#winona the apprentice

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A little self indulgent post about my other non-binary apprentices celebrating Alessa coming out. In hindsight with so many non-binary, feminine presenting apprentices I should have seen it coming. 😂

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And Winona’s is done! They very much like waist coats, vests, and big ties. At first I was really worried about the hair, and wanted to make sure their expression showed genuine happiness. I couldn’t give them a small smile or stoic expression because they simply wouldn’t

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Poor poor Winny, why do I make my OCs suffer so? Because it’s fun. This is my first ever comic so the formatting is a bit wonky as it was not easy to do.

But in all seriousness this is a comic I wanted to do for a while where Winona finds their parents. @chimerosecat’s apprentice Xero was here, as xey have a very close maternal relationship to Winona, and were able to bring them to their parent’s graves.

The writing on the graves is made up but says “unknown travelers” as they were ambushed while trading and killed, only to be found later by locals who did not know who they were. Winona would end up carving their names into the graves. “You weren‘t nobody to me.”

Edit: If it isn’t clear, their magic is sucking the color from the world around them. This often happens when they are distressed. 

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Here are my other apprentices in snowy weather! All handling much better than Tabitha did. (Left to right: Winona, Zira, Katarina with Masha on her lap, and Freya. 

Winona was trying to throw a snowball passed Freya, at Asra. It did not work. Also their aesthetic is 100% early 2000s Barbie movies. I don’t usually draw Freya in red or warm colored clothes, but I think it looks pretty nice! 

Another thing of note is Zira and Masha are pretty used to a cold climate, as their dimension is pretty cold. Masha is just wearing gloves and a scarf for the aesthetic.

Edit: Added the close ups of Freya “this-is-fine” and Winona “this-is-not-fine”. And I almost forgot to mention that once again my baby sister did the background and snowman for this picture, mostly just playing around with how to do digital art.

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Winona is taking a much longer time than expected because I have a lot less time to work on their portrait, so have a WIP For free. Honestly I need to change the hair to a braided piece on top instead of a twist, side it's just not working out in color.

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Echoes of the Past day 5: The Aunt

@arcana-echoes

So many of my apprentices didn’t originally have an “Aunt”, Alessa’s just worked out on accident lol. Some of these stories ignore a bit of canon.

Alessa: As stated previous, Alessa’s aunt was her connection to learning magic. Her Aunt, Leonor, left Padr to pursue magic after being exposed to it in a positive light while traveling. Her family didn’t want to keep in touch, unfortunately, but sometimes Alessa and her would find ways to communicate without it being intercepted by her parents. Leonor was very well respected in Padr until she got into magic. She was known for being caring, compassionate, and a wonderful baker. Alessa and her would get along great and Leonor would often babysit her when she was little before leaving Padr when Alessa was eight. 

When Alessa left Padr to pursue magic as well she went straight to Vesuvia to find her Leonor. All that she would find, however, was an abandoned shop with her things still inside. After asking a few locals she learned of Leonor’s sudden death a few months prior and broke down in tears. Alessa decided to take up running the shop in her memory.

Tabitha: She did not have an aunt, or even a family friend that was connected to the shop. Tabitha just ended up in Vesuvia along her travels and decided it would be a good place to settle down for a while. Plus, she heard the city had a very cute procurator. ;) She came upon the shop almost by accident and learned the current owner was ready to retire, so she spent a few months learning how to run the shop properly before taking over completely. 

Freya: For Freya the “Aunt” was a family friend. After Erika (the “aunt”) had heard that Freya was planning on leaving the tribe she offered for Freya to come to Vesuvia and stay with her. Before leaving the tribe, Erika was very much like everyone else there. When Freya was younger, Erika had believed that her parents were doing the right thing in sheltering her so much. Not many people left the tribe anyway, so she wouldn’t have to worry about being on her own. However, she did change her mind after leaving for herself and seeing the disservice Freya’s parents were really doing, even if Freya really would stay in the village her whole life.

Erika would eagerly take Freya under her wing in her young adult life, and they became much closer than they had been in the tribe. Freya owes a lot to Erika teaching her how the real world works, not just the bubble her tribe had put her in. Eventually Erika would pass away at the age of 76, which didn’t come as a surprise and it allowed Freya the closure to speak with her one last time. By that point she had considered Erika an aunt. Erika had left the shop to Freya who has been looking after it ever since. 

Winona: This was actually Winona’s half-aunt, as it was their mothers half-sister, though that didn’t mean anything was different. Enola was her name and she left the tribe shortly after her sister and brother-in-law went missing, in order to try and find them. She would be the inspiration for Winona doing the same when they became a teenager. Winona didn’t remember much about her as they were young by the time she left, and they would only remember stories people would tell about her. According to them Enola was very strong, and her magic was nearly as powerful as Dakota’s. 

Winona met with them a few times in Vesuvia, as they were working on ships at the time and frequently came to Vesuvia. When they felt they were ready, they went to stay with Enola. She left Winona in charge of the shop one night while she left to continue looking for clues on Dakota and Nahuel’s disappearance, but her ship became lost at sea after a horrible storm. Winona began to feel their family was cursed and has reoccurring nightmares of this happening to them, especially after they had a child. 

Zira: To get to the point, Zira had absolutely no one in this dimension that she knew, much less family or close friends who would give her a shop. After crossing over into this dimension she stumbled around to find a place to stay. She came upon an old abandoned magic shop and decided to buy it. She had no concept of money in this world, so she basically just bought the whole shop in cash as she threw a bag of gold at the person she bought it from. For a while, though, she had forgotten she bought a shop as well as a place to live, so it wasn’t until about a month later that she realized she would need to start making money and tried her hand in shopkeeping. 

Katarina: Similar to many other apprentices, this “aunt” was a friend of the family rather than her real aunt. This friend was Gabriella, and she had known the family for a while; since Kat was very young. Since Kat lived in Vesuvia, she was very familiar with the shop and would often go to spend time with Gabriella when she had free time. When she got old enough Gabriella allowed Kat to use her shop for her sculptures, since she had a giant basement she didn’t really use. She was always supportive of Kat and her art, and would even sell some of her pieces. 

After Kat decided she didn’t want to run the family tavern, Gabriella gave her the idea to help around the shop. She could decide if it was something she wanted, even if she did’t keep it as a magic shop, but there was no commitment. Kat did end up deciding to run the shop. At first it was mostly an art shop, but she realized the market was asking for a magic shop so she changed it back, but still sells her art and does commission work. Gabriella ended up retiring and moved somewhere else during the plague. They still keep in touch.

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Echoes of the Past Day 6: Friends

@arcana-echoes

Alessa: She had two main friends; Emma and Sofia. She was also friends with her sisters, Laura, and Violet, but outside the family Emma and Sofia were her friends. They were the absolute best of friends and inseparable when they were younger. They were her friend group that became interested in magic with her. They would read the history of magic and pretend to be witches in their little clubhouse in this woods. This lead Emma to getting in trouble and she was forbidden from seeing Sofia and Alessa again. Alessa had also gotten into trouble with her family for it. However, Emma, Sofia, and Alessa would still hang out together in secret. As Alessa got older and decided to leave she grew apart from her friends. She still is in contact with Emma sometimes, but hasn’t seen either of them in years. 

Tabitha: She had so many friends. All of the children in her tribe were her friends, and she loved to play with them when she was little! As she grew up, she gained more friends in some of the older people int he tribe. Her main friend, however, was a girl named Uma. They became better friends because Hemi, Tabitha’s brother, started dating her. He was really happy the two got along so well, and all three would hang out together and craft things together. Tabitha still keeps in touch with Uma today and always clears a day to spend time with her whenever she goes and visits her home. 

Freya: Because of her upbringing, she didn’t really have many friends, especially when she was young. Most of the children were told to stay out of her way, or not be too rough with her, or that they couldn’t play with her because she and her powers were important to the tribe. The first person she was friends with was when she started to hang out with the boy she was betrothed to. Even he wasn’t allowed to hang out with her too much when they were little because they didn’t want Freya to become distracted from honing in on her magic. They thought it would cloud her visions of the future. While her and Lukas got along well, and she felt he respected her wishes better than anyone else in the tribe, the marriage didn’t work out. However, it did not end on bad terms so they are still friendly when Freya comes to visit. 

As discussed previous, she did find a friend in Erika. Erika had been helping her parents for a while before she left Vesuvia, and when Freya made her way to Vesuvia they became even better friends that lasted even after Erika’s death. 

Winona: They make friends with just about everyone they meet! They are such a friendly, approachable, social butterfly. They had many friends in their tribe, but haven’t kept much in contact with them. Similarly, because they would travel all the time as a young adult, they haven’t kept in contact with much of their friends. The only friends they did stay in contact with were Asra, Muriel, and Enola. Ever since settling down in Vesuvia, though, they have gained many many friends! Especially the vendors int he markets, whom they always say “Hi” to everyday. 

Zira: She had a few friends back in her home dimension named Alamon and Emoran. The three were always sneaking around and pulling pranks on people, though very harmless pranks. The staff at her palace and even her father would always laugh and even suggest who should be their next “victim”. As they got older they remained good friends. They did silly things and experimented with different styles and hobbies together and they could always look to each other for advice. They even became Masha’s godparents after Zira adopted her and they absolutely spoiled her silly! Unfortunately, after Zira and Masha were forced to leave their dimension, they couldn’t keep in touch with Alamon and Emoran anymore. 

Making friends in Vesuvia is hard for Zira, as she doesn’t look that approachable or friendly at first. Her friends are now are Asra, Nadia, Portia, Julian, and the courtiers, but only really Asra, Nadia, and Portia are her best friends that she trusts more than anyone, and it took a really long time to begin to trust them. 

Katarina: While they were friends with many people around Vesuvia, their best friends were Gabriella, the person who would give her the shop, and Edmund, a young boy who lived not far from her. She also did know Asra and Muriel, but wasn’t well acquainted with them for a while. Gabriella would be busy most of the time with the shop so they would play with Edmund, mostly “hide-and-seek” or “explorers” where they would run all around Vesuvia. As Katarina was starting losing her ability to run for a long time and would struggle keeping up, Edmund would just carry her around or run around while pushing her in a wheelchair. On more than one occasion they ended up accidentally tipping over, but Kat would just laugh it off. They will always say they’re grateful for having him as a friend, and they are still very good friends to this day. 

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Echoes of the Past Day 14: In Another Life

@arcana-echoes

Alessa: If she had ignored her “call to action” when she realized magic was what she was supposed to do, she would have eventually taken up running the bakery her aunt left behind. Don’t get me wrong, she loves to bake so that would be a good job for her, but she would struggle to have independence since her parents constantly tried to control her and her finances. Out of desperation I believe she would have ended up marrying a traveler who came through just to get away from her family. She would never end up contacting them again, even leaving her sisters behind. The marriage, due to it being rushed, would not have been the best, but not nearly as bad as her and her ex. All in all she would have remained dependent on people her whole life and never experiencing what she wanted to. A life filled with regret is a fate worse than death to her. 

Tabitha: It’s kind of funny how easily her life could have been different. If she just decided not to stay in Vesuvia and keep moving, or go back to her tribe, or even just go to live somewhere else. While fundamentally she would be the same person, but her life would be very different. She would not have met and married Volta, and they would not have a beautiful daughter. Another difference would be she would not believe those tied to the devil were anything other  than evil as well. Since the other courtiers seemed creepy and bad intentioned, she probably wouldn’t have ever thought they could be anything more, much less believing they could be victims themselves. 

Freya: If she had never left her tribe she would still be controlled by her parents, and they never would have learned what they were doing was wrong. It could have affected more blind and disabled people born into the tribe. Freya would never have learned to live for herself and never become independent. She never would have ended up becoming friends with Erika. Her life would be vastly different.

Winona: In all honesty, they really wanted to go with Asra. Ir hurt so much to say no but they knew that if they went with him the guilt would overwhelm them. Well, in another life it did. If they had gone with Asra they would have had horrible nightmares, that would find their way to manifest in real life. Often these would be very threatening, and they would end up hurting Winona if they go too out of hand. They would make themself sick and no amount of hep from Asra would be able to console them. Eventually they wouldn’t be able to be around Asra anymore without being reminded of that time in Vesuvia so they would just leave. No trace of them left behind. They would wander without knowing where to go. 

Zira: If Zira had not died, lets be real, this whole thing could have been avoided. She would be only a little different, but that in itself, can make a big difference. She would be more trusting of some people, since she was already trusting of Julian and Maz before her death. This would have helped her to gain more friends and have a good support system. This also would have helped Masha, since while her mother was dead and after she came back to life she was going through a lot. Not having Zira around for vital developmental years was hard on both of them.

Katarina: After dying her confidence plummeted. They were working on building confidence, mostly just about their appearance, but after coming to life this translated to not only appearance but ability. They worried about how their magic is developing and how well they can control it. Especially after mind controlling someone for the first time, they started to worry about their true nature and if they used to be or were destined to be evil.