#so sorry darner but Aspen is one of the ocs i have Many Thoughts about

[thekeatoncadet]

15 + Aspen (or any of them tbh) for the OC thing

15. What places hold significant meaning or memories for your OC? Do they have a positive or negative association with those places?

Ohhhh no you hit the ramble button. Ok so. To answer that requires a pinch of lore and some Aspen background, which I'll put under a readmore because ilu all:

- Kelpies have to fully submerge themselves in water every few days to survive, for roughly an hour. Any body of water will do, and it doesn't have to be an hour all on one go, but failure to do so is fatal (thats just an oc thing afaik there's no folklore like that? Anyway.)

- Kelpies also have a tense relationship with humans. Most kelpies won't prey on humans. Many of them find it immoral, and those that don't still find it not worth the trouble. Even so, a minority WILL, and both groups often clash over bodies of fresh water, so they regard each other as a threat.

Alright, that out of the way:

When Aspen was a kid (not sure how old yet, but preteen at the latest) she and her family lived in a modest lake near a human village. Both parties were wary of each other, but had a tense truce to just share the fresh water that was crucial for both group's survival, and otherwise avoid each other.

But then a child goes missing, and after a few days of panicked searching, they find the kid's remains in the lake and jump to blaming Aspen's folks. (They had nothing to do with it - the kid was just a tragic accident. Aspen even tried to look for the kid when they caught wind that they'd gone missing)

The villagers are too scared to confront a couple full-grown Kelpies and their foals on their home turf, so they beg their god to take care of the kelpies for them. He agrees in exchange for great praise and tribute. He dispatches the kelpies in a needlessly cruel way: He sprouts a mass of tree limbs and vines from beneath them, ensnaring them and hoisting them up just out of reach of the water. Aspen's parents and younger brother are left to wither away over the course of three days, the water they need to live just barely out of reach. Aspen only escaped the same fate because she wasn't around when the god attacked them - she was still out looking for the lost kid.

She can't do anything for them, and they beg her to run away before the villagers/god find her too.

AL OF THIS TO SAY she holds very intense, complicated emotions about her home. There's lots of precious memories of her family and childhood there, but it's overshadowed by the cruelty and grief.

She has very intensely negative feelings specifically about the old, gnarled tree that's found by the eastern side of the lake, the bark of which still traces the forms of bones and fangs and hooves, that villagers revere as a sign of justice and their god but Aspen knows is nothing but a sick display of cruelty and murder.

She's a very cheery girl.

For a happier note...mm...there's a mountain lake in Keres' territory she likes visiting. The environment itself is pretty different but it still makes her think of home and her family, and she can feel secure in the knowledge that Keres well maintains her territory and just about nothing dares intrude it.

Sometimes Keres will join her, and the two will talk a bit and stargaze