Freya for mermay! This is an old one but I removed the background 1. Because it looked gross and 2. It feels more isolating.

@vikinglumberjack Thanks for the ask!

45. How would they describe their own appearance?

Here are my other apprentices in snowy weather! All handling much better than Tabitha did. (Left to right: Winona, Zira, Katarina with Masha on her lap, and Freya. 

Winona was trying to throw a snowball passed Freya, at Asra. It did not work. Also their aesthetic is 100% early 2000s Barbie movies. I don’t usually draw Freya in red or warm colored clothes, but I think it looks pretty nice! 

Another thing of note is Zira and Masha are pretty used to a cold climate, as their dimension is pretty cold. Masha is just wearing gloves and a scarf for the aesthetic.

@arcana-echoes

So many of my apprentices didn’t originally have an “Aunt”, Alessa’s just worked out on accident lol. Some of these stories ignore a bit of canon.

Alessa: As stated previous, Alessa’s aunt was her connection to learning magic. Her Aunt, Leonor, left Padr to pursue magic after being exposed to it in a positive light while traveling. Her family didn’t want to keep in touch, unfortunately, but sometimes Alessa and her would find ways to communicate without it being intercepted by her parents. Leonor was very well respected in Padr until she got into magic. She was known for being caring, compassionate, and a wonderful baker. Alessa and her would get along great and Leonor would often babysit her when she was little before leaving Padr when Alessa was eight. 

When Alessa left Padr to pursue magic as well she went straight to Vesuvia to find her Leonor. All that she would find, however, was an abandoned shop with her things still inside. After asking a few locals she learned of Leonor’s sudden death a few months prior and broke down in tears. Alessa decided to take up running the shop in her memory.

Tabitha: She did not have an aunt, or even a family friend that was connected to the shop. Tabitha just ended up in Vesuvia along her travels and decided it would be a good place to settle down for a while. Plus, she heard the city had a very cute procurator. ;) She came upon the shop almost by accident and learned the current owner was ready to retire, so she spent a few months learning how to run the shop properly before taking over completely. 

Freya: For Freya the “Aunt” was a family friend. After Erika (the “aunt”) had heard that Freya was planning on leaving the tribe she offered for Freya to come to Vesuvia and stay with her. Before leaving the tribe, Erika was very much like everyone else there. When Freya was younger, Erika had believed that her parents were doing the right thing in sheltering her so much. Not many people left the tribe anyway, so she wouldn’t have to worry about being on her own. However, she did change her mind after leaving for herself and seeing the disservice Freya’s parents were really doing, even if Freya really would stay in the village her whole life.

Erika would eagerly take Freya under her wing in her young adult life, and they became much closer than they had been in the tribe. Freya owes a lot to Erika teaching her how the real world works, not just the bubble her tribe had put her in. Eventually Erika would pass away at the age of 76, which didn’t come as a surprise and it allowed Freya the closure to speak with her one last time. By that point she had considered Erika an aunt. Erika had left the shop to Freya who has been looking after it ever since. 

Winona: This was actually Winona’s half-aunt, as it was their mothers half-sister, though that didn’t mean anything was different. Enola was her name and she left the tribe shortly after her sister and brother-in-law went missing, in order to try and find them. She would be the inspiration for Winona doing the same when they became a teenager. Winona didn’t remember much about her as they were young by the time she left, and they would only remember stories people would tell about her. According to them Enola was very strong, and her magic was nearly as powerful as Dakota’s. 

Winona met with them a few times in Vesuvia, as they were working on ships at the time and frequently came to Vesuvia. When they felt they were ready, they went to stay with Enola. She left Winona in charge of the shop one night while she left to continue looking for clues on Dakota and Nahuel’s disappearance, but her ship became lost at sea after a horrible storm. Winona began to feel their family was cursed and has reoccurring nightmares of this happening to them, especially after they had a child. 

Zira: To get to the point, Zira had absolutely no one in this dimension that she knew, much less family or close friends who would give her a shop. After crossing over into this dimension she stumbled around to find a place to stay. She came upon an old abandoned magic shop and decided to buy it. She had no concept of money in this world, so she basically just bought the whole shop in cash as she threw a bag of gold at the person she bought it from. For a while, though, she had forgotten she bought a shop as well as a place to live, so it wasn’t until about a month later that she realized she would need to start making money and tried her hand in shopkeeping. 

Katarina: Similar to many other apprentices, this “aunt” was a friend of the family rather than her real aunt. This friend was Gabriella, and she had known the family for a while; since Kat was very young. Since Kat lived in Vesuvia, she was very familiar with the shop and would often go to spend time with Gabriella when she had free time. When she got old enough Gabriella allowed Kat to use her shop for her sculptures, since she had a giant basement she didn’t really use. She was always supportive of Kat and her art, and would even sell some of her pieces.