When the Stars Shine Again: Character Spotlight

Welcome to a sneak peek inside the world of my upcoming story, When the
Stars Shine Again. Today I’ve got a short spotlight with the story’s MC, Wren.

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Appearance: Pretty short for an elf, a slender slip of a girl with long, almost-black hair and deep greenish-blue eyes.

Age: Nineteen.

Introverted or Extroverted: Extremely introverted. There are very few people that she would be willing to be around out of desire, not necessity.  

Personality: Quiet, shy, loyal, and full of deep emotion.

From the moment I got the idea for this novelette, Wren has claimed the spotlight as the main character. I had barely any ideas for her, her plot, or even the story in general, only a vague picture of a dark-haired girl standing under a star-lit sky. But I knew I had to write her.

The name Wren means royalty. That meaning crafted the first versions of her character, giving me a quiet, sweet slip of a girl, and a story of a broken girl who thinks she isn’t worthy of being called important. It also provided her entire past. Wren was abandoned at a young age to the Unwanted, after being told countless times that she was worthless and only mattered to the Black Mist. But a Man finds her and shows her that she is worthy of love. That she is His daughter. Royalty.

As I am still in the middle of writing this novelette, I don’t know every aspect of Wren’s character. She’s already surprised me more than once, and I’m sure she will continue to do so as the story progresses. But one thing I have noticed in each scene as I finish it is her aching heart. She longs for beauty and love, and her greatest wish is to be found worthy and lovable by someone. She sees through the ‘perfectness’ of the elves untouched by the Mist, and knows they are just as tainted as those in the Unwanted. And she aches for that taint—the shadows and Mist—to leave, and light to come into Ailnirha.

A short snippet with Wren:

For just a moment, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to imagine it. 

The cracked, low stone walls around her fell away, and in their place rose great pillars of pure white marble, unmarred by even the slightest smudge. 

Tilting her head towards the ceiling, she let the sun’s faint warmth wash over her closed eyelids and turned that into something else, creating great crystal hangings and long rows of sparkling, tiny silver lanterns to line the air above her. 

The thin blanket piled in a crumpled heap in the corner was actually the tall, endlessly soft bed she faintly remembered sleeping in when she was young.

And she wasn’t a young elven maid cursed by the Mist, doomed to be abandoned and unwanted for eternity. No. She was…an apprentice in the Story Guild. 

Yes. She was Wren, a year-six apprentice in the highest of all Ailnirha’s Guilds, untouched by the Black Mist, well learned, and with a greater pen than all the Ailnirhian scribes before her. She crafted magnificent tales with just a few words, drawing the admiration and love of all. 

Never again would she want for the simplest belongings. Never again would her heart ache for a place to belong and be loved. 

For she was an Ailnirhian elf. Perfect. Wanted.

Yes, yes, if only dreams could become reality as fast as you think them up, Wren. She shook her head, pulling her attention back to the space around her as she opened her eyes. 

A brisk turn found her all the way across the length of the tiny hovel, in front of a sagging doorway that lost its door many a year before she claimed the crumbling space. 

Wren sighed, pausing before the opening and hanging her head. 

Really, she should know better by now. No matter how much she dreamed, no matter how many times she rewrote her story in her head, it remained the same. Dreams were just that. Dreams. 

Dreams couldn’t release her from the Mist. The imaginative wanderings of her mind couldn’t bring back her parents and convince them to love her again. 

She was no one, stuck in the Unwanted, and nothing anyone did could change that.