In spite of looking like a young human woman roughly twenty arcs of age, in reality Eliza is much, much older than that. The mortalborn daughter of the Immortal Ymiden and a young human woman named Meg Soule, Eliza was born in Arc 483. At first passed off as an ordinary human child by her caretakers, the task became increasingly difficult over time as Eliza failed to age as a human child ordinarily would. Or even as other mortal born children tended to.
It took the better part of two hundred and thirty-five arcs for Eliza to reach the age of majority, so slowly was her rate of growth. As a result, by the time she reached an age similar to that of a five arc aged human child, she would have seemed extraordinarily wise beyond her arcs. By that time however, the couple who had raised her from birth, those who'd pretended she was their own child, were dead and buried, while Eliza's upbringing had been put in the hands of the next generation, and then the next. And so on.
Getting Eliza safely to adulthood without her being subjected to the stigma of being a mortal born, in a sense was much like slyly passing a family heirloom from one generation to the next, through more than eight generations of caretakers all told. Something like a prized portrait or grandfather clock, but one that couldn't always be relied on to keep a secret. It wasn't always family who cared for her and some of them weren't as loving or kind as others. But the one thing that could always be relied on, was that nothing was ever permanent.
She was schooled at home for the most part, only occasionally attending school with other children of her apparent age. By the time she reached the age of majority, she'd lived in more than a dozen cities, towns and villages throughout Idalos, many of them more than once or even twice. She's had many names, at least as many as the generations that took part in her upbringing. The nature of that upbringing, the time elapsed and the number of generations that took part in it, resulted in an education that some would consider to be very well rounded.
She's had more teachers and tutors than she can remember the names of. There were the basics learned in both formal settings and private ones. But the basics could hardly fill nearly two and a half centuries worth of growing up. So from her tutors, because she loved art of all kinds and music, Eliza learned to draw and to paint, and discovered that singing well came naturally to her. Others were all too happy to teach her about history and politics, even ancient languages. Though as often as not she had to resist the temptation to tell them that in regards to history in particular, she'd already lived the bits they were teaching. But from others, both men and women, she learned to fire a bow, handle a sword. From a brother of sorts, she even learned to brawl a little.
Other bits of knowledge and ability seemed to come to her naturally, and it could only have been Eliza's origins, her connection with her Immortal father that was responsible for it. It began when she was much too young to comprehend how, or why. But as she aged and became more aware of the abilities or ways of being and how they affected her and even others, they, along with their costs, became easier to control and less unsettling.
The most apparent ability, if it could be considered an ability at all, is the most unsettling one. At least for those very few who are aware of Eliza's origins. In essence, she has aged so slowly, come so slowly to adulthood that many of her past caretakers had sworn that she'd never aged at all. In their eyes, it would seem that she hadn't when fifty of an ordinary mortal's arcs equaled just one, in effect, of her own.
Aging slowly however was something that was out of Eliza's control, and it wasn't the only ability that made her unique. She already knew that she could carry a tune fairly well and while she's never known it, so could the mother that she never knew. It was what Eliza could do with her voice however that was most interesting. She discovered it quite by accident one trial, when a childhood friend fell while they were playing and scraped up his elbows and knees. It was then with a sense of wonder, and a little bit of fright, that Eliza realized that her singing had the power to heal, should she learn how to focus and perfect the ability.
Another of her unique abilities was one that, much like her ability to heal others, came as a surprise to Eliza when she stumbled upon it quite by accident. She loved to draw and paint, and she was particularly good at it. Objects, landscapes, imagined scenes and portraits of family members, she loved painting or drawing all of them. It wasn't uncommon to become lost in the study of her subject, and it was during one of those times that Eliza gained far more insight than she'd have thought was possible. History came alive while she was in that trance like state, her subject's history, scrolling before her mind's eye at a dizzying speed. Armed with that insight, Eliza could then paint or draw her subject, frozen in time at some moment in its, or their, history.
Eliza has watched generations of families being born and then passing away. She's lived through times of war and times of peace, the rise and fall of important families, politicians and princes. For her, from the time she was old enough to comprehend, history wasn't just something that people read or wrote about. She's lived it and witnessed much of it firsthand.
![[Approved by Aegis]](.//images/icons/cs_ok.png "[Approved by Aegis]"){kind=icon}
