Am Jol

### Abilities

Can use third eye to see under 24 hours into the future, and monitor current events both within and out of the lakes. Can also survive underwater. Resistant to hallucinations.

**Am Jol** is a young woman residing near the Western Border River. She was the first human Familiar carved by Forest Dog, as a gift to Sin Mother. As a result, she has extremely crude features and is widely regarded as frightening. Am Jol is constructed of obsidian, daisies, and foam from the river, which she guards. She has moderate psychic abilities and is a talented dancer, but is rash and unfriendly to most people.

## Vita

Am Jol is first described in the story, "Forest Dog and the 1,000 Gifts" as being the 500th gift given by Forest Dog to Sin Mother. When Forest Dog works up the courage to try sending his love more ambitious gifts, he decides to carve a human out of obsidian, infusing the glass with daisies and river foam so that it can move and grow. He carves up Am Jol, and is proud of his creation, but he did a poor job on the face, making her look frightening and unpleasant. Sin Mother rejects the gift, and Forest Dog, too attached to his creation to kill her but too heartbroken to keep her, sends her down the river from Condor, never to be seen again. However, before sending her away, he placed a third eye on her forehead, which could give her visions of other places to keep her company.

After the events of the story, Am Jol washed up somewhere along the bank of the river. She was too embarrassed to return to Condor, and so instead decided to live on the riverbank alone. She built herself a cottage, but every time she needed to travel to town for supplies, people ran screaming from her. In her next 60 years of isolation, she discovered that she could use her third eye to watch what was happening from afar without ever having to interact with people. In particular, she liked to see what was happening in the big cities, which crawled with people she could never meet. However, she grew addicted to her visions, and became misanthropic and introverted as a result. She's now regarded as a sort of river witch, living alone and scaring away any who come to her door.

## Personality

Am Jol is widely feared by the people of the Lakes, and she, in return, fears them. She has little to no interaction with others throughout the year, except for the occasional few visitors she gets, and is something of a hermit. She's unfriendly and not known for her hospitality, and is more interested in seeing the world from an outside perspective than actually partaking in it.

That being said, Am Jol is one of the only people in the Lakes with any sort of access to the rest of the world. As the Border Gods can't regulate psychic ability, she is free to telepathically explore anywhere on the planet. She especially prefers large cities, as she likes to look into urban culture, and learned to dance purely by observation despite her glass legs. This psychic ability of hers is somewhat renowned, but she prefers to keep her knowledge of the outside world to herself.

On the inside, Am Jol is a lonely being who was hurt by her perceived parents, but she internalizes and suppresses the emotions. She feels that, as an inherently ugly person, she isn't permitted to have a diverse range of emotions, and has somewhat stunted herself as a result. However, she does have a single friend in The Journey, who occasionally visits her in the evenings for outside news. This single source of contact to the Lakes keeps her relatively sane.

## Appearance

Am Jol is a woman of indeterminate age, who has mostly human - but highly distorted - features. She has very light skin, thick black hair worn in two braids, and blue eyes, which are very low on her face and seem to bulge somewhat. Her lips are blue and her teeth are excessively long and sharp, and her forehead is quite large. At her hairline, she has a greyish-violet glass eye, which - like her real eyes - is surrounded by daisy petals as eyelashes.

Am Jol also has parts of her body where the obsidian is fully visible. Aside from her third eye, the ends of her fingers and her legs, which are little more than skeletal rods beneath the knee, are made of dark violet glass. Her feet are tiny and almost hooflike as a result. The glass is actually quite strong, due to being mixed with other substances during her creation, but is still susceptible to shattering after an extreme impact. Above the knee, her legs appear swollen and veiny due to the pressure on her slim glass shins, though she insists they don't hurt as much as they appear to.

Am Jol likes to wear large, patterned sweaters that cover her body down to her knees, and lightweight sweatpants or jogging pants. She does not wear shoes, and prefers not to cover her hands or face, either. Her hair is only seen down when she's sleeping.