "nothing [she] can do about it, anyway."

Azalia does not have any prejudices; she's accepting even of the last Infernus.

After several years, she's gotten pretty good at harvesting year-round golden tomatoes; keeping secrets

Azalia hasn't really got time for hobbies, but when she was younger, she used to play tag in the courtyard with all the boys, including Francis Caradoc.

Azalia doesn't really use weapons, but if she were to pick something, she would want to have one of those easily-accessible (but not handed out freely) government handguns.

Isn't particularly picky about what's going on in the government since she can't even vote, but she does wish that Infernuses weren't so vehemently discriminated against.

There isn't much to choose from, but those golden tomatoes sure do look good...

There is a blanket tucked away somewhere that Meria was tucked in when she first arrived at their house. It smells of smoke and dirt, and it's half-singed, but the burgundy yarn reminds her of how her adopted daughter might change the world.

She's not big on fur and feathers, but when she was younger, she recalls a certain purple finch that used to visit her mother's backyard when she was a girl and has fond memories of coming home and hoping to see it.

Dark Blue or Mauve

Farmer

May 25th, 8 NA

Went to a Shudra school from age eight to thirteen. Before then, she had gone to Vaishya public school starting at age five.

Azalia was born in New Kansas County. Her parents were Vaishyas, but her father lost his job when she was eight and they became Shudra farmers. At age thirteen, she began to work in the fields farming with her parents, and that's where she met her future husband, Durante. One day, when she was seventeen and still living with her family, her father tangled with a delivery truck on the job and injured his leg pretty badly. Because of the rationing laws, he didn't lose any food, but now he was injured and so the government had an excuse to evict him at any minute. Now, Azalia had been friends with Durante for four years now, and she was starting to develop a little bit of a crush on him. Seeing his friend feeling so distressed about her father's condition, he often invited her over to his family's house for dinner, and soon it seemed that they were starting a relationship. The night that Azalia had her first kiss, she rushed home in hopes of telling her family (because she wasn't a secret-keeper)...but her father was gone, sent to the Chandala village after being on government support for too long. Instead, she found her mother, weeping as she told her daughter what had happened. The kiss was forgotten for the time being; however, at nineteen, Azalia was married to Durante. When she was twenty-four, she had her first child, Mei. Then, a year later, she was watching the news and saw that the Infernus village a few miles away had been burned to the ground that there were no survivors. Shocked by how those people had been treated, she told her husband she was going out and hurried to the Infernus village a few miles away. Unbeknownst to anyone, there was an Infernus left with two children. One was kept, but the other, dubbed "Meria," was given to Azalia for her to take care of. Nobody ever knew that she was an Infernus except for Azalia and Durante.

None, but that purple finch was a sort of pet at one time.

Azalia means "God has spared," which made me think of how she and her husband took in Meria, sparing the last of her kind from persecution and delivering her into the land of the enemy--where she causes quite a bit of trouble for Sarleck in the end.