Sierra

Sierra Blue was the most promising of Aubergine's apprentices and next in line as dyemaster, but this was never to be, due to Tasman's betrayal of the twelve. Sierra is golden blond and tawny and all who encounter her notice that she has the flecked irises and far seeing eyes of a mountain lion. Calm and patient, she lies in wait watching those around her, watching her life go by, and waiting to be called. Nothing escapes her all knowing eye, but she keeps most thoughts to herself.

Once a great beauty, Sierra is now a handsome woman filled with regret, for she has never been able to realize her full potential as a dyemaster. Over the years she has tried to make peace with the knowledge that her time to rule the twelve has come and gone, considering it nothing more than a lost opportunity--but this could not be further from the truth. Sierra has three children: Warren, age 19, Skye, 17 and Garth almost 15. They lived at Lavender Fleece Farm, beside the Lavender Rill which flows south from the Teardrop Lake into River Runne. Their farm is just one day's drive to Middlemarch, the home of the Worlds Fair.

Sierra's ability to create magical garments has never faded, particularly the ones she knits and then felts in her pot of boiling crystal waters at her fiber farm at Top Notch, just below the crystal waters of the Teardrop Lake. These garments infuse the wearer with special senses of courage and confidence, and to pass unseen but the power of persuasion they offer the wearer is the most useful.

Sierra's troubled history started innocently. As a young girl at the Potluck, she learned her lore quickly and easily. No one else was as skilled at the dyepot, or took to the spinning wheel or knitting needles more quickly. The yarn on her spindle never had knots or kinks, her garments were finished with tiny even stitches, and they sparkled with magical aura. She was so calm and serene that among the twelve it was always thought she would take Aubergine's place one day, but that never came to pass. Upon meeting Tasman's cousin Kendrick, she fell in love instantly and so she forsook the potluck for family to live with the man of her dreams.

The following shift of power almost immediately fell to fellow apprentice Tasman was surprising the others in the circle who wondered if Kendrick's sudden appearance was a little too good to be true. His honeyed words painted pretty farmland pictures in Sierra's head that enchanted her. His version of her fairy tale was a dream the ruled her like a spell. It was Tasman who broke the circle, but she could not have done that if Sierra had not already been lured away.