Lottelita/MaitreyiHistory
Maitreyi was drawn into learning from birth. Her parents, dedicated but nearly-impoverished scholars in Gethamane, made it clear that they expected their children to follow in their footsteps. When her older sister, Shalini, proved herself not up to the task, the burden of fulfilling their parents' expectations fell entirely upon Maitreyi. Her mother and father were cold, critical people, and she lived in terror of disappointing them and, eventually, of interacting with them at all. Maitreyi found solace only in Shalini's love and companionship. The sisters eked out a loving relationship and moments of rare joy.
Just as Maitreyi prepared to begin her university studies, her parents died quite suddenly, leaving the sisters all but penniless. They traveled to Icehome, where Maitreyi began an apprenticeship as a tutor for the children of the outcaste Dragon-Blood oligarchs that dominated the Haslanti League. Shalini soon married Rakesh, an amber merchant, and Maitreyi was placed with a large and prosperous family. Though teaching had at first been a second-choice profession, Maitreyi took to it quickly, and grew to love nothing more than the time she spent instructing her bright-eyed pupils — connecting with children was easy for her, whatever trouble she may have had interacting with adults.
An unlikely affair developed between the teacher and her employer, the proud Uttam Dinesh. He was a haughty man who fancied himself an intellectual, and was intrigued by Maitreyi's passion for learning, so different from his beautiful, vacuous socialite wife. Maitreyi became pregnant and, as was common in dynastic Dragon-Blood households, Dinesh offered to arrange for his wife to wear the pillow: The child would be raised as a Prince of the Earth, and Maitreyi would receive a generous sum of money for her troubles. Shrewdly, however, Maitreyi rebuffed the offer of coin and asked instead for Dinesh to secure her a position at Icehome's primary school. Amused, he accepted the arrangement, and a year after Jagan was born, Maitreyi left Dinesh's household. There was only one problem: She had fallen in love with her son, and the pain of the separation almost broke her.
She buried herself in her work, and earned some renown as an innovative and dedicated history teacher. Though many of her colleagues resented her for her youth and inexperience, and disapproved of her unorthodox teaching methods (which emphasized reason and questioning over rote memorization), her students responded to her immensely. Over the next four years, Dinesh allowed her to see Jagan every few months. Her son knew her only as one of his father's affectionate, clever lady-friends, but she joyed in his presence, which was almost enough to make up for the torment of his absence. She imagined that someday, when he was a student at the primary school, they would become life-long friends, and perhaps she would eventually reveal to him the truth.
Tragedy, however, followed Maitreyi always. While she was building herself a noteworthy and often satisfying career, Shalini was falling apart. Rakesh did his best to make the marriage work, but Shalini was a broken woman, her psyche feeble from years of enduring her parents' worst abuse in an effort to spare her younger sister. After years of misery, she finally took her own life. Maitreyi and Rakesh both blamed themselves. All joy went out of her then, even at the blackboard, where she had long been happiest. Giving up, however, was never an option. If anything, Maitreyi's determination to bring understanding to her students grew stronger. She knew her destiny was powerlessness and sorrow, but she pushed for better things for the bright-eyed children before her. She also renewed her own scholarship, focusing her energies into a pursuit of knowledge and truth.
She had been like this for a year when it happened. When a new Headmaster made advances towards her and the altercation turned dangerously physical, she suddenly felt herself filled with power and strength; her brow glowed with a strange mark the meaning of which was clear: anathema, the unclean. She killed the Headmaster and left him in a dark alleyway, and went to the only place she knew she could seek shelter — Rakesh's ramshackle home. Rakesh's sense of obligation was greater than his fear, so he took her in.
She spent weeks consumed by visions that contradicted the history she had known and taught. Her life had been built on lies, she realized. She vowed to discover the truth about the nature of the Solars and the events of the First Age, and to combat ignorance and deception whenever she encountered them.
