Tristan Liferiver
Zafiil's contact in Hold 9 when she arrives in Akana Ris.
Appearance and Personality
A silver Chatcaavan male with bright blue eyes; the silver dapples into paler skin over the torso. Silver talons; short and brushy hair down his neck. His voice in Chatcaavan form is slightly higher in pitch than it is in his Tam-illee shape. "Her eyes dropped to his hands. They still had too few fingers; now they lacked fur as well, and were tipped with silver talons. But she recognized the wrist tilt, and the way the last, smallest finger curled with a kink at its final joint."[1]
Known Shapes
It is implied strongly that Tristan knows more than one shape ("I should backtrack at some point and tell you how I learned my first Other shapes with Tevit"[2]).
- Tam-illee: A silver Tam-illee male with summer blue eyes. He has a white patch over his throat and chest, a white tail tip, and some darker streaks in his hair/on his eyebrows but is otherwise uniform in color. On the shorter side, at about 5'8". Appears to be in his early 30s.
Biography
Born to a Chatcaavan system lord, who had several females (and therefore, many children; Tristan speaks of "brothers" who "loved power" as his sire did [3]). He left with his mother and two siblings (Violet, a sister, and an unnamed brother[1]) when his sire's abuse of his mother finally crystallized all his discontent with the Chatcaavan way of doing things. They escaped to Akana Ris, after which Tristan learned to take a Pelted shape and left to be educated in the Alliance. "I don’t love my people. I don’t love being one of them. I’m grateful that I can pass as one of the Tam-illee, and be part of the Alliance, and have my family here, safe. But... I can’t forget that I ran away. That I didn’t stay to do something more, to try to change things. Maybe it’s useless to think that I could have done anything, when the Chatcaavan Empire is so large, and the Alliance so naïve. But this is what I have, arii, and I’m grateful for it."[1]
At the time of Zafiil's arrival to Akana Ris, Tristan is masquerading as a Tam-illee in FIA, working as a linguist. He considers the FIA hold's members as friends and doesn't like lying to them, "But I’m on their side, arii. I want to protect the Alliance against my people. My small lie about my identity matters less than that bigger truth. In my heart, anyway."[4]
Timeline
- He's born 142 BA, and is 17 years old when the Alliance and the Chatcaavan Empire sign the treaty.
- Three years later (about), he escapes with his mother and goes to the Academe to join Fleet, so maybe early 20s (162ish BA).
- He's in his early 30s when he meets Zafiil in around 175 BA.
- He has to "die" before his lifespan runs out in order to maintain his cover, so he retires from Fleet in his 60s, tells Fleet he wants to remain on Akana Ris (which is where he's told them he was born), and goes into hiding. That would be around 205 BA. At that point he takes on a new shape in order to resume helping refugees fleet the Empire.
- He's in his early 100s when Zafiil dies, and entrenched in his new (and more dangerous) work, which he does from a different part of Akana Ris to keep his family safe. (Around 250 BA)
- He lives to hear about the Faulfenza formally joining the Alliance (at 311 BA), at which point he is around 150ish. He meets Daqan not long after.
- He dies at 230ish years old, in 391 BA.
FoundName
Tristan's Tam-illee FoundName was the product of a discussion with a mentor, Therevel, who enjoyed using metaphors to explain concepts, but in one case didn't: "Well? How is life like a river?" "I don't know, it made sense when it came out of my mouth, but I wasn't really going anywhere with it." He confesses to having written some "bad" poetry about it, but the point of it was that "in that moment, what it made of me was someone with a rapport with an alien mind. And that's a truth you can fly on, arii. Every person, no matter how familiar, is still the Other to us. Because we're not them."[2]
"Tristan's List"
The list of stories recorded by Tristan Liferiver for Zafiil's journey from Akana Ris to Qufiil remains part of the Faulfenzair record. There are "dozens" of them.[2]
- "How I went to the Other worlds to join their fighting force"
- "How I learned my first Other shapes with Tevit"
- "My first roommate, who liked to go out and howl at the moon"
- "Food was often the most fraught" (of customs I had to navigate)
- "My mentor Therevel" and the story of life as a river
- "About jumping off a cliff on a rope"
- "About having to figure out my birthday so my friends could celebrate it"
- "How hard it was to listen to what they were teaching me about my people"
- "How weird I find it to have fur, and my misadventures with clothes"
- "About graduation"
- About starbases[5]
- About the border worlds, because of their danger, particularly Sharsenne[5]
Other segments teach Chatcaavan, talk about his classmates and friends, his difficulties navigating customs and language, about missing his family, but not his culture, and other topics.[2] Notably, the Chatcaavan lexicon he left for Zafiil in the Slipstream is a more complete/better one than the one being worked off of, later, by ambassadors sent to the Chatcaavan court; Faulfenza using it have a better command of the language than any member of the Alliance prior to the updates to the database inspired by Lisinthir's initial tenure as ambassador.
Quotes
- "I wish you had arrived anywhere else. The Alliance has so many wonderful worlds and places to see. This is not one of them." [6]
- "It’s not how we wanted to do this. We wanted it to be… perfect. And it wasn’t, and now it will never be. Now the Faulfenza will always remember that they met the Alliance, and it caused worry and dismay and sorrow, rather than wonder and enthusiasm."[7]
- "And no place is perfectly safe. Not even on your worlds, arii—because you never know the hour."[4]
Trivia
- Learned some limited Faulfenzair body language signs from Zafiil.[3]; knows at least three languages (Universal, Chatcaavan, Faulfenzair spoken)
- plucks at his lower lip when troubled/thinking[7]
- swears (once) by the Dying Air