#both real

bunny’s name is briar, he’s an apothecary witch who lives in a hut on chicken legs and runs a little potion/charm/spell shop, both inherited from his elder witch mother. he’s actually pretty nice, always helpful and generous, he’s just got powerful resting bitch face and doesn’t bother with a customer service voice.

he’s 23, he’s a pretty good witch but his mother was so powerful and well-known he still lives in her shadow years after her death. his father wasn’t around. he lives by the phrase “do no harm, take no shit,” and has no patience for bullshit or insults. autistic + adhd, depression + anxiety. relies on music to calm himself and takes his cassette player (the height of technology) everywhere he goes.

he’s out looking for mushrooms and herbs and shit in the woods one day, he’s in a bad mood and very distracted and ends up much farther from home than he usually goes. he finds an old castle, almost invisible among the trees, and ignores the weird feeling when he enters.

he meets the monster man, hawthorn, up in the top of a tower. hawthorn is very excited to see someone, briar is less than excited to see a huge monster. briar runs, but the door bars itself on its own. hawthorn eventually gets him calmed down and explains what’s going on.

so hawthorn was a minor royal, he lived in this castle and watched over the nearby town. handsome and generous, he was very popular. he was too far from the royal family to bother with an arranged marriage, and he wasn’t interested in any of the lady suitors who came to him. (he’s gay, but that wasn’t in the lexicon at the time) they were all ok with the rejection, and he lived quite happily as a bachelor.

until the witch. she was obsessed with him, and after one too many rejections, she flew into a rage and cursed him. she made him hideous, trapped him in his home, and he would be that way until he loved someone who loved him back. he’d actually been asleep for about 400yrs, the spell had waned, but briar’s appearance sort of reactivated it.

hawthorn is very sweet and gentle, he used to be very confident but centuries on his own magnified his existing anxiety and depression and guilt and now he’s a lil fucked up. he still sees beauty in everything, he’s hopeful and optimistic in a way that briar initially finds irritating, but later it helps him get out of his own cynicism.

yeah yall can guess what happens....... its gay! what a surprise!