Candy’s family is still alive so it’s weird to talk about them in past tense. Her mother is Mesalian and a sugarcane farmer, her father is Lucin and a famous sculptor. She has no extended family on her mother’s side but her father comes from a wealthy family of artists, and Candy hates all of them. Candy also has a Mesalian step-father (her mother’s husband), and a younger half-brother (17 years younger). She has a good relationship with all of her parents and she sends her little brother money if there’s any to spare.

Candy was born in 13AV, 9 months after her parents met and 7 months after their wedding, and everyone knew what was up. She was born as Uyen Thi Hightower, but took on her mother’s maiden name, Bui, when she was 5 and her parents separated. It was a peaceful and expected separation because her parents married because of Candy, because her father’s family, because they were afraid of what the new-at-the-time civil war meant, but never because of romance. She mostly lived with her mother afterwards with her father visiting sometimes and giving his financial support. It was the best choice because 1. her dad’s family hated her, and 2. her mom had no other family and would have otherwise been alone. But her parents loved her and because the separation and all the circumstances around it was handled smoothly and honestly, Candy came out of it ok, if not a little more mature. But this made it even harder for her to fit in with other kids growing up. On top of that she was too Mesalian for the Lucins and too Lucin for Mesalians. And her name was hard to pronounce, which was an easy target for teasing. This is why she started calling herself ‘Candy’, after the food her mother made with sugarcane, which didn’t stop the teasing (duh) but by the time Candy regretted it the name had stuck. The exclusion made her a little awkward, but something else made her start truly acting out. In 20AV, when she was 7, a neighbouring settlement attacked her hometown, and before Candy could be whisked away to saftey, she witnessed a few traumatising things, mainly a man getting stabbed in the face with a dagger.

When the walls were rebuilt and she was allowed to play outside again she started picking fights with her bullies and losing control of her water powers, which is why her father started her on ballet. Her parents tried a few other things on her first but ballet was just what stuck: it let Candy express, but also encouraged discipline and focus which helped her hone in her powers. It started off as private lessons that her father paid for but then becamea serious passion for Candy, something she was really excelling at. Which was good because in 23AV, Candy became 10 years old, but so did the civil war, and at the time it showed no signs of stopping. Desperate to shield their daughter from more childhood trauma her parents reluctantly sent her to a ballet academy in the Celestial Realm, partially under the guise that Candy would train for 7 years to become a professional dancer. Candy was kicked out in 29AV at 16 years old instead for beating up a dancer who had a principal role in a production. That is, she beat up a ballerina. The academy kind of made things worse for Candy: she was still an outcast, but now she also didn’t have the constant support of her parents and was experiencing puberty. The ballet masters turned her into an exceptional dancer, but they were very strict, borderlining abusive with her. During these years Candy hated everything, everything except ballet, but eventually she hated ballet, too. So she snapped at the ballerina who called her an ox.

Her parents were disappointed when she returned to the Middle Realm, but it didn’t stop them from continuing to support Candy. She spent some months on her mother’s farm, just helping out with stuff and taking up candy-making as a hobby before her mother suggested she join the local guard. It made sense: the Dusk Realm’s portal was looking like a threat so the guard wanted more recruits, while Candy had the athleticism and her powers. And channelling the aggression into something else didn’t work, but using the aggression for something good was a nice compromise. So that same year, 29 AV, a 16-year-old Candy was recruited. And when she was 27 in 40AV, she quit the guard. Alot happened in those 11 years: her hometown grew into a city, her mother married a hunter and her half-brother was born, Candy was trained to fight with her powers, and she actually made friends with her equally-aggressive co-workers. But the guard was corrupt. It started with silencing protesters with ‘crazy stories’ that the current leader of the city had received bribes from Xitians to engage in the civil wars, but then the Dusk portal re-opened and as more Xitians joined the city’s population it became harder and harder for Candy to ignore that the people she called her friends were essentially bullies as well, finding whatever reason they could to arrest or even kill the Xitian citizens. And that made her hate guard work, so she quit again.

She didn’t tell her family the truth, other than a vague “burnt out” excuse. She took a few months to plan her next move just like she did before, this time helping her step-father hunt. But eventually a few months became a few years and hunting became her new job. Just like before, it made sense. Athleticism, combat skill, and a flexible amount of exposure to other people which helped her slowly get more comfortable with people again. Life wasn’t amazing, but it was ok. And then the dragon happened, in 48AV. Luckily, the city had years of preparation for the attack, and the great skeletal lizard didn’t make it past the edge of the city, and even then she was on a hunting trip. But her father and his family became ill from the dragon’s nether, and all their wealth was going into transporting them all to the Celestial realm for treatment. This set Candy and her mother back quite a bit, but not as much as the fields and woods also going barren. With the last of their money, her mother, her step-father and her brother moved to the forbidden lands, but it was at Nightveil where Candy decided to part ways from them. Two hunters in two different towns had a higher chance of making money than two in the same.

Candy isn't someone intensely interested in being well liked: she's used to being an outsider of sorts. But she does like to be tough because that is how she has learnt to earn respect. She tends to do stuff just because she thinks it’s cool, like throw in an occasional somersault or chew sugar cane. That said she can’t be told that something is worth liking, she has to decide that it’s cool herself and will usually choose to firmly defend her interests instead.

Candy is disciplined in all things except anger, she’s prone to outbursts and even bouts of violence or destruction if provoked  but she's also mature enough to often regret her behavior after and usually tries to make amends. She can be a little defensive about her ‘tough' image and will sometimes turn to threats and violence to maintain her tough look.

She likes to be tight-lipped and secretive about herself, partially because her past involves ballet and partially because she likes to be mysterious, but mostly because she can be quite socially awkward as someone who hasn't had many non-familial, non-professional relationships. Personal conversations are a source of discomfort and embarrassment for her, but sometimes she will push past the discomfort for someone else's sake or even her own health.

She has a complicated relationship with femininity, often wanting to be seen as tough but not wanting to be seen as completely masculine to get there. It’s why she does things like keep the name ‘Candy’. She isn’t against feminine things like wearing a dress, but usually wants to engage with them on her own terms, like wearing a leather jacket on top.

She’s a woman with an ideal dancer’s figure, tall and waif-like even in spite of her muscle. She tends to look younger than she actually is, vaguely in her late 20’s. She has brown skin and keeps a punk aesthetic overall. Her hair is naturally black and she keeps all of it short except for some straight, choppy bangs out front. She wears a load of powdered charcoal around her pale blue eyes and she has a thin scar through her right eyebrow (truthfully she got it from some hot sugar syrup hitting her in the face). For clothes she tends to favor black and leather accessories with an occasional pop of color. She always has a flask of water with her, since that’s basically her weapon.

Farming - Novice
Hand-to-Hand Combat - Novice
Ballet/Acrobatics - Apprentice
Outdoor Survival - Apprentice
Hunting - Competent
Water Powers - Advanced Use
Lucin Language - Conversational

A hip flask, a change of clothes, some powdered charcoal