Arlie La Rue - @BoundToProtect
Age: 15
Race: Human
Occupation: Store Assistant
Alignment: Good
Personality: Protective, independent, curious
Home Region: The Metro
Powers/Abilities/Skills: Abjuration witchcraft
Other Associated Regions: The Corral
Face Claim: Amandla Stenberg
Arlie was born to Jacob and Isabelle Pritchard in the wild west of the Corral in a tiny town called Mineola. Her father was a bank teller and her mother worked from home, tending to the house and raising their daughter.
For the most part Arlie's upbringing was a modest one. There was almost always enough to go around, save several summers of intense drought, and she loved the small dustbowl of a town she was raised in. It was a quiet town with no electricity and hardly any technology whatsoever. Far removed from civilization, magic did not exist there and few had ever witnessed it. People relied on their own hands and wit to get things done, and life had a slow, ambling pace. Arlie's favorite pastime was riding horses along the winding trails that lead into the uninhabited wilderness that surrounded them.
The serene life came at a price. Her family, like nearly all of the residents of her town, were deeply opposed to anything that would progress society too quickly. Magic and technology were shinned as it was believed they would tarnish the soul, making people selfish and greedy.
When Arlie was eleven, she headed out on one of her many trips into the wilderness and noticed a figure walking ahead of her. A gun was slung over his shoulder, with the body of a raccoon slung over his shoulder. A hunter. Arlie despised hunters- not the ones that hunted for food- at the very least, theirs was a pursuit that used the animal in a way that honored it. It was the ones that killed for fun, who took their kills and mounted their heads on the wall, leaving their bodies to rot that angered her. They had no value for life an Arlie recognized this man to be that kind.
She followed behind the man until he came to a stop. He'd caught a coyote in his snare, and she could hear its scared growls and whimpers as he approached. It was then that she broke out into a full gallop towards the snared animal, placing herself between it and the hunter. She pleaded with him to let the animal go, but he refused with a laugh, trying to push past her, his gun trained on coyote. Without thinking, Arlie raised a hand. A blast of shielding energy shot from her palm, knocking the hunter down and back several yards. As he stood, a look of horror filled his face. He fled, screaming and shouting, calling her a witch and a lunatic.
Arlie was stunned, staring blankly at her own hand. After releasing the coyote, she went home, feeling hollow and detached. Magic. She had used magic. She knew what that would mean in a town like hers...
Her parents had heard what happened before she got home. Everyone had. They were furious, believing she must have been in talks with the devil to have used a power like that and berated her for giving in to the tempation of using it. She spent the next few days shut in her room. Her parents wouldn't even look at her. Their only child, and all they now felt was rage and shame.
Alone, Arlie's thoughts tormented her. Maybe the magic she'd used really was evil... maybe they were right. It made her sick to her stomach, but she knew she had to get away. If for no other reason, then to find someone who could purge her of her newfound ability. She had to get rid of it.
Taking what little she had in her savings, she stole away as darkness fell and took the midnight train to the Metro. As she stepped off the train and into the bustling city, she was immediately overwhelmed. The electricity, the noise, all the people...everything moved so fast. She realized immediately she had made a terrible mistake, and with all her money spent on the train ticket, she had no way to get food or seek shelter. As rain began to fall from the darkened sky, she curled up in a ball beneath the awning of a convenience store, shivering and crying alone.
That's when a young woman approached. Natalie la Rue, the very woman who would soon become her mother offered Arlie an umbrella and gave her shelter. With nowhere else to go, Natalie allowed her to stay, and in time, would come to adopt her as her own. Arlie came to her broken and lost, and Natalie made her feel whole. Instead of helping Arlie rid herself of her abilities, Natalie nurtured them. A witch herself, she saw Arlie's potential and helped her grow, helping Arlie learn that her magical abilities geared towards abjuration, magic which protects.
Now fifteen, Arlie loves her mother very much and helps run her magic shop where they sell potions, artifacts, spell books and stones. Her mother is a skilled potions brewer, a skill Arlie has yet to master (although her confidence would tell you otherwise!) There are days where she misses the Corral, but she knows she can't go back. Not when her kind isn't understood there.
