Meet GINEVRA “Ginny” QUINN. They are FIFTY-SIX years old and hail from BOOTHBAY, MAINE. Ginny embodies the constellation, ERIDANUS. They use she/her pronouns. Their faceclaim is Sydney Park.
Eridanus reminds me of rain covered sidewalks, jars filled with brightly colored pebbles, the tragedy of growing up, birthday cake flavored everything, diving into open waters, double takes, found families, a hilarious lack of pop culture knowledge, #SaveTheTurtles, a monochromatic wardrobe, endless FroYo toppings, footsteps running along a wooden dock, seashells as decoration, and finding your voice.
BIOGRAPHY
Boothbay is the picturesque setting for many-a adolescent coming-of-age summer movies. Nestled on the coast of Maine, its small population makes their living off of being a tourist destination in the summer and living their everyday lives as fisherman and townsfolk during the rest of the year. As cliche as it sounds, Ginny Quinn truly can’t imagine a more perfect upbringing. She was the youngest child two hard-working parents, never swimming in money but always having enough to live comfortably with little worries. Her early years were spent running along the docks and swimming in the ocean, knowing almost everyone in the area by face if not by name. It wasn’t exciting, but it was home.
That’s why, when Gregory and Paulette Quinn were found dead in their home one day in the fall of ‘78, and their daughter was nowhere in sight, the town was left in shock.
It would be another forty years before any of them saw Ginny again, looking only a few years older than when she had disappeared. Previously a carefree young girl, with dreams of exploring the world but always ending up back in Boothbay, the Ginny that greeted them was of a much more callous variety. Not rude, never rude. But with sharper edges than when she’d left, a little more reckless. And very much so closed off — she wouldn’t answer the questions they asked about where she’d been or how she still looked so young. And when asked if she knew what happened to her parents, she simply replied that she did not care about them. So, a very different girl indeed.
The truth is, Ginny didn’t see a point in explaining to them what had happened. Her family’s magic was a secret from most of the town, and they wouldn’t have believed her if she had told them. But here we go.
Never once during her idyllic childhood had Ginny ever known what her parents did for a living. Never once had she thought to ask. Most of their town was made up of fisherman, and her parents spent almost as much time out on their family’s boat than they did at home. Every few weeks, one or both of them would travel along the East Coast to sell, and it was enough to keep their family afloat. Ginny had no reason to question it, even as she grew older and began to pick up on how none of the other town residents ever spoke about fishing with hers, or how she never saw any of the fish they brought in.
In the Fall of ‘78, Ginny came home from grocery shopping to a literal bloodbath. Her parents were barely recognizable in the middle of the living room, with three creatures surrounding them who were most definitely not human. Even if Ginny had wanted to scream, she couldn’t. Her lungs were filling with water; she was suddenly being drowned from the inside out. She was going to die. But she didn’t.
Only a few seconds after their attack started, one of the creatures told the others to stop. Ginny was too busy guzzling air to pay much attention to what they were saying, and too emotionally drained from the ordeal to fight back when they moved her. She was expecting them to kill her as horrifically as they had her parents except that didn’t happen.
When she was next fully aware, she was underwater. She was alive and underwater without any bit of struggle. When she remembered what happened to her parents, she reasonably freaked out. And then cried. And then bit one of the creatures — mermaids, she thought initially. sirens, they corrected her — that attempted to soothe her. It took another three days before she could bring herself to listen to them. When she did, she wished she hadn’t.
Your parents were hunters, they explained. Then sneered and corrected themselves. Capturers, more like it. That didn’t seem right, but the more they said, the more Ginny realized that the horribly picture they were painting made too much sense to be a lie. Her parents — good, kind Gregory and Paula Quinn — hadn’t made their money off selling every day fish. It came from capturing and selling water-based magic. Primarily nymphs and mermaids, but they could get a pretty high bid if they caught a siren or a selkie. Her parents who had taught her to be kind and forgiving, had built themselves around the selling of living, breathing, sentient beings. And, after decades of covering their footsteps and protecting themselves, they were finally identified by the sirens and permanently removed as a problem.
So why had they brought Ginny here instead of killing her too? They answered that before she’d even considered it. For starters, Ginny was just a child. A scared child that hadn’t appeared as a blip on any of the sirens’ proverbial radars, who they suspected was unaware of her parents misgivings. Her reaction proved they were right on that one. They were killers by nature, but they refused to harm an innocent like Ginny.
Then, of course, there was the notice of her constellation mark. That’s what had been discussed while she’d gasped for air next to her parents’ bodies. Magic worked differently for sirens than it did for witches, but there were particular marks that they could recognize from their own mythology. The mark that had appeared years ago on Ginny’s forearm was one of them. Eridanus was as close to waterfolk as most witches could get. Ginny knew that her mark gave her abilities similar to a mermaid, but her parents had always urged her to keep those secret from the rest of the town. Now, they had helped to save her life.
They would have let her go. They promised they would, so long as she promised to leave their kind alone moving forward. Or there was another option: she could stay with them. She wasn’t a siren, but she had everything necessary to live underwater for most of her life if she so chose. And they would take care of her. They were the reason she no longer had any adult to watch over her; the sirens would freely step (or swim) into that role. She would have been well within her right to leave after what they had done to her parents. But after the undeniable truth of their stories... could she blame them? No, but she did blame her mom and dad for being capable of such horrific things. Besides, if she returned to the human world, what would await her? Explanations she didn’t have and a probably life within the foster system. She trusted the sirens, though. So she stayed.
For the next forty years, she was raised a daughter of the sea. She did need to breech the surface every few days (her powers aren’t limitless and she still needed to retain at least some humanity), but the sirens were her family and her loyalty was to them. Any reminder of her own human status was met with disdain; she could only think of the horrific actions of her parents and those who had bought off of them. Ginny certainly wasn’t a siren. She wasn’t a mermaid or a selkie or any of the other water creatures she stumbled across in her time. But she was one of them in everything but physiology and that was enough.
Returning to the human world was less her choice. The siren she had come to think of as her father, the one who had stopped the others from drowning her that first day, was the one who urged her to not only spend time in their world but to further her education. He was a high ranking member of their clan’s council, someone who at his very core wanted the ability to exist peacefully with other creatures, even if not on the friendliest of terms. It took years of convincing before Ginny agreed to act as something of an ambassador. There was an ulterior motive — her father knew that without proper training, Ginny’s powers might one day fail her. As much as she wanted to think herself a siren, she could not fully immerse herself as one without risking death, the last thing any of them wanted. So it was for both her own health and for the safety of her clan that she returned to land and headed for Polaris.
She has been at the school for approximately three years now, and it has been a rather slow adjustment. Upon first arrival, she wanted nothing to do with the other witches and wizards. She likened them all to her parents, and refused to let anyone know about where she had been raised. But over the years, those feelings have somewhat shifted. She is still wary about people, and she places her trust on a very high shelf. There have been some who have earned it though, and she had started to let herself think that maybe some witches and wizards are good by nature. There is still that overall hesitance though, and she is very careful not to be moved too far from her mission. When not in class, she spends much of her time advocating for magical beings, trying to bring attention to the the hunting many of them face at the hands of wizards and humans alike. Don’t get it twisted. She may be making friends and she may be slowly rediscovering what it means to walk among mankind. But her main goal is always at the forefront of her actions.
INCLINATION
Eridanus, the river, creates water magic in its most basic form. Those chosen are often born around water, and thrive best along an open shoreline. Their most noteworthy skill is their ability to submerge themselves for long periods of time. It’s not necessarily that they can breathe underwater; rather, their need for air disappears as soon as they’re underwater, their physiology immediately adapting. They are also skilled swimmers and have a strong connection to aquatic life. Because they are so connected to the water, Eridanus usually struggles of too far removed from it. The drier an environment, the weaker their magic becomes.
CONNECTIONS
Relative: An older sibling, a cousin, a great grandpa — someone related with Ginny who was under the impression that she just disappeared after her parents’ murders. She completely distanced herself from her land life so when they two stumble into each other at Polaris, Ginny wants absolutely nothing to do with them. Too bad she’s too stubborn to give them any explanation as to why she fucked off for forty years. (FC should be either park Korean and/or African-American to match Sydney’s ethnicity. Bonus points if it’s an older sibling who was out of the house at the time of the murder and the fc is Tati Gabrielle.)
What’s a Friend?: By nature, Ginny is cautious around most witches and wizards, and it takes a lot to earn her trust. This is someone who has earned it though, so much so that Ginny has told them about her life among the sirens and her current mission. Because of who she is as a person, Ginny doesn’t actually call them her best friend, but the sentiment is there.
We Could Have Had It All (Rolling in the Deep): Ginny can not afford to form many attachments while on land but this person right here seems to be the biggest wrench in that plan. Without meaning to, they’ve grown closer and she’s developed feelings towards them (whether or not that’s reciprocated is entirely up to you). Getting romantically involved is simply out of the question, much less with a witch or wizard, so Ginny’s solution was to stop talking to them altogether. With no explanation. Seemingly unprompted. She’d apologize but she doesn’t trust herself to be around them without falling even harder.
Penned by Jeanne ★