Avery Kelly
[[Category:{{#switch:|File=Files|Template=Templates|articles}} in need of cleanup]]
<infobox layout="stacked">
<title source="Name"> <default>Avery Kelly</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>
Avery is one of the protagonists of Pale.
Personality
Rarely aggressive. She is arguably the most moral of the trio and is useually the first to leap to someone's defense.
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. They share interests in art.
Lucy
Recent friends. They argue about decisions frequently.
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.
She has kept her distance since.
Her Family
Avery lives with her family; at the start of Pale, she hasn't told any of them that she's gay. They started to start finding out around the summer.
There are a total of 8 people in the house: Avery, her grandfather ("Grumble"), her father (Connor), her mother (Kelsey),<ref>Avery’s mother took a seat opposite Jasmine. “Hi. I’m Kelsey, Connor’s parking the car. [...]" - excerpt from Gone Ahead 7.8 Spoilers</ref> 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.<ref>“You keep me sane. I couldn’t have gotten through the first part of that without you. I couldn’t have gotten through the second part of it like I did if it weren’t for you. I say it and I mean it and let my words count.”
[...]
“I love you, Snowdrop. You’re the best thing this practice stuff has provided me with, and I worry I’m taking you for granted sometimes, or that…” Avery took in a deep breath. “…I dunno. Is it bad if you’re what you are because of me?”
“Yeah,” Snowdrop said, laconic. “Terrible.”
“I don’t- just the fact that you’re set up to be my companion, and we forced that on you.”
“Ruined my long, healthy life.” - Excerpt from Back Away 5.4</ref>
Appearance
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> Her eyes are blue-green and she has a slightly upturned nose.<ref name="WB description"/>
She tends to wear sporty, brightly-coloured clothing. She often wears her hair in a ponytail, especially early in Pale.<ref name="WB description">Avery
Avery is thirteen, with blue-green eyes, some freckles on her face and arms, a slightly upturned nose and red-blonde hair that she keeps pulled back into a short sporty ponytail early in the story and wears it down and a bit longer toward arc 4. She's athletic but this doesn't impact build much at her age. She's considered fairly pretty by classmates.
Her clothing style tends toward sporty clothes (raglan, jersey, shorts), brighter colors, a little busier (maybe a pattern on a shirt or jacket). There is an Extra Materials that suggests her clothing style.
She’s most likely of the group to be smiling/happy. At a resting default, she'd be smiling while the other two wouldn't. In terms of art direction for pose, she'd be moving, she's moving more/at a higher difficulty, or she's already moved. Examples include V&L walking while Avery is ahead of them, walking backwards so she can face them while moving, V&L standing while Avery sits on a wall or branch just above, or V&L standing while Avery stands on one foot, the other off the ground, like she's ready to get moving.
Her Sight turns her eyes cloudy, like fogged up green marbles (think of planet earth seen from space, with clouds moving over it, but entirely green), but the blacks of her irises and pupils stand out more in the fog, vs. being covered up. Her mask is a deer mask with short antlers and the antlers can be slid into slots/holes in her hat, which has a slightly more triangular or leaf-shaped brim. Her cape rests atop her shoulders as a loose wreath, then falls over one arm like a musketeer's cape. She wears a charm bracelet and has her dog tags at her cape as a decoration, instead of around her neck. Cape and hat are navy blue.
-Wildbow on Reddit</ref> She's between Lucy and Verona in hight.<ref>Lucy is [...] a bit taller than Avery (only a bit)
[...]
Verona is [...] petite, a bit shorter than Avery. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref>
As a practitioner, Avery wears a deer mask that was created for her by Verona, as well as a witch's hat made by Lucy and cloak she made herself. The mask is well-made, carved from wood, with tan paint on the nose and eye-holes and darker brown specked paint at the edges and ears.<ref>Verona had put her bag down, and now she unzipped it. She pulled out the mask. A deer mask, carved out of wood and painted with tan at the nose and around the eyes, a speckled darker brown at the edges and ears. She handed it to Avery.
Avery handed Lucy a fox mask, painted orange.
“Damn,” Lucy muttered. “You’re way better at carving than I am, Ronnie. That deer mask is great. Sorry yours is…”
Verona shook her head. A black cat mask. It was simple, but she liked it. She hugged it to her chest with one hand while offering Lucy the hat she’d made herself. Each of them had a gift for the other two. And for themselves, short cloaks.
- excerpt from Lost for Words 1.1</ref> It has short antlers. The hat and cloak are navy blue; the hat has a pointed brin with holes for the short antlers of her mask, and the cloak resembles a cape covering one arm with a wreath around her neck.<ref name="1.ze1"/><ref name="WB description"/><ref>They’d shared online videos about the mask carving and a website with tailoring templates for the making of the hats. The differences in mask were intentional, any differences in the hats accidental. Verona’s hat was just a bit floppier at the brim.
When they’d done the search for the capes, they’d agreed to use the first blueprint on the list. They’d been halfway when they had discovered the cape designs were all different. Not that it mattered. Verona’s was closer to a cloak, and Lucy’s closer to a shawl, it was so short. Avery’s looked like more of a cape, with a wreath around the neck and shoulders. She wore it ajar, so it covered most of one arm.
- excerpt from Lost for Words 1.2</ref> Once acquired, she wears a magical charm bracelet around her wrist and magical dog tags as "decoration" attatched to her cloak.<ref name="WB description"/>
To the magically perceptive, 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> and the black of her pupils is exaggerated.<ref>The gold leaf letters glimmered all over Avery’s skin and around her eyes, accenting the misty look with the stark black pupils and the irises that had everything that wasn’t that steely blue now a deep black that branched out a bit past the usual bounds. - Excerpt from Back Away 5.5</ref><ref>
“Let’s just handle this,” Lucy said. “Eyes open.”
Avery’s eyes flashed, the mist sweeping over them, in a way that made the outline and darkness of the irises stand out in even dimly lit gloom. Verona’s eyes turned purple. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/08/25
Excerpt] from Leaving a Mark 4.3</ref><ref>Behind her deer mask, Avery’s eyes went wider, mist rolling over the surface, the edges of the irises and the black of the pupils clear in that foggy green soup. - Excerpt from Out on a Limb 3.6</ref><ref name="WB description"/> In certain magical contexts, her mask appears real, as if she has the head of a deer.<ref name="1.ze1">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 third girl was quicker, moving from a point behind the other two, catching up, and skipping easily over the four-foot high fence of thick plastic netting, finer nets, and the barbed wire that Tattoos was stringing up. A long cape fluttered behind her before she landed in a crouch, a hockey stick resting against her shoulder. She hurried forward to the woman who was sobbing. Her face was a deer’s, with antlers.
[...]
There was only the Deer girl, her dark blue cape fluttering behind her. - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.z</ref><ref>She lifted up the dense, metal dollhouse, setting it in a metal box with about 20 segments. There were a horrendous number of figures, pieces of furniture, accessories, animals, and little colored blocks inside, sliding around, rolling down stairs, and falling out. The box itself had zipper-like creases at the edges of each segment, knitting them together. She centered the dollhouse and then collected the fallen bits, pushing them in through windows.
[...]
She whispered, “Show me the three girls with animal faces,” and opened it up.
Three simple figurines with rectangular blocks for bodies were topped with the heads of a fox, cat, and deer. They were within a cabin with an open top. Ribbons filled the space, tying to a center mass. A circular bit of wood, shallow, sat in the center.
There was no sign of the other figurines that had been within, or the diner, or the old house.
“Why animal faces?” she asked.
“If it’s this omnipresent, it may be the Sight equivalent of labeling something at the root level. I could see changing or obfuscating your name, taking on a title as part of the implement or demesnes rituals, but faces… I don’t know. If it was one individual, I could say it’s a Host with an exceptionally strong rider, or a practitioner with a familiar strong enough it was leaking through, but I’d expect to see that leak somewhere else.”
- excerpt from Stolen Away 2.z</ref><ref>The room’s appearance shifted, to become something very much like the spirit world Lucy had visited together with Verona and Avery. The floor was covered in an inch of water, littered with flower petals. She could see the nose of the ‘mask’ she wore in spirit, and her hair was far longer, pale pink tendrils blowing across her shoulder.
Other students changed as well. Avery had the deer mask. Jessica had two silver lines running down from her eyes, her skin and hair beaded with moisture. Dom, Talia, and Jorja weren’t as affected as some, but Lucy could see how Dom’s hands were paler. Talia resembled her doll and her doll resembled her. Jorja had little pastel pellets littering her hair and shoulders, in stark contrast to how dark her clothes and hair were, and how grim her expression was.
“Spirit is one source of power. Basic, simple, easy, but it can be hard to negotiate for the particulars, or to control the fine results.”
[...]
The lighting changed. Everything became a slow-motion flow of smoke, but where transparent wisps overlapped, they painted silhouettes and details.
She wore the fox mask here. More smoke traced the outline of her cape.
“This is what one might see with a particular variety of the Sight, ignoring connections. Lucy here-”
- excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.6</ref>
Abilities and Art
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. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/05/30
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. As a consequence of walking the Forest Ribbon Trail, portals and pathways open faster for her. Zoomtown 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. Was gifted a pair of gardening gloves on the Promenade Path which allow her to send items to an undisclosed location and summon them back when clapped. The items reappear a bit beat up. <ref>Avery threw the pickaxe into the air, two-handed, then clapped her hands together.<ref>
The pickaxe flipped, and it didn’t come down, disappearing.<ref>Avery dropped the club, catching the handle with one foot, and then clapped her hands a few times in quick succession. She felt the weight in the air, and braced herself, catching the handle of the water-elemental pickaxe as it dropped into place, gouged, scratched, and badly beaten up from its trip to wherever the gloves sent things. She hurled it past Finnea. It hit the dirt, flipped, bounced, and hit the dirt again.<ref>
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
-
Avery cosplay by heynoswearing on Reddit.
References
<references/>