Ah, child of countless trees

They've had a long quiet day together--instead of going out, Ivy did her best to cook for them, and bought a bottle of champagne to go with it, just for fun. The dinner is not perfect, but it's as close to perfect as her cooking skills are going to take them, and afterwards she washes the dishes up in the sink while he opens the champagne.

She loves it when his roommates are out, because she loves the feeling of having the apartment as their own home, just the two of them living together. Of course that's not really true: she's living with her parents in Long Island over the summer, and he's renting the apartment in Manhattan while he works (the company hired him, just as they'd been hoping), and once school starts up again she'll be back in Connecticut.

Still, they have this summer together, and Ivy, who has terrified herself a tiny bit by the fact that she feels a lot more serious about him than about anybody else she's ever dated, wipes her hands dry on the apron she's wearing over her clothes as she goes into the living room where the champagne and Ken are waiting for her.

Ivy is the kind of girl who knows what she wants and then does it. And after meeting Ken, they did get together the next day for Chinese, and it's gone wonderfully well, but they've never gone past thorough kissing thanks to Ken being responsible and Ivy being busy, and the fact is that summer break is almost upon them.

She knows that means that he'll be graduating, and she's only going to be finishing her freshman year, and that demands that steps be taken, because they've never officially declared themselves a couple. So she calls him early in the afternoon and secures a promise that he won't be busy that evening.

In general she doesn't spend hours on her appearance, but this evening she stands in front of the awkwardly placed dorm mirror and fusses over her hair, her makeup, her clothes--the white silk dress she's chosen even though it's the colour of mourning, because she refuses to let the old meanings tie her down. She clasps on silver bracelets and fills her hair with pins like tiny silver stars, and when she's thoroughly satisfied it's about twenty minutes past when she should have left, so she forgoes shoes and runs to the car.

And at twenty past seven she's knocking on the door to his apartment, hoping to bypass his roommates, bright and shining as silver ore gleaming in the darkness of a mineshaft.

Player Name: Soujin
Player Age: 19
Contact Info: rainbowjehan@gmail.com/ RainbowJehan on GTalk
Time Zone: EST

Character: Ivy Statton
Based on: Ragnelle
Age: 30
Occupation: Civil law attorney

Bio: Ragnelle was a half-tree half-faerie woman who managed to get herself cursed by Morgan le Fay, who was working with Ragnelle’s brother to try and kill King Arthur. Ragnelle managed to thwart the plot, and in return Arthur promised that she could marry anyone she chose.

Unfortunately, Morgan’s curse involved horrific ugliness, and nobody would consent to marry her except Sir Gawain, which worked out very well for him in the end when he broke the curse. He and Ragnelle had three children together: Florence and Lovel, who were killed by Lancelot, and Guinglain, who was part faerie like his mother and did shiny things.

However, Ragnelle, being not really human, was unable to leave her home for long, and when their sons were around ten or so she left and went back to Inglewood Forest. Gawain, who grew up on stories about selkies, probably didn’t find this bizarre, but that didn’t stop it from hurting.

Secretly, Sir Kay may have been in love with her.

Ivy Lin was born in small-town Massachusetts, and her family moved around constantly. Before she was eighteen she had lived in seven different houses, and college was a relief because it meant she stayed in the same place for four years (she enjoyed it for other reasons, too).

She went from a community college in New Hampshire to Yale on a scholarship, and passed her BAR exam with flying colours. It was at Yale that she met her future husband, Ken Statton, and a few years after he graduated they were married and she moved to New York City with him. Fast-forward another nine years, and Ken was getting more and more restless and insomniac, and Ivy was feeling frustrated and cramped in the city, so they without ever really mentioning that these were the reasons behind the choice they both agreed to move to Britannia.

Ivy has a small office in Britannia where she takes cases in civil law, helping residents of Britannia with things like wills, divorces, damage, and other non-criminal cases. In her spare time, she gardens fanatically, and reads poetry.

She sort of knows who she is, but she prefers to keep that to herself--it’s not exactly information that should really be shared. In addition, she isn’t aware that other Arthurians live in Britannia (including Kay).

Personality: Ivy is out-going and insanely cheerful, sort of the typical manic pixie dream girl. She does not have a lot of patience for other people’s stupidity, although she has learned to curb the instinct to smack people outright when she’s in a professional capacity.

She does very good law, hates exercise, enjoys Mozart and also movies with lots of explosions, and finds it really disconcerting that she can actually communicate with trees (it’s all about the whisper in the leaves).

She also, to her parents’ embarrassment, really likes American Chinese food.

Sample Post: Ivy sits back on her heels in the garden, wiping dirt on the knees of her oldest, dirtiest pair of jeans, and brushing stray hair out of her face.

“Ken?”

He makes kind of a grunt. He’s sitting in one of the wicker chairs on the patio that oozes out in a curved line into the garden, wearing his glasses, buried in his computer and the neat stack of papers. Ivy just watches him for a few minutes; she likes watching him, likes the way he concentrates.

“Ken, we should put in a castor bean. They’re gorgeous. I was looking at the catalogue.”

“Mm. Annuals.”

“So is the flowering maple, and you bought that.”

“I bought the flowering maple because it reminded me of you.”

“And the magnolia--”

“Magnolia’s not an annual,” Ken says, without looking back. Ivy grins.

“I think we should get one anyway.”

“Sure. You can put it near the Easter lilies.”

“Oh, good call. I’ll go to the nursery to-morrow.”

She gets up and goes over to him, hopping on the mosaic stepping-stones she made last year during the winter, and wraps her arms around his neck from behind, leaning over his shoulder. “How’s it going?”

“Just fine.”

“Good,” she says, because things are.

(Except for the sleep--but she doesn’t mention the sleep. It doesn’t help to bring it up when neither of them can change it. And someday he’s going to sleep easily again, surely. All things that grow grow slowly.)

Journal: greenwoodlady
Played By: Karen Mok