expanded Zi profile - ss13

Her mother, Hra'zirra Rurrsiim, was Kaytam, a Silver tabby M'sai soldier. Tall, lean, extremely fast and agile, she was a pre-war soldier, said to be able to disassemble her firearm and put it back together faster than any other in her unit. Fearless, ruthless, and fierce, unless it's with her family. She fought in the rebellion on the frontlines. A proud, stiff-necked and very traditional Tajarran woman despite being a rebel.
Her father, Vrrashna Kha'rurr, was a Njarir'Akhran noble whose family was disgraced and exiled. He is cream with slightly darker stripes, big fluffy ears and a very long, fluffy tail. Slight, slender, willowy, tall, and frankly effeminate with a big poofy mane, he is a poet at heart whose head is always in the clouds. His Noble grandmother married a M'sai soldier for love, and was disowned by her family. His own mother took after the Noble side, and his fur closely resembles hers. He functioned as a courier and radio operator during the rebellion, having been taught by his grandmother to read and write.
Both were born around the turn of the century, and grew up in a world pre-discovery. Adults when the humans came, Hra'zirra was a soldier, and Vrrashna was a stockman who helped manage a ranch and its food animals. When the uprisings broke out, Hra'zirra was one of the first to join up, while Vrrashna waited until his family was no longer safe to join. Over the 10 years of fighting, Hra'zirra sustained multiple injuries and was eventually taken out of commission late in the war by a shot to the lower body which left her partially paralyzed in one leg. While covalescing, Vrrashna stopped in to rest at the safehouse/hospital/bunker hidden in a service tunnel underground. Vrrashna was carrying supplies, news, and orders across the battlefield, and arrived with supplies that helped Hra'zirra survive her injuries. Hra'zirra felt a deep life-debt towards the skinny courier, and insisted that when he left he took a small token of her, and a letter bearing her name and family's address, which he converted to cipher to keep safely. Leaving, he carried not only her information, but a deep impression of the iron-willed woman who had been shot at so many times for so long that she regarded her life-threatening injuries as nothing more than an inconvenience.
After the war, it took another three years of searching for Vrrashna to find her again. She had been released from the hospital but hadn't adapted to civilian life well; she was still a soldier at heart, but her wounds prevented her from service. Ranching was all that was left for a wounded veteran, and she was slow at that, left sore every day by even light work. When Vrrashna found her, she was weary, exhausted and ready to give up. Vrrashna offerred to help get her hired on at his clan's ranch where his family lived and worked, and it was there that the two grew close. They were married in 2433, and their first child, Zirra'sharr born in 2434.
Zirra'sharr spent her early years being coddled and cosseted by her mother, who had never known a good excuse to be so tender and gentle with another living being. Given a generous leave and light duty for the first years of her child's life by her husband's family, who shared his warm affection for her, Zirra'sharr's early life was easy and full of love. However, both her parents, being rebels, had a finger on the pulse of society and paid close attention to the news and the radio. Unrest was stilled temporarily, but the promises of the Hadii that things wouldn't be the same seemed truly empty. By the time Zirra'sharr was 5 years old and truly cognizant of the world around her, her parents had saved up enough money to flee the planet. Amidst a wash of tears from Vrrashna's parents who had grown to truly love the wife and child of their blood relation, the young couple fled for greener pastures. They were able to secure housing in the Middle Colonies of Sol as refugees, explaining the civil unrest to a sympathetic case manager who placed them in block housing.
It was a cramped, unpleasant existence, but the couple had known worse hardships and were grateful for a quiet, out of the way place. The reactions of humankind to xenos were mixed; the Middle Colonies weren't quite the booming hub of diversity and commerce the Inners were, but it was far from unheard of to see xenos on the streets. Skrell and Unathi were strange at first, but the arrival of humans had prepared them for aliens, and it was only a small surprise to find kinship with the other nonhumans when living in human-dominated space.
Zirra'sharr's full name proved to be a bit of a mouthful for the humans she went to school with, and "Zi" became her officially sanctioned name. From an early age, she had an affinity for plants and green, growing things. The foliage of Ahdomai was rather sparse and adapted for arctic climates, and so to be surrounded by a profusion of leafy, flowering jungle-like growth in the form of public parks and potted plants in every home was something out of a dream, an alien landscape never before dreamed possible. Zi thoroughly enjoyed the frequent walks her parents took her on through the public gardens, her mother's slow shuffling limp perfectly suited to the little girl's delight in every single growing thing she saw.
The cuisine of the human colonists was strange to the offworlders, but Zi took to it easily and early. Baking, frying, grilling -- whatever her father was willing to help her with, she excelled at with his gentle guidance and ability to make sense of even the strangest, most convoluted recipes in the books they checked out from their library. With his help, she developed not only a voracious appetite for literature but a thorough understanding of vocabulary, but the skills that would carry her through the rest of her life, when - unsurprisingly - she decided to pursue a formal education in cooking to become a chef.
Neither of her parents were foolish; they knew that the life of a Tajarran, both on-world and off-world, was one of service and being less than their superiors, no matter how hard they fought in the rebellions to change that. They had carefully reared their children to be subservient, both Zi and her younger brother Reza, and were pleased to find Zi taking an active interest in a quiet, service-oriented role which would see her in no direct conflict with her superiors. Human mistrust of xenos was something they had learned to tolerate, likening it to nobles' mistrust of the workers, and raised their children to keep quiet, smile, and say "yes sir" to every question a human would ask.
Yet despite those ever-important lessons that would keep their children alive, they taught the young ones of their inner worth. They made sure their children knew that humans believed in a concept known as "basic rights", something that no one could take away from you, and they made sure they knew their children, despite the need to behave like it, were not lesser beings. Determined to win out over the prejudice surrounding them, Hra'zirra taught her children all about what she fought for, why the rebellion was successful, and what it meant for their people back on the homeworld. That each living being had the right to be free, to choose their occupation and where they lived. Likewise her parents instilled in her the virtues of collectivism, of each person giving their all so that the group could thrive and that each person within the group would live better as a result.  Working as a group, for the group -- it was the only way to win.
However, despite teaching her to be gentle and compliant, they couldn't crush Zi's vital, curious spirit and inquisitive nature. Asking questions before thinking them through was a failing she never quite managed to abandon, and throughout her entire school career, she found herself the constant butt of human teachers' aggression and mistrust. She got used to being held up as an example of what not to do -- her work was always lacking something, her technique always imperfect and sloppy in some way. Accepting her lot in life never came easy, but by the time she finally graduated from culinary school at age 24, she had learned the fine art of keeping her head down and doing what she was told.
Quiet, soft-spoken, gentle-hearted and so kind she seemed terminally naive, the young Zi found her way into the employ of NanoTransen as a chef with a minor in botany and a deep-seeded desire to serve and to help. Her upbringing had planted a notion of the need to work with others, giving and getting to contribute to the good of the group, and her desire to be the best chef she could was rooted in the desire to keep the whole crew on their feet in fighting shape.