Ayra Lamirion

A painting I did of Ayra, finally in full naga form, hahahah! I actually think her skin should be tanner in reality, but I haven't learned how to watercolor darker skin tones yet ahah, so sorry... : D;;

Nagas are cold-blooded, so they tend to be a very tactile species, as well as very social. They have a generally relaxed nature, though--and Ayra isn't exempt from this--prone to flares of temper when provoked. Nagas also have a fairly slow metabolism, and can live a fair bit longer than the average human--probably up to around 120, 130 years or so. They're really lethargic during the winter though, and many nagas still practice hibernation in large (and adorable) social groups underground when the temperatures drop.

Now, as for Ayra herself...
She's actually a half-blood Naga, so though she likes to dress up in traditional clothes and use her coils to harass Phelan in his sleep (xD), as a child she was just as comfortable running barefoot through the alleys of the Underground where she grew up. Her mother is a prostitute, and Ayra grew up the youngest of 7 siblings--all girls, as Nagas almost always give birth to multiple offspring, and they all tend to be the same gender based on prenatal conditions (temperature), so... she was part of a batch of three, and she has four older siblings from an earlier birth. After that though, their mother (luckily xD) finally figured out an effective method of birth control for herself.

Ayra, growing up in the environment she did, is pretty casual about sexuality/intimacy and exposed skin, but as she watched her sisters one by one join the same trade as their mother, she became more and more determined not to follow the same path and get stuck in the same cycle of poverty. ...Her sisters thought she was just weird and rebellious, and generally ignored her talk of trying to escape the life they'd grown up in.

...Along comes Asher, of course, and through a series of events I'll not elaborate here (I hope to be able to do a comic on it someday, though-!) she makes a deal with him, offering herself as a blood partner in exchange for him agreeing to start a new life with her as bounty hunters. She's frustrated sometimes by this, as being a blood partner to a fullblooded vampire leaves her fairly weak physically, but she's still pulled more than her fair share of the weight in their team by pulling connections and gathering information on new bounties, and serving as the general brains of the operation. She has a general dislike for the entire City, though, and dreams of leaving it all behind, even for other cities only rumored to exist.

Though she's the only one of her sisters to leave, her mother is still very fond of her and they remain on good terms--Ayra's mother even visits her every now and then, to fuss over her and mortify Asher and Phelan, hahahah.

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