So, the writer in my attic, K Orion Fray, sends out a weekly writing inspiration e-mail, which includes a writing prompt.

And I used the generator inventrix made me for Addergoole/Fae Apoc, so:
The character is female
5 ft. 5 in. tall.
slim athletic build.
shoulder blades perfectly straight light brown hair.
greengrey eyes.
light skin.
posture is notable in some fashion

Aria strolled down the streets of what passes for a downtown in Burchester, NY. She’d been here less than a month – moved here for work, for a dream job in terms of pay, benefits, duties, co-workers – pretty much everything except location, which just happens to be in the rustiest of rust belt cities, in the coldest of Great Lakes areas, in the armpit of America.

And that was fine, because she didn’t want all that much to do with her family anyway. Go… Orange, or Red, or Slightly Reddish-Orange, or whatever the college colors were around here. Go being in Burchester and not Springfield.

Burchester was weird, though, and she was never quite sure if it was because she was new, or because the city was just weird. Something about it got under your skin.

Like the street art. Someone had put a lot of money into this bus stop, the one shaped like an umbrella, and that was lovely. But somehow, it never seemed to quite look right. Any angle you looked at it, it looked just a little bit off.

Not everything was creepy – except in that city-that-was-past-its-prime way, like these sad flower boxes. Maybe sometime, once, they’d held flowers. Now they held trash. Aria picked up a few pieces and dropped them in the nearby garbage can, trying to ignore the slimy feeling they left of her fingers.

And some things were beautiful. She rounded the corner – she wasn’t even all that sure where she was going – and came across a rose garden, striped across three acres in the most brilliant rainbow of floral beauty she had ever seen.

Aria took in the scent. Maybe Burchester wasn’t all that weird. Maybe she just shouldn’t have moved in in February.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/719502.html. You can comment here or there.

Jason Walker
Media Arts & Technology

Jason is the music. He’s known so all his life. He feels the music in ways that nobody else seems to understand; he can compose songs which seem to change people’s emotional state, seem to change the weather, sometimes, if he hits just the right note.

It’s not your typical psychic power – at least, it’s not something he’d ever heard anyone else talk about. He assumed, back in high school, that it was “just” a talent with music and lyrics, nothing “special.”

Then he saw a poster for the Oak & Rowan group, and things started becoming a little more clear to him. He was expecting a bunch of new-age mumbo-jumbo, but figured it was at least good for meeting new people. What he got was Jo, who ran the group, sitting down in private with him and having a two-hour conversation about the forces of the world.

There was no question after that: he kept coming back to Oak & Rowan. He met Craig there, who liked to pretend to be a werewolf on the weekends but, more importantly, who played the guitar and the violin, and Craig introduced him to Raven, and that’s how he ended up at Raven’s group, drinking beer out in the swamp on Thursdays and passing around an old guitar.

Jason is tallish and pretty, 5’11” and skinny, with blue-black hair in curls just past his chin and blue-green eyes. He’s paler than his hair color would suggest, and prettier than his near-gauntness would seem to allow.

When he’s not making music, he’s a big fan of climbing things – the taller, the better.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/718544.html. You can comment here or there.