Shayla Langford has had a rough past - ailing brother, demanding family and military traditions, and the emergence of a gift in tantric magic, which lit the afterburners on the Harrier's already tempestuous "daddy issues". Striving to keep the peace with her family and their peers, Shayla submitted to tradition for a while and won the last-year cadet championship. While everyone else celebrated, she went off "to chill" on her own -- after all, she'd be sworn into service in the morning. But now that she was an adult, she wanted to be her real self, and hours before anyone missed her, she was gone. Shayla's magic gift helped her cover her tracks, but gathering the energies to use it, and keeping body and soul together in the meantime, led her into the demimonde of the Carsverse's aircraft society. It wasn't until her path crossed with that of the Raven's Tribe, a "user group" (i.e., coven or magic circle) that she found acceptance and a healthier direction.

The sudden appearance of Ash Mountain on the fringes of the tribe's protected zone puts Shayla in a position to be one of the first few of her world to encounter a whole new race - humans. These survivors of a devastated world give her a whole new perspective on her own life, and in this place here she encounters another "square peg", an airplane/helo hybrid - a gyrodyne - by the name of Seth. During a mid-spring blizzard, Shayla played some board games with this "lovable geek" to pass the time. Before either of them really knew it, she and Seth were proceeding into "games" of quite another sort. In the morning, they woke up in an embrace that neither of them wanted to leave, and their days of wandering were over.

-- from the "Swept Away" RP fanon