Eri

Eri is Iios’ other (and some would say better) half, although they are currently not officially “married” in any way.

Names:
     Eri is the short form of Eria’dane (pron “E(h)-ree-uh-DAA-nee”) Dawnstep; she also answers to Daani (her name in Ondrai’i) or variations on the theme.

Appearance:
     Eri is a star-marked “fawn and chocolate” Vulline. As such, she has fairly standard patterning, but is paler in colour, being a pale beige with “chocolate”-brown points. As well as her pale colouration, her star gene has led to her having a white right hand (with a smudge of dark fur on the thumb), a sprinkling of white spots on her hands, forearms and hips, and two white toes on her left foot.
     Other than in terms of colouration, Eri is unremarkable – average of height and build, with a fairly sleek pelt, and short hair on her head.

Persona:
     Compared to Iios mercurial nature, Eri is an island of sanity and placid calm, although she would never have considered herself as such until meeting him. She is a strongly moderating influence on him, sensible enough to calm his worst excesses, and she puts up with his stupidity with a greater patience than many would.
     <more later>

Brief history:
     Eri’s early life wasn’t especially noteworthy – she had two loving parents, went to school like any normal child, got fair grades in her exams, and went to university, where she studied horticulture for four years. Rather than join an agency like she had initially intended, she stayed on at the university as a mature student, doing research into the medical applications of a family of flowering conifer-like plants. She shared a townhouse at the edge of a park with two fellow mature students; Uuvern, an Ondrai male doing a research project in advanced psychology with “neural electronics” (a branch of robotics), and Ximi, a middle-aged Xniki female studying avimorphic flight design and mechanics.
     It was while accompanying Uuvern to an official university fundraising function that she met Iios – and “everything went downhill from there”.

Notes:
     To start with, Eria’dane was (essentially) a play on Ariadne, the Ancient Greek goddess of vegetation. Originally, her story was similar in scope to the Greek myth, but since the original storyline fell by the wayside, out of necessity, I had to revise much of it.
     She has once or twice expressed a desire for children, although this is something her would-be-husband is obviously not empowered to give her, unless they adopt.

First met in: Rogue in Velvet

Art and references

Colour chart - identifying marks, colour pattern, and coloured pencil/marker notes.
Nibbles - Eri and Iios, sharing a moment. (Yes, he's missing the top of his right ear on purpose.)
Redesigning the Character - seeing how she'd suit a slightly more human look. I quite like it. (I should apologise for the quality of the colouring - I had something of a lack of good-quality materials, at the time, except for 2 Copic markers.) She's a little TOO brown, here (she should be more greyish, like the colour chart), but otherwise I like it.