Aileena

     Old profile, needs rewriting.

Names:
     Lena’s real name is Aileena, but her friends almost invariably only call her “Lena” or occasionally “Lennie”.

Appearance:
     A passing human would define Lena as a biped, humanoid newt with ears. Like Ren, her partner, she is a genetic hybrid, created of a number of species, but outwardly she looks like an amphibian of some description (although she does lack a tail). She is a plantigrade, unlike the rest of her shipmates, with long, slightly webbed hands and feet, and is rather short, at just over five and a half foot. Her skin is soft and dry, betraying her mammalian heritage, and similarly like a mammal she is possessed of breasts – for that matter, Lena is fairly “amply endowed”. She has occasionally been described as “solid”, but she is the pragmatic sort and describes herself as “overweight”.
     She has a soft, blunt face with slightly protruding limpid gold eyes, and three crests that pass backward over her head; one goes right from brow to nape of neck, the other two (on either side) from just behind the eyebrow and looping round to just below the base of her ears. Her ears are relatively long, slightly mobile, and typically point backwards; the lower margin is delicately “finned”, with tiny sharpened barbs (like fish-bones) supporting the membrane.
     Her skin is a rich “thunderhead” bluish-grey on top, and a soft cream-yellow underneath – the two colours do not gradually blend into each other, but have a very defined margin, with freckles of blue and a slightly paler hue of it extending into the yellow and vice-versa. The same is true of her crest – although the blue base freckles into a black outer margin.

History and Persona:

     Lena originates from the same labs as Ren did, although her history was considerably different – whereas Ren was the first they managed to get to survive, Lena was from later, and was created to specifications given them by a company that wanted her for their “public face” – but they went bankrupt before they could buy her, so instead she remained in the labs employment.
     She met Ren when she was dispatched to bring the “runaway” back to the labs, which she dutifully did, but wasn’t banking on the attraction she felt for him. They made a run for it again some time later, returning to Khufa, and have remained together since.

     Lena is sweet-tempered and gently motherly; she sees it as her duty to nurse all her shipmates, and her mothering instincts
     She is possibly the most ethically-minded of the crew, even if you include Ivy; she is a strict vegetarian through choice, even though her teeth are small and sharp and her “ancestors” were at least omnivores, and she empathises strongly with any suffering.

     One of her “ambitions”, if that’s the proper definition, is to settle down and have a family, but Ren’s sterility has so far prevented it.

Notes:

     Lena is gifted with an ability similar to the ones inherent in one of the species that went into her genetics – these talents, which are varied in the base species, could been seen as magic by outsiders, but are really closer to simply energy manipulation. Lena’s ability is one of healing – she is able to donate some of her own spiritual energy to speed up the natural healing process, compressing days of healing into a few minutes. She does not, however, like to use it too much – not because it leaves her drained, but because injuries she has healed like this aren’t always as strong as they would be after healing normally, particularly head-wounds. She will use it if she feels a need to – in emergencies, in particular, even if it’s just to stem the bleeding until the patient can get to a proper doctor. It does require that she goes into a deep trance, so it’s rare she’ll do it without a friend nearby to watch her back.

     Unlike the rest of the crew, Lena does not have a Mirrorverse duplicate; her own doppelganger was killed by Neev, shortly after the start of their journey on Dauntless. Until this time the duplicate was rather different, anyway; she ate meat, which “normal” Lena does not (she is a strict vegetarian through choice), and where “normal” Lena relied on Yaaren to rescue her from her tormentors, on her planet of origin, the parallel duplicate saved herself, killing the ringleader with her teeth.

First met in: “Gladiator”

Art
As with poor Onyx, I don’t have a lot of images with Lena in; there’s some on the archive.
Aileena - the very first doodle of her. I'm not sure what I was planning for her at THIS point in time, just never anticipated it going the way it DID.
Love - Yaaren and Aileena, smoochy.
New Look - If someone finds Ren's lower jaw, please replace it? Thanks
Foxgloves - was going to be the cover on my Pharmacognosy file, but I messed up her tail and never finished it. Incidentally, she's a lot skinnier here than she should be.
Romans - well, Ren WAS a gladiator, so why not? (Incidentally, I used this picture for the respective characters' profiles for some time.)
Profile, pencils - The pencils for the above markered image. Never OVERLY happy with it as it's quite dark, I may later re-do it in watercolours.