Azalea Snowflower

Azalea is pale-skinned. Their natural hair color is a medium-brown with a slight greenish undertone to it. Their hair is very curly with medium-tight curls which reach their mid-back in length. They have streaks of their curls magicked to look like they're dyed a bluish green aquamarine color, with a single pink streak. Azalea has blue eyes.

Azalea has a very expressive face, and it's nearly impossible for them to hide what they're feeling. While their physical feature are identical to their twin sister Rose, their face tends to rest with a more neutral expression, but very transparently emotional when they are actively feeling something.

It's unclear whether this is due to their distant fey ancestry, or somewhat less distant elemental relatives, or more likely a bit of both, but Azalea and their sister Rose were born with intricate markings all over their bodies. Azalea has glowing lines running down their sides and along their arms and legs, and leaf markings forming pleasing patterns along the lines. These lines glow different colors in accordance with their mood and feelings, though which colors indicate which emotions is something Azalea only tells their close friends. Azalea also has a single azalea blossom sprouding out of their head, and several vines with azalea-like leaves sprouting fron their scalp and mingling with their hair. These they were not born with, but grew in around age 10; a common occurance for many Snowflower elves. Plant-like snowflowers gain these attributes around this age, and they seem to be based on the child's interests and personality rather than direct genetic inheritance.

Azalea is pensive, empathetic, and a bit of a space case. They tend to mull things over before acting, and can get stuck in loops of indecision. Of course, their tendency to think things over carefully can sometimes be a good thing, as it ensures that when the decision is made, all sides and aspects of it will have been considered.

Azalea adores the water, particularly rivers and streams, and spends a good deal of time near them if they can help it. They also like to sit outside and watch thunderstorms, though more for the rain than the thunder. Azalea always endeavors to flow through life fluidly and gracefully, like water. Whether or not they always accomplish this, though, is up for debate.

Azalea can manipulate the state and movement of water. They cannot create water out of nothing, but they can cause ambient water vapor to condense and form liquid water to work with. They can move water around as liquid water, ice, or vapor, and can cause it to shift between these three states at will. They can move roughly one swimming pool's worth of water at any one time, but moving that much tires them out very quickly. Moving half a swimming pool's worth of water or less does not fatigue them very much.

Azalea can also infuse water that they are controlling with magical energy, causing it to glow slightly and heal wounds it comes in contact with. This can heal minor flesh wounds (cuts, scrapes, bruises) with almost no effort, moderate but not seriously life threatening wounds (deeper cuts with more bleeding, broken bones, etc) with moderate effort, and can stabilize people in critical condition with about five to ten minutes of concentration.
If the wound would be fatal/critical, it cannot be completely healed by Azalea's magic alone, just stabilized so that the person doesn't die on the spot and can be transported somewhere else for care.
Healing happens instantly with minor and moderate wounds. Healing severe wounds and stabilizing critical patients takes five to ten minutes.
Azalea cannot restart a stopped heart with their magic.

By entering a deep trance, Azalea can open their empathic sense further and see into the collective unconscious of all life. This takes at least five minutes of relative quiet to accomplish, but usually closer to an hour unless the silence is complete and uninterrupted. Once this trance state has been achieved, Azalea can leave their physical body and wade into the metaphysical waters of the Collective Unconscious realm that connects all thinking and feeling life. Azalea's physical body will stay wherever it has been left while their soul explores this realm. They can see a metaphysical representation of the souls of those near their body within this realm, and can see the thoughts, feelings, and bonds people share represented as glowing threads tying these souls together. They cannot glean anything from palyer characters without the player's permission. While in this realm, they can tap into a given soul's emotional threads and bring buried pain to the surface to help it begin to heal. if Azalea's body is jostled forcefully while in the Collecitve Unconsious realm, they will return to the physical realm, but it will give them a splitting migraine and extreme physical fatigue that will make it hard to do anything at all. If they carefully reenter their body of their own accord, they will be relatively fine, just a bit drained.

Azalea's ancestry includes a handful of elementals a few generations removed. This has granted the ability to forgo solid form and slip into a liquid state as a sapient mass of water equivalent to roughly 10 gallons/just under 40 liters of water. In this form, Azalea can exist as liquid water or mist/water vapor. In liquid form, they can move along a surface by “flowing” in a given direction, though they cannot flow up an incline steeper than 45 degrees, and they can move freely through any body of water, though they cannot move against a fast current. In vapor form, they can float freely in the sky up to cloud level, but not above. While in water form, whether liquid or vapor, they can “carry” their twin sister Rose while she is in electrical form, as Rose's living current will simply arc between Azalea's constantly shifting water molecules.

Water connects nearly all life as a common necessity for existence. Being connected to the element is like being connected to the essence of life itself. As a result of this connection, Azalea a mild empath. Azalea can pick up the ambient moods and emotions of those around them and feel them vicariously as if they were their own feelings. This ability can't be “turned off,” however, and can often be incredibly uncomfortable, overwhelming, and even crazy-making in the wrong circumstances, particularly in crowded areas.

Water vapor naturally gravitates very slowly toward Azalea, hovering and swirling around her or condensing on her skin, resulting in Azalea frequently having an "aura" of mist around their person. This effect is more pronounced the more humid an environment is, and the longer they remain in a single spot.

Azalea's elven heritage allows her to see in perfectly clarity even in total absence of light.

Azalea's fae ancestry has endowed them with the ability to sometimes see or hear little flashes or sounds coming from other planes of existence. This happens at random and cannot be controlled, and any dimension or plane that has protections placed on it to prevent magical spying would prevent sounds or images reaching her from that plane.

Azalea can also be expected to live around 1,000 years naturally, and their childhood lasted a century

Azalea's elven eyes and ears are more sensitive to bright lights and loud sounds than the average human. Anything brighter than direct sunlight or louder than moderate background chatter in a crowd will cause pain and disorientation.

Azalea needs to drink about twice as much water as the average person and immerse herself in water for at least an hour every day or she will experience extreme weakness and fatigue, which gets continually worse the longer she goes without drinking/soaking sufficiently. Where a typical human can go about three days without water before dying of dehydration, Azalea will perish in half that time (so roughly 36 hours with no water).

Rose and Azalea were born to the Snowflower clan, a mostly-elven community deep in the woods with a very communal and familial attitude that attracts a lot of hybrids, misfits, and in general those considered eccentric or troublesome in greater elven society. Though the clan is notably composed mosty of a number of different “always femme-bodied” elven subspecies, the clan matriarchs, Petal and Flurry, have a habit of adopting all sorts of individuals, regardless of race or creed, who need a home. For example: Rose and Azalea have an adopted orc sister in their family, and a spriggan, to name just a couple less typical members of Clan Snowflower.

The clan originally hails from Ireland, but around the time Rose and Azalea were born, their mothers, the matriarchs, were growing increasingly wary of the ever-encroaching modern world and the difficulties it created with staying out of sight of “normal” folk. They managed to make do with the help of the clan's mages by beefing up the protective wards around the clan sanctuary, but when a Manta Carlos scout found the clan in 1958 (when the twins were 43 years old, about 10-ish developmentally, thus meaning they have only vague and foggy memories of their original homeland on the emerald isle), it seemed like an angel had descended from heaven itself when they were offered the chance to relocate to Manta Carlos island. The clan moved out about a month after the offer was extended, with everyone piling on The Great Oak, the massive sapient and sentient, tyhpically stationary oak treeant that the Snowflowers build their homes on and around, and using her as a willing ship, with her roots extended in a large circle allowing her to float like a tree-shaped raft.

Rose and Azalea were born directly to the clan matriarchs. Petal was their gestational mother (the one who carried them), and Flurry was their non-gestational mother (the one who provided genetic material to Petal). They had a fairly comfortable childhood, in which their mothers encouraged (but did not force) them to wear adorable matchign outfits on many occassions, and from early through middle childhood, they revelled in ther twinned cuteness and did absolutely everything together.

Perhaps because of this, or perhaps in spite of it (probably some of both), Rose and Azalea eventually pushed back against the perception others had of them as an adorable matched set, and spent most of their adolescence, from about age 60-63 (mid-teens, around 15-ish or so developmentally), desperately attempting to each claim an identity as an individual. This started as petty squables and minor acts of rebellion like insisting on celebrating their birthdays seperately, but eventually developed into a full-fledged sibling feud. It certainly didn't help that Azalea was beginning to really develop as an empath, and that even the comparively small communmity of Clan Snowflower was a lot of emotions stabbing at their awareness like pointed knives. Ultimately, this combination of factors resulted in Azalea leaving home to wander the woods and “find themselves” for three years.

Azalea had always felt at home around plantlife, and spent a good deal of their childhood in Clan Snowflower's beautiful gardens, but untempered wilderness was another thing entirely. They wandered aimlessly for a time, heart aching with equal parts wanderlust and homesickness, oscillating between anger and love for their family. They really had no idea what they were doing. They whole “finding themselves” thing seemed great in theory, and certainly made for a grand gesture, but within a week of leaving, Azalea was starving, cold, and covered head to toe in myriad scrapes and bruises, squatting in whatever cave or abandoned burrow they could find and subsisting mostly off of berries and other plantlife, with many instances of vomiting after eating less than potable food.

Two weeks after they'd left, Azalea was unceremoniously accosted by Serena, basically the snowflower family dog, who just so happened to be a magical spirit of growth who chose to take the form of a loyal houhd, covered in leaves and blades of grass rather than fur. Serena had grown increasingly agitated after Azalea left, and it almost seemed as if on some level she somehow knew that Azalea was barely scraping by and maybe even on the verge of death. She left her home at The Great Oak and tracked Azalea for five days until coming upon them, curled up under a tree trying to sleep in spite of soreness and hunger pains. Serena arrived with bags full of preseved food from moms, and leapt on Azalea as soon as she found them, licking them for what was probably about 10 minutes solid. Azalea was certain they were dreaming at first.

With Serena's help, Azalea found it much easier to get by, as the spirit-hound's keen sense of smell seemed to be able to sniff out food and tell whether it was poisionous or not. As a resuilt, Azalea had to reluctantly admit to themselves that somethimes, no mater how much teenage angst tries to get in the way of better judgement, they did need to accept help and companionship. They weren't yet ready to admit this to their family though, nor were they ready to be around people again until they managed to reign in their empathic abilities, so they eventually built themselves a small hut in the woods hear a small babbling brook, where they lived for the better part of three years, with Serena traveling back and forth between them and the Great Oak (as well as making occassional sojourns to Manta Carlos City to check in on Rose) to keep their mothers reassured that they were alright. In this time, they honed both their hydromantic abilities by plaiying with the water in the sream where they build there home, and learned to control their empathic gifts through meditation, eventually deciding they were ready to return to the rest of their family.

As if by some bizzare cosmic coincidence, Rose and Azalea both realized that they weren't quite ready to live away from the comforts of home and hearth yet, and decided to come back around the same time. They were reunited in the woods just south of the Great Oak Grove, Clan Snowflower's primary domicile. Serena, who was sitting loyally at Azalea's feet, followed Lia and Dove—Rose's guests—into the grove and let the twins have their moment. They must have each stared at the other, faces awash with guilt, frustration, shame...but mostly love, as they each took in the sight of the other. They realized then that they were very much their own people, each an individual, but they were very much deeply connected, too, and each needed the other. Both were true, and both were important. After a hug that lasted about 10 times longer than the long stare, they returned to their family hand in hand, and spent the next 40 years happily at home with their family.

Now, fast forwad to 2017, and the twins were starting to consider, again, their plans of one day attending Manta Carlos Academy as college students. They'd had little interest in the elementary or high school programs, as the clan made sure they were educated as children, but after one very long and full childhood and adolescence, they finally decided they were ready to make this particular fantasy a reality, and they settled into an apartment together in the city, picked up part time jobs to make rent, and walked hand in hand to the admissions office...

Azalea is autistic. This colors their behavior in a number of ways, but manifests most visibly as a need to stim, or self-stimulate, when excited, nervous, or very happy, by flapping their arms, moving around, clapping, or other methods.
Azalea has also struggled with chronic depression and anxiety in the past. And although they are currently doing reasonably well, you never really shake chronic depression or anxiety for good, so they occasionally still struggle with both. None of these things define all that Azalea is, but they do color their experiences and behavior.
I myself am autistic, depressive, and chronically anxious, so I feel more than equipped to portray these things accurately.