calmomile | info

NAME: Adeline Mayou

AGE: 18

GENDER: Female

RACE: Witch

OCCUPATION:

Hedge/Green Witch - A magic practitioner with middling skill and authority, Mayou's most important job in her new station as an official witch is to keep an eye on unusual weather phenomena in her city. If an elemental spirit is acting out or broken free of binding agreements, wrestling the spirit back under control is her responsibility, as is investigating the cause... including addressing the source, if evidence points towards interference from some of the more unsavory schools of magic.
Pastry Chef - The rent isn't gonna pay itself. Living in a city is expensive! Mayou's a part-timer in a frou-frou upscale restaurant, putting together desserts for the local gourmets or prepping ingredients. She's not exactly enthused about grinding away in a 9-5, but the pay is good and she's left alone to her own devices unless some mega hipster requests a specific dessert that requires her (grudging) attention.
Familiar Wrangling - Feeding the magical equivalent of city pigeons a bunch of scraps bit her in the ass once every familiar in a mile radius got wind of a new witch/meal ticket settling in. Mayou complains long and loud about herding them around as an unnecessary chore, but truthfully doesn't do much to dissuade their company. City life is less lonely when you have a cascade of critters constantly underfoot, after all!

APPEARANCE:

Stature - Petite. Tops out at an underwhelming 5'2" when not sneakily trying to make herself seem taller with boots. Slender build.
Clothing - (ref. ref 2.) Long, slightly-too-large sweaters, scarves, slim fit jeans, ankle boots... pretty modern stuff. Prefers to wear bold colors and patterns.

PERSONALITY:

Introvert - Solitude is a common trait among green witches. Mayou keeps to herself, only attending large get-togethers with much initial reluctance before gradually warming up to the idea of socializing. Would 110% choose a cozy date with tea and a book over getting white girl wasted at the club.
Studious - A lover of deep knowledge, arcane tomes and cookbooks alike get devoured with a startling amount of gusto. The extent of a witch's power is restrained only by ignorance, after all.
Ambitious - Mayou is naturally inclined to be an overachiever (where her hobbies are concerned at least), rarely ever settling for the bare minimum when something truly fantastic is possible with clever planning and hard work. That does backfire now and then, but getting your eyebrows scorched off for the umpteenth time tends to help desensitize you to fear of failure.
Perceptive - Cut enough deals with spooky nature ghosts and you learn to recognize when some little shit is trying to take you for a ride. Mayou is used to figuring out hidden motives behind behavior - whether human or spirit - viewing manipulation attempts/emotional outbursts as an interesting puzzle that needs solving. Just sayin', don't throw a tantrum around her unless you want to get treated like this week's sudoku.
Practical - No nonsense allowed during Mayou work mode hours - also known in the business as do no harm, but take no shit. A habit born from the need for strict timekeeping to maintain her study schedule, she doesn't have much patience for dancing around a subject needlessly. Give it to her straight and she'll be just as candid in return.
Laissez-Faire - Literally: "allow to do". In other words, going with the flow, letting things unravel naturally, so on. In some ways it's just laziness with more intention behind it - choosing when and where to Give A Shit™ if the stakes are high enough or her interest is suitably piqued. After all, one's time and attention are finite resources.

BACKGROUND:

Family - Middle child with two brothers, and (unfortunately) the token introvert in a pack of wacky woohoo maximum overdrive extroverts. Has a rocky relationship with her parents and brothers mostly due to getting completely steamrolled unless she yelled really damn loud about her wants and needs, which contributed to gradually drifting away from them over time. Mayou loves her family, just from afar with earplugs on.
Academics - Mayou enrolled in her apprenticeship at the tender age of six, decided she liked having a questionable amount of agency over her free time, and jumped ship from her chaotic family home the moment she got the chance and was old enough to be assigned a remote little cottage out in the middle of asscrack nowhere. It... explains a lot about why she's not super keen on a social life tbh.

ABILITIES:

Green Magic - Manipulation of elemental energies by partnering with spirits of the land, sea, and sky to borrow their power for a time. Mayou's most skilled in precise weather manipulation, but can pull off multipurpose parlor tricks like warming a beverage in a cup between her hands until it's steaming hot, creating small sparks/cinders to light fires, hastening fruiting plants into ripening faster, and so on. Not quite at the point where she can toss lightning around at a whim, but a year or two of hard study should just push her over the finish line, if not close to it.
Pacts - The test of a witch's mettle is to negotiate partnerships with various elementals to increase the scale and variety of spellwork available. Spirits of the hearth to warm your home, of rain to keep your garden flourishing, of zephyrs to dry your laundry or guide a sailing ship safely to harbor... all perfectly possible if the right spirit is approached. The caveat of forging a pact is that the most ancient spirits always come hand in hand with protracted haggling that can take years - if not decades - to settle. Calling down dazzling displays of falling stars or quelling a monsoon with spoken word is the hallmark of a powerful witch and wily negotiator.
Elemental Alignment - A side effect of spending most of one's time in the company of spirits – caused by a layer of raw elemental magic over the body that grows in potency as a witch ages and gains knowledge. The most accomplished witches gradually take on properties of the spirits they're most strongly aligned with.
Hexes and Curses - Serious business! Offensive spellcasting is notorious for backlash that can't be fully mitigated, which means being a massive asshole without proper cause tends to be a self correcting problem in apprentices when they end up zapping themselves just as much as their target. Mayou's curses are brief but very targeted in how she gets her point across. (i.e. getting every door and window in your house frozen firmly shut when you have an important meeting that morning - good luck!)

WEAKNESSES:

Borrowed Power - The greatest workings of green magic rely heavily on the cooperation of strong-willed elementals. While a stone or wood spirit can usually be trusted to stay the course when bound in a long lasting pact, fire and wind spirits are much more dangerous with their mercurial shifts in mood and/or capricious tendencies in general! Delicate handling is mandatory in these partnerships to ensure day-to-day business isn't upended in a fit of pique. In the end, none of the strength in green magic is truly, permanently yours; everything borrowed must one day be returned.
Fragile - At her core, Mayou's just a regular human that made good friends with a handful of nature spirits. Green magic is all about slow growth and careful guidance... which really sucks if she's getting jumped in an alley somewhere.
Lead Time - Whipping up a microburst isn't a process that can just turn on and off at the flip of a switch, you know! Instead of burning through stores of innate magic to cast her spells, Mayou pays in time and knowledge; the time to set up all the pieces beforehand, and the knowledge of how to order each link in the chain to get the result she wants once the 'fuse' is lit.