Name: Ashlyn Park Occupation: Barista at Cool Beans Cat Cafe Age: 24 Sexuality: Lesbian Species: Witch Hometown: Port Leiry, Oregon Relationship Status: Single Personality Traits: Strong willed, Shy, Studious, Dreamy
They were high school sweethearts, with a dream of more, distance not breaking their spirits and in time they comeback to one another and build a family based on never dying love. Ashlyn never has to question what she wants to have when she grows up, her parents encapsulate it. Care, joy, even hard comings, are met with a perseverance and sense of teamwork that teaches her all she needs to know. One day she too will find her soulmate and their love will be transcendent. The problem is, the young witch isn't the strongest in social settings. That is when she is among her peers.
It doesn't take much convincing for her father to start bringing her to work with him. He's been teaching History at Tide View for years. She sits in his office and colors, or doodles. Reads different books off his tall shelves. Sometimes she's allowed to sit in his lecture hall, behind his desk. She soaks in every word. Every story and event he teaches. One day she hopes she can be just like him. Able to stand there and command a room.
Eventually going to the University is no longer an option and she's plunged back into school. She well behaved, excelling in most of her studies. But she feels shy and unsure about the others around her no matter how hard she tries. No one seems to like the things she does, or understand the stories she tells them of lands forgotten by time. Of civilizations fallen. The thing people come to hear her dad talk about, no one at school seems to want to listen to her repeat. It makes her feel alienated and alone, she stops trying. Sits on the sidelines and observes. Writes her thoughts and feelings out in her journals like her father tells her. 'All great minds need time to grow, and once they have? Everyone will listen. Everyone will know your voice.' He tells her, and Ashlyn listens. Her father would never lie. Her father commands people to listen and they do.
Years go by and she grows, her scribbled thoughts and feeling turning into poems of people who catch her eye, a blossoming in her heart. The possible promise of finding someone who will listen. It distracts her from the upset settling in at home, her father working later and later. Distracted from his family. It's a sort of unrest. Her parents don't fight, but there is a distance.
He's working late again and then there is a call. The man who could command a room, dead by heart attack. She wonders if it was truly a broken heart, from a fracturing love. Socializing gets harder after that. She doesn't want to talk to anyone and people whisper about his death. It's the day a guy from her economics class approaches her, pesters her with questions. She just wants him to go, she wants him to leave her alone. It's like a chant in her head 'Go. Leave me alone. Go' it's like a pounding in her head and the calmness, voice like an echo as she looks up at him
"Leave." he looks at her slack-jawed for a moment as if in a trance, then turns and walks away. It's the first time she uses her power. And if she can help it, it will be the last. It's a power her father had possessed, she's told. And suddenly wonders if that man who could command a room had ever been doing it on bravery alone. She keeps her head down and makes it through the last years of school without much excitement, and with a worried sort of nerves makes it into Tideview. The halls and campus feel different now, she wants to teach Creative Writing here one day. She wants to make up for what she's certain her father had been doing.
