❝ LONELY IS NOT BEING ALONE, IT’S THE FEELING THAT NO ONE CARES. ❞
NAME: Eva Montoya
GENDER/PRONOUNS: Cis Woman, She/Her
DATE OF BIRTH: October 8th, 1994
PLACE OF BIRTH: Chicago, Illinois
CURRENT RESIDENCE: Manhattan
OCCUPATION: Tattoo Artist & Piercer at Spilled Ink
FACE CLAIM: Melissa Barrera
SPECIES: Witch
COVEN POSITION: Member
ELEMENT: Water
SPECIAL POWERS: Telepath
Raised in a low-income, single-parent household herself, there was no harder worker around than Renata Estrada. Watching her mother, Juliana, a powerful Black Widow witch who, understandably, only had the one child, work tirelessly to hold down multiple jobs, keep a functioning home and raise her daughter to be the best person she could be, Renata was raised with a strong work ethic and the passionate drive to find something more stable for herself. At no point did she ever expect to follow in her mother’s footsteps, but after a string of short-lived, failed relationships and unfulfilling one night stands, twenty-year-old Renata found herself staring in horror at a positive pregnancy test. Nine months later, Eva Juliana was being placed delicately into her arms, and Renata, an Illusion Caster herself, became everything she’d always hoped to avoid.
Despite the unplanned arrival of her daughter, Renata never struggled to love her. She adored Eva and vowed to raise and protect her with care and compassion, and to make sure she would be the one to break the pattern set out by Renata and her mother. Although she knew who the baby’s father was—given the timing, she’d known all along, but all she had to do was look into Eva’s eyes to see she was Montoya through and through—Renata chose never to reach out. She was a proud woman, the last thing she ever wanted was for him to think she ever actually wanted anything from him, so Renata and her mother raised Eva together in their modest, two-bedroom home, and instilled that same Estrada drive into her from an early age.
With a child in their home and the years beginning to catch up to Juliana, eventually she had to give up work. This meant Renata taking on multiple jobs to provide for their little family. This left Eva largely in Juliana’s care, with the two developing an incredibly strong bond. Her Abuela, decidedly her favorite person, taught Eva all about her culture. She made sure she knew all there was to know about her magical abilities, and taught her useful human skills like cooking and sewing, and passed on her love of art to the young girl, too. For hours and hours, Eva could lose herself in her artwork. Whether this meant coloring in an old coloring book or creating her own original pieces, Eva just loved everything surrounding the craft. With age her talent grew, and when Juliana eventually passed away with Eva in her preteen years, Renata would go out to work and come home to find her young daughter having barely moved from the spot in which she’d left her, surrounded by a calming illusion and a pile of original drawings.
Their lack of riches aside, Eva never really felt that she was missing out on anything. She asked about her father only through curiosity—information her mother only gave up because of Eva’s newly developed Telepathy power, therefore she knew withholding would be pointless—but didn’t care to reach out at all, and she didn’t mind helping out around the house. In fact, when she reached high school and all of her friends were out enjoying their downtime after school, and Eva had to use her free time to work two part-time jobs, she actually kind of liked it. She liked the independence that working afforded her, and she liked knowing that she was contributing to the Estradas’ modest lifestyle. For a while, Renata seemed so appreciative of all of her effort, and while Eva didn’t do it for the recognition, she had to admit she liked that, too. When Renata began dating a man who slowly but surely started taking up all of her focus, however, all of that seemed to change.
While she was used to evenings home alone, those evenings started to become longer and longer the more time Renata spent with James. Evenings would bleed into nighttime, then suddenly Renata would be gone for more than a day at a time. To begin with, she’d cast the illusion of peace and protection upon the house, but eventually she began to forget. Despite the company of her faithful familiar, a gray and white cat named Murphy, Eva grew lonely, and watched the strong bond she and her mother had always had grow weaker and weaker, until she felt like nothing but a burden in her life.
The final straw came when, late one evening, Renata and James came home with a group of friends Eva had never seen before. It was a school night, Eva was trying to wind down between work and bedtime, and she asked them to please keep the noise down. This simple request resulted in an altercation in which James, clearly drunk, threw around some ugly words, before picking up Eva’s latest in-progress art piece. He told her (much more colorfully) that it was trash, then tore it up much to the amusement of his friends. His next words, God, I wish you didn’t have a kid, hit an already distraught Eva like a punch to the gut, but when she looked helplessly toward her mother, despite no verbal response, she read the thought loud and clearly: me too.
She’d always been pretty impulsive, so perhaps it made sense, the way a devastated Eva disappeared to her room, packed a backpack with essentials, then took off into the night with Murphy following closely behind. She passed her mother on the way, who did absolutely nothing to stop her. In spite of her aching heart and the stark feeling of betrayal swirling throughout her, Eva gave Renata the benefit of the doubt. Too proud and embarrassed to go to any of her friends, she used some of her savings to check into a nearby hotel, where she stayed for the next three nights, and expected Renata to reach out or come to get her. When the third night hit without so much as a text message from her mother, Eva took off again. She told herself that, if the parent she’d always known didn’t want her anymore, she had another one out there who maybe would.
As far as she was aware, her father had no idea of her existence, and other than a name on a birth certificate and the fact that, according to her mother, she looked like him, she had no proof for him that she was actually his. Still, she wanted to try, so Eva used the rest of her savings to pay for a train ticket from Chicago to New York, where she showed up at his last known address with a heart full of hope and the desperate longing to be welcomed in with open arms. Only, he wasn’t the one to answer the door. He was never going to be the one to answer the door—he was gone, and despite never having met him before, a part of Eva’s heart seemed to shrivel and break right then and there. While she didn’t find her father, she did find other family members, and despite the disapproval of her step-brothers, thankfully her step-sister, Meena, took her in. Eva only expected to stay temporarily, still holding quietly onto the hope that her mother would come looking for her, but she never did. Days turned to weeks, weeks to months, until Eva became a permanent fixture in Meena’s home.
Had she not had her Abuela’s name a part of her own already, she likely would’ve kept Estrada when Meena became her legal guardian, but she wanted nothing to do with her mother anymore. So, Eva Juliana Estrada became Eva Juliana Montoya, and she officially closed the door on that part of her life. In spite of this, Eva still had all of the life lessons she’d learned in her formative years drilled into her. She’d never had money before, and despite her new family having plenty, Eva never wanted any of it. She’d accept things Meena bought for her—essentials such as new school supplies and clothing, or gifts around holidays—but she would always do so with a grimace. She continued to work a part-time job alongside school, and saved frugally just like she always had done.
Around the age of seventeen, Eva decided exactly what she wanted to do with her life. A talented artist, Eva landed a new job at a tattoo parlor, where she would essentially just keep things tidy and work the reception desk, but she wanted to be in on the actual tattooing action, too. Eventually, the owner took her under his wing as an apprentice, and Eva began to hone her talent, until she became a dedicated and efficient tattoo artist, a full-time job she still works to this day. In the future, Eva hopes to own her own studio, but she is more than happy to work her job at Spilled Ink as one of their highly sought after artists until then. She took a piercing course and covers the occasional piercing shift now, too.
Personality-wise, Eva changed slightly when she left Chicago. She was never the most trusting of people to begin with, but she began to trust people less and less after her mother cast her aside the way she did. Eva is friendly when she wants to be, and always happy to converse politely with clients at her job, but she isn’t quite as naive as she once was. She can be pretty cold sometimes, and while she doesn’t lose her temper often, when she does it is really not a pretty sight. Fortunately, Murphy is always on hand to keep her grounded, but Eva is still known to act impulsively, so it isn’t uncommon for her to disappear for a night or two when she doesn’t have work commitments the next day, though that is likely of no comfort to those who care about her.
