Ava

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Full Name: Ava Moreno Reyes

Court: Summer 

Virtue: Hope

Vice: Wrath

Seeming: Fairest

Kith: Minstrel

Physical Age: Late teens

Birthday: December 3rd 1971

Taken: December 15th 1983

 

"Dear bone fragments

  Dear displacement

  Dear broken skin

                                    I am in over my head."

 - Camille Rankine

 

Playlist                         

♬ Poe - Walk the Walk

♬ Foxy Shazam - Killin' It

♬ Florence + the Machine - Third Eye 

♬ Keane - Somewhere Only We Know 

♬ Of Monsters and Men - Little Talks 

♬ Fleetwood Mac - Landslide 

♬ Poe - Spanish Doll 

♬ Queen - The Show Must Go On 

♬ The Hush Sound - That's Okay 

♬ Ke$ha - Die Young (Deconstructed) 

♬ Tori Amos - Winter

 

Character Sheet

Pinterest Board

 

The Sordid Details                  

Ava Moreno Reyes was born in El Paso, Texas. She doesn’t remember anything of El Paso or their life there, but Diego would sing ‘The Girl From El Paso’ to help her fall asleep at night, and he would tell her ‘That’s you - the girl from El Paso.’ The lack of memory before Diego ran away with her was not a product of the Hedge but simply because she was so young at the time and Diego steadfast in his refusal to tell her anything about their parents other than it was better that they left.

 

Diego Moreno Reyes was not born under that name. Moreno Reyes was made up when he took his little sister and ran for it. Diego didn’t think their parents would come looking for them - two less mouths to feed was probably considered a blessing for them if they even noticed. What he was wary of was being caught and sent back. First both of them, then just Ava as Diego turned eighteen and immune to the long arm of child services.  He was the product of his father’s “first” marriage (the first Diego knew about, the first that produced any kids that dad was saddled with) and already twelve when good ole dad remarried and Ava was born. He was also already involved in a fair amount of illegalities by then in spite of his age due to boredom and circumstances. He spent the first couple months resentful of the screaming baby they’d been stuck with until he noticed that his parents were doing about as much as Diego was - ignore it and hope it shuts up. 

 

Twelve was a little young to take up parenting, but it suddenly became crystal clear that this baby was going to die if Diego didn’t do something. Just shoving her off on CPS never occurred to Diego. The law and all of its branches was in general not something Diego trusted considering he was poor, not white, and was fairly certain even by twelve he was more into guys than socially acceptable in that era. He was already planning on making a break for it as soon as he had the resources to do so - he just had to adjust his plans a bit to account for an extra person. It took a few years of working hard and bending his morals more than before. He had never been the praying type, but he started around then. ‘Please, just don’t let her turn out like me.’.

 

He was able to get a ‘65 model Ford Mustang for a good price considering the previous owner didn’t take care of it at all. Diego had always been magic with machines though, and somehow he got it running like new with half a year of steady work on it. It was Ava’s birthday the day he excitedly shook her awake in the middle of the night and had her silently pack the one bag of things she had. 

 

“Where are we going?” Ava asked, still only half awake as Diego ushered her into the car. No lights in their home were on. 

 

“An adventure.” Diego answered as he buckled her in. By sunrise they were in New Mexico with Texas far behind them, never to return.

 

"I wish being a good person could erase the bad things I've done." - J Comeau

 

The first few years were rough. They slept in the Mustang more often than not, surviving off charity. Ava learned a lot of church hymns as most outreach programs to take care of the homeless were religion-based, with a sprinkling of folk songs picked up from hippies they sometimes camped with if Diego decided they were trustworthy enough. Excuses were also made as to why they were on their own instead of with extended family - the most common story that Diego gave and coached Ava in as well was that their parents died trying to make a new life in America and that that the rest of their family lived Tehuacan, that they weren’t really living on the streets so much as getting by and saving up so that they could go back to their family without being a financial burden on them. It was a real bootstraps and tearjerker story, and people ate it up. 

 

They’d had a lot of Aunts and Uncles but Diego never was certain which were blood relatives and which were “Aunts” and “Uncles”, and either way their whole family had lived in Texas since before the US took the territory over. They were quick to move on before anyone found anything suspicious, and with the vets returning from Vietnam as the war was declared officially over it was easy to get lost in the ever-shifting landscape of people. They stuck to the south at first, it was familiar and there was a greater Mexican-American community to rely on for help. Diego was constantly restless, though, always looking over his shoulder. He told Ava he just wanted them to see more of the US, but the truth was he continued to fall back on less than legal means to make money because it was what he knew how to do - and getting away from that was not so easy even after he became a legal adult. It was simpler to just get far away from the whole area. Ultimately this ended them up in Seattle, and Diego hadn’t ruled out skipping off to Canada if they needed. Determined to be on the up and up this time around, for real this time, as Ava was getting older and while her blind trust in her brother had maintained Diego figured it was only a matter of time before she started asking questions he didn’t want to answer. 

 

Keeping her completely in the dark was, after all, not an option. Cops couldn’t be trusted ever, so he had to at least make sure Ava knew how to spot the dangerous sorts to avoid.

 

They came into Washington while the Puyallup Fair was going on and Diego stopped them there for a day to just have fun. It was there he got the bracelet Ava always wears - assorted cheap plastic beads and letters to spell out her name tied together with elastic. She insisted he get one too so that they would match. 

 

“Lame,” Diego said about that, but he was smiling. He got one too. While much of Ava’s life before the Hedge is a foggy mess full of more holes than swiss cheese, that memory always remained such a vibrant one. It was one of the happiest days of her life, especially because for once Diego looked like he was just feeling happy and not worrying too. He did his best to make sure she never really understood how poor they were, but Diego was her brother and effectively her only parent - she got very good at picking up his moods, even when he could fool everyone else. 

 

They settled in first with a homeless outreach church program the next day, and for once when they moved out it wasn’t into the car to a new city - it was into an apartment. 

 

It was a dirty roach-infested deathtrap studio apartment was what it was, but it was theirs. 

 

Time passed, they moved from apartment to car to apartment to car but living out of the Mustang became less and less each time. Diego argued to himself that it wasn’t really anything illegal if any of his relationships during that time just happened to be with people who had something to offer the both of them, resources they needed access to. Ava was also able to enroll in school, she was embarrassingly far behind but caught up quickly. Ava always made friends easily, if someone didn’t find her posturing and attempts to act like her older brother annoying she usually found something about them to like. They moved into an apartment with an actual bedroom on her eleventh birthday thanks to Diego managing to obtain gainful employment at an auto shop, and Diego said for her birthday he was giving her the bedroom. 

 

It was barely larger than a closet, but it was Ava’s. She had a door that closed and that was amazing. 

 

Benjamin came into the picture around then. Benjamin’s life was a multi-act tragedy that came out, mostly to Diego, in bits and pieces. It wasn’t uncommon to be rough with your kids in those days, but Ben’s father was still worse than average. Ben recalled actually being grateful when his father broke Ben’s arm in high school for getting a B in math - it gave Ben an excuse to quit the baseball team he was killing himself to excel at along with all of his grades. Every day was a desperate struggle, especially after his mom died, but somehow Ben made it. He graduated high school, got a scholarship, and got as far away from home as possible studying music on the east coast. Music was the one thing that made life worth living for him, and he was finally free.

 

The difference between Ben’s father and Ava and Diego’s parents was that Ben’s father didn’t have the decency to being an easily recognizable scumbag. He was a police officer, a regular pillar of the community. 

 

A year and a half after he left home, Ben’s father took a bullet to the spine in the line of duty and was paralyzed from the waist down. No mom, no other siblings, no other family. Ben tried so hard to be a good son, and they didn’t have the money for a caretaker. Dropping out of college, Ben returned home to Seattle take care of his father.

 

He told himself every day it wasn’t so bad anymore. His father hadn’t beat him in years. This was fine. It was fine. 

 

Ben was running errands and taking his father’s truck in for an oil change on a day that Diego was the only one working in the shop and Ava was there with him. He needed to go to the pawn shop next to get rid of his old guitar - there was no point in keep it, any dreams it held were long gone - but he lingered at the auto shop rather than just dropping the truck off.

 

Ava was curious about the guitar. She only ever sang before, though some of the hippies they had camped with had shown her a few chords she could sort of remember. 

 

Diego was backed up with other work, so it was not going to be a short stay there. With nothing else to do except make a young kid smile, Ben spent the time showing Ava the guitar and how to play it. She was absurdly fascinated, and Ben told her she was a natural at it. 

 

Finally Diego came out, asking if he was looking to sell the guitar. Ben told him that was the plan. Diego offered to knock money off the oil change if Ben would give the guitar to Ava - more than Ben would get for it at the pawn shop but less than Diego would have to pay to buy it. 

 

“Won’t that get you in trouble with your boss?” Ben asked, tempted by the offer.

 

Diego grinned.

 

“I won’t tell my boss if you won’t.”

 

Charmed in spite of himself (Diego had that effect on people) Ben offered to give Ava further lessons. 

 

“I can’t pay you,” Diego said quickly, expecting that to be the end of it. Ben just shrugged and said helping a kid with music was payment enough. He worked part time and was hoping to enroll in the University of Washington next quarter to someday finish his degree. Most of the time his father could stubbornly look after himself, and those times Ben prefered to be out of the house if he could help it. Ava liked him right away - he was a sharp contrast to her mercurial brother, mild and even-tempered. It would be unfair to say all the violence that shaped Ben had made him kind, the innate kindness was simply who he was and every attempt to kill it had so far failed. Ben was comforted by routine so they had a normal day to meet, for him to give lessons to her. It doubled as babysitting for Diego’s late hours at the shop when the older women who lived in the apartment building didn’t have the time to check in on Ava after she got home from school. 

 

It was probably because Ben was friends with Ava before him and Diego became close that Diego gave Ben a chance at all. Ava tended to not like most of his past relationships, but she was already fond of Ben (affectionately nicknamed “Benji”) To be fair, Diego didn’t like most of his past relationships either. 

 

Ben was the straight laced former super-achiever who was far enough into the closet to find Narnia, while Diego was only on the down low about it because the auto shop he worked at was at least semi-reputable and he reluctantly was willing to sacrifice his pride in favor of continued survival. As far as anyone else was concerned they were just an odd but oddly compatible friendship. 

 

(Ava actively tried to hook them up. She always knew about her brother and saw the way Ben looked at him, and the way Diego seemed less stressed around Ben. It was embarrassing and awkward and she was never anywhere near as subtle as she thought she was.) 

 

They were taken away shortly after Ava turned twelve. Diego was 24, Ben was 22. Ben had stayed over longer than intended that day so Diego offered to walk him home as it was already well past dark. Diego hated having to take Ben home, really. Even though his father hadn’t raised a hand against Ben in years, Ben still seemed so afraid and anxious at the sight of his own home. Diego knew that look too well. 

 

“How do you feel about Victoria? You know, in Canada?” Diego asked as they slowed their walk within a few blocks of Ben’s home. 

 

“I’ve never been,” Ben answered.

 

“Want to?”

 

“What, like for a weekend?”

 

Diego shrugged, drawing to a stop on the sidewalk, not looking at Ben. 

 

“Nah. Like forever. Our lease is coming up soon, Ava and I could book it pretty easy. You could come with us.” Diego proposed, all casual, as if he wasn’t asking Ben to run away with him. For Ben, who had known people his whole life and stayed rooted in one place, the little over a year they were familiar with one another was such a short time to become so close. For Diego and Ava, who were used to shuffling in and out of people’s lives by the week, it was practically forever already. Diego had been running for so many years he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to stop, even when he had nothing to run from. If he was helping someone else, though… It wasn’t like it was really running, right? It was planning an escape for someone else. 

 

Ben smiled, but it was strained at the edges, tired. Worried.

 

“I don’t have a passport.”

 

“I can cover that.” 

 

“A - okay,” Ben shook his head. Diego had told him a little about his life before Seattle, but like Ava, he tried to keep Ben in the dark. He was too kind. “...There’s no one to take care of my dad if I leave.”

 

Diego frowned, kicked at a rock, tried to keep his temper under wraps because Ben didn’t deserve that.

 

“FUCK your dad, Ben! You don’t owe him shit, let him be the goddamn State’s problem!”

 

Ben returned the dark look then, taking a breath and trying to calm down. He didn’t succeed. 

 

“Not everyone can just get up and leave everything whenever the mood strikes them, Diego, some of us actually have obligations.” Ben tried to keep his voice down. They were still on the street, where anyone could hear. 

 

“I don’t have obligations? Are you really going to fucking tell me I don’t have obligations when you teach mine guitar and help her with her homework every week?” 

 

“That’s different, Diego, you know that’s different.”

 

“How is it any fucking different?”

 

“It’s different because you don’t help her to bed every night wishing she’d fucking die already so you could finally have a life!” Ben clapped a hand over his mouth then. He’d never let himself say that aloud before. That he actively wished such a thing (a change of pace when he was in school and graduation was so far away, wishing himself dead some days instead).

 

Diego pulled Ben off the main street. No lights had come on indicating too interested parties, but you could never be too careful. 

 

“... I could help.” Diego said. He didn’t have to explain, not with the hard look in his eyes, the set of his jaw. 

 

“I can’t,” Ben replied. “Don’t you see that I can’t?”

 

Diego did, and he hated every second of it. 

 

“I don’t want to fight,” possibly the only time Diego said those words.  “... Ava’s babysitting for Mrs. Li tomorrow, right after school until 8. I have an early shift at the shop. Come over. We’ll have the place to ourselves and can talk then.”

 

“I’ll think about it.” Benji replied, which for Diego always meant ‘yes’.

 

Diego watched from the street until Ben got inside his house, until the door closed behind him and the lights eventually went off. He liked Ben, a lot, but it could get downright vicious when they fought. They were very different. 

 

A sound caught his attention, and he wasn’t really surprised to turn and see his little sister there, holding on to Ben’s guitar as it was her makeshift security blanket now. 

 

“Ava, what the hell?”

 

“I heard a sound, I was scared, you’d just left so I just… followed.” Ava tried to explain.  

 

“You know the pipes are shit hermanita, you’re supposed to go to Mrs. Li if I’m not home and you get scared, you know that.”

 

Ava just shrugged. 

 

“I didn’t fucking want to.”

 

“Hey,” Diego reached out and aggressively ruffled her hair. “Don’t fucking swear, what did I tell you about that?”

 

Diego could never stay mad at her. 

 

He kept an arm around her as they walked home, Ava had heard some of his argument with Benji so he just told her the rest of it since she’d be curious and prying until she got an answer anyway. Diego was supposed to make that walk home alone, but he found himself relieved to have Ava there. It was good to get the feelings out. 

 

“I swear, Ava. Sometimes it feels like I just gotta get out of this place.”

 

It wasn’t precisely a ‘I wish the goblins would come and take me away right now,’ but it was close enough for anyone listening in. 

 

Ava was not supposed to be there with him - it was only Diego’s tight hold on her and her’s on him that kept them together through the sudden drop, she doesn’t remember much of it, just the pain and Diego’s voice yelling at her to not let go. 

 

They ended up somewhere which seemed to glow with its own inner radiance. Ava was disoriented, hurt, she only saw the one that took her the once, and the only thing that made an impression were vibrant blue eyes and a distinctive voice. 

 

“Well. Two for the price of one. I could just throw you back, but… I’m sure you have some use…” 

 

After that all Ava saw were other changelings, lesser fae, her brother. She wasn’t isolated, but her music was mainly used to entertain guests or add an ambiance. The True Fae that took her and her brother had no interest in Ava aside from apparently keeping her safe made Diego more compliant. While Ava’s own purpose was clear she never knew what Diego was kept for. He was a fighter, a mechanic, a grifter - he could be whatever he needed to be to survive, which left his exact purpose unsure for her. What he did do was learn Arcadia like he learned any place. 

 

Everywhere has an underworld if you know where to look. True Fae had their own deals, their own codes, and Diego was always willing to do whatever it took to keep them both alive.  She never expected the two of them to be separated, and it was hard enough to remember her own identity, let alone things that would allow her to find this particular realm again. It was beautiful, it was full of light, and she knows if she sees it again she will know it but ultimately she knows not even the name of the one that took them or any way to find his particular domain once more.

 

These were all things she regretted some time later when she was taken by a guard and told she was to be traded - the master of that domain owed the master of another, who was particularly fond of music. She was a perfect way to settle the debt while losing less than he wanted to. Ava was not exactly happy, to say the least. She kicked, screamed, tried to fight back. Only Diego telling her to stay calm, to keep her head down, that he would find her again settled her enough to be taken away without major injury. She’d be strong. He was always strong for her, she could be strong for him. 

 

The first time Ava saw her second keeper, he looked unsettling by way of uncanny valley. He looked human... ish, aside from the antlers (tree branches?) and odd coloring, but his proportions were all off. It was like he had not seen a human in a very long time and was working off of a memory of cave paintings, perhaps. He was about nine feet tall as well - or at least he seemed that way, but Ava was never particularly tall herself. She was introduced to her second Keeper as such: 

 

Lord of the Spiral Skein, Labyrinth Walker, Opener of Ways, Keeper of Keys, Wordweilder, Worldwelder.

 

"Fuck," Ava said with a sigh, "I'm not going to remember that."

 

The Lord of the Spiral Skein, Labyrinth Walker, Opener of Ways, Keeper of Keys, Wordweilder, Worldwelder quirked an eyebrow. 

 

"Leofric, if you must," He said, like it pained him. 

 

"Leo," Ava said agreeably. "Got it."

 

Lord of the Spiral Skein, Labyrinth Walker, Opener of Ways, Keeper of Keys, Wordweilder, Worldwelder, Leofric, now Leo, gave a short laugh.

 

“Okay then.”

 

"Words need worlds in order to be worlds. Worlds though don't need words in order to be worlds." - Mark Z. Danielewski

 

Leo’s domain was a tree. No, it was a mansion. No, it was a maze. It was all of these things at once, a living breathing home grown from a single pitch black ash tree, roots forming a complex web of hallways and ever-changing stairways and doors to different places.The upper branches were only marginally more hospitable - Ava’s room was effectively a tiny attic with a single circular window to let in the light of Arcadia, as she had already grown accustomed to it and would wilt in the darkness that Leofric preferred. 

 

It was very quiet there. 

 

“Don’t you have servants to show your new staff around?” She’d asked at the doorway. She didn’t mind the small attic room. She’d lived in smaller places with less privacy. Leo gave her a vague look.

 

“No,” He replied. “It’s just us.” 

 

“Fuckin’ creepy.” Ava said, before closing the door. Alone, she cried for her lost brother until she had no more tears, until the sadness had worn her to exhaustion, until the exhaustion resolved itself to rest until she felt alive again. Just as she was beginning to worry she was going to be shunted into a corner and forgotten again, trotted out only when there were party guests to impress with her apparently golden voice, Leo appeared again. To his credit he knocked. To his credit he looked different again. More human. Still with his skin and antlers/branches the color of the tree, a dark so deep it seemed to absorb all the light near it, but he had gotten much shorter. His eyes were at level with Ava’s, the antlers the only thing making him any taller than her. His proportions were also equally shifted to match. 

 

In his own way he seemed trying to make her comfortable, and while she tried to remind herself that these things were different, inhuman, could not be judged like humans, she instantly felt warmer towards him for it. While few were outright cruel to her in Arcadia, none went out of their way to do a kindness and try to ease the fear she refused to show.

 

He explained again that it was just the two of them there. That he did not come and go frequently - he was either here for a long while or away for a long while with little in between. That the only thing he enjoyed as much as his books was music. Any music, really. Human music kept him keenly interested like a scholar uncovering more about a recently discovered country to music he had written himself but had not the voice to sing. So Ava sang it, played accompanying tunes on her old guitar that Benji had given her. The first time Leo left and came back after a time gone Ava complained of boredom in the small room. “Goodness,” Leo replied “You aren’t a prisoner here.” 

 

The door was never locked, she had free reign to wander, but was recommended against going too far down into the roots/cellar/maze. Not because he had anything to hide from her, but because it was only darkness down there and easy to get lost in. 

 

“What if I get lost?”

 

“Sing, I’ll find you.”  

 

Leo was strange but not unpleasant, frustratingly enough. Ava had been prepared to hate him. As she stayed and played music for him, the upper branches began to grow more rooms fit for her. A solarium with intricately designed windows to let even more sun in, with walls shaped to permit better acoustics for Ava’s music. A greenhouse filled with strange flowers and berries only seen in dreams. She never saw him in them aside from when Leo would stay in the dark corners of the solarium while she played, they seemed just for her. In spite of herself, Ava kind of liked it there. Leo would bring her more music from beyond the hedge for her to play, or write his own which was always a wonderful challenge. He gave her two gifts while she was with him along with the music and the shifting domain to accommodate her needs. The first was repair of a gift from her brother. It was a simple bracelet made with cheap plastic beads strung on elastic that spelled out her name, but she’d had it since she was young, and it was the only reason she remembered her own name, so much of her memory was devoted to not forgetting her brother even if she forgot everything else. The weak elastic finally gave out and the beads scattered into the darkness, bouncing down stairways. Ava was inconsolable until a few hours later, Leo returned with all the beads found again and restrung on silver thread. “This one won’t snap.” he told her, securing it around her wrist. 

 

The second gift was her guitar. Benji’s was old when Ava got it, and finally it began to wear out beyond simple tuning to fix. When it finally gave up the ghost Leo presented her with another. Intricately carved out of a single piece of wood, curves and spirals marking it, it looked like it was made of the same ash wood that the domain was, aside from being dyed a deep red color rather than the pure black. Like the bracelet, the strings were silver. As far as Ava could tell it was just a guitar, its only magical properties being a resistance to entropy of time. While the wood eventually started to wear smooth from constant handling, the strings never needed to be adjusted after the first time Ava tuned them, the tune sharp and pure as the first day she was gifted it.

 

When left to her own devices, Ava explored. Candles were little help against the darkness, but she did her best with the ever-changing hallways. Though Leo had told her they were alone, when she would go deep enough into the domain sometimes she could swear she heard a distant (or not so distant) growling. A few times Leo had to get her, but more often than not she could find her way back on her own. He had an alcove set up for her next to his library, a comfortable place to sit and glowing moss to light it, for her to sing and play her music at when he had work in there but still wanted the songs. She was never forbidden to go inside - she was never forbidden from any part of the domain - but she only bothered to peek in only once. Like the rest of the place, it was very dark, but the moss gave just enough light for her to see twisting architecture that defied comprehension, something shiny and black with too many limbs and antlers - no branches - moving along the stacks. Even having been in arcadia for a while then, it was too much. She closed the door quickly and ended up puking, ears ringing as he brain tried to wipe itself of what it had seen. 

 

“Sorry about that.” Leo said as he exited the library, looking like he always did. “Should I lock the door?” 

 

“No,” Ava coughed. “I’m fine. Fuck, I’m fine.” 

 

She didn’t try to look in again, though. 

 

As pleasant as it was - and it truly was pleasant if lonely - Ava never stopped thinking that she was not staying. Her brother would come for her and they would go home. How long she spent with Leo she didn’t know, time had little meaning without sunrises or sunsets. It was certainly at least three times as long as she had spent with the first Keeper. 

 

Resolve began to take shape within her. 

 

Diego had not come for her. 

 

That meant only one thing. He was far more trapped than she. It was her turn, then, to save him. 

(It could have meant anything. It could have meant Diego trusted Leo to take care of her and thought this was a better prison and he had lied to Ava about coming to find her. It could have meant Diego was dead. It could have meant Diego had escaped but lost his way back. It could have meant that while he lived there was nothing left of Diego. Ava did not consider any of these options and does not let herself consider them.)

 

So when Leo took his long ventures away or in his library where he did not request music, she wandered. She tried to learn the twisting hallways of the tree, managed to memorize a few core hallways that did not change. There were doors all over, she just needed to find the right one. 

 

She found the book instead, the one Leo was so fond of. “Jesus fucking Christ,” she swore, paging through it. “You ass. You pretentious dick.”

 

It was worth a shot. 

 

Her next exploration happened almost right after Leo let her know he was leaving again for a while. She went as deep down as she dared, knowing the most doorways were farther down. She sang. ‘Help’ by the Beatles. ‘Daisy Bell’, ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’. 

 

She didn’t so much find a door out as stumble ass backwards through it, falling at rapid speeds through the Hedge (ow) and landing hard in Seattle (double ow). 

 

“Jesus fucking Christ.” she muttered to herself. “ You ass, you pretentious dick.” 

 

She figures she has another couple weeks before he even notices she’s gone. 

 

Additional Art            

Of Ava and Company, images link back to my tumblr post of them for embiggening.