Character Q&A Bree

One reader asked Bree:

"What was that whole goth phase about? What brought it about, and what caused you go grow out of it?"

Answer:

Ugh, I can still taste that nightberry hair dye from the time I got it in my mouth. You don’t even wanna know what that stuff feels like if it goes in your eyes!

I guess the whole thing was a bit of a backlash against the whole “children of the forest” thing that so many of my generation were into back then. I mean, just because we’re wood elves, it doesn’t mean we all have to be druids and archers. There was a lot of pressure to go to those big moonlight gatherings and “become one with the spirit of the forest” or whatever, but that was never my thing, you know…

As a matter of fact, I met the Spirit of the Forest once, and he was kinda creepy, to tell the truth. He kept swaying his giant antlers back and forth like he was trying to hypnotize me or something… and those big, watery eyes of his… eugh. Would have been bad enough, if he hadn’t kept asking if I’d ever “felt the spirit move within me?”… Yeah, I know, right?

Anyway, I guess I got tired of all those dewy-eyed dryad girls and their hangers-on always inviting me to come sniff the pine boughs or whatever it was they did, so I went a little dark for a while, you know. After that, they mostly left me alone.

My family did stage something of an intervention at one point, even had the Hierophant Druid sitting in the parlor when I got home one night. They kept telling me how my cousin’s Ranger troop had an opening, and they were sure they could get me a tryout, and, since I liked “sneaking around at all hours” so much, I’d probably fit right in… so long as I was willing to wash my hair and “dress appropriately.”

Well, I finally agreed to go to the tryouts, and that got them to leave me alone for a while, but, instead I wound up using all the gold that I had lifted from the Hierophant’s coinpurse while he was hugging me goodbye to buy a ticket to a Shrikereaver concert. Oh, was my father pissed when he found out!

As for “growing out of it,” I don’t know. I guess I just stopped caring so much about trying to tell other people that I wasn’t like them. The only ones who really cared at all were the ones who just wanted me to be happy. They just had no idea what made me happy.

I guess I eventually stopped blaming them for not knowing me, because I realized that I didn’t even know myself, so what chance did they have?

And all those dryad girls that whispered behind my back... well, I guess they just stopped seeming so important, once I got a look at the real world. They’re probably still there, sniffing leaves and praying to the moon.

I’ve got more important things to do.