Gale

Name: Gale "The Dreamer"

Species: Rock Harpy

Chrono/Bio Age: 21 / 21

Sex: Female

Height: 103 ft (31.3 m)

Skin complexion: Light

Feather color: Brown with orange tips

Hair color: Orange with violet streaks

Eye color: Brown

Predation: She is reluctant to eat intelligent creatures capable of sharing a story, but she will eat dangerous people with little problem.

Quote: "I tend not to eat things that can talk often. The last thing I need is to be guilt tripped by my food."

Background: Gale is Helia's best friend and one of the few persons, human or harpy, residing on Mount Litocoro who is not put off by Helia's abrasive personality. Gale has a near perfect memory and can remember fine details of a person or place as well as repeat entire conversations from years ago, a talent which those around her find to be a tremendous help. She's not exactly what most would expect from a harpy, or any other giant predator for that matter, and she doesn't represent a huge threat to Torinian humans and the like unless she's desperately hungry. She was more or less raised by the city librarian Daphne Lohgos who fed Gale's budding imagination with storybooks and fairy tales. Gale grew to view the librarian as a god-mother and because of this she could never see the librarian as prey. With Daphne's assistance, Gale has co-written three books that many humans surprisingly loved. Her best-seller, In the Belly of a Dreamer, is a story about trying to beat the negative perception that humans have of her as a giant predator. Gale hopes to one day travel to other lands and experience everything the world has to offer. She's long felt that her creative flow has been a little stagnated from being isolated to the island for so long. After exploring more of Felarya, she will then turn her adventures into more books when she returns home. Apparently, one of her books has already crossed the Shimmering Sea and found its way to Negav (perhaps carried there by a Torinian on the wings of one of Gale's flock). Upon reading it, the people there find the suggestion that it was dictated by a Rock Harpy to be absolutely preposterous, in spite of what it says. A portion of it reads as follows:

"More than any other creature that I've seen, humans are selective in their beliefs about whose suffering should matter. Somewhat adjacent to that: humans have the astonishing incapacity to comprehend how the 'food chain' works. They will insist that they are not food even as they are being swallowed." - A Bird's-Eye View of Humankind by Gale the Dreamer.

Personality: The mild-mannered Gale actually has many issues that she gets poked fun at for; she is extremely shy, she's a bookworm, a habitual daydreamer, and seems fairly timid. She has an insatiable hunger for good stories, Gale rarely ever passes up the opportunity hear the experiences of other people. Quite often she'll be found staring off into space with her mind wandering and she has been known to fly directly into trees or the mountain side while daydreaming. When speaking, she has a habit of stumbling over her words and going off on tangents that leave the listener baffled before she eventually comes back around to her original point, but by then the listener is sorry they ever asked her to speak. As mentioned, she's quite shy and overly polite which lends to the perception that she is a bit of a pushover but Gale would insist that she's perfectly capable of standing up for herself; she has yet to prove it though and her attempts at talking tough often fall flat. A consequence of spending so much time with the librarian is that Gale struggles with use of slang. While she can handle being on the receiving end, she can't throw insults well at all and her attempts often end up looking so pathetic she gets laughed at and encouraged to simply give it up altogether.

Hunting Habits: Gale is a rock harpy and she has had training in using the wind magic she's naturally inclined to. She can create a focused, almost tornado-like vacuum that can be aimed to within mere feet of its target. She doesn't have to snatch her prey in her talons with such a useful technique; she simply swoops in and sucks her prey up off the ground. Gale's tendency to start daydreaming often causes her to miss her prey and eat dirt, so she often doesn't have a successful hunt and can be left very hungry at the end of the day. Like most giant predators, Gale will eat almost any living thing that fits in her mouth but she tries her best to keep sentient creatures off the menu because she prefers to not eat anything capable of telling a story - plus "they complain too much". But because she so rarely manages to get a satisfying meal she has moments of weakness and ends up eating sentients; not even Gale's friend Atreus is safe when she reaches the limit of her willpower. Fortunately, and ironically, Helia has been there to stop her.