Claire Broussard

Claire speaks a loosely stitched together quilt of the Creole, Arcadian and Parisian French she's picked up from her husband, Louis Broussard. The two share a few of their own quirks in speech, mostly Louis' versions of her own mumblings. Louis never did learn which tribe she came from, though he did get the sense that the ones he'd paid the bride price to weren't, possibly, her actual parents. Neither did he ever bother to learn her real name--not through any lack of effort on her part, I assure you, there being a great deal of frustration involved for the poor girl--instead simply deigning to call her 'Claire', a name he'd always taken a fancy to.

A little short thanks to her years spent training in medicine instead of enjoying herself or getting worked to death like everyone else, she dresses like a good Christian woman though if you ask her she'll tell you plainly that she thinks it's stupid. She prefers looser clothing and leathers--more sensible things--to the poof'd dresses her husband's family favors. Lucky for her, when traveling the southern wilds her husband has a bit more of a head on his shoulders than his family does and doesn't seem to mind the slightest bit letting her wear less restrictive or even native clothing. None of the other trappers and voyageurs up in the north minded much either with their own native wives. Claire tends to wear her brown hair long and braided, or straight and to her waist. She did smile a little when her brother's sisters braided and bundled it up all pretty, but fleeing the scourge doesn't really leave her much desire to spend any time on her appearance.

Back in her home 'round the pacific northwest, in the little tribelet she called home, Claire--that not of course being what they called her--might have been considered a little headstrong. To the quaint and strange French trappers who fancy taking women who look like her as wives--and who so often mistakingly think their wives are all part of the same massive group--she's got a lovely degree of submissive in her. A little too used to their maddened French girls back home, that's what she thinks.

Claire is a sensible girl at heart, not out to prove anything to the world. She understands that it's a man's world, and for the most part she's content to eke out her way in it. She's found a happiness for herself, when she hums a basket-weaving tune as she's threading bark and grass into the finest designs, or maybe a little when she's sticking needles in her husband's feet to wake him up. Maybe a little more than a little on the last one.

There's something quietly mischievous about the girl. Traveling on her own for so long--and taking up an occupation that lends itself to solitude--she prefers to keep things within her own mind, observing with half the attention she should. She'll smile and hum a wife's tune when she helps her husband dress, listen to his troubles, and pinch his arm when he's starting to get on her nerves. Claire's somewhat fond of him, yes, and cares for his happiness--she is a fairly dutiful wife if a bit snappy at times. But it's a mean-ness well tempered by the understanding of just how good she has it: she's seen how often he's had to come to her verbal defense (and sometimes, physical) when they've traveled through the English and Spanish speaking regions, though she understands little to none of the words that pass, she is truly grateful.

Patient, sensible, and something quietly mischievous: Louis could have done a lot worse.

Claire makes a fine basket, if anyone would ever give her the time and the materials. Her husband's family tends to get terribly annoyed whenever she tries, worse still when she tries fixing any of their problems with the medicine she picked up back home from her father. Due to the diversity of languages back home, she like many of her neighbors has an easy time picking up languages, and she's fluent in French and beginning to pick up Spanish. While she could understand to a respectable degree the somewhat foreign landscape up near Quebec, she is fairly lost when it comes to the local fauna and flora around here--especially once she and her husband started seeing desert. Bit of a shock to her system, that was. Again due to her background in the west coast and surrounded by so many languages and an oral tradition, Claire has an exceptional memory, especially an auditory memory, and is able to mimic sounds quite easily. She is fairly smart, and understands more of her husband's exploits than she lets on.

Claire Broussard is the native wife of frontier gentleman Louis Broussard, a Creole by birth and a whole lot of other things by trade. Though she'd wound up all the way in the Hudson Bay region, to her husband's disappointment Claire spoke little of the languages of the nearby tribes, nor did any of the local métis seem to have anything to do with her. In fact, Claire had been born a considerable distance from Quebec, in a little tribelet far closer to the west coast than the east. She'd studied medicine under her mother, gone on a soul-searchin' journey only to....find herself all the way on the east coast. She's still scratching her head as to just how that went and happened.

Winding up in the frustrated employ of a local Cree band, she found herself not all that much liked as despite her talent for languages, she couldn't understand a word of the stuff spoken all the way on the east coast and managed to go and accidentally offend not only the war chief but the old hag who she couldn't quite understand why everyone took so much of a liking to. A few months later their patience had worn thin and they were pawning her off to an eager-looking white fellow alongside a bundle of baskets she'd made. Hell, the man even tried giving [i]her[/i] a basket, guess he thought it'd be sweet or something. And it was a little.

She was stuck with the guy, and two years later today she's picked up a decent amount of the awful mix of southern and frontier French he spoke. Even got herself named something odd, couldn't quite get it into his head that it wasn't her actual name. The two had returned to his family plantation--meeting the family was a real treat--and had been traveling around the countryside out of something close to sheer boredom when the scourge hit.