Elise

"*The clouds will speak to you, should you try to hear them. If only more people would take the time to listen.*"
—**Elise**
**Elise** is a 19 year old woman with silver hair and grey eyes. Affected by a magical affliction since a very young age, Elise is highly introverted and appears outwardly to be someone inattentive and unfocused. However, she is a loyal, if somewhat naive, companion who seeks to help those around her.

She is one of the Children of Destiny, representing air.

## Personality

Elise is an introverted and quiet woman who has extreme difficulty socializing appropriately with others. Having spent limited time through her childhood and adolesence engaging with other people, she grew into adulthood with relatively limited social skills. As a result, Elise greatly enjoys opportunities to calmly interact with others and tends to latch onto those who demonstrate patience with her and do not show frustration toward her.

Elise often appears inattentive and unfocused as a result of her magical affliction. A near-tragedy involving aether resulted in her being permanently affected by a spell effect similar to Voices on the Wind; this causes her to hear all conversations within line of sight at a radius of 100 meters. This overwhelmed her as she grew until she learned to affix her gaze, and thus her focus, onto the sky and the clouds above her. Doing so moderately helps her quiet the voices around her, though it comes at the cost of appearing spacey and somewhat ditzy.

## History

She was born in the town of Saloria in western Iquai, and lived with her parents and her older sister, Heather. When Elise was a very young child, her parents both contracted a highly contagious and fatal illness that was spreading through the town. Though Elise's father was a healer, he could do nothing, and they each passed away from the disease within a week of having caught it. Neither Heather nor Elise fell ill, and Heather turned to leatherworking to gather money to support her and Elise. Neighbours who were friendly to the family helped them stay afloat, offering them food and clothing to help keep them going.

The following year, the illness returned, and though Heather was again safe from it, Elise contracted it. Heather was heartbroken at watching her sister grow weaker and weaker while being helpless to stop her decline. However, one particularly bad night, when Heather had fallen into a restless sleep, she had a dream which she interpreted to be from the Maker. The dream showed her a vision of a wellspring deep within the Bramble, and of her sister swimming within it. Terrified, but knowing Elise had perhaps a day to live, Heather threw caution to the wind, lifted her sister, and began to carry her into the woods.

A fire burning in Heather's heart, her desperation to see her sister live, acted as a talisman, warding away her terror at being so deep in the Bramble. Hours of walking led her, miraculously, to the wellspring, the silvery aether within swirling and flowing in beautiful patterns. Heather kissed her sister's forehead and listened to her shallow breaths. With a sob, Heather dropped her sister into the wellspring and prayed to the Maker.

There was a flash of purple light bright enough to light up the whole clearing, and when it had subsided, Elise was gone. Heather collapsed into a heap at the edge of the wellspring, body wracked with tears. She very nearly threw herself in after her vanished sister, but held back. Minutes later, her sister reappeared in a second flash, hovering above the wellspring and gliding smoothly toward her. Heather took Elise in her arms and rocked her, and when Elise awoke, she found her health returned. Her hair had changed from a sandy, dirty blonde to silver, and her eyes had become a slate grey.

All did not end well. Elise's young and frail body was unable to adequately handle the raw aetheric power that had now flooded her. As she grew, her growth seemed to have been stunted by the aetheric interference that had coursed through her as a toddler; she never grew to five feet in height, and her body remained slight and moderately frail. In contrast, her hearing was bolstered to superhuman levels through a magical effect that she had no ability to disable; everywhere she went, she heard every conversation of every person around her. The sheer cacophony of being in the market or on the streets of Saloria was overwhelming, and so Elise shut herself away as she grew, seeing people only in quiet spaces. She spent her childhood and adolescence studying healing magic and bandaging, like her father before her.

To keep them afloat, Heather opened a shop called Heather's Leathers, which she operates to this day. She rarely pushed Elise to leave the home.

## Skills

She is a healer and carries a staff that belonged to her father before his death.

She has gained the following powers from The Maker:

* The wind carries conversations to her. Elise passively hears all conversations within line of sight and within 100 meters of herself. Elise is unable to deactivate this power and fixates on clouds in a mostly useless effort to tune other people out.
* Elise can manipulate the aether within the air to float, though she has only demonstrated this ability under extreme duress and likely has no conscious control over it.
* Elise can manipulate the aether within her body to become like air, causing physical objects and spells to pass through her, though she has only demonstrated this ability under extreme duress and likely has no conscious control over it.
* She can summon gusts of wind to carry objects thorugh the air over moderate distances.

## Notes

* Appears to be much younger than she claims to be
* Acts much younger than she claims to be
* Likes games, but is very bad at them
* Her hair is tied up near the back of her head into two tails.

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