Wilde
Meet our next protagonist...
Wilde is Wolfe’s younger sister. (If you don’t know who Wolfe is, you can read about him here).
She’s 13 years old when the story starts, and she’s blind.
It’s been fascinating to write from the perspective of someone who cannot rely on sight. How many times I’ve had to go back and rework a scene because I had slipped in some visuals from Wilde’s POV.
What fun it is to write a scene where she’s walking through the village, with only sound, smell, touch and thought.
I love her.
Like her brother Wolfe, I wanted to write a young person who was both intelligent and naive, who was deep and dark and afraid, yet convicted.
Someone who feared herself as much as the world around her.
Another challenge with writing Wilde being blind and a child is giving her agency. She can’t get far on her own, physically, and yet she cannot be passive.
Half way through the first draft of book 2, she continues to be my favourite character to write.
PROFILE
Gender: Female
Age: 13
Bornday: Whitemoon (Winter Solstice), 13th day of Whitemoon, 860 AC (Winter child)
Heritage: Eirean (Highlander, mother) / Drae (father)
Nicknames: Witch (derogatory)
Height: 4’11” (growing toward 5’9” or so by 16)
Weight: 80 lb (36 kg)
Hair: Dark (black/brown), long, straight
Eyes: Dark grey (normal looking)
Physical Description
Like her brother, Wilde is of Highlander descent, though there is something ethereal about her.
She has a fragility that can make her look younger than her 13 years. Little and slender, slight of frame, her bones show through her ribs.
She has a finely structured, pretty face beneath the grime, a small mouth, with full lips, cracked and worried.
Her eyes are grey, much darker than her brother’s, like the ocean on a moonless night.
She is blind, and so has the askance stare of those who cannot see those before them. And yet sometimes, it can appear like she’s looking deep inside.
Her skin is pale. Deathly so, with a moonlit translucence. Her dark hair is long, black brown, falling past her shoulders, unkept and always tangled.
Wilde moves with quiet grace, a stillness that makes her seem almost untouched by the world. There is precision and sensitivity to her movement that betrays her blindness.
Her hands and small and delicate, but quick and dextrous.
She is often dressed in hand-me-downs, clothes too large, worn at the edges, and she wears them without care or vanity.
There is an otherworldliness about her.She does not need her eyes to move through the world, and that in itself unsettles people.
Personality
Wilde is quiet, withdrawn, until she feels safe. With Wolfe, even her mother, she is lighter of spirit, a child, warm and funny.
But out in the world, she is guarded. Afraid.
She is intelligent, insightful. She sees often more than those with sight. She has a way to read people, she senses emotions, feels the world around her in ways others cannot.
She hears the words between, that are not spoken.
“Wilde did not ask the next question. She listened, instead, for the small sounds that people made, not with their words, but with their thoughts. And their feelings. And she heard her mother’s heart, and it sounded to Wilde like a torn leaf.”
She is compassionate. She has a strong sense of fairness. But can also be fierce and unforgiving.
She has a deep well of courage, though she lives in fear. Fear of the world. The noise of it all. All the emotions.
Truth is light to Wilde, who lives in darkness. She’s always finding the truth in people, their emotions, their motives. She hears the words between. Even when truth frightens her, she is drawn to it.
There are shadows in her, darkness in her blood, she can feel it, stirring, whispering, something menacing, and it terrifies her, and excites her.
For in the shadows, she senses power. And that makes her feel safe.
Background
Wilde was born in the Highlands amidst a terrible storm in the deep of winter in 861 AC. Her mother moved to Feldhart from the Highlands shortly after she was born.
So far as she remembers, Wilde has been blind since birth. Through she has visions, can picture places, things, as if she had seen them. Perhaps she imagines these things.
She and her brother Wolfe live with their mother, Etain in a farmhouse cottage on the outskirts of Breton, on the property of Dirty Declan. Cabbages, onions and potatoes surround them.
They are poor. Shunned. But Wilde is content. She lives much of her life inside her mind anyway.
Her mother is not well. Her mind is broken, and she lives often in a sort of dream state, seeing the world through eyes that he does not share.
But Wilde loves the stories. Of the fey, the Elan Prince who loved her. Their father, Etain tells them.
Wolfe supports them, and has done since he was a boy. Wilde knows the burden her brother carries, and loves him deeply.
Wolfe and Wilde are the only people in the world who see each other. Who understand each other.
In a very real way, it is “us against the world” for them both.
So that’s Wilde. If you haven’t read chapter 1 and you’d like to, you can do so here.
Take care and be wilde,
Andre