Character outline: Coral O-Th'-Woods

She's a girl, around seventeen, and she's beautiful of course - slender, with always-touseled brown hair and red beestung lips. Her vague, wide-set hazel eyes were blind from birth, though. Her mother was unmarried, and had always been suspected (accurately) of being a witch, so the two of them lived in a state of social exile. The girl's blindness was considered her mother's just desserts. Her childhood was mostly in isolation, knowing only her mother, and they didn't speak much; most of the language she heard was the mocking calls of their neighbours, so she grew up with little regard for other members of her species. When the mother passed away from disease caused by malnutrition (they lived in extreme poverty), the girl was abandoned in the forest to die. She was maybe eight or so. The people had underestimated her survival skills, so despite her blindness and that she was reduced to savagery, she lived.

The powers she inherited from her mother (although perhaps it was actually the father, since his identity is a mystery - we can play with that later) is of a rather bestial sort. To compensate for her blindness she acquired a hypersensitive tactile sense - attuned to vibration and stuff like that - so she can pick up and recognize anything from an approaching cavalry to an oncoming storm. So she can recognize footsteps as easily as sighted people can recognize a face. This obviously helped her get by when she lived in the forest for seven years. The power manifests as an itching sensation, generally in the bottoms of her feet. All the other benefits of increased tactile sense are also there of course - identifying materials, detecting a hollow spot in the walls, and all sorts of other fun creative stuff.

Her standard of living probably improved in the forest, since she could consume freshly killed meat and drink spring water rather than tainted wellwater. She acquired a gruesome taste for blood, living in a truly Rousseau-esque State of Nature. She became strong and fit and a worthy huntress.

She was rediscovered by the city when she killed a highly-regarded nobleman while he was having a secret tryst with his mistress in the woods. Attracted by they unusual scents and sounds, the girl's curiosity merged with hunger and she attacked him, not fully recognizing that he was of the same species as she. The mistress panicked and ran back to the city, but her story was garbled with panic and the populace was generally in shock that one of their favourite local courtesans had been unfaithful to his young and lovely wife. They recovered the mangled, half-eaten body, and, in horror, declared that some awful avenging angel had done this to him. The mistress was in no position to disagree, especially because she had witnessed a naked wild girl sink her teeth into her lover's neck, full red lips giving him a kiss of death - not to mention the effect of being hanged for infidelity.

When the girl was found wandering the skirts of the woods two months later, half-dressed in the dead nobleman's finery, they declared that they had captured the avenging angel. They netted her without much difficulty, because she had been caught by surprise (and wasn't very hungry).

She now resides permanently in her chambers, which is a poor euphemism for jail cell. The room is, in fact, in the city prison, albeit with a window with a nice view. She is fed slightly better than the other prisoners. She also gets to wear an exceedingly uncomfortable getup designed specially for her, because divinities ought to have special garb and also because they couldn't bear her nudity.

As for a name, the people have called her Coral - from a local root word for "fatalism", pronounced as a more gutteral "Goral" - and to be more specific, Coral O-Th'-Woods.

The populace soon discovered that she has the power to detect oncoming storms and tsunamis - an important thing to know, in a coastal town - so they are always very attentive to her when they hear her howling and scratching at the bottoms of her feet. She is, in fact, a local curiosity and regional fable.

She's been languishing in her "chambers" for two years now and is quite fed up with the situation. She prowls the length of her cell, and is only waiting for the right moment to lunge upon the guards and make good her escape.

A meeting with her would be many-layered, I think. At first sight, she is rather lovely, but after a few moments of observing her mannerisms one would begin to suspect that she's more of a monster. That's where most people stop - but if one were to have the courage to try to talk to her, she turns out to be a remarkable creature. She retains Stoic positivity about everything, and expresses it in a captivatingly unique way. I want her sentence structure to be charming - uncouth, but insightful in its abstraction.

It will be a real challenge writing her in first person, but I will try. She has very limited linguistic skills and obviously I can't use any visual descriptors. I think it'll border on poetry - sentence fragments and stuff like that, although I'm not sure.