Atusaya Rae

(Redirected from Rae-Anne Anderson)
Atusaya Rae
Art to come
IC Information
Full Name: Atusaya, Rae
Gender/Sexuality: Female/Lesbian
Species: Anthousa
Human (former)
Place of Origin: London, ON, Canada
Age/Birthdate: 37 (December 22, 1984)
Zodiac Sign: Capricorn
Height: 5'6"
Hair Colour: Blonde
Eye Colour: Blue-violet
Romantic Status: Married (Ruriko), Involved (Fujiko, Jennifer, Sarai)
Romantic Identification: Polyamorous, not looking
Religion: Animism
Residence: Maison Soeur, Little Sister Island
Sakato Vale, Underhill
Occupation: Initiate Priestess of Zansho
Preferences
Likes: Flowers, summer, cats, Zansho, exploration, sunny days, the wind, painting, writing, cooking, water, acceptance, lilies, swimsuits
Dislikes: Cold weather, children, clothing, exercise, art critics, feeling like she has to compete with others, her old views
OOC Information
Source: Original Character

Atusaya Rae, more commonly known by the proper name Rae and formerly as Rachel Anderson, is a long-time Yuriban resident originally hailing from Canada. A painter by trade, she is reasonably open-minded and polite but somewhat snarky at times, though she tends to be very reclusive and prone to keeping to a small group of friends. As of 2021 she has taken on the permanent form of an anthousa - a flower dryad.

She served on the Town Council for a year and is the original owner of the Yuriba Art Gallery in the village, though as of 2016 she sold all of her holdings in the village proper and withdrew from public life. She's since quietly drifted back towards Yuriban religion as her affinity for the summer season has grown.

Contents

Psychological data

General personality

Rae came to Yuriba fairly shy and grew into someone quiet but polite over time. Today she's opened up even more and generally comes across as a warm, casual sort who can be outgoing and flirty but otherwise keeps to herself much of the time. Typically she tries to appear warm but level-headed, preferring to sort through her thoughts a little before she speaks but more than happy to be spontaneous when she's around friends and lovers. Her general air of kind, cheerful warmth somewhat conceals that when stressed or pushed, she begins to wear her heart on her sleeves, and though she can hide it much of the time, she's become quite passionate. She has become more comfortable with crowds over time as she's shrugged past some of the remaining vestiges of her youthful shyness. She is typically sociable and tends to tease and flirt with those she likes, though her generally light-hearted discourse with others is marred by her stubbornness and by a broad streak of cynicism that bleeds frequently into her speech. Her sense of humour is somewhat British, heavily weighted towards irony, wit, and snark. More recently she has developed a streak of vanity.

She tends to be somewhat resistant to interpersonal drama and has been accused of being cold and detached when it comes to dealing with strong negative feelings, as she tends to clam up and become curt and abrupt. When dealing with people who approach her with arrogance or a bullying appearance she swings the other way and becomes extremely heated and prone to full-throated denunciations, and it's common to see her call out people who push her, often with profanity involved. She has developed a tendency to answer threats with either scorn or by trying to punch her assailant's lights out. She has a lot more courage than most might expect from someone who is basically a soft-hearted artistic type, and when pushed to the wall she has been known to respond by defending herself even against threats from people she knows could seriously hurt her. When she is hurt she tends to hold it close to her heart for a long time, and though she outwardly functions without excessive angst, she doesn't welcome reminders. Particularly sore for her is the trauma she experienced during the death of her ex-wife, Eimi Kozuka, which continues to haunt her long after it happened.

While not formerly spiritual, Rae underwent a slow spiritual awakening in the years following Eimi's death, overcoming an atheistic streak and a skepticism towards Yuriban animism borne of hurt feelings from the Doom Trio crisis. As of 2021, however, she has come to accept herself as part of the island and has become spiritually enmeshed with it, to the point that she's effectively become bound to the island in the form her anthousa blessing initially gave her. She's closely associated with Zansho and spends much of her time tending to both cats and summer flowers, and she's begun to find a place for herself within Underhill, a transition which has come with abandoning her human surname in favour of the use surname "Atusaya." She maintained her original name as her primary use name to avoid confusion in day-to-day conversation.

Appropriate for a creature of summer, Rae is extremely fond of cats; her constant companion is a lazy ragdoll cat by the name of Cleo, though she's since been joined by two more cats by the name of Tammy and Tilly. She enjoys water, beaches, and quiet, peaceful surroundings that are incidentally scenic and worthy of painting. Her social setting of choice involves a cup of tea or hot chocolate and a quiet chat, though she has been known to seek excitement and adventure every once in awhile. She tends to be unfond of surprises and is quite easily startled. While formerly possessed of an exhaustive selection of swimwear and fluffy sweaters, these days she goes about nude save for flowers in her hair.

Species note

While Rae was born human in Canada, as of 2021 she is no longer human. She briefly carried the blessing of an anthousa-human, but whatever process she went through in late 2021 caused her to spiritually and physically bond herself to Yuriba. As a consequence, her anthousa form is no longer a blessing, but her inherent and permanent state of existence - that is, she cannot be turned back into a human by any means, barring taking an unmodified human blessing via spring water. As a result of this transformation, she is no longer physically able to leave Yuriba and is essentially part of the island's spiritual totality.

This change appears to have brought with it a significantly extended lifespan and a substantially slowed physical aging process - Rae of the 2020s appears no older than her 20s despite pushing 40.

Rae and Eimi together in the late 2000s.

Romantic preferences

After seven years in a monogamous relationship, Rae saw her romantic values change significantly, beginning in late 2011 and shifting rapidly from there. Historically she had been monogamous but has now embraced polyamory wholeheartedly. For the most part she is a light-hearted lover who values an active and mentally challenging partner, though she's begun to open up to more casual relationships and is prone to occasionally having sex with friends and the occasional acquaintance just for the sake of having fun or knowing what it's like. At times she can be very frisky. When she does meet someone she finds especially interesting or cute, she'll go out of her way to get to know them and cultivate a relationship. She's not above having friendships almost solely based on sex. She's also developed a tendency to show off, partly for the sake of teasing other women, partly because she just plain enjoys it.

Beyond the physical, Rae is much more selective about whom she places her trust in emotionally. It tends to take her some time to fall in love, and she's somewhat wary of whom she falls for, often taking her time to use the word or reminding herself that she must temper her feelings and see if they last. She values honesty in relationships and will not commit to anyone she perceives as dishonest, unfaithful, or in it just for the chance to say they conquered a village notable.

She tends to be put off by women who come on too strong or assume her light teasing is more than what it is. She also tends not to jump into bed with girls she's just met, save on extremely rare occasions involving undeniable chemistry.

Since returning to the island, Rae has expressed little interest in pursuing new relationships and has resolved not to renew some old ones, feeling she overloaded herself with sex flings in the years after Eimi's death as a means of compensating for the loss of someone who genuinely cared about her. At some level she pines for a way to reconcile the feelings of acceptance she associates with having lovers with the feelings of security she got with monogamy, in general feeling that she needs to find "someone who will always be there for me." This has coincided with a general abatement of the more active elements of her sex drive, which she credits to "getting old."

Hobbies, skills, and employment

As of late 2021, Rae has taken on the role of an initiate priestess of Zansho, the Yuriban goddess of summer. In practice this hasn't involved a lot of work, though she spends time these days tending a votive circle dedicated to the goddess, along with such important tasks as tending to summer flowers, herding cats and otherwise learning more about what's expected of her.

Rae is an extremely talented painter. She is naturally gifted with the ability to form a picture in her mind and transfer it to canvas with startling accuracy and realism. Though she has occasionally done portraits for friends, she has recently ventured into more surrealist and postmodern forms of art and has considered selling several of her works. She is, furthermore, a skilled writer and owns several journals full of poetry and short stories. Rae is a good cook, particularly when it comes to casual Western-style food, though her repertoire has expanded since 2021 to include a selection of subcultural native Yuriban dishes.

Rae is former owner of the Yuriba Art Gallery and had most of her works on display there. She also formerly owned the exotic dance lounge called The Labrys and could occasionally be spotted dancing there. However, Rae abruptly closed her business in early 2016.

Relations

Pre-Yuriba

Family and partners

Others

Rae in profile following her post-bereavement haircut.

She also counts Abryn, Anna, Bernice, Claire, Ishatha Karambolos, Kaede, Kassy Talalupe, Madeline Lane, Madoka, Makoto, Merin, Neiko, Ran, Rho Grey, Riley, Rinne and Siduri among her friends. For a time she took on Meissa as a housemate. Her relationship with Shego is also known to be somewhat rocky.

Rae's Pets

Rae is a known cat person and, since 2017, lives with multiple cats and one guard dog. Rae tends to name her cats after historical female queens regnant.

History

Canada and Japan

Born in the city of London, Ontario, Rachel Anne Anderson was born the daughter of George Curtis Anderson and Susan Maria Bijeux - she is by blood half Scottish, a quarter French-Canadian, and a quarter Swiss but considers herself a native Canadian. Early on her parents considered her slow to develop, but she proved them wrong. Though she didn't start walking or talking until late in her infancy, when she did she did both with great fluency for a baby. In 1987 her younger brother Alex was born, and it was hate at first sight, as these things go. Rae grew up constantly annoyed by her kid brother's behaviour, but the two really do love each other, going to great pains to hide it behind a lot of fighting. From a young age little Rae-Anne was fascinated with colours and drawing, often holing up with a colouring book and a box of crayons to scribble diligently away. As she grew she took art classes at a local community center and developed her abilities that much more.

Anderson circa January 2005, aka. Classic Rae.

Despite her incredible smarts and her skill at arts Rae was something of a social outcast, often teased by other girls because of her chronic stutter. She took to sitting under trees by herself and losing herself in books, developing a shyness that haunted her for much of her life. While she seldom approached people, she did stay out of trouble, making it through most of grade school without difficulty save an incident in seventh grade in which she flipped out, lashed out at her tormentors with her math textbook, and was promptly beaten up four on one. She chipped one of her front teeth in the incident; it has since been capped. Other than that her school life was uneventful until she was sent to high school... in Japan. Her father's job forced the family to move to the Orient, and Rae was enrolled in the St. Agnes Academy for girls. While she resented the place she did ace all of her classes. She takes particular pride in how expertly she lied her way through religion class despite being an avowed agnostic. Here she met Miyako Tanaka, who took her on as a petite soeur. She developed a crush on fellow student Eiko Kusanagi, who helped her to accept her budding homosexuality and shared her first sexual experience with her. She is somewhat ashamed of that relationship nowadays. Eventually Rae graduated from St. Agnes, and her family returned to Canada, this time to Toronto.

For a time Rae enrolled at the University of Toronto, her high grades at a prestigious foreign school practically guaranteeing her admittance. She entered the university as a student of visual arts and scored excellent grades in her first semester; however, her marks began to peter off towards exam period, falling slowly towards the Bs. This was mainly because Rae had grown disillusioned with school, knowing that artistic talent couldn't be taught. While she enrolled for a second semester, she ultimately dropped all her classes before the cutoff date and retreated into her basement to work independently. She shared a number of close friendships during this period and has on occasion spoken of them.

She soon grew tired of her family pressuring her to re-enroll in school, finally packing her suitcases, wishing everyone farewell, and leaving Toronto, eventually ending up in Yuriba by sheer happenstance. She claims to have whistled for a cab, and when it came near, the license plate said 'YURIBA' and it had kitsune tails in the mirror; in reality she arrived after departing a hotel in Ottawa and passing through a dimensional membrane without realizing it.

Yuriba

Rae arrived in Yuriba shortly before midnight on July 5, 2004. After floundering for awhile she met Shipon and promptly developed a crush on her. In true naive-idiot fashion she mistook her fleeting infatuation for true love and developed a relationship with the girl, spending most of her time in her tent. The two broke up sometime later. During this period Rae developed a crush on Nagisa Vendaris which lead to extended tension between the two. Following her breakup with Shipon Rae developed a relationship with Mai, again foolishly "falling in love" with someone she scarcely knew. Their relationship was dissolved tearfully after Mai returned from a two-month absence only to declare her love for another girl. With no trace of sympathy, Rae ended the relationship abruptly.

She remained single for around a year and a half afterwards, her attitude towards love and the island in general hardened by her experiences. She was determined not to repeat her foolish mistakes. During this time Rae's friendship with Nagisa ended following an attack on Rae's person by the angel and Nagisa's revelation of her role in the Church of Hentai. She and Rylia began to grow quite close, and she found herself in the company of such notables as Xellos, breisleach, and Merin more frequently.

Eventually she became extremely reclusive, moving in with her surrogate sister Miyako and her friend Shay. She maintained friendship with Shipon and stayed in contact with Rylia following the vampiress' departure. Eventually she expressed a desire to reimmerse herself into the social sphere of Yuriba, beginning by making up with Nagisa in the spirit of restarting their friendship on less amorous footing. Her spirit of goodwill lasted only a short time, however, as after a brief conversation with Nagisa she began to avoid the angel again. Most of her time was spent indoors, where her time with Miyako and a number of self-help books allowed her to mature and get past many of her social handicaps.

Another Rae.

Soon she became romantically involved with Eimi Kozuka, finding that she shared much in common with the girl. She moved out of Miyako's house, accidentally wrecking her friend's living room while moving her belongings through. Her new residence started life as a simple one-bedroom affair attached to the Yuriba Art Gallery. Though she remained fairly reclusive she could often be seen following Eimi on hikes up the slopes of Inishie-san, though she was wise enough to never go alone, as Eimi's protection from the volcano appears to extend to Rae only when the two are together.

During October of 2006 she began to experience odd dreams, leading her to find the Yuanquannyanniichuan and bathe in its waters. Her stint in blessed form was very brief, however, as she rapidly relieved herself of the spring's magic and returned to being a regular human. Around this time she took on a cat named Cleo as her companion. Later she and Eimi parted ways, albeit amicably, remaining very intimate friends. Indeed, following Eimi's injury and cursing atop Inishie-san Rae held a vigil by her former lover's bedside and remained with her a great deal during her recovery. Around this time she accepted the star elemental Meissa as her housemate.

Through March and into April Rae befriended fellow artist Ciara, and for a time the two shared a fling. This came to an end when Rae renewed her relationship with Eimi, the two women having realized they still loved each other in light of their closeness following Eimi's injury. The two began living together, growing ever closer, until finally Rae presented Eimi with a commitment ring, and the two dedicated themselves to each other even more intimately.

In late 2007 she stepped down from her position on the Town Council, finding the duties overly stressful, though she occasionally appeared at the Rinkei Gakuen as a guest instructor. During the first half of 2008 she set to work designing a new business, enlisting the aid of a pair of oreads from Underhill in drafting a floor plan. Construction of the project began in December of 2008 under the direction of Rae herself and project forewoman Soled, whom she entrusted with the practical side of the construction.

Her first project of the new year, the 2009 Yuriba Swimsuit Calendar, went on sale at the Art Gallery on January 12. She both posed in and published the calendars. Four months later, the Sun Lily Suites opened to the west of the Tiger Lily Clearing on Tiger Lily Road. A second calendar was released in January 2010, shot by Teagan Richards, with a third planned in 2011.

As of October 6, 2009, Rae and Eimi formalized their relationship with an engagement. They were married by breisleach on January 23, 2010 in a small ceremony at the Crimson Rose and Sword. After a relatively long honeymoon the pair returned to the island, where Rae has immersed herself in running her businesses and trying to jump-start her idle muse. She spent most of 2010 stewing over new business plans and finalizing the 2011 swimsuit calendar, settling into the quiet bliss of marital life with her new spouse.

2011 proved eventful for her relatively early on, as she was subjected to a massive psionic attack while accompanying Eimi up Inishie-san on an academic hike. Though she suffered no long-term damage from the affair, she was shaken enough that she kept indoors for awhile. Nevertheless it was with some reluctance that she accepted a rather desperate measure Eimi proposed to help her protect herself. She's since been able to carry herself with a bit more self-assurance but has had to adjust to not being the relatively normal woman she used to be. Shortly thereafter she rolled up her sleeves and began to finalize a few long-held business plans, putting to use a plot of land behind the Art Gallery. The efforts bore fruit in the form of The Labrys, an exclusive bar and the first business on the newly-accessible Day Lily Lane.

As the summer wound down, Anderson and Kozuka took a few striking steps to freshen up their marriage, first inviting Blue into their circle as a friend with benefits, then resolving to give polyamory a try. Her autumn saw her deepen her associations with Fujiko Tanaka and the kitsune Ruriko, drawing both into her circle of closest confidantes.

She began 2012, though, by breaking off with her relationship with Eimi and slip back into single life for the first time in years. She began to grow closer to Fujiko and Blue, cultivating a deeper relationship with the former, though neither seemed to want to call it outright romance.

The Doom Trio

With Inishie-san seemingly set to erupt again in 2012, Anderson kept to her home and the Art Gallery for the most part, her quiet times with friends being routinely interrupted by quakes and tremors. As the situation worsened she began to clean her artwork out of the Gallery in the hopes of saving it if the volcano did erupt.

Ultimately, though, with the volcano set to detonate, a vengeful Eimi showed up at the gallery door, having lapsed to Inishie's side as her Sentry. As Eimi began setting off a volcano under the gallery, Rae tearfully tried to reason with her. After several minutes of weeping and pleading, she eventually hit a chord, and the injured Eimi allowed herself to die in front of Rae, curtailing the eruption and saving the island.

The incident left Rae emotionally broken, and she spent the next several days locked in her home crying, with Cleo standing guard over Eimi's body on behalf of breisleach. Though she received a Rose Quartz Commendation from Town Council for her efforts, she tearfully buried it at the bottom of a drawer and refuses to look at it.

Life after Eimi

Anderson closed out the Eimi chapter of her life when she stood by with breisleach at Eimi's funeral pyre, the vulcanologist having decided not to return as a Guardian and instead go on to be reincarnated. The decision left Rae deeply wounded, and she retreated for a time, closing off the more intimate parts of herself for about a month while she tried to adjust to the hole in her heart.

Slowly, she began to pull her way back into Yuriba's social life. She capped off her reappearance by hosting a large amateur night at the Labrys, where she met Danielle Luena, who'd eventually become her housemate. The months that followed saw her begin to build up that relationship while strengthening her ties to Fujiko.

Tension did erupt in her life around Hallowe'en of 2012, when she had a run-in with Nemesis, who stole her glasses and made a stink about giving them back. Rae promptly threw a punch at her but the fight was broken up. Shortly thereafter Nemesis came to Rae's door explaining herself, but the encounter did not go well and ended with Rae hitting her visitor in the stomach with a hockey stick and ordering her off her property.

In 2013, she began making tentative plans to publish a line of pin-ups starring local people, mainly as a means to compete with Kaleaithne and her trading card franchise. The Yuriba Pinup Series debuted that year. For the most part she spent her time holding court with Fujiko and friends, though the years also marked the beginning of her shift away from the last of her old clique mentality and into the social scene at Leona's Bar and Girl. Gradually becoming a regular at the bar's Naked Sunday events, she cultivated friendships with Leona and other bar notables and built on her friendship with breisleach, whom she'd known in passing for years but only recently found any kind of chemistry with.

Even as she got to know the fox better, she crossed paths with Camille Alexandre, who ended 2013 by asking Rae to be her girlfriend. She agreed.

Rae experienced a few personal upheavals in 2014. The foremost was the realization that she had grown significantly apart from Miyako, with the two now moving in completely different circles. The second came when Kinuko, who had spent more than a year disavowing Rae's existence, suddenly re-entered her life, older and more aggressively amorous and bent on getting into her so-called onee-sama's pants. Rae found herself swept along out of sheer surprise at the change in the formerly shy shrine maiden's attitude, but it didn't last before Kinuko inexplicably vanished from Yuriba again as spring turned to summer.

As 2014 chugged into 2015, Rae found herself more or less content with the status quo, falling into a routine of seeing Fujiko and Ruriko while easing off breisleach a little while the woman bore Abryn's child. The year also saw her try to extend warmer relations to Allya, one of Fujiko's other partners, though she found herself struggling a bit by year's end to actually figure out how the strange woman operated. Along the way she added Jennifer Braddock to her group of girlfriends and moved her into her guest room, formerly occupied by the departed Danielle.

Periods of absence

Rae left the island in April 2016, returning home to tend to her ailing mother. She spent six months with her family, helping her mother through a difficult recovery from a medical condition. The time also helped her cope with Fujiko's sudden announcement that she was pregnant with Allya's child, and helped her to reorient herself after years of grappling with the return of her depression. The quiet months gave her time to remember to try and love herself instead of basing her self-worth entirely on others' acceptance of her, and she came through her quiet time with a renewed sense of herself - and a growing willingness to spend time in solitude.

Eventually, though, she whistled for a cab, and when it came near, the license plate said "YURIBA" and it had breis in the mirror. She got out before it went anywhere but found herself back in Yuriba anyway.

Most of her businesses having been shuttered in her absence, she moved into her hideaway cabin on Little Sister Island, intent on largely keeping herself separate from village life and reintegrating herself into the island's paradigm slowly, focusing mostly on people who brought her joy and ignoring everyone else. Her cat Cleo remained her closest companion, along with a Rottweiler named Boomer, who came into her care courtesy of a family member.

Not too long after her wedding to Ruriko, Rae vanished from the island again for a period of months, evidently sucked into a pocket of Underhill consisting entirely of shadows and the presence of Tsuki. In this manifold of Underhill, Rae was almost completely consumed by her own doubts and fears as she was forced to confront the sum of all the anxieties and drivers of despair which had plagued her for the past three years. After what seemed like an eternity of languishing within absolute despair, she was finally able to repudiate Tsuki, emerging from the shadows and back into Yuriba proper in October of 2017, renewed and free of a great deal of emotional weight.

A refreshed Rae, ashamed of herself for ditching on Ruriko, set to work rebuilding her home on Little Sister Island, moving back in with only Cleo and a new cat, Tamar, for company - aside from Boomer, her guard dog. Boat trips to the island no longer sail from the main pier, and guests tend to run into the guard dog before they get very far, with the island heavily signposted against uninvited guests.

Integration

A long period of spiritual learning culminated in 2021, when Rae found herself given a unique blessing, that of an anthousa (a flower dryad). The change marked the acceleration of her long-time move towards the honouring of Zansho. While she had long considered herself a summer creature, the advance of time - and an increased ease with former inner turmoils long past - allowed her to finally acknowledge her own desire to be part of Yuriba on more than the level of a mere occupant. Through the spring and summer of 2021 she took to cultivating flowers atop the crest of her home on Little Sister Island, transforming the islet's crown into a votive summer garden.

As the winter of 2021 wound down, Rae's spiritual explorations led her to discover a pocket of Underhill ensconced in a perpetual summer, home to a votive circle of Zansho and a village of fellow anthousae. She spent an extended time there with the dryads, ultimately having her true name divined and choosing a use name - Atusaya - to reflect her acceptance. While at the votive circle, she underwent a subtle change that caused her anthousa form to become permanent, binding her spirit to Yuriba.

She went into 2022 dividing her time between Yuriba and Underhill, where she has taken on a role as tender of the votive circle and a junior priestess of Zansho, effectively being adopted into the dryad group residing around it.

Trivia

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