Bitter Street Witch

<infobox layout="stacked">

 <title source="Name">
   <default>Bitter Street Witch</default>
 </title>
 <image source="Image">
 </image>
 
 <title source="title">
 </title>
 
   <label>Alias</label>
 
 
 
 
   <label>Age</label>
 
 
   <label>Gender</label>
 
 
   <label>Status</label>
 
 
   <label>Type</label>
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   <label>Classification</label>
 
 
 
 
 
 
   <label>Affiliation</label>
 
 
 
 
 
 
   <label>Family</label>
 
 
 
 
 
 
   <label>Occupation</label>
 
 
 
 
 
 
   <label>First Appearance</label>
 

</infobox>

The Bitter Street Witch is a gang leader in the Kennet Undercity.

Relationships

She has a good relationship with the Kennet Others.<ref>Because the Bitter Street Witch is one of the two power holders over here who we can actually work with, who stays reasonably fair and keeps to the rules.- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.9</ref>

She's an enemy of The Family Man, thinking that he's a dangerous maniac.<ref>He’s dangerous, he can’t be trusted.  He’s maniacal, he’s power hungry, he’ll castrate the men and boys and if he doesn’t butcher the bulk of them they’ll at least have a one night feast on whatever it is they’ve cut off.”- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.9</ref>

She rules with her eight brothers as her lieutenants, two of them are now dead and another is being punished.<ref>Five of her brothers were with her.  Two were dead, and a third was being punished.- Excerpt from Left in the Dust 16.1</ref>

Nicolette took her on as an apprentice, helping her to improve her talents.<ref>Nicolette’s agreed to back up the Bitter Street Witch.  An apprenticeship.  Elevating her, expanding her talents.  Pending Nicolette’s approval, she gets an apprentice, bit of help with stuff, the Witch of Bitter Street gets lessons.  Turning a talent into a real power.”- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.11</ref>

Appearance

She has unwashed hair, blue cloths with bird feathers attached to them and a stick almost as tall as she is with her gang sign on it.<ref>It was the corner of Downtown, not all that far from the house on half street, and the Witch of Bitter Street was there, with three of her many brothers.  She couldn’t stand very long, so she sat on the road, stooped, hair unwashed, wearing a lot of clothes in various shades of blue with black feathers attached to them.  Her stick had her gang sign dangling from the top.- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.6</ref><ref>The Bitter Street Witch was almost wrapped around her staff, a walking stick as tall as she was, in her effort to use it for balance.- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.9</ref> She has a hunch back and her figure is bent and she has difficulty standing upright.<ref>The Witch of Bitter Street was seated on the sidewalk, the opposite of Rook in many ways.  Rook was decorated.  The Witch was underdressed, wearing the sort of old clothes Lucy would reserve for sleeping in.  Rook’s hair was tied back tight.  The Witch was messy, hair pushed to one side of her head more than it was brushed.  Lucy’s hair was dense and she imagined she’d have an easier time getting a brush through it on her worst hair day of the last year than the Witch could on her best day.  But most of all, Rook was straight-backed and prim and the Witch bent, almost as if her bones and back had all been broken and had healed wrong.  She seemed to only sit upright and hunched over because she could hold onto her staff with both hands- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.9</ref>

Abilities

The Bitter Street Witch bits the head of birds, eats their heads, squeezes out their entrails and uses them to perform augury.<ref>He brought her a cage, reached in, and handed her a small gray bird.

Clutching the bird in her fist, fighting its struggles as it got one wing partially free and wiggle-flapped it, the Witch of Bitter Street bit into the bird’s neck, the head firmly in her mouth.  It took her a second to reassert her grip, twist, and tear to firmly remove the head.  A string of something thin and ropy slapped her chin, leaving a line of blood with splatter around it.

She squinted one eye while chewing, and shook the bird firmly, squeezing it as she did.  Blood and tiny internals splattered out.  She extended a toe and scraped the toe of her shoe through the viscera.

The Witch of Bitter Street had to take a few seconds to choke down the head of the bird, feathers, beak and all.  She wiped the blood from her chin with her sleeve, then pressed the headless, squeezed corpse into the upper chest of the guy who’d delivered the bird until he took it from her.  “Alright.  Let’s talk.”- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.9</ref> As her body has gotten more bent and broken her skill with augury has improved.<ref>The Witch of Bitter Street continued chewing, staring down at the blood smeared on the textured, grime-fogged glass.  She smiled.

“Be honest,” Rook said.

“If you’d asked me weeks ago my answer would be different.  Then?  Most of it.  But I could see enough to build on.  Now?  I see more clearly, but my body gets more bent.  Because I have power, power flows through me.”- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.9</ref>

She is capable of directing the future by altering events in a vision.<ref>“Saw someone in a vision.  Nudged things, there was… ah, what’s it called?  Driving a car offroad, bumpy.”

“In an airplane it’s called turbulence,” Verona volunteered.

“Yeah.  There was turbulence.  But the guy pissed me off.  So I pushed through it.  Handled the vision like you can handle a dream if you realize you’re sleeping but manage not to wake up.  Felt like it bit me on the way back out.”

“Bit?” Nicolette asked.

“Hurt.  Pushed images into my head, when I tried to pull my head out of the scene.  Guy with a bloody nose, dragging against my brain like long fingernails.  Totaled cars.  Left me with a bad feeling, I woke up, then vomited up the twenty bird heads and bits of bird, bird bone, feathers, I’d had the day before.”

“I think I know what that was,” Nicolette said.

“So do I.  Had Giblet smash the right guy’s nose.  Had Wishbone drive a car into the parked cars I pointed out to him.”

“Others?” Nicolette asked Verona.

“Brothers.”

“My brothers.  And it happened.  Came true, just like I saw it.  But it messed me up too.  My wrist never fully straightened out after that.”

...“Yeah.  That’s probably karma telling you to watch out.  When you pull something like that, trying to write it down or tell someone about it can be enough to make things snap back at you.  Either you put the scene right and the vision was wrong, or the universe comes after you and you get obliterated, with no record of the vision.  That’s dangerous, especially when the things you have to arrange or sort out can be really out there.”
- Excerpt from Left in the Dust 16.1</ref>

Chronology

Someone asked her to read their fortune, after seeing what was to come she had her brothers attack the man and took over his gang.<ref>“Yeah,” the Witch replied, smiling.  “Someone asked me to do a fortune about a fight.  I did, I didn’t like what I saw in the distance, past that moment.  What he’d do with me after.  I had my brothers shove broken bottles into his armpits and the backs of his knees.  Took over.”- Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.9</ref>

She meet with the Family Man to consider his offer of him taking over her territory, he also offered to give each of her brothers three girls each.

She gave Lucy and Rook a reading on how to rescue Marlen.

References

<references/>