Appearance

(c) Dark Matter 227432
Though Maeve has a nearly flat chest, she does have a subtle hourglass form, thanks to her small waist. The rest of her body is rather slender, with long, toned legs, an elegant shoulder line, and a regal, confident posture, making her sometimes appear a little more than 5’5. Like all shadow fairies, Maeve has a cold creamy skin tone, which looks gray in colder lights and like it has color in warmer lights. Her fingers and feet are an inky black at the tips and slowly fade to her normal skin color at her knuckles and the bottom of her calves. Her skin is nearly perfect aside from a few small scars and a palm-sized purple-gray birthmark beneath her wing on her left shoulder blade which she always covers up with her clothes or wings.

Speaking of wings, when Maeve isn’t flying or doesn’t have her wings open, they look like folded hand fans with a few tears in them. Each “wing” is split into four pieces, two on top, two on the bottom, with the top ones about twice as long as the bottom ones. Each wing segment has the same bowed shape, with the tips lower than the base of the wings on the back, they also all have a few natural rips and tears on them. About 2/3 of each wing segment is a rosey black color, which fades to a dark gold at the tips with a small bit of wine red between the black and gold.

Maeve has long, slightly wavy hair that is very thick and poofy, which falls to the center of her back… when she has her hair open… which is never. She usually keeps it in a loose braid or bun, or braided bun, keeping it out of her face and the poof at bay. The hair also has quite a unique coloring, being very similar to her wings. The hairs closest to her head are black, which slowly fades to a dark wine red, which lightens up to a soft creamy yellow-orange at the tips. Rather unusual for a shadow fairy, but not unheard of.

Her face is rather slim, with a narrow chin and jaw, and most of her facial features are rather small and pointy. Her nose and lips are thin, with her lips having more color than the rest of her skin, but still not really bright. Though her eye shape is pretty average, her eyes are rather catching, being a soft yellow that gets lighter closer to the pupil, sometimes appearing as if her eyes are glowing. While light-colored eyes are not a common sight, Maeve has seen a few other shadow fairies with light colored eyes like her own. Her eyebrows are slim and defined. Her ears are also like an average shadow fairy's ears, upturned and pointy, though she has several piercings in each ear and tends to wear her earrings at random.

Maeve tends to wear dark purple, red, and black clothing with soft yellow and red accents. She usually wears some sort of leggings or skin-tight pants on her legs and a billowy top on top, sometimes long-sleeved, sometimes short-sleeved, depending on the weather and how she’s feeling. Although she has many earrings, usually in rose gold or black, she doesn't like wearing anything on her wrists and fingers or around her neck. Maeve is rather good with most weapons but prefers bows and spears over everything.

Personality
Observant - Anxious - Can’t stand still
Maeve is the kind of fairy that can stare holes into you, and not just because of her seemingly glowing eyes. She often stares into space, and fairies believe she’s just lost in her head as she always is, but even though she’s stuck on a loop thinking about everything, she will catch the smallest movements, a slight limp, a bloody rag, a stuttered lie, it's uncanny how well she picks up on these little things, and she won't tell a soul she knows. Although she often appears calm and lost in her own world, her mind is a constant storm, never stopping to breathe, constantly thinking and remembering and worrying about what will happen next and what she did wrong, and what she said that might have made another fairy think she’s weird and wrong and bad. Seeing as her mind is never still, even when it’s not worrying, there’s little chance you will ever find Maeve actually being completely still, she’s always tapping her leg, foot, or fingers, picking at her nails, fumbling with her hair… though sometimes she has made these movements almost unnoticeable.

Emotional - Stubborn - Cold
Maeve may be a raging storm on the inside, her emotions ready to burst into a fit of yelling or tears at any second, but she would never show this or let anyone see weakness. If she needs to cry or yell or let her buried emotions lose as she must every once in a while, lest she completely lose control and explode in front of someone else, she will do so alone, far away from everyone. She is also incredibly stubborn, making up for all her faults in faked confidence and nonchalant attitude, of saying what she means and feels directly, no lies, no sugarcoating, and she will not care if she hurts the person. At least on the outside. She will stand by what she said months ago, just so she appears like she was right at all times because being wrong is just another fault she can’t have.

Judgmental - Distrustful - Grudging
Being so observant, Maeve is also very judgmental, noting imperfections in appearances, strange ways of talking, strange ways of speaking, and anything that could be seen as annoying, strange or quirky. She can also be a bit of a hypocrite, judging others for being stubborn and stuck up like her, and how annoying people like that are. Because of her upbringing, she is incredibly distrustful, knowing that kindness and love come with expectation, which is something she does not want, not the love, not the expectations, so any kindness is immediately turned down and snarked at, even if her mind is about to burst into tears. She also tends to hold grudges against those who are mean, or nice to her, really. If you do something for her that she doesn’t want, if you hurt her ego, which she does have to fit the personality she projects, she will hate you. It’s not that she wants to be the best, she doesn’t care about that at least… usually. It’s just that she doesn’t want you to be better than her or do something for her. So she will hate you if you open a jar that she can’t open for herself, and that hate will not go away.

Sarcastic - Snarky - Defensive
To keep herself from being hurt, or from people being nice to her, Maeve has learned to be rather rude, having sarcastic and snarky remarks when she does speak to people, and tending to ignore commands. She’s not exactly mean, just very blunt, and will say something if she doesn’t want to do something, or if she doesn’t like you. To people she’s neutral with or doesn’t mind, her form of liking them, she won't be as sarcastic, and might lend them a smile or slightly friendlier tease. And during a normal conversation she will be nice enough, say what she needs to say, and be done with it, only when someone calls her out, or talks right at her, will she start with the snarkiness.

Easily stressed - Has difficulty learning - Difficulties with left and right
Because of her constantly active mind, Maeve is also very easily stressed, which leads to more thinking and finger tapping and picking. What caused this nervousness and anxiety in the first place is the fact that she struggles to learn, which in the shadow fairy culture is not a good thing. Maeve is good at learning and doing physical things, and learning while doing is the best method. Sitting on a desk watching a teacher write something down and repeat words after words after words does very little for Maeve. She can’t catch the words from the teachers fast enough to write down, copy the written things well enough, or take notes that are fast and make sense, meaning she was always behind, struggling to keep up and constantly disappointing her family. What did not help was that she struggles with figuring out which side is left and which side is right. She knows which direction she wants to go, but to give that a name? It just doesn’t work. It takes her 5-10 seconds to figure out which side is left and which is right, some bad days when she’s distracted it takes longer.

Her parents smothered her with kindness and promises of greatness, and that they were already proud of her before and when she began school, but that didn’t last long once everyone saw how far she was falling behind, how she struggled to understand easy things, and how her notes were incomprehensible scribbles half the time. At first, it was her grandparents, saying there was something wrong with her, that she wasn’t normal. Then her parents started becoming harsher, forcing her to sit hours with a tutor that spewed words and never showed her how. She was never enough, never good enough, and when she succeeded, it was a small praise and an order to continue learning so she could at least catch up to her peers.
She was nine when she broke the first time. Her parents were arguing about her, so she ran, not able to cope with their loud voices. A young raven found her crying in a ditch near the White forest and managed to comfort her a little, and hasn’t left her side since.

At some point her siblings had turned as well, noticing how harsh her parents were, and believing they could do the same. Maeve became an anxious ball of tears, the love and kindness she’d experienced when there were no expectations were gone, and now it was only learn, become better, learn, do better, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. Even her younger brother joined in with their siblings when he got older. That’s when Maeve started turning. She started to skip her tutoring, her school, and spend as much time as she could outside.

When she was thirteen she broke for the second time, the stress and expectations making her fly out of the house and towards the ocean, trying to get away. She’d never flown over an ocean and wasn’t prepared for the strong winds. The wind swung her around, she struggled to stay upright, and then she was underwater, too panicked to swim or hold her breath. She’d wanted to attack the water fairy that saved her… not because she’d wanted to drown, but because she was angry at herself that she couldn’t even swim or fly right.

After that Maeve started to learn, actually learn, how to fight from the soldiers stationed at her village and joined their ranks, of course somewhere far away from her family, as soon as possible.