#i just really like drawing antlers. i May have forgotten the wings. but i did not want to redraw the cape

[chromatic-casino]

Another Deer

[bookwyrminspiration]

These are the most recent drawing’s of Maui!!

I hope you enjoy them!! I’m not sure if i’ve mentioned this before but his favourite colour is green.

And yeah it makes sense that you answered my other ask that way!! I did try to do a place from New Mexico, as you have stated before, but for some reason it didn’t have Santa Fe, which to my understanding is the capital of NM?? Also, is New Mexico even near Mexico?? Why is there a New one??

And yeah, same here for the ‘instinctively waking up at six’, i can sleep in til 7 but any more than that is just late.

Put the note directly over your face or make it your phone lock screen perhaps? (I say that as i have forgotten to get a meds refill until they’ve run out and since nothing is open on a sunday i have to wait until tmr)

i have to go but yes! happy halloween!

heathen! hello! please excuse how long it took me to answer this one; I like to give asks with art more thought and attention and life really didn't want me to get to this one! but, now i am here and Maui looks absolutely stunning.

Definitely not how I imagined him based off the like two asks you'd sent at the time where I essentially just made someone from scratch in my head, but this style seems to fit him a lot better. There seem to be two versions (best word I can think of right now) for him, one where he's all magical and another where he is Just Some Dude, and both are excellent. It may be obvious from my blog, but I do tend to lean more fantasy, so those antlers and wings intrigue me. Oh and the ears! Are those specifically to compare him to an animal or just a characteristic of who he is as a person? I don't know if that makes sense let me try to word that better. Are they specifically deer antlers showing that he can be compared or is associated with a deer, or are they just his antlers and don't have an animalistic meaning?

Those tattoos (if that is what those are) look intriguing as well. I love how they wrap around his body--are they supposed to be a specific plant? Do they have a meaning behind them or is it just "oo cool plant" kinda vibe? I think it's interesting how he has the tattoo on that part of his body considering the mirror is a mechanical arm.

Those wings too!! They look delicate, which is an interesting contrast to the rest of him, sturdy and tough. He does look very approachable though despite the stature, like he's someone who doesn't know what to do with his height and is kind of just existing.

Also I keep looking at that first image of him in what's basically business casual and laughing because that doesn't match anything I know about him. You've said he's chaotic and forgetful and yet there he is in slacks and a button up. With a normal watch. I mean he does like tinkering with things and mechanics, but for some reason him having a normal business watch feels off (/pos) in a way that's like oho what are you doing deer man.

You hadn't mentioned that his favorite color is green, but you've definitely incorporated it into the art!! I can't tell if his eyes are a mix of green/brown or the green is the reflection, but either way it's really pretty!! My eyes are a little mix of the colors so I must admit when I saw that I went Oh? Like me?

Also glad the way I answered that ask wasn't a problem!! I thought it was funny that somehow, out of all the places in MST, you found my exact city. Like I understand how it happened but also how did it happen. And yes Santa Fe is the capital of New Mexico! I think I know why it might have gone to my city instead of that one, but that involves statistics that are a little telling so I think I'll stay quiet on that one. And yes, New Mexico is near Mexico. The bottom of the state borders Mexico, and it's "new" because the land that is New Mexico (alongside some of the neighboring) used to belong to Mexico before treaties and purchases and things like that made it the US's. Being close enough the culture is a little closer to Mexico's than the rest of the U.S., which is great seeing as i am Mexican! The rest off the states don't have chiles or hispanic/latino people--I think we've actually got the highest percentage there.

as for the waking up thing, very convenient for school!! I don't understand how people can just...sleep so late. My partner sleeps in and I'm always amazed like damn you're just. still sleeping rn. Not judgemental, but fascination because we have such different sleep schedules. I think I once slept in until nine on accident when I was like 7 and the confusion was so overwhelming that I can still remember it to this day. If i'm not out o fbed by 6:30 I'm gonna feel off.

for the notes: I would find a way to forget that I had put a note over my face, but thank you for the suggestion!! that and the lock screen suggestion might help someone else though! I don't change things like my lockscreen often, so that might be strange. I very rarely change things like pfps and headers and backgrounds--I don't understand how people do it so frequently like ahh! How!

also you saying happy halloween shows just how old this ask is given that I am answering this only a few days before the new year starts. but I hope you had a good few months in the times between when this was sent and I actually answered it!!

Thank you for sharing all the art of maui and some more information about him. He sounds like there's a lot of interesting lore behind him, so I am intrigued! your art is really pretty and I love the way you use the colors and lighting to express his character <33

[seadeepywrites]

Kid, You Gotta Stand Up

Character: Haven Vassellon Words: 3229 tw: academic stress & failure

Haven is eighteen and her life is over.

She sits here for a while, in this small side room of the Runiversity, her throat aching and a heaviness in her abdomen that feels a bit like a draft horse has kicked her, repeatedly. As Haven buries her head in her hands, letting her blonde hair curtain down to hide her face from view, she wishes for the five hundredth time she wasn't the kind of person who cries this easily.

She weeps, but it's practically perfunctory. There are few tears that escape, like she’s a sponge wrung out of all moisture, for the simple reason that she has cried enough this week to fill a bucket with saltwater several times over. By now she knows the pattern she'll follow. The crying, accompanied by the sinking-spiraling sensation that she's worth nothing. Will never succeed at anything, anywhere. Then come the hot flash-bang surges of rage — frustration at herself, and fury at the university for putting her in this position.

Lastly, a nauseous kind of acceptance. There's peace to be found on the other side, when her stomach muscles are sore from her heaving sobs and the tears and snot on her face have dried into a slick film. Haven isn't sure if she’d call this phase coming back up for air or crashing down to earth, but that’s where she is in the cycle when the door to the room opens and Wyler sticks his head in.

"Hey, Haven," he says, brown eyes warm and tone extraordinarily gentle. "How are you doing?"

Haven gives him a double thumbs-up without smiling. "Oh, you know.... terrible."

"Yeah," he says quietly. "I thought so."

Tugging the door shut behind him, Wyler walks over to a desk that sits several arm-lengths away from where Haven is puddled in the near-center of the room. He slouches sideways in the chair, kicking out his lanky legs in two entirely separate directions, and regards her with contemplative sympathy.

"I take it you just had your meeting with Professor Rothquenter?" Wyler asks.

Haven nods.

"And how did it go?" Wyler says, before casting his gaze over Haven's disheveled appearance and amending his question. "I can kind of tell the answer is 'not well.'"

Haven shrugs, a weary and helpless motion. "She said they can't do anything for me. My work hasn't been up to their standards, so it's..." She takes a deep breath. "It's as simple as that."

Wyler makes a noise of outrage. "What? It's not simple at all. There was that whole thing with your sister halfway through the semester, and you— you tried so hard."

"It turns out," Haven says with a bitter twist to her mouth, "that how hard I try is not actually a metric the Runiversity cares about very much."

"They're supposed to be an institute of learning," Wyler says, a little desperately. "They don't recognize how much you want to be here? That doesn't count for anything? Are you serious?"

In a small voice, Haven says, "I don't know that I do want to be here, anymore."

"I guess not," Wyler snorts. "I wouldn't either, if I were you."

Haven scrubs at her face, running her fingers up into her hair and rubbing at the base of her antlers. Her hair floats away from her head in blond wisps — she's guessing it has already tangled itself in the ten minutes since she took it out of its bun, though she hasn't even moved from this chair.

A wad of blue fabric lands on the desk in front of her with a gentle flumph noise. Haven looks at it.

"Uh, what is this?"

"It's my handkerchief," Wyler says with a frown. "For, you know." He waves a hand in her direction. "Your face."

"Wow." Haven smiles despite herself. "Thanks a lot."

Wyler seems to register his own comment. "Okay, you know I didn't mean that. I mean, I meant. Um."

Picking up the handkerchief, Haven clutches it in one crumpled fist. A fresh wave of tears crests and breaks, spilling down her face.

"I'm sorry!" Wyler says, truly alarmed now.

"N-no," Haven chokes out, blowing her nose and shutting her eyes as her shoulders shake. "It's... thank you. For being." She makes a strange wet gurgling noise that surprises even herself. "Here for me."

"Oh." A scraping noise as Wyler scoots his chair closer. One warm hand grips her shoulder. "Of course. I'm.... this is really terrible. How they've treated you."

Haven cries some more. Wyler sits with her, and for someone who's normally quite the chatterbox, he doesn't say much.

***

Haven has forgotten what it was like to be stared at wherever she went. In the halls of the Runiversity, a bright pink tiefling with a large rack of antlers and a cascade of blond hair could sit in a classroom alongside silver-scaled dragonborn, tiny-but-spunky kobolds, and even a handful of shy firbolg. The Runiversity's position as the foremost institute of higher learning means that it attracts people from across the continent of Povrunei — sometimes even further — and Haven had relished the chance to be only one oddity in a group of many. Just another funny-looking student learning to read, write, and fling spells.

It stings a little, then, when she stops at an inn along the coast and the women in the corner of the taproom burst into poorly stifled giggling at the sight of her. Haven ignores them, though she can't prevent her tail from lashing slowly along the floorboards behind her, and goes straight to the bar.

"Hi there," she says to the innkeeper, a somber-looking dwarven fellow who hardly reacts to her presence at all, thank the gods. "Can I get a room for the night?"

"Absolutely," he says in a surprisingly high-pitched voice, reaching under the counter. "One single bed? Dinner and breakfast are included."

"That'd be great." Haven smiles. "And can I get a glass of wine, please? Something with fruit or berries, if you have it."

The innkeeper grunts. "Grape's a fruit."

Haven blinks.

Before she can reply, he flashes her a smile. It is wide and toothy, but it is gone again so fast she's left flat-footed, wondering if she imagined it.

"I'll bring you some of the Minaret blend," he says. He waves a hand. "Pick any table."

Haven does, dropping her pack to the floor next to her chair. It crashes down with a thud loud enough to draw every eye in the place, and she winces. Her shoulders and back are one solid stone block of pain and tension right now, forcing her to shuffle along like an aging hermit, but she’d found herself physically unable to walk away from the Runiversity without stuffing a truly ridiculous number of books into her traveling pack. These are just her favorites, too, the ones she couldn't go any length of time without. When she figures out where she's going to be staying in the future, she'll write a letter to Wyler and he'll send along the other six cases of tomes, notes and journals.

Haven digs her fingers into her stiff shoulder muscles, tilting her head from side to side. Her wand nearly slips free of its place in her bun, so she spends a few minutes re-securing her hair more neatly atop her head.

She is just sticking her wand back through the whole mess, tongue nipped between her pointy teeth in concentration, when a human slides into the seat across from her. Their short hair is dark against their lightly tanned skin, and their gray eyes are glacier-pale. Coupled with their unblinking stare, the effect is unnerving, but since Haven doesn't have any pupils or irises to begin with, she supposes she isn't one to talk.

"Uh," she says. "Hi?"

"Hello," the human says, a smile fluttering like moth's wings around the corners of their mouth. "You are from the Runiversity, yes?"

Haven has spoken to people from several continents of Thiuhm, but she has never heard the lilting accent that lifts this stranger's speech into melody.

"I am," Haven says. "Or, well... I was. I'm actually," she glances down at her pack, "on my way away from it, these days."

"I see." The human sits there for a few seconds, digesting this information. "Would it be all right if I asked you a few questions? I am perhaps an aspiring student myself."

Haven can't help the face she makes, brow furrowing and lip curling in reflexive dismay.

"I apologize," the stranger says hastily. They move as if to get up and leave, halting poised on the edge of their chair. "I did not mean to offend."

"Gods," Haven says with a little laugh, waving them back down. "That's not it. You're fine. Please, stay."

The human settles into the chair again.

Grimacing, Haven continues, "I just don't know how much help I'm going to be. I'm, uh, not feeling too kindly towards the place at the moment."

The human arches one sleek, crisply defined eyebrow.

"It's complicated," Haven says. She fidgets with the fabric of her sleeve, twisting the gauzy fabric between her fingers in a way that is sure to leave permanent creases. "I wanted to go there so badly. I really did."

"But you do not anymore?"

"I don't know." Sighing, Haven repeats, "It's complicated."

"We have time," the stranger says magnanimously. The expression they flash at the innkeeper is small and subtle enough that Haven decides they must know each other — that the human is a regular here.

Haven says, "I don't think I caught your name."

"Ah, I suppose you did not." The human considers this, apparently weighing the possible benefits and drawbacks to handing over such personal information. "You may call me Ten."

"Ten? Like the number?"

"Indeed."

Haven gives a mental shrug, curious but hardly perturbed. She is a tiefling, after all, and strange chosen names are part of their lot as well.

"Okay then — Ten. What did you want to know about the Runiversity? I'll do my best."

"I could hardly ask for more." Ten smiles slightly, inching forward in their chair. "The students, those that are accepted to study there... are they all afforded the same privileges?"

Haven frowns. "What do you mean?"

Waving a hand, Ten says, "Take a random example. Say... the teleportation network. Would any student have access to such a place?"

"Ah," Haven says. She suspects the example was not random in the slightest, from what little she can glean off of Ten's mysterious, polished mannerisms. "Well, uh.... not really. I mean, you could always pay to use it, but in terms of just letting students hop across continents..." She thinks about it for a second. "I'd say you'd have to be at least a fourth-year." And then, more confidently: "They'd definitely require you to have taken Conjuration II, cause that's got a unit on travel and transportation spells. Or to have an equivalent recommendation from a Conjuration professor along with high marks in a lower-level class."

"I see." Ten is silent for a moment. "And what year did you say that you were?"

"I didn't say," Haven replies with a grimace. She shifts in her chair, tugging again at her sleeve. It's not shame that prickles warm across her skin, exactly, but she's not too comfortable baring the sordid details of her stay at the Runiversity. Not right now, with the wound so fresh.

"I was going to take my second-year exams next month," she says after a moment.

Haven doesn't mention that it took her three years to complete the work most students would have in one, or the stilted and humiliating conversations with everybody from her professors to the Archmage of Abjuration to her fellow students. She doesn't share the particulars of the Runiversity's assessment system and why she's so nauseatingly familiar with it. She doesn't admit to the ravenous insecurity that has rotted inside her the last few weeks — the fear that for all her thirst for knowledge, there is something deeply, deeply wrong with her brain. Something wrong with her.

"And where are you headed for now, if you don't mind my asking?" Ten says, perfectly politely. They skate elegantly past the real question that Haven is sure lurks on their tongue, dark and squat and ugly.

Haven says, "I don't know for sure yet. I'm heading east for now, but I'm thinking of maybe sailing to another continent, even. I've never been a ship properly before. Only those little boats, with oars."

Her hands flutter as she talks, tracing a path through the imaginary Povrunei in the air between them. Her fingers hesitate on the coastline, but then she flicks them outward, into the swell of a transparent ocean. Haven knows her geography, but she is starting to realize there is a significant difference between knowing something intellectually and truly understanding it in your bones.

Haven decides, as she speaks to Ten, to pretend. For the length of this conversation and the questions they ask her, she can be like any other student. She chose to leave the Runiversity for entirely independent reasons. Of her own volition and free will, because she truly concluded there was a better life for her in the wide world beyond.

It's tempting, that lie. It's an explanation she pieced together bit by bit over many tearful hours spent with Wyler, bolstered by his attempts to spin golden optimism out of the spiky straw of her despair. He believes it, and she's repeated the words so many times she almost believes it too. It's the story she's told anyone that asks, and one she's tried very hard to convince herself of.

The problem is that Haven's read enough fiction to know a convenient narrative when she comes across one. She's notoriously bad at discerning when other people are lying, but she recognizes the squirm of self-delusion in herself as she speaks. The way she's twisting the truth. The way she's making excuses for herself, and pretending this wasn't partially her fault. Maybe even mostly her fault.

"Haven?"

Haven blinks. Refocuses on the human sitting across the table from her. "Oh, sorry. I got a bit lost in my thoughts there."

"It's all right. I'd expect nothing less from an academic such as yourself."

As Ten smiles magnanimously, it occurs to Haven that she doesn't think she introduced herself to them. To anyone in this tavern, actually. So how the hell does Ten know her name?

"If I'm being honest," she says with a flash of guilt, "I'm not sure it's in the cards for me to be an academic much longer."

Ten's glance flicks down to the pack at her feet and its lumpy, oblong shape. "You are clearly enthusiastic about learning."

"Learning, yes." Haven's mouth twists. "Academia, maybe not so much."

Ten tilts their head in a silent question.

"I want to learn things," Haven says in a rush. "I want to read and take pages of notes and know everything about everything." She swallows against the sadness that's been sizzling in her throat for weeks now. "But school is... it might not be the right fit for me. For the way that I learn."

"There's no shame in that," Ten says, serene, displaying again an uncanny ability to guess at Haven's emotions. "We are all of us different people."

"But I'm a wizard," Haven says, distressed. "Wizards learn their spells through studying. And classes. And homework."

"Do they? All of them?"

"All the ones I've ever met."

Ten laughs. The sound is musical, and there's an echo to it that abruptly forces Haven to re-consider the assumption she'd made that Ten is, in fact, a human.

"You have, however," they point out, "spent much time at the Runiversity. Perhaps it is a limited selection of the population that you have drawn your conclusions from."

Haven thinks about this. It reminds her of the introductory math class she took her first year, which quite literally had her tearing her hair out in frustration. Professor Brighthammer had spent several classes emphasizing the importance of surveying a representative sample, and the errors that might result from a failure to do so.

She nods, and says, hesitantly, "That's... possible, I guess."

"You simply have to make your way in the wider world and meet more wizards," Ten says. Haven can't tell if they're being facetious or not.

She makes a face. "Maybe. It's not the main goal, but it could happen along the way."

"And what is your goal, then?"

Haven hesitates. It's not that she doesn't know — it's the careful fitting of words to her purpose, trying to articulate it in a way this stranger will understand.

"I want to learn," she says slowly. "But I also want to, um, make my mark. Find whatever it is I'm good at and do that. I thought I was gonna be able to do it at the Runiversity, but... I guess not."

Ten's fingers drum an irregular rhythm on the table. They sip from the mug the innkeeper deposited on the table in front of them. Haven blinks, remembering her wine, which she has completely forgotten to drink.

"I hope you find what you're looking for," Ten says eventually. "I have every faith that you will."

"Thanks. Um, you too."

This time, their smile reminds Haven of the point of a needle — minute and deceptively sharp. "I am confident that I will as well. Do not worry about me."

"Uh," Haven says. "I won't, then."

Ten sits with her a little longer, slowly draining the rest of their mug. They ask a few more questions about the Runiversity, in the delicate sort of way that dances around Haven's current conflicted feelings towards the place.

Haven is happy to answer, but she can't deny the way her shoulders relax when Ten finally stands, stretches like a cat, and says, "I shall retire for the evening, I think."

"Okay," Haven says, trying not to sound too relieved. "Good night, Ten."

"And to you."

Ten inexplicably offers her a bow, performed with just enough flourish to look out of place in this rough backwater tavern. Haven gives a short little laugh, bemused.

And then Ten disappears into the night. The door latching behind them seems very loud, despite the murmuring chatter from the other tables that are still occupied. Haven takes a larger swallow of her wine, enjoying its rich and velvety sweetness. She didn't ask what was in it, but she suspects a hint of cherry. It's nice.

She doesn't stay up much later after that, only long enough to finish the glass of wine and thank the innkeeper. Climbing slowly up the stairs, she yanks her bun out and replaces it with a loose braid.

The bed is lumpy and narrow, but Haven collapses into it without changing out of her day-clothes. She places her wand on the low table next to the bed, rearranges the pillow to accommodate her antlers, and is asleep within minutes.

She dreams of a jungle, thick and verdant. Insects hum in its interior, and buried somewhere amid its tangle of vines, a yellow-white light flickers and vanishes. She dreams of snakes, and pirates. She dreams of adventure.

In the morning, Haven heads for the coast.