Vital Sta­tis­tics

Name: Serin
Age: 28–35, depend­ing on set­ting
Sex: Female
Birth­day: April 13^th
Likes: Cof­fee, Sleep, Peo­ples’ Sto­ries, Thoughts of Home
Dis­likes: Rude Cus­tomers, Being Indoors
Spe­cial Fea­tures: For­tune Teller

First Impres­sions

Serin is not by her­self a par­tic­u­larly tall or par­tic­u­larly strik­ing young woman, but what she lacks nat­u­rally she makes up for by the way she dresses and behaves. As a for­tune teller, and a proper gypsy one at that, an awful lot of her adver­tis­ing hap­pens just by wan­der­ing around look­ing like a for­tune teller.

Her cloth­ing is undoubt­edly what peo­ple notice first upon set­ting eyes on her. To call it “multi-layered” wouldn’t quite do it jus­tice. It looks like she has decided to wear her entire wardrobe, and all her acces­sories, all at once — but thank­fully, her wardrobe con­sists mostly of thin pieces of inde­fin­able fab­ric that all just about man­age to avoid clash­ing with each other. As far as the acces­sories go, there’s even less coor­di­na­tion than with her clothes. Bits and pieces hang from var­i­ous places about her per­son, and in select­ing them she seems to have been unable to dis­tin­guish a jew­ellers from a hedgerow — bunches of heather and strange flow­ers fea­ture as promi­nently as gold anklets and sil­ver necklaces.

Whilst onlook­ers could eas­ily devote hours to the study of her cloth­ing, espe­cially when she moves — and, some more sub­tly than oth­ers, they often do — even­tu­ally one’s gaze might move on to her actual fea­tures. Her long red hair would be strik­ing on its own if Serin were to dress nor­mally. Sadly, that would be her only strik­ing fea­ture if that were to be the case. Five and a half feet tall, of aver­age build and with olive tanned skin, she is only a lit­tle unusual look­ing for an inhab­i­tant of a coun­try so famed for its cloudy skies and tor­ren­tial downpours.

The way she walks adds to the effect of her clothes — whether this be ‘mys­tic allure’ or mere base adver­tis­ing. Some­how she man­ages to walk with poise, despite the dis­tinctly unal­lur­ing hob­nail boots that are one area in which she forces her out­landish cloth­ing to con­cede to prac­ti­cal­ity. Most observers become so dis­tracted by the rest of her cloth­ing that they never get to the boots. This is prob­a­bly a good thing.

Serin’s voice is calm and sooth­ing, with an accent as con­fused as her fam­ily tree. It is dis­tinctly a coun­try voice, but to those who pay close atten­tion it also unmis­tak­ably con­tains French and Irish, along with who knows what else.

When you come to talk to Serin, how she acts is very depen­dent on the sit­u­a­tion. Were you a cus­tomer, for exam­ple, well — cus­tomers expect for­tune tellers to be reserved, deep, mys­ti­cal and dis­tant; peo­ple who aren’t entirely human but a con­duit through which the human and spirit worlds min­gle. It’s all an act, though. An act she’s very good at after all these years, since she’s now spent more years as a for­tune teller than not, but an act nonethe­less. Deep down, she’s a very homely sort — the kind who, given a dif­fer­ent upbring­ing, might be wear­ing self-knitted roll-neck sweaters and mak­ing cups of tea at the very fayres at which she now tells the futures of those with a spir­i­tual incli­na­tion and a cou­ple of pounds to spend.

Char­ac­ter Sheet

• Serin (Dream­ing Awake)

Trea­sures

Fate’s Thun­der
Fate’s Thun­der is Serin’s mus­ket. It has been a fam­ily heir­loom for some time, prob­a­bly since mus­kets were a con­tem­po­rary inven­tion rather than an odd anachro­nism. It looks par­tic­u­larly odd in the keep­ing of Serin, whom no-one really imag­ines to actu­ally be able to use it. Regard­less, it seems reg­u­larly pol­ished, and who knows whether those pouches at her waist that she claims con­tain herbs and baubles actu­ally con­tain pow­der and shot?