A Blip Appears on the Map - Words of Robin

Mí's father is a cartographer, the third generation in a row to follow what is now the family trade. He loves this with a passion, the exploring and discovering of beautiful places, the danger of the wilderness, the challenge of transferring what he sees into a map for all to use and admire. He is observant and skillful; his name eventually becomes well known throughout Kryta.

Mí's mother is a seamstress. She enjoys creating lovely dresses for women to wear, the usefulness she feels when she Mí someone's favorite outfit or the apron the blacksmith was given by his father, the challenge of the precision required for the gloves for a noble lady. Her customer list is quite extensive, including even prominent members of nobility from Divinity's Reach.

Mí is the oldest child and a tomboy to boot. Even as a toddler, she wants to wander to the nearby meadows or down to the ocean. When she is five, her sister Doe is born and when she is eight, her sister Rae is born. Rae's birth is quite traumatic on Mí's mother and the doctor tells her she cannot hope to bear another child and live. Mí's father, who had hoped for a son, is saddened both by the affect the birth had on his wife and by the thought that his family's trade will die with him.

But Mí changes his despair into hope when she begins to ask to go with him on his trips into the wilderness, complaining about how her mother keeps trying to teach her how to sew and how all she can do is prick her fingers and try not to look bored. He agrees to let her come with him and secretly begins to teach her the skills of a woodsman.

She take to this readily and by the time she is 11, her father decides she is ready for the ultimate test of her skills. He charges her to enter the nearby woods with only the clothes on her back and a his favorite dagger. She is to track and kill a wolf using on the the skills he has taught her and any weapons or traps she can devise.

Mí is very excited at the prospect! Finally she will be able to prove that not only is she the equal of any of the boys of Garenhoff, but better than them! She heads off into the woods and is gone for three days. When she returns, she has the skin and head of a wolf, a wound on her left cheek that will eventually turn into a small scar and bragging rights that will make her the bane of all of the boys in town.

Mí's mother had always been fearful of the woods and all of the harm that could befall her oldest daughter, but when she sees the joyful Mí displaying her trophies and proudly telling her story, she realizes that Mí has found her proper path in life.

So while Doe and Rae learn all that their mother can teach them of sewing and converting the desires of her patrons into works of wearable artistry, Mí spends her days with her father learning how to explore, observe, measure and convert all that she sees into a vibrant painting on parchment that any might use to guide them from the remotest region of Kryta to the poorest neighborhood of Divinity's Reach, should that be their wish.

Time marches on and eventually, around the time when Mí is 18, Mí's mother can no longer grip a needle for long due to the cramps that are caused in her hands and Mí's father, his vision failing can no longer travel through the dangerous countryside or accurately copy a map. The three sisters take over the daily business and care for their parents, whom they love very much. Mí has the heaviest burden because she has no one to spell her and she is the only one who can carry on the trade that her father and the fathers before him prized so much.

Mí works tirelessly at her trade, still learning everything she can from her father: how to read people, how to haggle and all of the tricks and secrets from a master of her art. Her father dotes on her and her name is always on his lips while Mí is always looking to make her father even more proud of her than he already is.

By the time that Mí is twenty-one, she has explored all of Kryta and decides that the best way to secure her fame is to leave Garenhoff and head to Divinity's Reach, where she will have the opportunity to display her talent for all to see and perhaps gain the patronage of the nobles.