Hmm.  Encounters between heroes and heroines and those who inhabited the less civilized parts of the world were, indeed, rarely anything that might be considered 'romantic'...  The shifter had always found her own upbringing to be rather fortunate, when considered in that light.  She had two parents who both loved her very much, though their strong personalities tended to clash on a fairly regular basis.  Still, the fact that her mother was someone who would challenge him on things when she felt he was wrong was something that the young shifter had sensed he loved about her, especially when contrasted to all the Bedine women in the tribe.  Then again, the restrictions that women in Bedine society were placed under would have been found atrocious in much of the rest of the world.  Which was why Rose was especially glad that she and her mother had been treated as exceptions to those particular rules...<br/><br/>"It was both my mother and my father who taught me how to fight, actually."  The shifter responded, when Aria questioned her about it.  "And the stories she told me each day when the sun hit its hottest point helped me to survive when I left the desert, though her wanderlust wasn't exactly the reason for my leaving in the first place.  That story's actually a bit more complicated...  Basically, to start off, even though most people think of the desert as being this extremely hot place all the time, the truth is that during the winter, it gets very cold.  Wild snowstorms sweep down from up north, and any who get caught up in them quickly perish.  Because of that, each Bedine tribe stakes out a winter shelter in the mountains that they return to each year when winter approaches.  These shelters are in the Underdark, though, and each year, the tribe must fight off all manner of monsters in order to gain for themselves a safe shelter from the snow.<br/><br/>"One such winter, my mother... fell, in the fighting, along with most of our tribes warriors.  We managed to gain shelter for ourselves for the winter, but during the following spring, we had to let a more powerful tribe absorb us into them in order to survive.  Without my mother around to prove her worth as a warrior, I was treated much worse under this new tribe than before, so I basically just decided to leave one day, using all those stories my mother told me about where she was from to help guide me to the rest of her family."<br/><br/>Laughing a bit, the shifter shook her head, thinking back to the very first time she ever met another person like herself and her mother.  It was funny to think back on, now, though at the time, she was being held at spear-point and questioned...<br/><br/>"The journey was long, and as I'm sure you can imagine, when I finally got there, they were very surprised to find out about me."  And saddened at her mother's death, as well, though they did admit to her that they'd given up any hope of ever seeing the woman again...  "They wound up accepting me once they were sure I wasn't lying, though, and afterwards, I wound up getting a lot of questions I had about my heritage answered for me.  After a while, though, then I started feeling that feeling of wanderlust, and eventually I said my goodbyes and moved on."<br/><br/>As she liked to think of it herself, travelling beyond the desert had given her a taste of the wonders the world had to offer.  And, she was used to always living a life on the move, anyway...  So really, it had only made sense that she would take up a life of adventure and travel.  Once she'd gotten a taste, she just wanted to see it all, even in spite of the temptation of having a proper family once again.<br/><br/>She was hoping to return to them some day, though.  Maybe when she finally got ready to settle down...  Or at the very least, she was definitely going to drop by for a visit again.