Avery Kelly

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   <default>Avery Kelly</default>
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   <label>Age</label>
 
 
   <label>Gender</label>
 
 
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   <label>First Appearance</label>
 

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Avery is one of the protagonists of Pale.

Personality

Rarely aggressive.

Gay; tends to be attracted to women who are "a healthy size".<ref name=":0">“Why do you always have a tone in your voice like you can’t believe it whenever I say I like someone?  I’ve mentioned Pamela before.”

Lucy answered, “I didn’t think she was your first choice.  There’s way cuter girls in class.”

“Pamela’s cute!”

“Pamela’s-” Lucy started, finished.

“You can say it.  If you want to be judgey, own it,” Avery said, with as much aggression and indignation as she ever mustered.

“A healthy size.  Kind of like Ms. Hardy.”

“You have a type,” Verona commented.  Her hand and shoulder were hurting from carrying the bags.  She was glad at least that Avery was distracted from her nervousness.

“I like that about her.  Like she’d give great hugs.  And she’s legit the nicest person in class.” - excerpt from Lost for Words 1.1 </ref>

After her time in the Forest Ribbon Trail, she seems to be unwilling or unable to eat meat.

Avery expresses great loneliness, and is eager for friendship and love. Maricica tells her that there are currently three people in Kennet who could return Avery's romantic yearnings, but none are meant for her.<ref>Maricica shook her head. “You told us your story. That you’re alone. I can tell you that there are three others around your age who could return your affections. None are meant for you.”

“What?” Avery asked. “No. That’s- no.”

“The first of the three is self-loathing and denies her very Self.”

“Can you introduce me to her?” Avery asked.

“I could, but I would be in contravention of my oath to you,” Maricica said, shrugging, the totality of her wings rippling following the shrug. “Like being attracted to like isn’t the entirety of compatibility. You would love her at first but she would hurt you back. Then you would hate her and she would hate herself. Such is her loathing. You should trust me when I say she would do lasting harm to you before you could heal her. She will find her own happiness when her age is twice what it is now.”

“That’s…” Avery wrinkled her nose, swallowing. “I’m not sure I believe that it’s that impossible.”

“All the same, I cannot act in contravention of my oath,” Maricica said, her head bowing.

“Who’s are the others?” Verona asked.

“Neither are meant for Avery.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Avery asked. She looked and sounded a little horrified. “Is there anyone out there that is?”

“Not in Kennet.” - excerpt from Stolen Away 2.2</ref>

Relationships

Verona

Recent friends.

Lucy

Recent friends.

Ms. Hardy

She's described Ms Hardy as her "role model" and "favourite person".<ref>“Ms. Hardy wanted to talk to me. [...] She wanted to have a serious conversation.  How am I doing, how stuff is with family, how’s sports. [...] Listen, I owe her so much.  She practically saved my life.  She was being nice and supportive, I can’t be all hurr durr, role model,

favorite person, I gotta go.” - excerpt from Lost for Words 1.1</ref> Avery has a crush on her teacher, having an idle fancy of dating her when she get older. 

Pamela

Lucy and Verona tease her for liking Pamela O'Neil.<ref name=":0" />

Avery uses glamour to become a boy, in order to talk to Pamela, and ends up kissing her.<ref>“I think you’re really pretty. It sucks to hear you apparently don’t believe me, but I sorta get it. My friend might be out there watching from a distance, but if she’s laughing, it’s at how much of a dork I’m being right now. Not at you, she’s not that kind of person.”

“I thought maybe if I asked you to kiss me, and you said yes, it’d be because of the bet.”

“No bet. Really. Who would do that?”

“Assholes. There’s a lot of assholes. People treat you as subhuman if you’re fat.”

“You’re not fat. You’re curvy and I… really like curvy. I like your face. I like- I like your clothes. I think you’re clearly nice, and cool, and…”

Pamela leaned in, and Avery stopped talking, pausing to wrestle with herself.

The glamour broke across her chest, like a crack spreading across ice, starting at the heart.

She kissed Pamela, and… she’d never thought kisses would be warm, stupidly. She’d never thought kisses would taste like the ice cream that Pamela had just been eating. - excerpt from Stolen Away 2.3</ref> Lucy and Verona convince her that she shouldn't do this again, because it may put Pamela in danger.

Family

Avery lives with her family; at the start of Pale, she hasn't told any of them that she's gay.

There are a total of 8 people in the house: Avery, her grandfather ("Grumble"), her father (Connor), her mother, her older brother Rowan, older sister Sheridan (16), younger brother Declan (10), and younger sister Kerry (6). Grumble suffered a stroke some time ago, and never fully recovered.

Life in the Kelly house is loud and chaotic, with her siblings constantly arguing with her and with each other, taking or messing with her possessions, blocking her in narrow hallways, etc.

Snowdrop

Avery's boon companion from the Forest Ribbon Trail, a young opossum/girl Other. Avery and Snowdrop share a great deal of affection and trust.

Appearance/Description

Avery is pale, with freckles along her face and arms and strawberry blonde hair.<ref>Avery stepped outside.  She was pale, her bare arms and face covered in

freckles, and her strawberry blonde hair was tied back into a short 

ponytail.  She was wearing a jersey over a t-shirt and track pants, and had a towel around her neck. - excerpt from Lost for Words 1.1</ref>

As a practitioner, Avery wears a deer mask that was created for her by Verona, as well as a witches hat and cloak.

To the Awakened, her eyes glow a misty green when she uses her Second Sight.<ref name=":1">Avery pulled a hockey stick charm from her bracelet, and shook it out to full length.  Diagrams were already drawn on it.

“How many of those do you have?”

“This is the second last of two,” Avery said.  Her eyes were misty green behind her mask.  She looked out toward the light. - excerpt from Out on a Limb 3.6 </ref>

Abilities and Art

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Official art from 1.8 Bonus Material: Inventories.

In addition to the shared abilities and gear of the Kennet Trio, Avery has several magics unique to her:

With her own distinctive Second Sight she can see white ribbons or photographic film representing (some) Connections,<ref>Avery turned that same Sight out toward the campus.  The ‘bands’ of film-negative cutouts that represented connections were stretched tight,

to the point of being strained, and many others were lying limp on the 

ground, especially here, between the parking lot and the school, and at the front of the school itself.  She didn’t know if that meant they were

broken forever if it meant the slack would be picked up later, but it 

caught her eye. - excerpt from Cutting Class 6.9</ref><ref>Edith turned her head to look off into the trees.  Avery, her Sight still active, could see the band that wound through the trees and along a

path, extending to the distant campsite that Edith was looking at. [...] The idea of this particular bit of chalk-drawing, like the one on Lucy’s
hat and Verona’s hat, was not to work on spirits, but to work on the 

bands she could see with the Sight.  Every relationship between a person

and a person, place, or thing had a band or a ‘connection’. - excerpt from Lost for Words 1.3</ref> and has discovered that she can physically interact with them to jerk targets around.[citation needed] She also sees handprints and footprints, while areas without the handprints or footprints have fallen into neglect.<ref name="sight-prints">She did as Miss had instructed earlier in the evening, and opened her
eyes to the Sight.  She could see the flare of Edith’s eyes, and the 

world partially dissolved.  On trees, on cars, there were a multitude of

handprints and footprints.  Bands extended like clotheslines or 

spider’s webs across everything, including a band from the truck to the office, another band to the truck, and another band that extended down into the woods, wrapping around trees on the way there.

Where there weren’t handprints and footprints, things were damaged.  Bark was peeled and broken, grass black to the point it looked like there was nothing there, and sections of wall around the camp buildings were splintered and shedding paint.

The bands were the interesting thing.  They were almost like old film

negatives, partially transparent, silhouettes standing up and looking 

around.  Almost like paper with sections cut out.  Almost like something

quilted, layers stitched on.  A middle-ground between all three.  Where
there was too much negative, too much cut-out, or too little material, 

the bands looked like they could snap.  She felt like she could look at those scenes that formed the band and analyze them, but she couldn’t get

close enough.  When she moved, they moved.  If she walked towards one, 

it rose higher until it was well above her head. - excerpt from Lost for Words 1.3 </ref> The world of her Sight is darker than the real world and filled with mist.<ref>Avery’s eyes opened wider, her pupils narrowed, and the ‘real’ world peeled away.  The floor was shrouded in the faintest of mists, the unimportant details flaked away like peeling paint in a high wind, and it was just her, the people on the field, a court of handprints and footprints, and a mess of the bands all around her, strung between players and between herself and the others.  The ones from herself were harder to see.

[...]

One third of her left eye was stuck on the Sight, like a blurriness that wouldn’t go away, but it was a different picture, darker, mistier, with handprints, some bloody. - excerpt from Lost for Words 1.7 </ref> Her Sight is somewhat nearsighted, making it hard to see connections to people near her.<ref>She sat at the end of the bench.  Pamela seated herself beside Avery.

[...] Her Sight was more farsighted than not, which was a pain, because she really would have liked to see and study the band that stretched between her and Pamela. - excerpt from Lost for Words 1.7 </ref> Movement is highlighted, with things reacting to it more (bits of dust and debris, the mist etc.)<ref>She remembered why she’d used the sight, and tried to analyze the world around her.  Movement and motion provoked shedding of bits of grass, bark, or paint, to the point she could tell that there were things out there, but… she couldn’t see in the dark.

[...]

Avery used her Sight.  It made it easier to see moving things, and to see the threads that tied one thing to another. - excerpt from Lost for Words 1.3 </ref> Lucy's Implement seems much larger and more comples to Avery's Sight, covering and surrounding much of her head.<ref>Avery turned on her Sight, and she could see the earring, exaggerated.  Metal-framed crystals, elongated, hung in the air, close to her head, and wire ran from her ear, along her hair, and into her ponytail, where it proliferated, decorating what was there. - excerpt from Cutting Class 6.9</ref>

She's also been taught a glamour by Guilherme as his gift to her, where she can use small amounts of glamour to "reinforce" victories and move her closer to her ideal self. She doesn't seem to have shared this technique with the other two.

She's performed a couple of basic Finder rituals, and apparently has been marked out to the universe as a Finder, making her interactions with that Practice more effective. One Path also won her supernatural skill at driving, running, riding etc. at the cost of annoyance when she can't drive (which is pretty much always, being underage.) Her Finder explorations have also won her the eternal friendship of Snowdrop.

Tools

She has taken to using the trio's training in Runes to create some basic magic items, shoes which let her jump further and hockey sticks which hit extremely hard (although they tend to shatter after a few uses.)<ref name=":1" /><ref>1.8 Bonus Material: Inventories.</ref>

She has taken to using the trio's training in glamour to shrink down her magical gear into charms which can be carried around on her charm bracelet (a gift from a friend who moved).<ref>Avery reached to her wrist, where she had a few charms hanging from a simple rope bracelet. A bracelet Olivia had bought her. The pledge on Olivia’s part had been that she’d buy a new charm for the bracelet every birthday and Christmas, in addition to other presents. Olivia had given it with one charm, a skate, then forgot the following Christmas, then bought a rabbit, and then the friendship had ended. Olivia had gone to play for Swanson and had ghosted Avery, ignoring and then blocking the messages Avery had sent. It wasn’t even like she’d sent many, or been demanding, or even been accusatory. She’d sent two the first week, then one a week for the next two weeks. Then after another month, she’d sent Olivia a happy birthday message. She hadn’t even cared about the hockey team or Olivia leaving, only that she’d lost a friend.
Avery had dug up the bracelet because it was convenient. It was a strong bracelet, and with other charms removed, she could add her own.
Mask- she tore it off, shook it violently, and shucked off the glamour she’d used. She donned the mask. - excerpt from Stolen Away 2.9</ref><ref name=":1" />

She has a Finder item given to her by Miss; a rope which lets her teleport short distances when unobserved. She can also tell from the roughness of the rope when she's being watched (and thus it's usable), although this is a little unrelable.

History

Arc 1 - Lost for Words

Avery and her friends were brought into the world of the practice in order to investigate the mysterious death of the Carmine Beast. Her Personal Item was an unfinished doll she had knitted for her younger brother.

After participating in the awakening ritual with Verona and Lucy, she went on a road trip with them, as well as Matthew Moss, Edith James, and Charles in order to visit the home of the Carmine Beast.

After the trip, Avery returned home, and had to deal with her extremely crowded and uncomfortable family situation. She pulls on a connection between herself and her mask after her brother takes it in order to retrieve it, then draws a symbol on her table to make herself unnoticed by her family. She leaves the house to meet with Lucy and Verona. The trio are approached by Sir Toadswallow and Cherrypop, who offer to teach them how to make curses count.

Fan Art

• Error creating thumbnail: File missing
  By Gamander-Ehrenpreis on Reddit.
• Error creating thumbnail: File missing
  Avery cosplay by heynoswearing on Reddit.

References

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