Birch

Birch is an elusive figure, disappearing and re-appearing often throughout the lands beyond the Wall and occasionally in the realms of the Northern kneelers. Born to a priestess of the old ways and a hunter of the Nightrunner clan, Birch is devoutly religious and fiercely independent.

Appearance and Character
Birch is "kissed by fire", with dark red hair that curls and tangles at the slightest provocation. She wears a few beads in her braids, most of glass or wood but a few of silver. Her eyes are pale, a color her mother used to call snow-blue. She is taller than most women, slender and hard. Most of her clothes are of wool, felt, leather or hide. One of her prized possessions is a small weirwood amulet in the shape of a hand.

She is quiet, a woman of few words and great stealth. She raised a shadowcat cub by hand, fostered motherless babes, and fed the desperate in the hardest of times. And yet she also vanishes into the haunted forest for months at a time, hunting criminals and the clanless to sacrifice to the old gods before the weirwood trees.

History
Birch was born in 381 AC, the same year and to the same clan as Ekkill Crowsbane's second son Helmut. Her mother Skarra was the priestess of the Nightrunner clan, appeasing and appealing to the old gods with blood and bone. Vittur, her father, was a hunter, a tall man, good-natured and kissed by fire as his daughter was born. As soon as she could walk, Birch assisted both her mother and father: learning to butcher the animals Skarra sacrificed, walking the woods beside Vittur, and practicing with toy bow and dull knife alike.

The Nightrunners' fortunes waxed and waned, some years bringing surplus and some scarcity. Over time, Birch began to practice alongside her parents, hunting with her father and praying with her mother. Although Skarra and Vittur remained bonded, they had no more children, and treasured their daughter.

When Birch was fifteen, Vittur was killed during a raid by a neighboring clan. Shortly afterward, Skarra decided it was time for Birch's first great sacrifice. Under the gaze of an ancient weirwood, Birch gave her virginity to a prisoner from the Hornfoot clan, then cut his throat. Now considered an adult by her clan, Birch gathered her things and left. Over the years, Birch has been seen in many places, and gone unseen in many more. She has spent fishing seasons with the ice-river clans, hunted the unicorns of Skagos, treated and traded with the remains of the Thenns, and even wandered as far south as Winterfell.

During her time with the mountain clans, she found a great mountain cat dead in a copse of weirwood saplings, with a single cub mewling in its mother's fur. The mountain cat Ascyn is now five years old, fully grown and larger than a wolf. He is Birch's companion, viewing her as mother and sister alike.