Tarel was an aloof young man with a pessimistic nature when I first introduced him. He rarely had anything good to say to anybody, and his manner was rough at times. His sarcastic and sometimes mean comments were merely tools that he used to force others to keep their distance, both physically and emotionally, but those who knew him knew that they weren't always meant, and knew when to ignore them. He had an explosive temper which he was trying to learn to control, and a scathing attitude towards those around him. He expected others to treat him like dirt, and was bitter as a result of that. He was also surprised and wary whenever someone acted nice to him, although if the nice acts were repeated continually, he would drop his guard after a while and seem to relax a little, or as much as he could. The sarcastic comments seemed to lessen when he was in the presence of those rare few whom he considered friends.

T'rel is almost always clad in black. The color actually works well with his brown eyes and curly brownish red hair which he keeps cropped short. His hair and dark clothes sharply offset the unusually pale features of this tall and gangly young man, who stands at 5' 11" tall. He burns very easily, and always slathers on the sunscreen, although that seems to only minimize the extent of the burns depending on how long he's out. So when he goes out, he usually is draped from head to toe to prevent sunburns. He is not someone you will ever see wearing shorts or T-shirts, no matter where he is.

And now for his history. T'rel has never had it easy. When he was a mere 2 Turns old, his mother Taina was killed by his uncle (Relet's brother) in front of his bigger sister, Ria. His uncle had been drunk and when he punched Taina, she hit her head on the edge of a table, which killed her instantly. His uncle was turned out of Storm Fires Hold, to become Holdless. He walked into the woods and was never seen or heard from again. He's never talked about, and T'rel doesn't even know his name.

But this was merely the beginning of young Tarel's difficult times. Without Taina, Tarel's father Relet started drinking heavily. Relet had an abusive father, and under the influence of alcohol, he too became abusive. The only things that saved Tarel were his sister and Nial. Ria protected her little brother as much as she could, sometimes taking young Tarel's beatings in his stead by distracting their father at the right moments. Nial befriended Tarel, encouraged by his parents, although Tarel didn't know this. This got Tarel out of his father's presence and lessened his father's ability to find and beat him. Ria also cultivated her friends to spend as little time as possible in Relet's presence. Since Relet never beat the children when or where anyone could see it, they got away most times with little more than bruises.

As they grew up, Tarel began to notice a difference in the way that he was treated in comparison to Nial. He had to work twice as hard to prove himself just as good as his friend or anyone else because there was always talk of bad blood. People seemed to expect him to mess everything up like his father, and as a result, he became very pessimistic and bitter.

His attitudes were well set by the time he turned 11 and Nial turned 12, which is when Nial met and fell in love with Kiandra. This development was not a comfortable one for Tarel, who had come to rely on Nial far more than he'd realized or was ready to admit. Although he tried to discourage his friend's relationship with Kiandra, it didn't work, and he eventually gave up and grudgingly accepted the eternally perky girl in his presence.

But with Kiandra came others into Tarel's world. Namely Jessilee, Dierna, Jial, and Androv, in that order. The group formed quickly into a tight-knit group which even managed to survive the adolescent get-togethers and break-ups in their midst, which Tarel had come to realize was unusual.

Tarel was 15 before he decided to make his first move on a girl. He chose Dierna, since he had secretly loved her for Turns, and his attempt was carefully planned out and executed. There were only a few hitches to the process that he hadn't anticipated. His first step was to get the approval of Dierna's friends. Watching Jial had shown him that unless a girl's friends thought a guy was worth something, the girl you were after probably wouldn't. He wasn't worried about Kiandra, for she seemed to approve of everything, but Jessilee was a different matter. Her approval might make things easier. Unfortunately, she didn't seem enthusiastic about his chances when he approached her. This really hurt Tarel's feelings, for Jessilee had never been anything but nice to him, and he had come to respect and like her as well. He buried that hurt by showing his anger, an emotional response that he had unwittingly picked up from his father, and moved forward with his plan anyway. He asked Dierna to accompany him to the next gather that was planned. This also was a stumbling block, for although he had never heard Dierna utter a "No" to a boy, she gave him a few scary moments when he'd actually thought that she might. But thankfully, she said yes, and Tarel returned to his room feeling over the moons.

However, the next day something very bad happened that shook Tarel's confidence back down to the ground. He came into the dining hall planning on sitting next to Dierna to find her openly flirting with the new guy, Liand. This hurt Tarel, and perhaps the only person who realized it was Jessilee. He could see in her eyes that she knew, but he wasn't about to talk to her about it in front of Dierna, so instead he left. As the day wore on, he became more and more depressed, until he'd finally asked Dierna straight out how she felt about Liand. When Dierna admitted to him that she liked Liand, Tarel found the other boy and told Liand that he could take Dierna to the gather instead of himself. Then he went to go and talk with Jessilee, ambushing her in her room. It took hours for her to calm him down, during which he wanted nothing more than to kill himself, but he knew that Jessilee would be terribly upset if he did that. It was that thought, that someone would care deeply if he died, that kept him from doing anything foolish long enough for her to calm him down.

When he could think again, he asked Liand if he could take it back, and was devastated when Dierna actually told him no when he asked her. He'd lost his chance with Dierna, he knew. Instead of revealing how hurt he was, he instead turned to trying to hurt Dierna and Liand as much as possible, starting off a campaign of sly insults designed to pick their self-confidence to pieces.

When Dierna finally dumped Liand, Tarel took to picking more on the boy, since he didn't have the support system of friends that Dierna had. He wasn't actually trying to get Liand to try and commit suicide, but he wanted the boy to hurt just as deeply as he did. He drove him a little too far, though, and Liand actually made an attempt at ending his life. The fact that it failed didn't bother him, but the fact that Jessilee had helped Liand hurt, for now that he was free of Dierna's spell, he had started to think of Jessilee as a possible romantic interest.

His self-confidence was so poor at this point that he jumped to the conclusion that Jessilee liked Liand romantically, and when he confronted Jessilee, he said some things that he hadn't intended to. He found himself lying and saying that he'd actually tried to get Liand to commit suicide, trying to cover for his real reason for confronting her. In trying to find out if Jessilee did like Liand, he tipped his hand a little too far, and made a hasty exit when he realized that she'd finally realized that he had feelings for her. The words that he had said had been very hurtful, and had given her the wrong impression of him, so he'd now ruined his chances of getting with Jessilee as well.

However, he hadn't gotten a "no" from Jessilee, and his obsession with her began to eat away at him, to the point where he was stalking her in the hallways, trying to see what she was up to and if she was with Liand, although she didn't seem interested in the boy romantically. Then the night had come when Journeymen had been announced, and all of his friends made it except for him. This hurt Tarel just as deeply as anything that had happened thus far, but for a different reason than any of his friends thought. Journeymen traveled, and Tarel envisioned losing all of his friends because of their new promotions. He sought out Jessilee, and the confrontation ended badly when he slapped her. He didn't mean to, things just got heated in their argument, and before he knew what had happened, he'd backhanded her. He was so surprised at his own actions that he didn't put up a fight when she ordered him from her room and told him she was asking for a transfer. His worst fear was coming to pass, and his friends would be leaving him.

Androv approached him that night, and Tarel said even more things that he didn't mean about Jessilee and Androv, trying to hurt and distance his friends so that when they left it wouldn't hurt him so badly, although he didn't even realize that this was what he was doing. He succeeded beautifully though, and by the time that all of his friends left, he wasn't even welcomed to any of their farewells. He watched his friends depart and go their separate ways from behind closed windows, or from behind trees where they couldn't see him, and now he was truly alone for the first time in his life.

Alone, but not forgotten. It was Jessilee who set in motion the next events in his life, with a simple request to Master Healer Kerelie that Tarel not be allowed to follow her to Rising Dawn Weyr for assignment when he made Journeyman. Master Kerelie had been watching the situation for a while now, and finally had cause to act upon it. She got Tarel's Master, Master Crytol, to agree with her, and together they took their case all the way to Lord Regalon. What they got was an agreement that Tarel, Ria, and Relet had to attend counseling with the Master Healer to try and get their lives in order. The abusive behavior exhibited by the family needed to stop, and Master Kerelie was convinced that with the help of a mind-healer the family could begin to heal and possibly function as normal human beings in society. Oddly enough, of the three, Tarel was the only one who didn't balk at the counseling. He felt quite bad that he had actually hit Jessilee, and wanted to change his behavior so that he didn't end up like his father. He wanted to prove to everyone that just because his father was a bad apple, it didn't mean that he was.

The counseling helped him with his self-control and his temper, which still acts out from time to time, but less frequently and far less violently than before. His sarcastic comments still come out upon occasion, but he's almost managed to cut them out completely when he's in the presence of his superiors, and his few friends. For a while he was depressed, but Master Kerelie has helped him with that as well. He was still quite surprised when a dragon from Storm Fires picked him out of the crowd and told him that he would make a good candidate, and more than a little disbelieving as well, but he accepted, since he knew that eventually he'd get to Rising Dawn Weyr. The Weyr wouldn't know that he wasn't supposed to go there, and the candidates were shared between the two Weyrs. Tarel's main mission at that point became to make things right with his former friends at Rising Dawn Weyr. He didn't expect them to forgive him, but he wanted to admit that he was sorry. That meeting wouldn't take place for a couple of Turns, however.

Tarel continued his counseling on a voluntary basis, with permission of the Candidate Masters, and they were even nice enough to ferry him over to Storm Fires Hold once a week for his sessions. He continued to make progress and by the time of his coming to act more and more like an average man his age.

The first time that Tarel stood for Impression at Rising Dawn Weyr, he somehow missed seeing his friends, but shortly after Storm Fires Weyr exploded into an active volcano, he was reunited with them and got to make his apologies. It was very obvious to his old friends that he had changed greatly, and all of them forgave him, even Jessilee, although she was slightly guarded around him. That was to change the day that Tarel stood for Impression for his fourth time and Impressed his bronze Sinoth, becoming T'rel.

Sinoth is a dark bronze with a temperament that is much like T'rel's, but there is much love there despite the name calling and constant fighting for supremecy between them. Anyone else might have a hard time with Sinoth's stubborn streak, but T'rel is at least as stubborn as his bronze, and he will win out in the end. Provided he's right, of course.

The attitude of his friends changed once he Impressed, and it was obvious that they were more comfortable with him now, but for all that, T'rel already decided that he was going to be a Storm Fires rider when he graduated. His family had moved to Falling Sky Hold, which is right next to the Storm Fires Weyr, and T'rel wanted to be there for the group counseling sessions to make his family stronger, as well as to be closer to his primary counselor, Master Kerelie.

His plans to move came about even earlier than he'd thought when Rising Dawn was attacked by pirates and destroyed. Over time, he went to the counseling sessions, and his entire family has benefited from them enormously. He managed to forgive his father, who finally sobered up and met someone new, so his family is as close as it is ever likely to get. T'rel spent a lot of time with his nephew, and plans to have the boy Searched when he's old enough. The counseling sessions were declared finished by Master Kerelie, and when Rising Dawn reopened as a Weyrhold and Nial and Kiandra volunteered to go, T'rel didn't feel bad about volunteering to go as well. His family is never going to be as close as some families are, but that doesn't seem to bother any of them at this point. T'rel will still be able to keep in contact with them and will still have reasons to visit his family because he has promised to keep in touch with his nephew.

Back to the Home Page

Back to the Rising Dawn Character Index





Background set: