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Aether Crimson

August 2, 2014

A tan-coloured unicorn with a short dark curly mane that has a red curled streak through it. She has a shorter physique than most other ponies, and is a bit chubbier. Aether's snout is a little on the rounder side, and as are her ears. Her eyes are brown.

For accessories, Aether wears three things consistently: Her red glasses, her golden necklace with a red crystal surrounded by her cutie mark, and a red flower in her mane. Lately, she's also taken to wearing a white fluffy collar around her neck.

Neurotic, dreamer, introverted, and eccentric are four good words to describe this pony generally.

A peculiar individual. Aether is typically quiet and withdrawn in public, being very distrustful of strangers due to her past experiences. She has a huge fear of being judged, rather crippling anxiety, and very low self-esteem, being generally avoidant rather than confrontational. Yet she is greatly passionate about any project she undertakes. A mare full of purpose and will for accomplishing her goals, with no clear methods to actually make them happen. As a result, she can appear flighty and scatter-brained, and is often governed by whatever emotion or interest she happens to have at the moment. She’s not very good at planning far ahead, but has a constantly improvising creative mind brimming with ideas. To sum it up: She knows where to go, but she has no idea how to get there.

This young pony is also very emotional and sensitive, and can be easily offended/hurt by the slightest statement, though she tries to hide this trait from those she doesn't know well. This often doesn't work, as it is easy to tell when she is upset due to how expressive she is.

Though she is generally anxious and fearful, she can be quite calm and even grounded when others lose their heads. Her emotions often shift to compensate for how others are feeling. In a dangerous situation, she is often the first to react and try to get to safety.

Aether is a very creative, eccentric, and moody artist with a desire for organization and security. Friendly and passionate about what is right to a fault, she finds herself limited by the intense anxiety and low self-esteem that plagues her. She is shy to strangers at first and takes some time to warm up, but is generally kind and empathetic towards others.

She is further characterized by a massive dislike of confusion and the ambiguous due to having problems processing information within the clutter of her complex mind. She seeks to mostly use her creativity (drawing and writing) to simultaneously organize and express the confines of her internal world. It is something of an urge to have to express her thoughts through these outlets, something that she HAS to do rather than wants to in order to feel happy.

Also, she is persistent and focused, which makes her somewhat inflexible. She will continue to passionately work on a creative piece until it is absolutely finished, even when it is highly impractical to do so, and will not easily be pulled away from the one topic that she has fixated onto. Aether will absolutely refuse to acknowledge a distraction and will callously ignore it, having an absolute intolerance for having herself detracted from whenever she's "in her focus box."

She's kind of ditzy and naive, having a tendency to not notice the subtle too much. Aether is a pony who needs things to be bluntly spelled out or they will be misunderstood, hence her previously mentioned dislike of the ambiguous.

Her personality is overall very bombastic and vivid when she comes out of her shell though, and tends to take people by storm with her detailed and vivacious way of expressing herself. This causes many ponies to regard her as a unique and rather odd personality, yet also unforgettable.

Born in Baltimare to parents she’d rather not talk about, Aether had a bit of an unpleasant childhood. She was surrounded by an overprotective mother who would constantly put her down and make her feel like she could accomplish nothing, and a distant father. As a result of this, she kept a careful emotional distance away from them.

Most of her childhood was spent constantly trying to immerse herself in her creativity - the worlds she made and her artwork - with others. The world of stories and fantasies was much more fascinating than the reality which she found herself trapped in.

Although she made a few friends at school, they simply weren't compatible with this odd pony, and unintentionally ended up causing her pain. Due to this, she closed herself off from everyone all together and focused exclusively on pursuing her artwork.

Her magic was somewhat impressive from the start, but only became more powerful as she focused herself exclusively on her talent. Her lack of ability to mentally visualize things inspired her further. Constantly, she practiced to get her magic to express these images outwardly, to create this world of dreams she sought.

This gave her one advantage over her peers - a relentless pursuit for a special talent that she already knew she had. A special talent that she was determined to represent in the form of an image, after overhearing one day at school some ponies speaking of their desire to get their cutie mark. What would hers be? She always wondered. Would it look lovely, beautiful, appropriate to her personality?

She spent many months encapsulated with the perfect flank marking, designing, drawing, erasing, naming. Nothing occurred until one fateful day, during a meteor shower. Everyone else fled except for her. Feeling an odd calm, Aether stopped to gaze at the beautiful and horrifying sight of a large meteor plunging straight for the city. Then she was distracted by a peculiar sight; a single red flower billowing peacefully in the wind, seemingly having come up from the clouds that appeared to have been swirling around the meteor.

Aether looked from the meteor to the flower, and felt a sudden burst of inspiration. The flower fell towards her and she took it as she went to flee with the rest of them.

She had heard stories after that day of some young brilliant colt known who had helped to steer the meteors away from the city, but she wasn't really concerned with that. All she was concerned with was this burst of incomplete vision within her mind. She spent hours and hours, trying to materialize the feeling she had felt from these events, and finally created the symbol Aethel. In that moment, she had obtained her cutie mark, and began wearing that flower in her mane.

Following several years of honing her talents (and retrieving a feline companion so that things weren't quite so lonely), Aether began to pursue her career. She put several ads up for her artistic services, and it was quite slow-going for quite some time. That is, until she was hired by her first customer; an owner of a place called Moby Dick’s Cafe. The gruff boss of this establishment quite simply said: “Make me a logo. It has to be a whale.” As she was working for this stallion, he got a glimpse first-hand of a very unique artistic method (the Aether Effect, described in Other under Magical Abilities) she had developed. Something she was very private about. He found this very impressive and was endeared heavily to the owner, who advertised her services by word of mouth.

From then on, she gradually grew more confident and became an artist. However, she doesn't yet make enough bits off of this calling to support herself, so she had to take a job at a small and disorganized Baltimare Academy of Magic as a librarian's assistant. Gradually, through a ridiculous set of improbable events (basically involving several students committing pranks that turned everyone else into a cupcake, mass staff quittings, and a book of chaos going utterly out of control), she was promoted to temporary Headmistress until they could find another. However, the position seems to be permanent in an unspoken way, as there is really nobody else who is stubborn and determined enough to keep this crazy position. Surprisingly, she seems to do a decent job of it.

Whilst she works at the Academy, she has a few semi-regular customers of her artwork, one of whom is Lumen Azure. This stallion on occasion visits the school and entertains the students.

Though her duties at the Academy are kind of demanding and time-consuming, she is mostly there in administrative capacity and only deals with larger scale conflicts, organizing things on a general scale. There are many underlings at the school who deal with the more day-to-day matters. This allows her just enough time to create artwork.

Magical Abilities

Aether's magical abilities revolve exclusively around her creativity. In particular, creating images and art through the use of magic.

Magic Drawing (Spell 1) - She is able to draw shapes and lines in the air using her magic, which manifest as light illusions. These shapes and lines can be as detailed as a real drawing, but aren't actually physical or tangible.
The Aether Effect (Spell 2) - This is a specific spell that is kind of unique to her which she has created for making art with magic. Basically, she uses her Magic Drawing to create shapes in the air. Then she takes paint which has been made from special magical flowers and shoots it at the magic in a very organized, precise way. Lastly, she gently coaxes the paint-coated magic onto a piece of paper.
Magic Aura Color: Red.

Accessories - Explained

Aethel - To this day, the very same flower she was inspired by when she received her cutie mark is the one she wears in her mane. She wears it as a symbol of that glorious day. Incidentally, it was also this flower that inspired her to seek out a magical type of flower which she uses to create her paint.
Necklace - A necklace crafted by a pony known as Pearl Necklace of her cutie mark. It was given to her as a gift by Lumen Azure as reward for all of her work for him.
Glasses - She's had these since she was a young filly. Her eyesight at first was perfect, then degenerated much to the same levels of her family's genetically imperfect eyes.
Fur Collar - Something she started wearing when she became headmistress, to make her look more formal and fit the part.

Relationships

Lumen Azure - One of her most frequent customers. She's not quite sure what to make of him just yet, but knows that she finds him rather amusing. Sometimes, he likes to give her random gifts for her services, which is also something that confuses her as she in general doesn't quite know how to respond to compliments like that. She is thankful for his business, however.

Misc

Pet: A cat named Apple (sometimes also known as Sku) who she obtained during the time of honing her talents. The kitty is your typical black cat in appearance, and has a rather neurotic and jumpy personality, somewhat similar to her owner.
Also a Skilled Writer, and very good at expressing herself through words. Not so much spoken word though.

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