#carhys

A FLAME IN THE STARS -> CHARACTERS

Elevynne True, Guardian

Chariss Quire, Scholar of the Arts

Aure Decker, Arts shopkeeper

Aislin Giverow, Spy

Carhys Blackwave-Althera, Heir to the title of High Lord

Iane Kesler, Chairperson of Asteri University (Luminaire)

Lovely people who see this: my first (and probably last, frankly) character aesthetic thing that doesn’t really look that good but @aliasastrid is nice so I put it here.

There was once a time that flowers held a sweet note in the back of Carhys’ mind. A soft soothing voice with warm hands in her hair and the smell of incense wafting in the air as a stew bubbled on the fire. Safe and curled up just like a bud as her mother sang songs or read from books. Even when she left her alone, the house was filled to its brim with hanging flowers, drying over the hearth and in the windows and from the ceiling.

When the flowers dried and withered or rotted in the rafters, Carhys could almost count the time passing by how many petals and leaves fell and littered the locked household holding her prisoner. With her mother gone she would wither there just like the rest of the flowers.

The orphanage had no idea how the girl had even managed to survive by the time guards had come by, on a whim no less. Though they did their best to nourish the withered vine that was this young child, she was always thirsty and always hungry, as though trying to make up for her time without. Matrons murmured harsh words over a husk they thought wasn’t listening. But in the dormitories and with all the other children, there were no more flowers.

Until the Garden came into her life. Refined women with perfume lingering about them as though they each were their own bouquet. They had welcomed Carhys as their newest member, and there would be others after her too. Each with their own chosen flower name and each with their own floral tattoo. The same mandala repeating upon each Flower, branding them each.

They shared skills, and food, and drink, and drugs. She learned how to be more than an orphaned street urchin, daughter of a whore. They were perhaps her first friends, and even more. Flowers brought joy, she had reasoned, it was true in her past and it had been true again. Though flowers are not all edible, or good for tonics and potions. Many leave a bad taste in the mouth, or worse yet, are toxic and even fatal. So true was the Garden. The Gardener himself was a butcher, hacking heads off the flowers for his vase and replacing and planting new ones. What choice could a flower do but become toxic in such an environment. The change was slow, unnoticeable even, but it happened all the same.