Hi! This post is going to introduce you to my characters and their story. It takes place during the 90s in a liberal arts college in a town called Oakley in West Virginia. All of the characters live together in an on-campus house deemed the "deer house" by other students because of the strange amount of mounted deer taxidermy inside and the large buck mounted over their front door. If you want to see visuals of what the characters look like and their overall vibe, THIS is a link to the Pinterest board and THIS is the Spotify playlist. I've been calling their story "Deer House" but I'm thinking about calling it "Heirloom" instead. Either way, here are the main characters!!

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Dahlia Beaufort

This is the main character and narrator. She moved to Oakley from a small town in Nebraska over the summer after her childhood "best friend" (*winks at you while playing "Casual" by Chappell Roan*) named Abagail died in a car accident. Her dad grew up in Oakley and was offered a job by an old friend so they moved there. She's a photographer and writer, so the writing in the hypothetical book will have a large focus on capturing the imagery and beauty in their not-beautiful situation (especially Odette's beauty). She's very laid back and quiet. She's kind of a perfectionist and has high expectations for herself, so she often feels like she's not good enough. She has a very specific sense of humor that only Abagail really understood. She was very much a loner in school and mainly only focused on her grades. If she had a taste, it would be coffee. 

Odette Eirwen

Odette was the first character in the story because she came to me in the dream which sparked the whole plot in my mind. She grew up with her grandmother because her parents were too busy with their jewelry business to take care of her. She would see them every once and a while, but they weren't really there. At least they financially provided. She grew to love pearls, nature, baking, knitting, and her Granny's favorite hobby: painting. She paints beautiful flowers, animals, landscapes, and still lifes. She wasn't popular in school either because she's albino and her peers would constantly joke that she was a ghost and they should stay away from her because she'll haunt you. It didn't help that she wore old-timey clothes and looked like a porcelain doll, which was considered creepy. The only peer she had was her best friend Evan. She has a very soft heart and is unfortunately a victim of the "I can fix him" mindset, so she's been in multiple bad relationships with bad men. She thinks if she's nice enough and listens to them, they'll eventually realize they don't have to be mean. That is not the case. If she had a taste, it would be french vanilla coffee creamer. 

Evan Grey

Evan's widowed father co-owned Odette's father's jewelry company so he was absent too, and Evan was left to be raised by the Nanny. Evan wanted nothing more than his father's approval and attention, so he poured everything he had into academics. He was enchanted by ancient stories and myths, so he's obsessed with Greek classics, even as a child, obviously isolating him as well. He writes essays on classics for school and poetry as a coping mechanism. He shares Dahlia's perfectionism and self-disappointment, but his is much harder to handle. Odette often has to help him feel better about himself whenever he feels like a failure and talks him out of panic attacks. To others, he seems cold and awkward. When he feels uncomfortable he speaks in short sentences, but his responses often feel cryptic and ominous when that's not what he's trying to say. If he had a taste, it would be Earl Grey tea. 

Christopher "Hatch" Hatcher

Hatch grew up in a trailer park in Florida with his parents and younger sister Lynne. His father was an abusive alcoholic and his mother was emotionally absent. He often had to protect his sister from his father, resulting in multiple emotional and physical scars. When he turned 18 he ran away from home and took his sister with him, his parents not bothering to call the police to get her back. It's an open secret among students that Lynne lives in the house with them, sharing a room with Hatch; nobody feels brave enough to tell somebody because they know what he would do to them. He plays the drums and sculpts figures in clay. He likes how he can smash it and nobody can tell what he's made. He’s always sworn he would never end up like his father, but the alcohol curling from his tongue is more truthful than he’ll ever be. If he had a taste, it would be discount canned beer. 

Avery Briar

Avery was raised by a single mother with twin younger brothers and an older brother in Savannah, Georgia. She's always adored all kinds of music, especially how different instruments making strange sounds can come together and sound beautiful, how poetry can be sung, and how everything falls together so perfectly. The concept just perplexes her. That being said, she plays guitar (VERY well) and sings. Her philosophy in life is to have as much fun as possible and to experience as much as possible. She loves parties and being social. She has a very hard time being alone. She doesn't like to be left with her thoughts because she ends up thinking something she doesn't want to and gets sad or scared, so she drowns it out with music, alcohol, parties, and people. She tends to avoid longer conversations with Odette and Evan because Odette always asks something too personal and Evan gets too existential. Hatch never makes her feel that way. If she had a taste, it would be a sour candy. 

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Okay so first of all thank you so much if you all read this. I often feel like people don't care about anything I care about so it means a lot if anyone reads this and is remotely interested. The whole plot is completely left out of this, but the themes of the story are (I think?) very evident in the Pinterest board, so if you're at all interested in these goobers please check it out to have a better idea!! When you look at the board you might notice that Entity isn't mentioned here, and that's because most of the tension and fear they bring in the hopefully-book is dependent on you not understanding and letting your mind fill in the gaps. Anyway, I'm just thankful if anyone cares. Please let me know what you think !!!