Abbelithe Olevera

Abbelithe Aletta Olevera

Abbelithe Olevera is a co-protagonist in the novel Green Thumb, Golden Tongue. She works as an aide to High Inquisitor Kozan Murano in the Central Court of Reisouth.

Appearance

Abbelithe has long, dark brown hair and a pale complexion with brown eyes. She stands at five feet, ten inches tall, a height that she seems to have never properly grown into as she appears to often make herself as small as possible to avoid attracting attention to herself. She often bites her lips out of anxiety.
Abbelithe favors dresses or skirts and blouses in neutral colors. She always wears long sleeves, even in the most scorching of summer heat, to cover her Mark of the Banished, a special tattoo given to those who are banished from Irocra. Her long hair usually falls neatly down her back, though she may also wear it in a simple braid or tied up. She has two piercings in both ears that are normally filled with simple studs. She has the sign of Siempre tattooed on her right shoulder, though it is rarely seen in public because of how she dresses. She wears a pair of dark-rimmed glasses that slip to the tip of her nose when she reads auras. 

Mental

Abbelithe is notably quiet, taking her time to consider her words before speaking, and often avoids situations involving others if she can. For this reason she can sometimes be seen as snobbish by those who don't know the truth of her story. Being in large groups of people causes her great anxiety.
Those who take the time to actually get to know Abbelithe will find a young woman with an insatiable curiosity and a fascination with the cultural history of Leland. She spends most of her free time reading. She often struggles to understand sarcasm and certain styles of humor.
Abbelithe is devoutly religious, worshipping the Indorai goddess Siempre as a thanks for saving her from her abusive situation, though by unorthodox means. She believes that her sentence of a lifetime in service to the Central Court in Deamei is her price to pay for Siempre's mercy, and therefore bears it with no ill will.
Abbelithe dreams of traveling Leland, but deep down she is terrified of being released from her service and having to actually make choices for herself.

History

Early Life

Abbelithe Olevera was born in Tolercia as the third of eight children to Isobelle Olevera and Lazar Olevera. Abbelithe's early childhood was one of wealth and luxury, growing up in a politically and commercially connected family. She was taught the the world was her oyster so long as she abided by the social norms of her station.
Trouble began brewing for Abbelithe as she got older. Her siblings manifested their enmanities around her, Power of Flux as was expected from the family's pedigree, but she still showed no sign of possessing an enmanity of any kind herself. Most just assumed her to be a late bloomer, but as she grew into her preteens her father began to grow aggravated by her lack of enmanity and the embarrassment it would cause the family if she turned out to be a null.
Abbelithe's parents hired enmantic tutors in an attempt to coax the enmanity out of her. One such tutor, who would be her last, took a different approach with her. Traditionally, Olevera efflucists practiced calligraphic Flux as it was considered the most refined discipline, so most of her tutors had attempted to teach her the use of spell script. This tutor chose to help her see Flux from the perspective of an artist rather than a writer, trying to teach her skills with a paintbrush rather than a pen. When Lazar discovered this unorthodox approach being used with his daughter he was livid, claiming that an imagofist was more of an embarrassment to the family than a null. He fired the tutor immediately and black listed him so he would never find another job among the wealthy of Tolercia. As for Abbelithe, he slapped her across the face and declared that such worthless trash as her could never be his daughter.

Confusion

Lazar took Abbelithe's confused stare and silence as stupidity and stormed off, but in reality she was stunned by the sudden manifestation of her enmanity at the age of eleven. She wasn't aware of it at the time, but the blurry shape she saw hovering around her father was an aura. She would never say a word about it to anyone for fear that it would just be another example of something being wrong with her, but it would eventually become both a saving grace and a curse.
It was at this point that Lazar's treatment of Abbelithe became openly abusive, both verbally and occasionally physically. Isobelle seemed not to care of her husband's treatment of their daughter and Abbelithe's siblings, conditioned essentially from birth to exploit the weaknesses of others, began to treat her as an outsider. She was less respected than the servants who looked at her with pity in their eyes.
Abbelithe withdrew from family life, holing herself up in her room and leaving only when the house was empty or in the middle of the night while everyone was asleep. She wasn't permitted to go out in public with the family, and gradually the outside world forgot her name and her face. She took solace in books she found around the house, eventually risking sneaking into her father's study to steal rare and collectible tomes from the shelves to read and return before he could notice their absence.

Finding Siempre

To Abbelithe's surprise, her father had many books about Indorai despite only being religious as necessary to maintain his public persona. Most were very old and were likely only purchased for their monetary value rather than due to a religious belief. What Abbelithe found within these books contradicted much about what she had been taught about the gods, particularly Siempre. These old books spoke of a firm but merciful goddess who fought for justice in the name of those who couldn't seek it on their own, not the agent of pure chaos and destruction she was portrayed as in the teachings at the Menudo temple. It was these books that Abbelithe would grow to treasure most, not wanting to return them to her father's study.
When she had read through the religious texts that she was able to understand, Abbelithe was left with many questions that she couldn't ask of anyone in the house. One night, after everyone had gone to sleep, she took one of the old books and snuck out of the house to the Siempre temple. She had been there a handful of times in her life for various religious events, but entering the temple on this night felt like an entirely different experience. She became transfixed with the obsidian statue in the antechamber, unable to take her eyes away from the sapphire ones that stared back at her. Sister Chela would be the one to discover her in this position.
Abbelithe at first found herself unable to speak to the woman, but after being taken gently by the hand to the kitchen for some tea and gentle one-sided conversation she broke down crying over the kindness she hadn't experienced in some time. The two talked late into the night and before the sun came up Abbelithe would perform her first devotion in a temple of Siempre.
For the next three years Abbelithe would spend multiple nights a week at the temple of Siempre, her devotion to the goddess growing with each passing day. Her first celebration of Misnosiempran as a secret disciple of Siempre would cement her decision to join the Sisterhood of the Chaotic Mother when she became sixteen.

Siempre's Intervention

Though Abbelithe had kept her devotion a secret for years, everything changed a few months before her sixteenth birthday when her father discovered her secret worship of Siempre. Lazar immediately flew into a rage over his disappointment of a daughter worshipping the evil goddess of the Indorai pantheon. She scrambled away from him, whispering pleas to Siempre. This angered him further and he lunged toward her. She put out a hand and closed her eyes to brace for what was to come.
Instead there was a thump that could be heard throughout the house. Abbelithe trembled, waiting for the attack to come, but when she opened her eyes she saw her father lying unmoving on her bedroom floor. Her family, having heard the commotion, came to her bedroom door. It was her mother who entered to discover that Lazar was very much dead. She backed away from Abbelithe, fear in her eyes as she cursed her daughter as a witch and locked the door behind her. Abbelithe was left alone with the body until authorities arrived and arrested her.
What followed was a flurry of investigations and interrogations that terrified Abbelithe. The outcome of the investigations and an autopsy with no indicated cause of death led to the conclusion that his aura had been extinguished, thus ending his life. The interrogations worsened, demanding to know if she had prayed to Siempre to grant her such malevolent powers so as to murder her own father, but Abbelithe was more fascinated by the knowledge that the clouds she had seen hovering around people since she was eleven weren't a sign of something wrong with her--they were supposed to be there because she was a visaurant. Not just a visaurant, but a transaurant as well. Siempre had answered her prayers, giving her the ability to escape her abuse in the most unexpected of ways.
While all of this was significant to Abbelithe, it made little difference in the grand scheme of the trial. Lazar Olevera had been a politically-connected man, and his murder would be avenged by the system, even if the person responsible was the fifteen year old daughter he had abused for years. The trial was expedited and, as was expected, she was sentenced to death for her supposed crimes.
Abbelithe's only friends in all of this were the Sisters of Siempre. They were allowed to see her in jail as religious counsel, but they played an even bigger role in ensuring her case was properly reported to authorities in Deamei as was required by law when a minor was involved. Had they not, the case would have been swept under the rug and Abbelithe surely executed.
Kozan Murano, High Inquisitor of the Court of Reisouth in Deamei, stepped in to review the case and was very much appalled by how Irocran authorities had handled the situation. He was unable to reverse the verdict--such a thing could only be done by unanimous vote of the High Inquisitors and the High Inquisitor of Irocra had been a friend of Lazar--but he was able to negotiate a new sentence: a life in service of the greater good and banishment from Irocra. Before leaving for Deamei with Inquisitor Murano, Abbelithe was tattooed with the Mark of the Banished so the world would know she could never set foot in Irocra again.

A Better Life

Abbelithe could not have imagined in her wildest dreams what the move to Deamei City would mean for her life. Though Inquisitor Murano was required only to escort her to Deamei and deposit her in children's housing, he and his wife instead welcomed Abbelithe into their home, treating her as one of their own. They hired the best tutors out of their own pocket to help make up for her lapse in education and sought as many ways as they could to foster her understanding of her enmanity. They took her home to Reisouth on holidays and provided her the kind of family she hadn't had in years.
Gradually Abbelithe began to grow out of her shell, though being around people was something she would never fully be comfortable with. She remained devout to Siempre and the Muranos would accompany her to the Indorai compound in Deamei City until she felt comfortable walking through the city on her own.

A Life of Service

Shortly after her nineteenth birthday, Abbelithe's life sentence in the service of the greater good began. She was expected to use her enmanity to ensure proper deliverance of justice, a heavy burden on a young woman who had been cursed for that very thing, but she handled the weight on her shoulders with dignity. It was what she felt she deserved, believing the incident with her father had been entirely her own fault despite those closest to her trying to convince her otherwise. As she became more adept at reading auras she was able to be of more use to the High Inquisitor, sometimes even being sent to work temporarily in one of the other courts of Deamei when requested.
As when she was younger, the Muranos continued to support Abbelithe financially. They paid for a decent apartment where she would be safe from those who might mean her harm, the kind of apartment her monthly stipend from the Court of Reisouth would never cover. Though Abbelithe was beyond grateful for their help, she felt guilty accepting it and refused to ask anything else of them.
In her mid-twenties Abbelithe was accepted into Ilium University as a part time student in provincial relations. Though she could never hope to leave Deamei and explore Leland on her own due to the conditions of her sentence, she found the interworking of the confederacy fascinating. It also made her more useful to Inquisitor Murano.
Abbelithe remained private in her personal life, finding more joy in the books littering her apartment than going out. She had only aquaintances, mostly those she interacted with at work, and often faced the stigma created by rumors about the heinous crimes she had committed to be in her current predicament, but she never let that get to her.
In a most unexpected turn of events, Abbelithe found herself falling for the granddaughter of the Muranos, Mariya Tano. She was transfixed as much by the younger woman's charms as she did her melodic harp melodies. The two saw each other only a few times a year when the Muranos travelled home, but they kept in contact by letters. Mariya didn't much care about keeping their relationship a secret, having weathered many a family scandal before, but Abbelithe was mortified by the idea of creating a scandal for the man who had saved her life. Mariya, thankfully, respected Abbelithe's wishes and the two continued to see each other in secret.

Novel Appearances (Spoilers)

Green Thumb, Golden Tongue

At the opening of the novel, Abbelithe struggles with the fact that she is coming upon the eleventh anniversary of her sentencing and that she will soon be eligible to submit a petition to have her sentence commuted. Those around her insists she should do it, but with High Inquisitor Montay Cabrera being a close confidant of her father, it makes the required unanimous vote of the High Inquisitors unlikely. Mariya, her long-distance and secret girlfriend, arrives in Deamei with the surprising news that she has been accepted into Ilium University, giving Abbelithe even more to worry about in terms of the reality of their relationship.
The Central Court of Reisouth ends up handling the case of Breydon Canmore, a herbator twice gifted with Power of Persuasion who has been charged with misuse of his golden tongue. Abbelithe struggles to properly reads his aura and suggests that High Inquisitor Murano allow his community service to be served by way of letting her study it. Breydon accepts the proposal and the two unexpectedly end up connecting.
Breydon relocates to Deamei to both attend Ilium University and complete his community service while his case continues to be investigated. Abbelithe finds an unexpected friend in Breydon and the two begin spending time together outside of the aura study sessions.
Things go bad for Abbelithe with she ends up caught in a feud between Breydon and some Ilium students from Irocra who personally know her family. Breydon uses his golden tongue to protect her from their verbal assault and snow projectiles, making her a witness to the violation of his probation. She ends up being called to the stand to testify during the hearing, and, through a misunderstanding of Breydon's motivations, ends up using his aura to hurt him.
Through a combination of support from the Muranos and a conversation she had with Breydon prior to their falling out, Abbelithe decides that she will petition for commutation of her sentence despite the overwhelming odds against her. She eventually discovers a loophole in the procedure to buy herself some time, only for her bluff to be called by her estranged sister Alisdara Olevera. Alisdara, it turns out, is also visaurant but has kept it a secret from the family because of what happened to Abbelithe. In an effort to mend the rift between them, Alisdara ends up casting the vote for the Central Court of Irocra, granting Abbelithe her freedom.
Abbelithe, suspicious of the incident that landed Breydon in jail, enlists Alisdara to help her interrogate High Inquisitor Cabrera. It turns out that Breydon had happened to be caught in the crossfire of Cabrera seeking to uphold Abbelithe's service to the court. Alisdara reveals that she has proof that Cabrera had been having an affair with their father and ends up using the information to blackmail him into releasing Breydon.
Unsure of what the future holds for her but excited by the possibilities, Abbelithe promises to visit Breydon in Cesland as he promises to never return to Deamei.

Enmanity
Power of Aura

Date of Birth

8th of Enary, 1245

Year of Birth

1245 SU 27 Years old

Parents

Eyes

Brown

Hair

Long, dark brown

Belief/Deity

Indorai , Siempre