I should write something about Levi’s. Too indirect?
Let’s talk about our recent main character. I’m pointedly not calling this a maquette as I’m not ready to lock in too many of her characteristics at this point. Unlike most of the seemingly well conceived blurbs I’ve begun here on 1000 Days this one doesn’t originate from a character or from a situation. This idea originates from three commingled concepts: a word, a characteristic, and a setting. Resolving a physical person out of those sparks hasn’t been a necessity…yet.
The main character is a girl becoming a woman or somewhere south of twenty but north of puberty. Black hair she wears long at home but braided and wound up in the market where she works. Her skin is pale brown. Song is a place of variety, but MC is nested well inside the fringes with regards to late teen girls. Maybe she’s taller than most.
She’s not exactly orphaned, but her situation allows her–as it would her peers–plenty of freedom. Something about her citizenship in Song is questionable though. Maybe she’s adopted or a foundling or maybe her family just isn’t multi-generational in the village. Nothing Disney-cliche just thick enough the opposition could use the difference as leverage when the time comes. Maybe her father lived away from Song and married an Outy. Or maybe both her parents are of Song, but somehow estranged and that works against her. In any case, she feels fully invested in the community, as does everyone else, until she’s afflicted with dermatographia and victim turns up dead.
She works in the market. What she sells appeals to both locals, Outies, and tourists so she has a broad experience with people. She doesn’t know it, but she has better knowledge of Out than many aboard Song. Though having never been–or rarely been–off Song she thinks it smaller than it truly is.
Friends are hard to come by on Song because same aged kids are few. Space is a premium, so families tend to have no more than two children and usually far enough apart to have one old enough to watch the next. MC finds herself trailing a baby boomer pack or leading it. Which would normally cause her to be fast friends with the one other girl in the same situation but….she’s not for some reason. That could be story related or not. The boomer pack could be back story.
409 words on day 501