Zevi of Swifts
Zevi of Swifts (a.k.a. Zev, Wolfdancer, Wolf.)
Gadianton and Adaki's mother.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Zevi is a Spector, a type of ghost. In the waking world, she can appear as a white wolf with glowing Pixie green eyes. She can sometimes speak to a person's mind, depending on how open they are to it and whether or not they possess any magical talent. She can make all sounds that a wolf can, and can choose if it is heard aloud or in someone's mind. She appears to be solid, but does not actually have any affect on the physical world-- so, she's not see-through, but when she walks there are not footprints, and you cannot feel her if you reach out to touch her. Your hand just goes through her, which is pretty weird.
In a dream or in the mind-world, Zevi is much more real. She can be touched, she can affect the world around her, and she is able to appear in her true form as a Pixie, although she rarely does. Her Pixie form is bedraggled, desperate, with tangled hair, shadowed eyes, and usually tears on her face, but anger and hatred in her eyes. She is terrifying.
Body Features
Wolf- She is a Prairie Wolf, which look similar to maned wolves but a bit bigger. Very tall, long, elegant legs. She has alabaster white fur that is always perfect, never dirty, never a hair out of place.
Pixie- She is about 5' 5'' tall, tall for a Pixie woman, with pale skin and a slender build. She was a dancer, and so she looks a bit like a ballerina, small but very strong and flexible. She has long, elegant legs as a Pixie as well as a wolf.
Facial Features
Wolf- she has a beautiful wolf face, slender, bright white, with even brighter green Pixie eyes.
Pixie- her Pixie face is also beautiful, gentle and delicate, with a small nose and of course big green eyes. She has freckles across her cheeks and nose, and short, bob-length hair that is more pale yellow than blonde (just like Adaki's... or, his hair is like hers, I guess). It is straight and fine, with a slight wave pattern.
Identifying Characteristics
Wolf - her white fur and green eyes.
Pixie - her yellow hair and her height/long legs.
Special abilities
Pixie magic- teleportation, telekinesis, bonds with close blood relatives, night vision, and projection (using Pixie magic to shoot out bolts or create shields)
Mindwalking- hearing others' thoughts, detecting lies and truths, entering others' minds and seeing their memories or dreams, controlling others' minds, resisting mind control from other sources
I'm thinking maybe her abilities are what allowed her to linger behind after she died. She kind of... retreated into the mind-world when she was dying, and refused to move on until she saw her sons safe together. Which... didn't happen. So she's been fighting against actually letting go of her life ever sense, to her detriment. She's learned how to project herself into the real world from the mind-world, but she can't stay there for long, because she doesn't belong there anymore. She doesn't really belong anywhere in the living world, anymore, but she resents that. She... resents everything.
Apparel & Accessories
Wolf- none
Pixie- she wears typical Pixie clothes, fitted soft cloth in muted greens and browns, with wrappings around her arms that go up to her hands and wrap around the thumbs/palm. She wears soft leather hunting boots as well.
Specialized Equipment
A Pixie double-headed spear. A white prairie wolf tail dangles from one end of the spear, her trophy from her first solo hunt. It is a spear that was used for hunting as well as dancing, so both ends weigh the same. The shaft is highly decorated.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Zevi was a Pixie born on the Windthrown Prairie into the Swift tribe. She had one older sister named Abihail. Zevi and Abihail lived pretty normal Pixie lives for their childhood, traveling with their tribe, learning to sing and dance, hunt and sew, etc. As Zevi reached adulthood, she began to realize she had abilities extending beyond the typical Pixie powers. She was a Mindwalker, with the ability to hear thoughts and even see into others' minds and visit their dreams. Mindwalkers in Pixie tradition are seen as leaders sent to the people to guide them spiritually, emotionally, and mentally. Zevi was sent away from her tribe to a secluded, hidden village deep in the Prairie to learn about her powers (from Pixies who had learned from writings of generations of other Pixies but had never met a real Mindwalker before, because they are so rare) and train for this new role. Poor Zevi did not want to be any kind of leader, she just wanted to be a flag dancer and a hunter. At first she tried her best to do as was expected of her, but eventually she buckled under the pressure of misguided teachers and her own self-doubt and anxieties. She ran away from the Pixies, fleeing to one of the Settler towns. She was roped into working at a tavern there as a waitress, and was paid badly and treated worse, but she was too afraid to go back to the Pixies. After a hard year or so, she met Lord Josef Drache, a fiery estate owner who was intrigued by her "exotic" Pixie beauty. He brought her to his estate in the far East of the Prairie, and kept her a bit like a pet for a couple of years. He was selfish and abusive, but he also showered her with gifts and vague promises of marriage, confusing her. During all of this, Zevi also struggled with her powers. She tried to stifle them, ignore them, but that only made things more difficult for her. She would have crippling migraines, which often brought her to Paul Heilend, the healer who lived on the estate with his wife, Moriah and their baby son, Neil.
One day, some mysterious men showed up at Lord Drache's door. They were Wizards of the Vaults, and they told him that Zevi was a Mindwalker, a magical being too dangerous to stay with him on the estate. Lord Drache wasn't too heartbroken by this, he had been getting a bit bored of her anyway and was ready to move on. He told her the men wanted to take her to a "finishing school" of sorts, to help her learn to blend in to Windthrown society better once they were married. Zevi, being a Mindwalker, knew he was lying to her, but she went anyway, because she had also realized how horrible Josef was and she thought she would simply run away from this school just like she had from the Pixie one. She underestimated the Wizards.
They took her to the Vaults, and did horrible experiments on her. When they found out she was pregnant, they talked about how "useful" her baby would be to their research. Zevi was horrified by this idea, and with great effort she managed to plan and execute a daring escape from the vaults towards the end of her pregnancy.
Zevi was going to try and find her old tribe and beg them to take her back, but she went into labor out on the Prairie and so she went to the only place she knew for sure there were kind people- the Heilend's house, back on the Drache Estate. Paul and Moriah helped her deliver twin boys, who she named Gadianton and Adaki. Exhausted and already physically compromised from her escape, Zevi did not survive long after giving birth, but she begged Paul passionately to keep her sons together. Paul promised her he would.
After Zevi died, her spirit should have gone to the afterlife, but she refused to. Her spirit hovered back, watching her sons anxiously, waiting for them. In this fragile state, she witnessed Paul break his promise. When they were weaned, Adaki stayed at the Drache Estate to be raised as Lord Drache's heir, and Gadianton was sent away to live with her tribe, the Swifts. Paul did this because Gadianton developed bright green, Pixie eyes, and Lord Drache threatened to kill him on multiple occasions. Zevi could not see this through her rage and grief. Pixie families are meant to stay together. All her problems began because her family, her older sister, sent her away. Siblings are meant to stay together. Zevi agonized and obsessed and grew angrier and angrier over her percieved betrayal, and the power of her emotions changed her into a Specter. A ghost. A spirit of the Prairie, with only one goal- keep her sons together.
Education
Zevi was taught how to use her Pixie abilities well, and she was able to project her powers and learned to do that as well. She was trained to be a hunter as well as a flag-dancer, until her Mindwalker abilities surfaced and cut that training short. She received some basic education about Mindwalking from scrolls and second-hand Pixie teachers, and then later in the Vaults she learned a bit more from the Wizards and also from her own experimentation and desperate learning on the fly so that she could escape.
Employment
Flag-dancer, hunter, Mindwalker sage, waitress (and unwilling prostitute), trophy girlfriend (if that can be a job)
Accomplishments & Achievements
She escaped from the Vaults of the Wizards and kept her babies away from them.
Failures & Embarrassments
Running away from the Pixies because she could not live up to their expectations for her.
Mental Trauma
Leaving her home and her people and being thrust into Windthrown culture was very, very hard. She didn't speak Windthrown, she was taken advantage of, and then she was basically picked up by Drache and treated like a sex pet. And then, after all that, she was taken to the Vaults and used as a lab rat, and no one came for her, she had to save herself. And then, after giving birth and dying, her one dying wish was (in her mind) ignored and her precious sons separated from each other.
Morality & Philosophy
Now, Zevi is a cynic. No one can be trusted, especially Windthrowns. You have to learn to do things on your own, and not rely on anyone else, or else you are vulnerable. And being vulnerable is the worse way to be. Also, siblings should stay together. Always.
Taboos
Separating siblings.
Talking about her past.
Showing her true form (she usually takes the form of a white wolf now).
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
She is wracked with agony every moment for the loss of her family, her life as she wanted it to be and the life she wanted for her sons. She wants her sons to be reunited at all costs, because she is convinced they will not survive otherwise.
Savvies & Ineptitudes
Savvies-- she is adept at navigating the mind-world, entering other minds and browsing through people's memories or participating in their dreams. She can communicate this way, or sometimes she is able to communicate to people's minds when they are awake.
Ineptitudes-- she is a specter now, so she's not alive. She doesn't progress, learn, or understand the way that she did when she was alive. She is kind of trapped in one state of mind, constantly, and has serious tunnel vision. She has one mission and literally cannot care about anything or anyone else.
Personality Quirks
When she is angry or upset, in the mind-world, sometimes Zevi begins to slip out of her wolf-form and into her Pixie-form. She flickers back and forth rapidly, or may briefly be Pixie, and then switch back to being a wolf. This only happens in the mind-world. In the physical world, she can only manifest as a wolf.
She has a habit of just... staring at you.
Social
Family Ties
Her parents and her older sister, Abihail, part of the Swift tribe. They were sad that she had to go away to learn to be a sage but not sad enough to allow her to stay even though she didn't want to go. Zevi never saw them again after that, and she felt like they abandoned her as she went through so much fear and pain and no one ever came to help her. Note for me-- Abihail did feel the pain of her sister, because they have a Bond, but she knew her sister had run away and thought that Zevi did not want her help, or she would have come and asked. Maybe not the best older sister, but she did try to raise Gadianton as best as she could. Zevi saw Abihail taking care of her son but was just bitter about it. She wanted to raise Gadianton. Abihail did not deserve that privilege, in Zevi's mind.
Religious Views
Zevi is Pixie and believed in the Pixie gods/goddesses/traditions. Now, she mostly just believes in herself and her own power. And she knows that there is an afterlife, because she is actively avoiding it. But she doesn't really have real faith in anything anymore.
Social Aptitude
Zevi was painfully shy and anxious. She hated speaking in front of others. The only thing she could do with confidence in front of a crowd was dance, and that only with a group. She wanted to please, and had a hard time saying no or standing up for herself. She was sweet and kind and innocent and naive.
Mannerisms
As a wolf, Zevi tends to stare intensely. She's a ghost so she doesn't need to blink, so sometimes she just doesn't. As a Pixie, she is usually in some kind of highly activated, anxious state. Chewing nails, pulling hair, wringing her spear, gnashing teeth, etc.
Speech
She speaks Windthrown with a heavy Pixie accent. Usually she speaks in a low, almost musical voice, but with a hint of strain underneath it. She's never really at ease, but she tries to put others at ease when she speaks to them. She can be condescending, especially to Alora, so sometimes she sneers or rolls her eyes.
Relationships
History
Zevi died when Adaki was born. Her specter contacted him when he was about 16 and began communicating with him through dreams, encouraging him to kill his father, run away and find his brother, Gadianton. At first, Adaki was thrilled to connect with his long-lost mother and brother. He followed Zevi willingly. But after a while, and especially after Gadianton leaves their band to have a family of his own, he began to see that Zevi was not really all there. Now he is wary of her, and does not want her telling him what to do. He resents her constantly pushing him back towards Gadianton. He wants her to just leave him alone.
Shared Acquaintances
Neil Heilend - he was Adaki's surrogate brother growing up, his best friend and confidant. Zevi doesn't care much for Neil, but she has shown herself to him once or twice and knows that he is the best way to get to Adaki.
History
Zevi died when Gadianton was born. Her specter could not contact him until after he escaped from the Wizards of the Vaults, which he did after she was able to convince his twin brother, Adaki, to save him. She revealed herself to him then, and at first Gadianton was excited, but quickly (more quickly than Adaki) his opinion of her soured. She says nasty things about her sister, Abihail, who was Gadianton's surragate mother among the Pixies, and he resents that. He wants nothing to do with her anymore, but can't seem to get rid of her. He was especially peeved when she appeared to his daughter Jillian once, and now he refuses to acknowledge her and actively keeps her out of his mind.
Current Status
Haunting her sons.
Species
Honorary & Occupational Titles
As a Pixie-- Sage (Mindwalker)
Age
Would be 46ish, but she's dead.
Circumstances of Birth
She was born to the Swift Tribe. She had one older sister.
Circumstances of Death
She died after giving birth to twins due to complications afterwards (and she wasn't doing so well before she went into labor, either).
Place of Death
The Drache Plantation
Spouses
Siblings
Children
Pronouns
She
Sex
Female
Gender
Woman
Presentation
Feminine
Eyes
Bright Pixie Green
Hair
As a Pixie she has short (bob-length) pale yellow hair.
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Wolf: White fur. Pixie: Pale Caucasian skin
Height
5'
Weight
100
Quotes & Catchphrases
About Mindwalkers: "“We are Walkers. We wander through dreams, and step in and out of minds. Home is everywhere, or nowhere. No walls hold us; we grow no roots.”
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