Dusty
*DJ Sutherlin*

Dusty

Dusty is a honey blonde with warm brown eyes.    She is well-built like her mother Shani, even at the young age of fourteen when Coul sent her to the Academy.     All she has ever had was her mother, Shani.   Who educated her during the day and kept Dusty locked away in the apartment at night while she worked downstairs in the tavern.'

Dusty does not have a last name.....Shani always told her they didn't have one.    They were free spirits and had only one name to hold them to the surface of Uen.     Part of a story Shani told her daughter to hide the ugly truth from her.

Coul and Shani were a *hot* item at one time when Coul was much younger.     Shani disappeared one night from her job at the local tavern and was never heard from again.    Coul and Tempest decided she had jilted him.    In reality she had been kidnapped to cover a robbery she had seen.   The thugs tortured her and abused her then left her to die in an alleyway in Chihalla.

Shani was too ashamed to go back to Pallahade when she discovered she was with child.    So she closed the chapter of her life and the love she had for Coul and went about raising her child on her own, the only way she knew how.     A tavern owner in Chihalla was kind enough to let her have apartments above the tavern.     So this was how Shani managed by herself.

She was too ashamed to find Coul.     Pregnant with a child from a rape, she could not bear to face him.     So Shani stayed away.   Breaking her own heart as much as Coul's. However, she felt she had to for Dusty's sake.     She loves Dusty and doesn't CARE who her father might be.