#isueda

After a while of not writing, I have been throwing down words for The Pirate's Reckoning WIP.

Isueda: She is a human who grew up on the outskirts of Ender Forest. To protect herself and her younger brother, Selwyn, their parents fed them incredibly small doses of poisons. As Isueda has grown up, she has become immune to most of them. But, since being separated from a young age from her brother, she isn’t so sure if he is in the same position. 

She has light blonde hair, sometimes mistaken as white as it is almost as pale as her skin. Her time in the school has forced her to shed a lot of baby weight and put on lean muscle. She is most practical at using a sword, but is slow compared to many others. The school has also taught her to be intelligent about the world around her—in the hopes she will find her brother again.

Sephonia: She is a nymph who was casted out by her people. An all female race, blessed with pregnancy from their Goddess Gaia. Sephonia was different to the others the moment she found her voice. She could call birds to her, speak to them as she sung meaningless words. Her family had never seen such power in another nymph, and worried over time as she also broke from their culture. 

Sephonia, like the other nymphs, has green-toned skin. She is quite dark, making the green act like it shimmers in the sun, sometimes. After being traded and close to execution, Sephonia found her new family at the school and hopes to hone her strange ability into something else. 

Ohen: A human from the Erend Marshes—she grew up among women who found magical abilities and non-humans disgusting. She knew from a young age she was special, like her Mother who could heal with her fingertips. Ohen had been forced to watch her Mother be burnt when she was found out, and took that opportunity to leave to the mainland. Her abilities were nothing special at the time, that is until she was found by the school. A small flame from her fingertips turned into a firestorm that would never burn her or those whom she willed it not to. 

Ohen began to grow horns from the moment she stepped into the school. She wondered if it was a curse—or just that her Mother was more than she seemed. She takes hold of her sexuality, something that was kept at bay back in her home, and uses it to her advantage. She gets out of training her physical abilities and uses it to sit in the kitchen, making friends with the cooks who come and go.

Fyk: Fyk is a fawn who sticks out. Everything about him is different. Unlike the rest of his species, he uses his litheness to get through obstacle courses. He can use a bow and arrow better than any other who has gone up against him. Some suggest he has been gifted with the ability of precision—Fyk suggests he is ‘just that good.’ His cockiness only goes so far, though. Despite making it his goal in life to be friends (or at least training partners) with Isueda, she will not give him a single well-intended smile yet. ‘Yet,’ he would say.

Drakon: Last but not least there is the Immortal. A species that have never ventured out from the Crimson Ruins. They were initially a remake of the cliche vampire, but became much more mysterious. Their abilities go far beyond just being Immortal. They are a shadow-phantom like being, never taking one true shape. Drakon, on the other hand, takes a humanoid shape and wears metal armour. That way, when someone sticks a sword in them*, and Drakon doesn’t die... it comes as a surprise.

*The Immortals are all non-gendered. Their voice is androgynous, some being more feminine and some more masculine. Drakon, to most, appears more masculine. They’re body, the voice, even the way they move. 

I've finished my second novella WIP. . . only one more to go. In celebration of this, here is the smallest snippet from the ending.

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‘What happens if you have all the runes back together?’

So I’ve seen a lot of other writblrs saying they want to follow people who have LGBT+ characters in their WIPs. So here is a list of the characters and their sexualities. 

Disclaimer 1: I am gay. I’d follow the definition of bisexual but I have never liked that word to describe me, so I prefer gay as an umbrella term.

Disclaimer 2: I hate romance. No matter the characters being in wlw, mlm, wlm etc relationships. I don’t ever purposely plan to put it in my writing unless it is so obvious that 2 characters should be together. 

Sephonia: Sephonia is my favourite character to write when it comes to romance. Mostly because she is asexual and I never feel like I need to force her to be overly romantic with someone, just because I know readers might want that. The nymphs don’t procreate, and they never find pleasure out of touch, and so Sephonia never has had the impulse to be sexually romantic with anyone else. If she were to fall in love, there is no doubt the only person she would be in a relationship with is Ohen.

Ohen: I’ve always worried that Ohen would fall into the ‘sexual bisexual’ trope that is universally hated. But that’s not necessarily how I’ve seen her. Ohen takes advantage of her own beauty to get what she wants. And, I don’t know, I’ve always seen power in that for her. Also, she is an absolute Goddess. (So yeah, she’s bisexual. She’s also in love with the cook throughout the novella.)

Pho: Pho is the cook. She’s this adorable petite woman who loves other women. We don’t see her much in the novella so I don’t get to show it as much as I’d want to, but it’s not like it’s completely hidden.

Drakon: Like the nymphs, The Immortals don’t actually breed... and they are a literal mist/phantom like being. Drakon is non-binary and uses ‘they/them’ pronouns. I’ve found it has been difficult using the pronouns in certain sentences, but I’m learning!

Fyk: Fyk is a fawn who is infatuated with women. In a good way. I’d like to think he’s a Peter Kavinsky. You know, super flirty, super obvious, super in love. He’s obviously in love with Isueda but like... they are different species so that would be wrong. (Here to a budding friendship!)

...and why I included it in my novella (kind of).

So it isn’t necessarily ‘white person saves one POC/POC country’ thing. It’s more of a ‘white person tries to save x minority but it fails because they suck at it.’ I include it to show that it doesn’t necessarily work in the way you often see it working in a lot of popular books. Anyway, lets get down to business:

Nora Bell (our first white character of interest). She grew up in a time where any creature who inhabited some form of magic wasn’t accepted in society. In some towns they were punished, in others it was more looked down upon. Nora set out in her early teenage years to purposely dabble in magic because she wasn’t afraid of it, like the rest of her people. She was a human, the most non-magical of all the creatures (in comparison to faeries, nymphs, fawn, and all that). So she dabbled in simple witch-like magic. She made concoctions that made her skin clear, that untangled her hair, that eased the pain of bruising.

Later, she begun to go further. She connected with higher beings, Gods and Goddesses of the world. There was one in particular, the one nymphs were born to, that took an interest in her. We’ll call her Mother Earth. Better known as Gaia. There came a time where Nora was finally able to harness true magic, not just simple concoctions. She found ways to speak to non-verbal creatures. She learnt languages just by drinking her potions. Nora could aid the villagers in farming and carrying heavy objects about without tiring for days. It was here they became suspicious. But it was also here Nora vowed to protect those like her. 

She was in her late 20s when she finally left the village for fear of persecution—but also to find a place to start her mission. On the West side of Ender Forest, she had her followers start building a mansion. Those followers grew as the word got out that she would save those cursed creatures. And so, the mansion grew. Nora set the final stone on her dais. And with that, she cast her two most important spells. The first, a protective barrier that hid the mansion and the surrounding clearing from those who weren’t like the rest. The second, she became ageless.