Verona Hayward

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   <default>Verona Hayward</default>
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Verona Hayward is one of the protagonists of Pale.

Personality

Verona is a middle school student in Kennet, Ontario. On top of dealing with the usual frustrations of being a teenager, she has a massively dysfunctional family (see relationships). She is somewhat more skeptical and imaginative than her two friends.<ref>“Why were my eyes last to open?” Verona asked “That doesn’t seem right.”

“It’s a good thing, Verona. Those things that let you hold onto what came before, like skepticism, imagination? They’re going to be things that make you an excellent practitioner, should you follow through here today.” - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.1</ref>

Verona is artistically creative, and does crafts as well as drawing. Verona doesn't do well in her regular school classes, due to lack of interest, but excels at learning the practice.

She cares more about having clothes that she likes deeply and are "hers" than having a lot of clothes, or having clothes in good condition.<ref name=":0">Her mom had been so frustrated when she hadn’t wanted to buy a lot of clothes.  It was Verona’s preference to have things that were very precisely hers, instead of a lot of things that kind of worked.  To those ends, she had two pairs of jeans she wore, this low cut pair of skinny black jeans, and acid-washed jeans with holes at the knees.  She had three sweaters, all with broad horizontal stripes, two of which were black and white, and then tops she tended to wear under the sweaters. The sweater she was wearing now had a hole in the elbow.  The other elbow had had the same problem, but she’d patched it with black moleskin.  There were some loose threads of wool near the collar, too. - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.1</ref>

She dislikes the repetitive, never-ending nature of cleaning.<ref>She’d decided.  She really, really hated cleaning.  She hated how insurmountable it was, she hated how cleaning off a surface often meant getting other things dirty, she hated every step in the process, and now that she was as close to done as she could get, she felt next to no satisfaction.  It would just get dirty again, and she hated that.  Hated that she was cleaning up a mess that would get made again and again for the next… however many years.  Fifty.  Seventy.  Crumbs and dust and gross food on gross plates, over and over again.

She stood in the doorway of the living room, surveying it all, and felt her dissatisfaction grow until she had to turn away. - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.1</ref>

Verona has expressed a desire to become Other.<ref>Verona looked out over Kennet. The singing was growing in intensity.

“I heard that and I knew. I don’t want to be human anymore.”

"I suspected." - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.8</ref> Miss suspected this, and it may have been one of the reasons Miss chose her to become a Kennet practitioner.

Relationships

Lucy

Friends since kindergarten. Verona considers Lucy her best friend. Verona is able to make stark emotional confessions to Lucy,<ref>“My mom doesn’t want me,” Verona said, her voice small.

Lucy gave her friend the tightest hug she could, but she didn’t know what to say to that.

“You’re the most important person in the world to me,” Verona said. “I don’t mean to order it like this. Like it’s because everyone else doesn’t-”

“I know.”

“Because even if I had a cool dad and a mom who wanted me, and Jeremy and a great relationship with all the Others, and friends, and whatever else, you’d be the most important to me.”

Lucy hugged her friend tight.

“Same.” - excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.3</ref> while holding everyone else (including her parents) at arm's length.

Avery

Recent friends. <ref>'“I made them an offer, five weeks ago. The two girls were friends already. I pointed them to the third because three makes a good number."' - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.1</ref>

Verona's Dad

Verona lives in Kennet with her divorced father, who has full custody of Verona. Their relationship is toxic and awkward. Verona's dad demands constant emotional support from his daughter, including bouts of crying multiple times per week. He exhibits signs of depression, and claims to have migraines, as well as "an STD" (unspecified) which he says he received from Verona's mother before their divorce.<ref>In the light of his television, she could see the moisture in his eyes. The tears started flowing.

“I’m so alone, Verona. I’m trying so hard and I have nothing to show for it. No friends, no wife- your mother gave me an STD from someone she cheated on me with and then left. I can’t convey how alone I am.”

She remained silent, standing in the doorway.

Her father sat there on his bed, sobbing. - excerpt from Lost for Words 1.8</ref>

When Verona leaves for summer classes at the Blue Heron Institute, her father ends up in the emergency room for a partial obstruction of the small bowel,<ref>“What happened?” she asked.

“I nearly passed out from the pain, is what happened. I got a ride to the emergency room from a coworker I am not a fan of, and I had to wait ten hours, getting told it shouldn’t be much longer, it shouldn’t be much longer, except people kept coming in, needing to use the machine before me. And all the while, I’m trying to call you.”

“What was it?”

“It’s not fun, wondering, is it? Imagine how I felt, for those ten hours. With nobody, not a single soul, to turn to. Not even my own daughter. Especially my own daughter, who is ignoring my calls when I really need the support. It was a partial obstruction of the small bowel.”

“You’re constipated?”

“No, Verona! No. It obstructed and my intestine twisted. They put a tube down my nose, and they had to give me fluids by IV, because I’ve been throwing up from the pain and everything else. There’s a very real possibility I’ll have to go into surgery. They’re saying it’s fifty-fifty, but every hour that passes, the odds of surgery rise, and it’s been a bit. If I do end up needing surgery, I won’t be able to handle things on my own. I’m going to need you to put down whatever you’re doing and come home, just in case. I literally have nobody else who can help handle these things.” - excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.9</ref> and demands that Verona return home immediately to care for him.

The full extent of her father's 'brokenness' is not known yet, but it is inarguably abusive.<ref>Verona - a thank you to Wildbow for representation.</ref> What is known about him indicates several possibilities:

• Depression
• Codependent parent
• Narcissistic parent
• Parentification/spousification
• Munchausen syndrome

Verona's Mom

Verona's mom lives "between two and a half and three hours" away<ref>[1] from Leaving a Mark 4.2</ref> and works for the Canadian government. She visits or communicates with Verona rarely. Verona would probably prefer to live with her mother, but her mother refuses to relocate closer to Kennet.<ref>“It’s really not great,” Verona said. “He’s kind of intense, and Lucy isn’t even coming over because of it. So I was thinking, like, I don’t want to leave my friends, or school, or anything like that, but how possible would it be for you to move closer?”

“It’s not really a consideration, Verona.”

“But if you moved closer and I moved in with you?”

“No.” - excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.2</ref>

Classmates

Verona is attracted to three of the boys in her class: Jeremy, Wallace and George.<ref name="boys">Like, she kind of wished she could approach a boy and ask him straight-up if they’d kiss her, no strings attached, so it meant nothing. When she imagined that, she sometimes thought of Jeremy or Wallace.

Well, George too. If she had to pick a face she liked, she’d pick George, but a lot of girls liked George and that meant hassle, and hassle was the opposite of the point. Killed the appeal a lot. - excerpt from Lost for Words 1.8</ref> However, she is not interested in a romantic relationship, preferring to have "no strings attached".

Wallace lives across the street and halfway down the block, and she has been attending class with him at least since first grade.

Appearance

She cuts her own hair, maintaining it in a french bob.<ref>After a quick glance in the mirror, she grabbed her scissors and tidied her bangs.  She picked up a hand mirror to fix a few stray hairs at the back.
[...]
“Scissors?” he asked.

Oh, she was still holding them.  She touched them to her hair.  As part of the back to school shopping, her mom had taken her to a stylist to get a french bob and she’d been trimming it herself to keep it in approximately the same style ever since. - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.1</ref>

Her few outfits include too-tight black jeans, acid-washed jeans with holes at the knees, and several sweaters with horizontal stripes on them.<ref name=":0" />

In full garb as a practitioner, Verona wears a cat mask that was created for her by Lucy, as well as a witch's hat and cloak. When the participants of the hungry choir ritual looked at her in this outfit, she looked like an anthropomorphic cat woman.<ref>Three figures were approaching.  They could almost be mistaken for the children that were scattered everywhere, but they were too animated, and too curious about their surroundings, looking around and looking up at the moon, where the children of this place were focused wholly on the ritual’s participants.  They couldn’t be Witnesses, because they had faces…

Animal faces, two of them wearing wide-brimmed hats, the other with a cord tying her hat to her neck.

The cat-faced girl had shadow clinging close to her cloak, to the point it was hard to make her out in the dark, not helped by the dark fur of her face.  Her eyes flashed violet as she looked over everyone and everything.  Her cloak was pulled over her hat, brim and point swept back, and made the hood more pointy behind her head. - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.z</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, Verona has her own distinctive Second Sight. This allows her to see in the dark (although not pitch darkness),<ref>They descended past the tops of the trees, into the recesses of thick forest.  It was dark, to a surprising degree.  Verona had first experienced this when going to save Avery from the Forest Ribbon Trail.  She kept her Sight on, but it didn’t help much.  She tended to see better when there was at least a little light, and there wasn’t much. - Excerpt from Back Away 5.2</ref><ref>“I’m fine,” Verona said.  “I can kinda see in the dark if I use my Sight.”

- excerpt from Lost for Words 1.3 </ref> and she perceives the world as filled with layers of plastic and cobweb behind which strange flayed creatures are sometimes hiding. She's discovered that she can ask the largest of these beings (which she suspects are Spirits) simple questions.

Unlike Avery she's not athletic,<ref>Lucy nodded. “If it isn’t another trap. And crap, that’s the warning bell. Run!”

“I’m all runned out after gym class,” Verona complained.

“You barely ran,” Avery said. - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.7</ref> and frankly thinks such people are weird.^{[citation needed]}

Tools

Verona has taken to using the trio's training in diagrams and Runes to make "spell cards" which can be completed with a small mark, functioning a little like different types of grenade (incendiaries, flashes, bangs) in combat.<ref>The goblins reached the illustrations. Cherrypop was fastest, running across one-

It detonated into a whirl of wind. She was sent skidding across more papers.

Smoke, a gush of water. Other papers flew through the air. Gashwad got touched by one, and it flashed, a bright light that made Lucy’s eyes hurt, even though she was a good distance away.

“That’s about ten hours of drawing gone,” Verona huffed. - Excerpt from Out on a Limb 3.8</ref>

She generally keeps the pen which moves letters around which Miss gave the trio.

Verona frequently uses Maricica's glamour to transform herself, most often into a cat or bird. She has prepared glamour-infused cat hair and feathers to aid in these transformations,<ref>She reached for the feathers in her pocket and found the fur instead.  Glamour.  She touched it to cape and pulled the cape around herself.

She’d been trying to make the glamour use with the cape a thing, in the same way they’d been told about glasses being tied to the Sight. [...] She flipped, head over heels, and the flipping might’ve been higher velocity because of the way she’d balled up, cloak pulled around herself.

She screeched, tumbled through the air, and then contorted her body.  Tail was a guide, legs pulled in close while they faced the sky, splaying out while she faced the ground.  She repeated the process for two flips, fixating on her landing point and controlling the movement of the rest of her body as she landed, making contact with all four paws at once.  Her body absorbed the landing, and the glamour fell away with the impact.
[...]
She still had a few bird bodies, and another cat body.
[...]
She hated to do it, but she touched the cat’s fur in her back pocket, which she’d laced with glamour, she didn’t touch her cape, and instead, she brought her hand up to her eyes, two fingertips touching each eye.

“Let me see bright,” she whispered.  “Improve my Sight.” - Excerpt from Back Away 5.2</ref> as well as a glamour-infused photo for casting illusionary duplicates of herself.<ref>Verona hesitated, then lunged forward, running.

She hadn’t spent the last few weeks doing nothing.

A bit of glamour, a photograph-

Creating an image.  Of herself.

She closed in, ducking low while her image went high. - Excerpt from Back Away 5.2</ref>

History

Arc 1: Lost for Words

Verona, alongside Avery and Lucy, was brought into the world of the practice, in order to investigate the mysterious death of the Carmine Beast. Her Personal Item was scissors.

Arc 2: Stolen Away

Verona continued on with the investigation of the Others of Kennet, eventually coming to the cave of Maricica and Guilherme. During the interview, she is turned into a weasel by Maricica as one of Maricica's gifts in glamour, a form which she stays in for most of the rest of the interview. She is turned back when Lucy throws her into the ground. <ref>Excerpt from Stolen Away 2.3</ref>

Verona later on invites Avery over to her house to get ready for conducting interviews with the rest of the Kennet Others. After they have an encounter with Verona's Dad, the group leave to meet Alpeana. She takes them on her nightly trips, and Verona agrees to letting Alpeana give her dad a nightmare. After the nightmare begins though, Verona calls it off, stating she 'still loves him'. <ref>-Stolen Away 2.5</ref><ref>“Why?” Verona asked, not taking her eyes off her dad.  “Are you?  He tries hard, and he does the basics of what a dad’s supposed to do, according to those guys from the government.  Feeds me, shelters me, makes sure I go to school.  Just… he’s broken and he won’t put himself back together.  I don’t think he’s where he’s supposed to be.”

“Then-” Lucy started.

Verona wasn’t done.  “But I don’t want him to hurt.  I don’t want to see him hurt.  He makes me more miserable than anyone and I feel exhausted and even a bit of dread when he comes in the door, but I love him.  I want to not live in his house, at least after I’m eighteen, and I’m not even sure I’ll come back to visit him when I’m gone, but… I love him.” - Excerpt from Stolen Away 2.5</ref>

References

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